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WEEKS » PARENTS AND THEIR
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COPTRl'iMr IJIJ Br -5. D, GMILUS * CO., CHICAGO.
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NEEDLESS ANXIETY
Ernst Zimmerman, 1852-1901, Germany
HOWS us on a background of tasteful, graceful
elegance, the watchful love which beautifies mother-
hood in any surroundings. The trustfulness of
affection binds together the little group — the child
in its mother's lap, the anxious young mother, the worried
little terrier and the kind old doctor who is about to relieve
the mother's needless fear.
PARENTS AND
THEIR PROBLEMS
A SYSTEMATIC COURSE
IN
CHILD NURTURE
EDITED BY
MARY HARMON WEEKS
Read and approved by Mrs. Frederic Schoff, President, National
Congress of Mothers; Mrs. Joseph P. Mumford, Hon.
Vice-President, National Congress of Mothers;
Dr. J. George Becht, A.M., Sc.D., Executive
Secretary, Penn. State Board of Education ;
Mrs. E. R. Weeks, Vice-President,
National Congress of Mothers and
Chairman, Publication Committee.
^
PUBLISHED BY
INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY SOCIETY
LONDON ST. LOUIS NEW YORK
r
Copyright. 1914.
THE NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS
AND PARENT-TEACHER ASSOCIATIONS
REVISED EDITION
Copyright, 1918.
INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
SOCIETY
3 X.i / i
HAMMOND PRESS
W. B. CONKEV COMPANY
CHICAGO
A PARTIAL LIST OF AUTHORS
EEPEESENTED IN
PAKENTS AND THEIR PROBLEMS
X^TMAN ABBOTT, Editor of the "Outlook."
FELIX ADLiER, Professor of Political and Social Ethics, Columbia
University, N. Y.
EDWARD B. ALLEN, Supt. Perkins' Institute and Massachu-
setts School for the Blind.
MRS. THEODORE BIRNEY, First President of the National
Congress of Mothers.
CAROLINE SHERWIN BAILEY, Lecturer on Story-telling for the
N. Y. School op Philanthropy and N. Y. Parks and Play-
grounds Association.
J. GEORGE BECHT, Executive Secretary, State Board of Educa-
tion, Harrisburg, Pa,
FREDRIC G. BONSER, Asst. Professor in Industrial Education,
Teachers' College, Columbia University, N. Y.
LLEWELLYN F. BARKER, Prof, of Medicine, Johns Hopkins
University, and Chief Physician Johns Hopkins Hospital.
WM. H. BURNHAM, Prof. Child Hygiene and Education, Clark
University, Worcester, Mass.
THOS. H. BALLIETT, Prof. Science of Education and Dean of
School of Pedagogy, University of New York.
NORMAN COLEMAN, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.
HENRY F. COPE, General Secretary, Religious Education Associa-
tion.
EMYLIN LINCOLN COOLIDGE, Visiting Physician, Babies'
Hospital, N. Y.
PHILANDER P. CLAXTON, United States Commissioner of Edu-
catioru
FLOY CAMPBELL, Head of Department of Art Instruction for
Porto Rico.
SUSAN F. CHASE, Dept. of Psychology, Buffalo State Normal.
School, N. Y.
CHARLES B. DAVENPORT, Director Stu. for Experimental Evolu-
tion (Carnegie Institute) Cold Springs Harbor, N. Y.
EUGENE DAVENPORT, Director Agricultural Experiment Station
and Professor of Thermatology, University of Illinois.
GEORGE K. DODSON, Vice-president of the American Federation
for Sex Hygiene.
HANNAH A. DAVIDSON, Former Lecturer on Literary Art m
Fiction at Wellesley and Mt. Holyoke Colleges.
E'LLA V. DOBBS, Instructor in Manual Arts, Missouri State
University.
LIDA B. EARHART, Instructor in Elementary Education, Teach-
ers' College, Columbia University.
EDWARD T. FAIRCHILD, President National Education Associa-
tion. , -
MARY H. FEE, Director U. S. Division of Correspondence for
Filipino Teachers, Manila.
JOHN P FREY, Editor "Moulders Journal.
FLORENCE HARTLEY GREENE, Chairman Dept. of Home
Economics, Missouri State Federation of Women's Clubs.
JAMES M. GREENWOOD, Formerly Supt. of Schools, Kansas City, Mo.
FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES. Prof, of History and Philosophy
of Education, State University of Ohio.
CONTRIBUTORS
CAROLINE L. HUNT. Author of "Home Problems from a New
Standpoint."
WILLIAM HARD, on the staff of "Everybody's" and the "Delinea-
tor."
G. STANLEY HALL, Pres. and Prof, of Psychology, Clark Uni-
versity^ Worcester, Mass.
ELIZABETH HAFIRISON, Pres. National Kindergarten Collegb.
RICHARD MORSE HODGE, Lecturer in English and Biblical Lit.
and Extension Teaching, Columbia Universitt, N. Y.
MARIE HOFER, Well-known Lecturer on Kindergarten Music, and
Composer of Songs and Games for Children.
DAVID STARR JORDAN, President Emeritus of Leland Stanford
University.
CARL KELSEY, Prof. Sociology, University of Pa.
IRVING KING, Prof, of Education, University of Iowa,
EDWIN A. KIRKPATRICK, Head of Psychology and Child Study
Department in Fitchburg, Mass., State Normal School.
JOSEPH LEE, Pres. Playground and Recreation Association of
America.
BEN B. LINDSEY, Judge of Denver Juvenile Court.
CHARLOTTE BLATCHLEY McCALL, Former District Supervisor
of Physical Culture, Mass.
J. H. McCURDY, Lecturer on Physiology of Exercise, Harvard
Summer School^ Editor "Physical Education Review."
SHAILER MATHEWS, Dean of Divinity School, University of
Chicago.
WM. McKEEVER, Prof, of Child Welfare, The University of
Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
FRANCES JENKINS OLCOTT, for many years Head of the
Children's Dept. Carnegie Library^ Pittsburg.
M. V. O'SHEA, Prof, of the Science of Education, University of
Wisconsin.
DAVID PHILIPSON, Rabbi, B'nai Israel Congregation, Cincinnati.
ANNA MAY PALMER, New York City Normal College.
E. E. PORTERFIELD, Judge of Juvenile Court, Kansas City, Mo.
HELEN C. PUTNAM, Member Executive Committee American Asso-
ciation for Prevention of Infant Mortality.
CAROLINE L. PRATT, Inventor of Do-With Toys.
STUART H. ROWE, Author of "Habit Formation."
FLORA ROSE, Dept. of Household Economics State Agricultural
College Cornell University.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
LYMAN BEEOHER STOWE, Sec. National Associations of Jumor
Republics •
CHARLES W. SALBEBY, Edinburgh, Author of "Parenthood and
E. HERSHEY SNEATHE, Prof, of Philosophy of Religion, Yale
University.
WALTER SPALDING, Asst. Prof, of Music, Harvard University.
IvATHERINE STILLWELL, School of Education, University of
Chicago.
DUDLEY ALLEN SARGENT, Director Hemenway Gymnasium,
Harvard University.
HANNAH K, SCHOFF, Pres. National Congress of Mothers.
EFFIE SEACHREST, Teacher and Lecturer on Art.
GRAHAM TAYLOR, Head of Chicago Commons ; Associate Editor
"The Survey."
RICHARD THOS. WYCHE, Pres. National Story-tellers' League.
FLORENCE E. WARD, Supervisor of Kindergarten Training,
Iowa State Teachers' College.
LEO WIENER. Prof, Slavic Languages, Harvard Ukiversity.
LUCY WHEELOCK, Pres. Boston Kindergarten Normal School.
WOODROW WILSON, President of the Unfted States.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume VI
Analyzed for Programme Use
Chapter I Page
AT HOME 13
QUOTATIONS 17
READING FOR CHILDREN, Elizabeth C. Bimey. . . 19
Why a love of reading is valuable — Literature is the
art of universal appeal— The child should have what
he really enjoys — What children do really care for —
Children's actual world a fairy land to them — The
"when I was little" stories — The kind of biograph-
ical material available — The child's response to
poetry — The adolescent period — Building character
with literature— Activities to be associated with
stories— Parental opposition to new educational
theory— Girl's books— The problem of the unde-
sirable book.
Chapter II
CHILDREN;S love of verse, Susan F. Chase. . 30
Unsupervised — The one who knew how — One great
need in our educational system— Ear hunger— Lulla-
by's the beginning of spiritual instruction— Mirth
and laughter must be cultivated— The beginnings of
ear training— Play fancies of poetry— Poetry pic-
tures— Recultivating the grown-up ear.
Chapter III
HOW POETRY REFINES LANGUAGE AND
CHARACTER, Susan F. Chase 39
The child's innate love of vivid expression and ac-
tion—Goethe's idea of the daily need— The aim of
great literature— The best method of presenting
poetry— Helps m selecting poetry.
3
4 CONTENTS
Chapter IV p^^^
THE VALUE AND USE OF BIOGRAPHY IN THE
FORMATION OF CHARACTER, H. A. Davidson 45
The value and use of biography in the building of
character— Biography not easily appreciated by the
young— Requirements in the selection of biogi-aphies
to be read by young people — Biographical stories
within the range of choice — Individual preferences
must be considered— The need of an interpreter in
the reading of biography— The lost art of reading-
Necessity for time and leisure— The open door of
opportunity.
Chapter V
HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN, Josephine H.
Greenwood 58
The value of histoiy in training— Material— Histori-
cal poems— Historical narrative— Plutarch — Pio-
neer life— Dramatization— Pageantry.
Chapter VI
HISTORIC CRIES OF BOSTON, Effie Seachrest
and Frances Dean 65
The ancient street cries— The cry of Boston Com-
mon—The Old Comer Book Store— The song of
King's Chapel— Old South Meeting House has two
voices— The message of the Old State House—
Faneuil Hall and the cries of two centuries.
Chapter VII
OUR HISTORY IN STORY TELLING 70
Paul Revere won fame by half an hour— An ex-
citing boat trip— Ordered him to be quiet— How he
learned the powder recipe— Couldn't get a political
job.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF READING 75
QUOTATIONS 7»
Chapter VIII
THE LESSON OF NATURE FOR THE CHILD,
Cora Campbell 81
CONTENTS 5
Chapter IX
HOW TO LEAD THE CHILDREN INTO THEIR
BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE, Anna May Palmer. . 86
Chapter X
TREES IN WINTER, Floy Campbell 96
Some suggestions to city parents as well as to those
of the country, as to what they can teach their chil-
dren to see in winter.
Chapter XI
THE ANT MOTHER, Mary H. Weeks 104
One suggestion as to how parents may use nature
facts as stories.
Chapter XII
MOTHER SPIDER, Frances B. Gillespy 106
Suggesting what might be done with facts about
other kinds of spiders, for instance, the trap-door
spider, or the spinners.
Chapter XIII
THE STORY OF LIFE, Delia Thompson Lutes 108
The baby morning glory.
Chapter XIV
THE STORY OF THE YELLOW JACKET 115
THE STORY OF THE FISH 117
THE STORY OF THE FROG 119
THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN 120
THE STORY OF THE BABY SQUIRREL 126
Chapter XV
THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOYS 132
6 CONTENTS
Chapter XVI Page
THE DETECTION OF MENTAL SUBNORMAL-
ITY, E. A. Farrington, B. S. M. D 138
Mental subnormality defined— Its causes— Necessity
of early recognition of abnormal physical condi-
tions—Normal proportions of the body— Height-
Weight— Proportion of head, trunk and limbs-
Bone development— Teeth — Motor development —
Sensory development — Attention and memory — Will
and imitation — Emotions — Speech — Meaning of
"Normal"— Signs recognizable at birth— Signs latent
at birth that appear during development — Signsi
caused by disease or injury during infancy and
childhood — Infectious diseases as causes — Injury to
the brain — Signs which indicate subnormality—
Overcoming the physical defect — Mental develop-
ment of subnormal children based on consciousness —
Methods used of assthetic training — An affirmative
necessary in the trainer — The kind of school need-
ed—Duty of state legislatures.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DEFECTIVES 153
Chapter XVII
THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY, David
Philipson, D. D 157
The conserving institutions— The Jewish homes—
The problems and its solvers — The spiritual must
live— Spiritual not synonymous with churlishness-
Individual effort necessary.
Chapter XVIII
THE MOVING PICTURE SHOW AS A PUBLIC
RECREATION, Fred F. McClure 165
Chapter XIX
WHY CHILDREN WORK, Helen M. Todd 172
The children's answer— Father's death through indus-
trial diseases or accidents— Average healthy life of
the child worker's father— Mother and children
support the family— The child the utilized waste
product of industry— The tragedy of parents' not
CONTENTS 7
Page
understanding another sort of waste— Why chil-
dren prefer factory work to school— Factory work
versus corporal punishment— What working children
need— The factoiy and the weakness of our schools.
Chapter XX
SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR, John P. Frey. . . 190
Where child labor in factories began— Physical ef-
fects—A bid for child labor— Trade unions vs.
child labor— Child labor not a subject of polite re-
marks—To plead for the child is to plead for the
nation.
Chapter XXI
ALLOWANCES FOR DESTITUTE MOTHERS,
Alice Maxwell Appo 199
The Mother of the Willows— Almost like animals—
The case of the Millers— The bill becomes a law—
The story of Mrs. Ward— Other states take it up.
Chapter XXII
HOW THE WIDOW'S ALLOWANCE LAW OPER-
ATES, E. E. Porterfield 205
Unsupervised childhood— A child belongs with its
mother— How the people regarded the application
for the law— Its value in operation— The law both
constructive and economic — To whom the law ap-
plies—Conditions on which the allowance is given-
Follow-up work— Why it provides partial support
only— Why it does not apply to divorced women.
Chapter XXIII
PREVENTIVE MEASURES IN CHILD SAVING,
Mrs. Hannah K. Schoff 211
The friendly visitor— The boys' club— Handwork
in schools— Making the school interesting— The
school the best court and probation system— The
place of the church in prevention— Character of
judge and probation officers important— Parent-
teacher associations as preventives— Juvenile courts
should require delinquent parents to attend parent-
teacher meetings.
8 CONTENTS
Chapter XXIV Page
PROBATION WORK IN SMALL TOWNS AND
RURAL DISTRICTS, Mrs. Hannah K. Schoff . . 216
The old way — The point of view in the children's
court — Establishing a simple form of county juvenile
court— Pay of probation officers — The right per-
son—The best procedure — Committees— Detention
rooms or houses for children awaitmg hearing— Co-
operation needed— Why do it.
Chapter XXV
EIGHT YEARS' STUDY OF JUVENILE OFFEND-
ERS IN A LARGE CITY, Mrs. Hannah K.
Schoff 223
Causes of delinquency — The mistake of the careful
mother — Methods of courts and judges — The first
downward step — How society has treated these
cases— The right point of view— How all can help —
The crimes that fill the prisons— Conclusions from
the study of crimes— A nickel versus a boy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SAVING THE CHILD 231
QUOTATIONS , 235
Chapter XXVI
MATERIAL FOR TABLE TALKS FOR MAKING
DESIRABLE CITIZENS, James M. Greenwood. 239
Rules of the game — Definitions of government ma-
chinery — Kinds of government— Five important
institutions— The family— The teacher— School
government— The child's view enlarges.
Chapter XXVII
A HERITAGE FROM A FATHER, A "Survey'* As-
sociate 243
Chapter XXVIII
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER, Lyman
Beecher Stowe 253
Preventing soil erosion— Hydrographic work— The
forest service— The Bureau of Entomology— The
CONTENTS
Page
value of our birds— Teaching" the farmers about
hawks — Bird refuges — The office of public roads-
Molasses and good roads— Coast and geodetic sur-
vey — Economic value of the coast survey— The
bureau of standards— The revenue cutter service.
Chapter XXIX
THE ACTIVITIES OF THE NATIONAL BU-
REAU OF EDUCATION, P. P. Claxton 270
The general problem of the National Bureau of
Education — Social hygiene and school sanitation —
Hygienic conditions in rural schools — Outlining
courses of study — Bureau reports and bulletins —
The Bureau's Alaskan Division.
Chapter XXX
THE EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE UNITED
STATES IN THE PHILIPPINES, Mary H. Fee 277
The beginnings— The aspirantes— Primary schools-
Intermediate schools — High schools — The univer-
sity — Financial support — Bureau of Education —
The educational units— Supervising teachers-
School language— Industrial education— Manual
work for girls— Trade schools for boys— Athletics.
Chapter XXXI
THE PUBLIC ROAD IN ITS RELATION TO HU-
MAN WELFARE, Logan Waller Page 286
The economic value of good roads— The effect of
good roads on country school systems— Good roads,
consolidated schools and economy— Illiteracy-
Population— Rural free delivery— Health — The
automobile — Why women should work for improved
roads.
10 CONTENTS
Chapter XXXII p^^^
DEVELOPMENT, Robert Browning 297
Chapter XXXIII
THE SANTA CLAUS PROBLEM, Elizabeth Cherril
Bimey 300
Chapter XXXIV
EDUCATION AS A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE,
Marguerite 0. B. Wilkinson 305
Wliat divorce is— The real cure not in legislation—
The monogamic ideal— A few of our inconsistencies
as to mandage — No home without love — Marrying
for a home — Idle women and overworked men— Full
equality of man and wife— The double standard.
Chapter XXXV
"I WANT 'UM BOFE," Edgar P. Allen 315
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CITIZENSHIP 317
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Volume VI
Page
Needlessly Anxious
By Ernst Zimmerman Frontispiece
Reproduced by courtesy of The Art Institute of
Chicago.
A Reading from Homer 19
The Cry of the Children on Boston Common ..... 64
The Book Cry at the Old South Meeting House. . . 64
The Cry of the Children in the Boston Gardens. . 64
The Cry of the Boot Black at Statue of Wm.
Lloyd Garrison 68
The Cry of Liberty Bell at Old State House 6S
The Cry of Flowers at Old King^s Chapel 68
A Birch in Boston Common 80
From a photograph.
Three Oaks 96
From a photograph.
A Typical Elm 102
From a photograph.
Washington and His Mother in the Ball Room at
Fredericksburg By Howard Pyle 240
Our Grandmother's Dancing Lesson
By T. E. Rosenthal 272
11
AT HOME
HE editor first wrote the heading, ''Around
the Family Hearth," so tenaciously do old
associations fix themselves in the subscon-
scious mind. And now even the "At Home"
seems to be a misnomer, since the family of the
twentieth century is so often away from home for
public recreation.
Yet the things which came to us around the home
hearth and at the family table are just the things that
children can not afford to lose. The times for family
conversation concerning the great things of life must
not be lost to the boys and girls, and we must regu-
late the outside recreations in such wise as to give
daily opportunities for a closer association with the
sons and daughters.
Perhaps the material in this volume w411 serve to
give subjects for discussion along lines in which both
parents and children should be interested, and in
which children can not come into their full birthright
without such co-operation in the home.
The articles on reading, poetry, biography and
history will at least serve to show parents what the
schools are working towards in much that seems to
be least practical and most purely cultural. If par-
ents can fully realize that such studies are given, not
merely for added information, but that they serve
as fully as do mathematics and spelling, to adjust
their children's lives to that of the world in which
they are to live, that, through them, judgment as to
the dealings of men and their relations to each other,
are based on a larger and more certain foundation ;
then the home can more intelligently support and
extend the aims of the schools, and create in children
13
14 AT HOME
an effective realization that the things being done in
their classes from day to day, are not things outside
the daily needs of their later life, but that everything
they read and write is a practical help toward
efficiency and success.
The articles by experts on defective and way-
ward children ought to furnish much material of the
deepest interest to both parents and children, an
interest which will serve to set the feet of future
legislators on the way to intelligent handling of the
social service of city and state.
The daily press is so filled with the politics of
government, and our daily talk is so concerned with
public men and their actions, that the great work for
the good of the people, being so quietly and efficiently
carried on by the various departments of the govern-
ment, is often obscured in the minds of our children
by the movements of our legislative bodies in Con-
gress assembled. It is these tremendous activities ex-
ercised solely for the good of the people, that should
continually restore our belief that this is a govern-
ment by the people and for the people. Certainly
these activities were set going and are carried on by
the very bodies of the country's representatives who,
to outward appearances, seem often to be fighting
merely for personal gain.
It is hoped that every parent may use the material
on national activities for the welfare of home and
children, to create in the minds of the coming citizens
an understanding of what has been done and is doing,
and a pride in these real achievements of the people
which is our people, of the nation which is our nation,
of the government which is our government — silent
forces which once set in motion by our founders, move
on in ever widening circles of beneficence.
BEADING
QUOTATIONS
"He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust:
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings,
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings."
— Balph Waldo Emerson.
Above all things, as a child, he should have tumbled
about in a library. All men are afraid of books who have
not handled them from infancy. Do you suppose our dear
didascalos (James Russell Lowell) over there ever read
Poli Synopsis, or consulted Castelli Lexicon while he was
growing up to their stature? Not he; but virtue passed
through the hem of their parchment and leather garments
whenever he touched them, as the precious drugs sweated
through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I tell you
he is at home wherever he smells the invigorating fragrance
of Russia leather. — Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The most accomplished way of using books at present
is twofold; either, first, to serve them as some men do
lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their
acquaintance; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer,
the profounder and politer method, to get a thorough in-
sight into the index, by which the whole book is governed
and turned like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace
of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time
and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony
are content to get in by the back door. * * * Yov this
great blessing we are wholly indebted to systems and
abstracts, in which the modem fathers of learning, like
Vol. VI.— 2 17
18 QUOTATIONS
prudent usurers, spent their sweat for the ease of us their
children. For labor is the seed of idleness, and it is the
peculiar happiness of our noble age to gather the fruit.
—Swift.
The background of the child's mind ought to be the
oldest world, that childhood of the race found in the
Old Testament, and the heroes and fairy tales. It ought
to live in the newest world, the world of today. In every
home there ought to be good newspapers, good magazines,
a little group of the best books on the conditions of the
hour, and these ought to contribute to the variety and in-
terest of home life in the talk at the table. It is a great
mistake to "talk down" to children in the home as in public
assemblies. One of the greatest privileges which a child
can enjoy is to hear the talk of older people. In this
way, while its deepest life is centered in the home, and its
imag^ination is associating the poetry of life with that
home, it ought to enter into the larger life of the world,
to understand, through what it hears at the breakfast
and dinner table, what is going on in Russia, the changes
in the Far East, the meaning of The Hague Conference,
the latest applications of electricity; above all, it ought
to hear all the stories of contemporary self-denial, self-
sacrifice and heroism. The newspapers give such enor-
mously disproportioned attention to evil in all forms that the
utmost endeavor ought to be made in the home to present
life in a true perspective, and to give good in all its forms
the commanding place which it really holds in the world.
—Hamilton Mdbie.
33
m
>
D
z
o
11
J3
O
o
m
READING FOR CHILDREN
ELIZABETH CHERRILL BIRNEY
President of the Philadelphia Mothers' Club
Y booke hath, been so much my pleasure Why a lov©
and bringeth daily unto me joy more and valuable
more that in respect of it all other things
be but trifles and troubles unto me." So
wrote Lady Jane Grey in the last few months of her
short, tragic life. If troubles such as hers could be
so forgotten in * * her booke, " it is truly important for
us to try to form in children that love of reading
which Gibbon says he ''would not exchange for all
the wealth of the Indies."
It is not books he values so highly nor the knowl-
edge obtained from them, but the "love of reading."
That has in it a great lesson for all educators. We
can spread out before the child the wealth of litera-
ture of all time, but unless we have given him a
genuine love of reading we have not set his feet on
the path which leads to that joy in books which is
the corner stone of culture and one of the most
enduring of personal resources.
The aim of all education is to deepen and enrich
the personal life ; people with few resources are easily
bored and have a constant craving for novelty in
scene, in amusements and in friends. They are pos-
sessed by unrest because they live only on the surface.
Lacking the power to see deeply into life, a new
environment is soon exhausted and they long for
19
20
READING FOR CHILDREN
Literature
the art of
universal
appeal
change. They cannot bear to be alone because their
minds are but shallow pools reflecting a passing show.
The rich personal life, the enjoyment to the limit of
every experience, the ability to get much out of
simple pleasures, through the mind which is rich in
association and know^ledge — these belong to the wise
man who, as Emerson says, ''is everywhere at home."
He carries with him his home ; his body may be con-
fined in narrow limits, but the true prison is that of
the man who sees nothing beyond his own door yard,
having no vision of the infinite meaning and possi-
bilities of human life.
"The arts are open doors for the expression of
the human spirit, ' ' and of all the arts literature alone
is universal in its appeal. Books are accessible to all,
painting and sculpture mean travel and expense; the
greatest music needs the interpretation of a master
and is but now being brought to the masses. Books
belong to no age, and reproduce the life of every age.
The passions, joys and sorrows of humanity are so
much the same in all time that books which ade-
quately picture every phase of human life are ageless.
Though the knowledge of the world is locked in
libraries, acquiring information is not the most im-
portant motive for inculcating a love of reading.
The boy who has read Walter Scott's novels and
Shakespeare's historical plays may have no mean
knowledge of English history, but that is a by-
product. He could have learned the facts from a
dull school-book, but he w^ould have acquired none of
the atmosphere of other days. None of the sym-
pathy, romance and high courage which a brave spirit
sheds; none of the true culture which acquaintance
with a master mind bestows.
READING FOR CHILDREN
21
If the love of reading be the test, how important
it becomes to give a child what he really enjoys!
Most of us are afraid to do this, for fear he will not
like the best things.
Taste in all things is largely a matter of cultiva-
tion and habit. We make our habits before they
make us. I heard a mother say the other day that
her boy of seven would not eat bread and butter with-
out jelly or sugar. Of course if we read twaddle a
child likes twaddle as he likes sweets, but we can give
him a taste for bread and butter by not starting the
jelly habit.
Not every child will respond to all sorts of books.
Some love history, some poetry, some story or myth.
Often the unimaginative child who most enjoys un-
true stories of the actual and commonplace, needs the
stimulus of fairy tales, and may be taught to love
them. We must first find one book that he really
enjoys and through that teach him to enjoy others,
for every real book which is entered into with zest
and pleasure, is an open door to a larger life.
It is interesting to find out what children really
care for in a story. Prof. Earl Barnes, in his
** Studies in Education," has an interesting collection
of children's stories. They are almost wholly about
the child himself or other children. Four times as
many deal with unusual experiences such as holidays,
trips, parties, etc., as with everyday life or other sub-
jects ; only about one in ten is imaginary. Feelings
and moral qualities play almost no part, and action
takes more than three times the space of appearance
or description. The small part played by imagina-
tion may be accounted for by the little effort made
to develop that quality in children, since their enjoy-
ment of the unusual shows an effort to make adven-
The child
should have
what he
really enjoys
What
children do
really care
for
22
READING FOR CHILDREN
Children's
actual world
a fairy land
to them
tures of even the simplest experiences; still we must
conclude that what children of school age are virtu-
ally concerned with is action. What he did, not how
he looked or felt when he did it. Someone else has
suggested that in telling stories to children the secret
of success is to think of yourself as standing looking
at the events as through a window, and narrate what
you see.
Stories for children should contain few characters
and not many events outside of the main action. I
was telling the story of Theseus to a little friend of
mine, an excitable, vigorous lad about five. After
describing Theseus' lifting of the stone I got him
fairly started on his way with his father 's sword, and
then began to describe the various adventures which
met him on his journey. Whenever I paused to de-
scribe anyone else my little lad grew impatient and
said ' ' Tell about the one with the sword ! ' ' Children
cannot get to their goal fast enough, but after they
know a story well they are jealous of the omission of
a single adjective.
The story-telling habit is one of the most delightful
pastimes in the home while the children are little.
Sarah Cone Bryant's ''How to Tell Stories to Chil-
dren" is helpful in starting us right and gives a few
model stories all children like. The story-tellers' art
is less difficult than it sounds. Simplicity and direct-
ness are its chief requirements and above all the
story-teller himself must be interested. Children
hate a perfunctory narrative, but their dramatic in-
stincts are readily appealed to by the vivid interest of
the narrator.
In the discussion of the never ending question of
the good and evil of fairy stories, let us not forget
that the actual world in which little children live is
READING FOR CHILDREN
23
a fairy land. They have no sense of time and space.
The happenings of every day are supernatural to
them, and seven-leagued boots no more wonderful
than railroad trains. Fairy stories are the peopling
of the child's real world, and he believes them just
as when left to himself he will make his bowl of milk
talk to his bread and butter, or hold long conversa-
tions between a Teddy-bear and a woolly dog. Na-
ture-myths and legends seem to him the natural per-
sonification of the great forces of the earth he lives
on, and but deepen his inborn wonder and reverence.
Almost as much as fairy stories, do children love
the simple narratives of actual events, the "when I
was a little girl" sort of stories. We must extend
that taste to simple biographies, and will find that the
child loves to read or hear the actual lives of Daniel
Boone and Nathan Hale, of Morse and Fulton and
Stephenson, of "Washington and Lincoln and Alfred
the Great.
The biographical material available is not abun-
dant nor always satisfactory. There are a good many
books for quite little children, and then it is difficult
to get just what we need. James Baldwin's biog-
raphies are good, and Edward Everett Hale's, and
for boys and girls in their 'teens we may well use
chapters from material meant for adult use — ^parts of
Woodrow Wilson's *' Washington " or John Hay's
*' Lincoln" or Grant's memoirs. Why should history
not be studied more as biography? Human life is
always interesting though "dates of wars and deaths
of kings" are memorizing feats from which the boy,
even more than the girl, revolts. In the High Schools,
boys and girls often hate Greek and Roman history,
studies which should surely be fascinating: is it not
because we do not focus enough on the men who made
The "when I
was little"
stories
The kind of
biographical
material
available
24 READING FOR CHILDREN
the history and thus give the child such a vital in-
terest in their personality that he must perforce
become interested in the events of which they were a
part, the environment in which they did their w^ork?
"We have but begun to use in education the great mass
of ''human documents" we know as biography.
The important thing is that the growing mind
should have some worthy material for its ready hero-
worship, and should form its ideals of character and
achievement on something better than the newspaper
and the street.
?^s^oS^^'^to "'■ ^^'^^ found the response to good poetry among
poetry children very satisfactory. A child loves imagery
much more than we think. In the simple poems of
Eugene Field and Stevenson, young children remark
the wind that passes "like ladies' skirts across the
grass, ' ' the ' ' little pale moonbeam with misty wings, ' '
the "azure meadow of the sky" peopled by fleecy
sheep. Such lines as these I have had children quote
and call for.
"We think children like only jingles, because we
have certain pre-conceived ideas of a child's taste, and
often do not trouble ourselves to find what he really
enjoys, and are then disappointed at not getting any
response to our reading. There are many collections
of poetry for children using what is best in many
authors and any one of these would give a wealth of
material for home use. We must in poetry, as else-
where, remember that enough so easily becomes too
much. If a child has too many books he soon craves
constant novelty and his mind loses poise and the
power of concentration. A small, carefully selected
library, which is increased by a few good books at
birthdays and Christmas, chosen to meet the needs of
the developing individual, is far better than a number
READING FOR CHILDREN 25
of books of which their owner soon tires. A child's
*' five-foot shelf" should represent in a real way his
growth and changing tastes, but if the books bought
are real books, not one need be outgrown. The well-
thumbed Greek Heroes, the Jungle books with the
binding worn loose are cherished friends to keep and
value always.
At adolescence, biologists tell us the individual The
reaches his highest development. All that we have period
been able to give the boy or girl up to this age is
material for the dreams of those years, the altruism,
the vague longings after the impossible, the ardent
hero-worship — these are woven of all that he has read
or thought or seen in childhood; poetry, biography,
hero tales, Nick Carter, Sunday supplements and the
sporting page — which shall it be ?
Our material development in America has been so
great, the standards of success in life are now so gen-
erally measured by competition, by material achieve-
ment, that the ^'long, long thoughts" of youth are
less of the eternal problems of human life than they
used to be, but this development is there always,
though most of it in healthy boys and girls is out of
sight, like the sap in the tree or the germination of
the seed in the ground. The human soul is a solitary
thing, and parents, above all, hut dimly guess all that
goes on in the minds of adolescent hoys and girls.
The emphasis on athletics and the great attention
paid to the hygiene of this period have prevented
much w^orldliness, and our religious education today
does not teach introspection, but it is still true that
the literature of early adolescence should be ''out-
door literature," adventure and hero tales, heroic and
epic poetry, and above all knowledge of the modern
men of thought and action and of what they are
doing to solve the problems of our modern world.
26
READING FOR CHILDREN
Bnilding
character
with
literature
Activities to
be associated
with stories
We all talk vaguely of character-building in liter-
ature, but few of us have the faith in what a well-
plaimed course of reading may do in shaping a
child's energies which is shown by Professor Burr of
Springfield, Mass., in the graded course of reading
which he has proposed for use in Y. M. C. A. and
other boys' camps, where some direction may be given
to the routine of life as well as to the reading.
His suggestions are as follows;
1st. Race stories, Teutonic myths, legends and
folk-lore, nature-myths, efforts of the childhood of
the race to understand the world it lives in.
2nd. Stories of nature, animals and plants.
3rd. Stories of individual prowess, hero-tales,
Samson, Hercules, etc.
4th. Stories of early inventions.
5th. Stories of great leaders and patriots, Social
Heroes from Moses to Washington.
6th. Stories of love, altruism, love of country and
home, love of beauty, truth and God — love of woman.
He further suggests the activities to be associated
wath various stories: with nature stories, tramps in
the woods and the care of animals and plants. With
stories of individual prowess (hero tales) are asso-
ciated individualistic games, athletics and gymnastic
work, for the development of individual strength and
skill, also constructive work like clay, knife work,
basket weaving, etc.
With the stories of great leaders and patriots
would be associated games which involve team play
(such as ball games), fellowship, obedience to a
leader and subordination of self to the group.
With altruistic stories would be associated the
doing of something for less fortunate bo.ys.
There is so much good sense in this outline that it
READING FOR CHILDREN
27
would seem thoroughly practical in camps, boarding
schools, etc. In the main it follows normal develop-
ment and uses the educational principle of never
developing a virtue without giving an opportunity
for its practice.
We are still afraid of theory in education. We
have much new knowledge of the mind of the child,
and it is largely the attitude of parents which has
prevented educators from putting it into practice.
As soon as a change is made in the curriculum, the
cry against ' ' fads ' ' and the superseding of the sacred
three R's arises from irate (and ignorant) taxpayers.
It is not necessary in this paper to give lists of
books for children of different ages.* There are
so many books that the fault of today is lack of
discrimination in the use of too abundant material.
It would be better if children were given fewer
so-called *' children's books" and were earlier helped
to use books which are adapted to their under-
standing, and yet are just as acceptable to an adult
taste. Generations of children in all lands enjoy the
Andersen and Grimm fairy tales, the Norse and
Greek myths. Grandfather, father and boy all read
with pleasure ' ' Treasure Island, "or * * Captains Cour-
ageous, ' ' or the * ' Jungle Books, * ' or the ' ' Last of the
Mohicans," or ''The Reds of the Midi," or ''The
Story of Roland."
Girls' books are usually much poorer than boys*
books, and it would be more wholesome for girls to
read more stories with red blood in them, nor would
it do a boy any harm to read an occasional story of
home life, such as the best of Miss Alcott's.
If we use, and we probably must, the very simple
books for quite little children, let us regard them as
Parental
opposition to
new
educational
theory
Girli' books
*Reader8 are referred to the very complete list published by the
National Congress of Mothers.
28
READING FOR CHILDREN
The problem
of the
undesirable
book
something to be outgrown and as soon as possible dis-
placed by something more real and permanent.
One of the problems of children's reading is how
to deal with the books you do not want your children
to read. To put them on an Index Purgatorious but
gives them the fascination of forbidden print.
A father I knew found his three boys reading
**Nick Carter" stories on the sly. *'Do you like
these?" he said, ''I've never read them, suppose we
take them downstairs and read them aloud." He
began to read with great dramatic unction and ap-
parent interest. So silly did it sound that the boys
were soon squirming in their chairs, and finally one
burst out *'0h. Dad, if you're going to read to us, do
read something vdth some sense to it." He said ''all
right," made no comment, and at once picked up
Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy" and began to read
as if nothing had happened.
In another home, the mother found her boys read-
ing some stories of the class of which we have thou-
sands today, by many authors such as Oliver Optic,
Henty, Alger and Strathmeyer. They are absolutely
absurd and impossible stories; many of them harm-
less enough but giving a false conception of life.
Biding her time patiently, the mother waited until
a much-admired uncle was a dinner-guest ; a great
traveler, and an adept in all sports, he was a par-
ticular hero to the two boys. During a desultory
chat about books at dinner, Kipling's stories were
discussed, and the boys were immediately interested.
The author of the volume upstairs was carelessly
mentioned by the mother and the father, and uncle
spoke with good-natured ridicule of the impossible
boy heroes who alone would capture an enemy, ship,
or win a' battle with Marlborough at sixteen, and be
thanked and knighted and "sworded" by the Queen.
READING FOR CHILDREN 29
*'It is as absurd/' said mother, *'as if Harvey in
"Captains Courageous" had come home in command
of the fishing fleet." ''Kipling had enough sense,"
said Uncle Jack, "to know that it was a good deal
bigger job to make a man of Harvey than to make
some young dunderpate captain of a vessel." A few
days afterwards at bedtime one of the boys said,
"I read a book of So and So's, but I don't think
there's much sense to it," and the subject was wisely
regarded as closed.
Many a girl has sat up late in her own room
reading a silly novel just because her mother had
said the books of that author were unfit to read.
Taste is not formed all at once, and tact wins more
victories in the home than force.
Home, school, society, chance companionship, play-
ground environment — all these are shaping influences
in the child's character, not one of which we can en-
tirely regulate. Having these influences, that of
books is a great and vital one, and it is one rather
more under the direct control of the mother and
father than most of the others.
Furthermore, when we start a child to love good
books, we are introducing him to "the choir invisible
of those immortal dead who live again in minds made
better by their presence," to the company of those
who have had thoughts on human life which, crystal-
lized into words, have become part of the life of the
race.
We cannot make happiness for our children. Life
is not easy for anyone who is mature enough to feel
"the irremediable weight of human woe." We can
only try by books — as by every other means — to
develop character in our children and give them all
the personal resources possible that the soul may find
its own joys as well as sorrows.
II
CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE
SUSAN F. CHASE
Department of Psychology, State Normal School,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Jingle and rhyme,
All in good time,
Rhyme and rhythm
For little children.
Some measure of sense.
Abundant nonsense;
Story and action.
All in fine motion;
Life pictures true
"Within the child's view;
Thoughts tender and sweet
With music complete;
Soul fountains stirred
By fitness of word;
Rapture sublime
Contamed in a line;
Jingle and rhyme,
All in good time,
Rhyme and rhythm
For little children.
Unsuperrised Not far from my window in an open lot the chil-
dren are playing. One girl, seemingly older than the
rest, is a leader in their game and I can hear them
shout in discordant chorus as at word of her com-
mand they catch one of their group and then repeat-
30
CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE 31
ing his name sing with her some rude jargon of
rhyme, as:
'Willie, Willie, oh, he's silly"
"Ben, Ben, a big fat hen"
"Bert, Bert, flirt, flirt"
"Mary, Maiy, she's a baby"
"Josey, Josey, don't be losey."
Evidently vocabulary failed here, but "losey,'* the
made-up word, satisfied the rh^^ming impulse. So the
game went on and rhyme after rhyme followed, some-
times coarse ones, too, and voices grew more and more
discordant.
Then a miracle. Out upon a balcony stepped a kJ|w°Sow^^°
young girl, hardly past the age of romping games
herself, and called to the children in the cheeriest
voice, **0h, say, children, do you want me to come
and play "v\dth you?" Of course they wanted her,
and into their play she entered with all the charm of
her fresh young life. And this was the miracle. The
children's voices grew musical and laughter that had
been rude before became the merriest of good na-
tured mirth. The playground was noisy still, but it
was the sound of innocent and happy childhood.
And how was it brought about? This young girl
knew childhood and she caught the instincts of the
playground, the love of sport and the rhyming mood,
and turned them to the best account. She was a
kindergartner studying in the training school and
with the love of childhood and the instincts of a
teacher she put herself into harmony with the abun-
dant, overflowing life of the children. She directed
their impulses, she did not forbid them; and lawless-
ness and harsh boisterousness were organized into
32 CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE
rhythmic sport. The children were soon arranged in
groups counting out,
"Inty, minty, cutey, corn!
Apple-seed, apple-thorn !
Wire, brier, limber, lock!
Seven geese in a flock
Sit and sing, by the spring;
0-u-t out, and in again.
Rearranging themselves the children played to
song and action the "Chickadees' good-bye song,"
fluttering like little birds at chorus ''fly away."
"Five little chickadees sitting by the door,
One flew away and then there were four."
Then followed games and other motion songs
played and sung in fine spirit and with rhythmic
action.
''Here we go round the bramble-bush.
The bramble-bush, the bramble-bush;
Here we go round the bramble-bush,
On a cold and frosty morning!
This is the way we wash our clothes,
Wash our clothes, wash our clothes;
This is the way we wash our clothes,
On a cold and frosty morning!"
One great It was a lovely hour those children spent with that
educational'^ youug tcaclier. When the hour was over the memory
system ^£ their mirth and songs remained. Just here we
may emphasize one great need in our system of edu-
cation. If we are to teach little children we must
first educate ourselves to see from the little child's
point of view and not along the line of the adult's
more material vision. The kindergartner saw as a
CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE 33
child, and played with them as a child, but with
womanly tact she led them into the lovely things of
childhood whereas in their own mistaken leadership
they might have stumbled into its folly and misuse.
There is ear-hunger as well as stomach-hunger, and Ear hunger
children's ears love rhyme and melody. They can
forego sense, and shout at the merest nonsense, if only
sound hits against sound in rhythmic measure.
Training the ear to harmony should begin very early,
The lullabies the mother sings her baby attune his
mind to melodies and quicken fancies. These lulla-
bies have more in them than present entertainment
or calming into sleep. Let the mother croon to her
babe the lullaby of Tennyson:
"Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast.
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his bird in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west,
Under the silver moon;
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep."
The slumbering babe has not analyzed these words Luiiabys the
of the song, but there has come to him from the sweet spiritual
music of his mother 's voice a calm to tired nerves and iiistruction
a new feeling from the words, 'father,' 'mother,'
'rest.' The life of faith has begun, faith in mother
love, faith in a large protecting care that holds him
safe from harm. Surely the lullaby may be made the
beginning of spiritual instruction to the child.
"Hush! the waves are rolling in.
White with foam, white with foam ;
Father toils amid the din;
But baby sleeps at home.
Vol. VI.— 3
34 CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE
Hush ! the winds roar hoarse and deep, —
On they come, on they come
Brother seeks the wandering sheep;
But baby sleeps at home.
Hush! the rain sweeps o^er the knowes,
Where they roam, where they roam;
Sister goes to seek the cows;
But baby sleeps at home.— Old Gaelic Lullaby.
''The baby whose mother has not charmed him in
his cradle with rhyme and song must live," so runs
an old Swiss line of wisdom, "his whole life through,
without enchanting dreams." And oh, the barren-
ness of such a life !
lau^hter^must Mirth and laughter are also native to the child,
be cultivated but they, too, must be cultivated or we have that
sorry spectacle, the joyless adult or, worse to behold,
the man or woman with perverted sense of humor who
shout unseemly at the coarse or ribald joke. Culti-
vate merriment. Laugh often with the child. To
this end nothing is better than the rhymes and jingles
of Mother Goose. They tickle the play fancy and
bring into the nursery an element that is needed
there, for the rhythm of laughter follows her every-
where, and sweet innocent laughter is such a good
thing.
To the adult mind it may be an absurdity to pic-
ture dish and spoon in a frolic, or the cow as vaulting
over the moon, or the simple adventures of Jack and
Jill, or the dolesome tale of the three little kittens,
or the perplexities of the old woman who lived in a
shoe, but the experiences of life have been too few for
the babe to set any limit to his imagination. The
unreal is as real as the real to him. Little Miss
Muffet, Little Boy Blue, Simple Simon, Tom the
Piper, Old King Cole, Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,
CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE 36
with that other Mary 'quite contrary/ and the Old
Woman Who Lived by the Sea, furnish suitable food
for child imagination.
The rhymes and melodies of Eugene Field and ^^ju^j^gg <,,
other nursery writers give to the child that bright- ear training
ness of fun and the beginning of that ear training
which later lead the cultivated man or woman to the
refined delights of music and poetry. Even poems
that are beyond the comprehension of the child are
listened to with delight and have this element of ear
culture for him. Much reading aloud of choice
poetry throughout the years of childhood trains to
good English and refinement of thought.
How dear to the child's mind are such rhymes as of^poetn?^"
the following, and how bright are the play fancies
they invite:
"Bless yoTi, bless you, bonny bee!
Say, when will your wedding be?
If it be to-morrow day,
Take your wings and fly away."
"Hark how they jingle
And tingle and mingle —
Heigb-a-down derry.
Oh, eome and be merry.
Over the mountains and over the dells."
"Oh, who is so merry, so merry, heigh ho !
As the light-footed fairy, heigh ho, heigh ho !
His ni^t is the noon.
And his sun is the moon.
With a hey and heigh and a ho !"
"As I was going along, long, long,
A singing a comical song, song, song,
The lane that I went was so long, long, long.
And the song that I sung was so long, long, long.
And so I went singing along."
36 CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE
There is more than the swing of verse and rhyme
in this that follows :
"Work is done,
Play's begun,
Now we have our laugh and fun.
Happy days,
Pretty plays.
And no naughty ways.
Holding fast each other's hand,
"We're a happy little band.
Follow me,
Full of glee,
Singing merrily.''
Poetry jjj ^j^g next, can you see the picture? Do you
like the story ? Do you love the fun ?
"Twenty froggies went to school
Down beside a rushy pool,
Twenty little coats of gTeen,
Twenty vests all white and clean.
'We must be in time,' said they—,
'First we study, then we play,
That is how we keep the rule.
When we froggies go to school.' "
Surely Bryant never wrote a finer line than this
bird song translated into rhyme, in which the dainty
little fellow whom all the children love,
"Merrily singing on briar and weed
Near the nest of his little dame
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name,"
'Bob-o-link, bob-o-link
Spink, spank, spink;
Look, what a nice new coat is mine,
Sure there was never a bird so fine.
Chee, chee, chee.' "
CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE 37
Music and picture and grace of motion as well as
humor combine as well in the following lines of
Allingham :
"Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of Uttle men."
To the nature-loving little child why may it not
be that
"All the birds and bees are singing,
All the lily bells are ringing"*?
Let's encourage such fancies with our rhymes.
And it would not be bad if we grown-ups sometimes
forgot our wisdom and read with them again and
again such nonsense verse as Edward Lear's —
"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea,
In a beautiful pea-green boat."
Nor would it be bad if, with the children's, our Eecuitivating
ears should tingle with delight as we repeat the ear ^^^^^'^^
refrain,
"And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand.
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon.
The moon.
They danced by the light of the moon."
Children always love the rhythmic cadence in
Eugene Field's "rock" of the wooden shoe:
"The old moon laughed and sang a song.
As they rocked in the wooden shoe.
And the w^ind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew."
38 CHILDREN'S LOVE OF VERSE
It is an easy passage from such delights as these
to the Forest of Arden, or to dance with culprit
fays and enjoy the revels of Puck and Titania and
Oberon in the beautiful ''Midsummer Night's
Dream/'
"Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through brier,
Over park, over pale.
Through flood, through fire,
I do wander everywhere.
Swifter than the moon's sphere ;
And I serve the fairy queen.
To dew her orbs upon the green."
At the birth of every child two fairy visitors
should be allowed, "Fairy Fine Ear" and ''Fairy
Dame o 'Dreams." Their gifts well bestowed are
gifts of life. "With them we enter the royal palaces
of mind where there is perpetual youth and perpetual
joy.
Ill
HOW POETRY REFINES LANGUAGE AND
CHARACTER
SUSAN F. CHASE
Department of Psychology, State Normal School,
Buffalo, N. Y.
HILDHOOD is the language period. Vivid-
ness of words, beauty of phrasing are appre-
ciated by the little child. He laughs in glee
over the merry rhymes of infancy. He
smiles with deeper pleasure over the beauty of more
mature verse. He enjoys and imitates, too, and imi-
tation we all know is at the foundation of every
person's power in using language.
The child expresses himself as well in bodily ac-
tion. If he sorrows or rejoices the entire body plays
out in sympathetic action. He delights in intense
forms of expression. You are the welcome guest in
his home. Words and looks of greeting are not
enough. He brings his toys and picture books. He
begs an apple that he may divide with you. His love
must find expression. But bodily acts are clumsy
ways of expressing the soul's finest feelings. We
must have words, winged words, that will mount and
soar to the most delicate breath of feeling.
A small boy of noticeably foreign birth, both in
body and in accent, was called upon to tell a story
about Ulysses. In broken English he hesitatingly be-
gan, so awkward and so slow, when suddenly he
dropped the language of his own creating and in the
39
The child's
innate love
of vivid
expression
and action
40 POETRY REFINES LANGUAGE
poet's phrasing, though not in the poet's exact words,
he told the story of the death of Ulysses' pet ram.
The change was wonderful. The timid awkward
child grew in confidence, and walking down the aisle
he stood before the teacher and with face aglow gave
her his thoughts in the poet's language. There was
tremor in his voice as he recited the anguish of
Ulysses. There was understanding in the teacher's
eyes as she asked why he had chosen those lines. ' ' I
had a dog once. He died," the boy replied. That
boy, not nine years old, had entered into the life of
the poet. They had become comrades in their sor-
row. And from that time, the teacher says, that boy
became a power in the language class. To learn
poetry, to recite it well, became an enthusiasm with
the children.
?rt?e'dany^* '*We ought every day," says Goethe, ''to read a
^eed little poetry, sing a song, or look at a good picture."
Let us give to our children richness of beauty that the
nobility of life within may find its outward flow in
beauty of expression. The words of James Whit-
comb Riley, sung into the hearts of children, must
turn many a sigh of discontent into an outbursting
song of gladness :
"There is ever a song somewhere, my dear;
There is ever a something sings alway:
There's the song of the lark when the skies are clear,
And the song of the thrush when the skies are gray.
The sunshine showers across the grain.
And the bluebird trills in the orchard tree ;
And in and out when the eaves drip rain,
The swallows are twittering ceaselessly."
The aim of ' ' The aim of great literature, * ' says Chubb, " is to
nteJature movc upon the feelings, to stir life impulses. Its
POETRY REFINES LANGUAGE 41
material is life, life of nature, life of man. Its
greatness is measured by truth.'* Poetry, which is
the noblest form of literature, is an interpreter of the
inner life of the spirit. It makes known to the hearts
of men the things that cannot be seen by the eye
alone. "When I look up unto the hills," said the
Hebrew poet, ''behold Thou art there;" and again
with the same vision the poet exclaims, ''The
heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament
showeth his handiwork." To fill the child's mind
with joy and beauty, sweet sympathies, and faith
in the noble and divine, is the office of well-selected
poetry.
If we would know poetry well we must memorize
it. It must become a companion to us in our
thoughts. If the ear can first take in the verse and
then the mind retain it not only in its word beauty,
but in its inner beauty as well, then poetry has be-
come a personal possession. Who can ever tell what
it has meant in the integrity of the Hebrew nation
that they were versed in the noble literature of the
Hebrew poets? What finer poem can we select for
our children than the sunrise hymn? Note the
music and the pictures and the loftiness of pur-
pose.
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof ;
The world and they that dwell therein;
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord"?
Or who shall stand in his holy place?
********
Lift up your heads, ye gates!
And be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors,
And the King of Glory shall come in."
poetry
42 POETRY REFINES LANGUAGE
*'I hold in memory,'^ says a university president,
**bits of poetry, learned in childhood, which have
stood by me through life in the struggle to keep true
to just ideals of love and duty/'
m^thod^f ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^ present poetry to a child or to
presenting an adult is to share it vs^ith him. **Drop into poetry
as a friend merely,'* said Charles Dickens. To drop
into poetry in this familiar way one must have feel-
ing for poetry in his voice. He must know how to
read. Speaking of this rare gift Sir Henry Taylor
says : * ' I often think how strange it is that amongst
all the efforts which are made in these times to
teach young people everything that is to be known
from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the
wall, the one thing omitted is teaching them to read.
At the present time, to be sure, it is a very rare
thing to find anyone who can teach it, but it is an
art which might be propagated from the few to the
many with great rapidity, if a due appreciation of
it were to become apparent.'*
Longfellow, who was himself a reader with a rare
voice, gives this testimony to the power of human
utterance :
**How wonderful is the human voice! It is in-
deed the organ of the human soul. The intellect
of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and
in his eyes; and the heart of man is vn^ittcn upon
his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the
voice only, as God revealed himself to the prophet
of old in *the still small voice,' and in a voice
from the burning bush,"
Of the influence of such a voice upon the child
listener, Dr. A. E. Winship tells in an anecdote of
George Rowland, whose frequent practice was to
read poetry to his school. This particular after-
POETRY REFINES LANGUAGE 43
noon Mr. Howland read from Longfellow's Evange-
line. After the reading the teacher of the class asked
the children to bring in comments on the poem or
the reading. This is what one child wrote:
**I supposed so big a man would read very loud,
but he didn't; I thought I should not hear anything
he said, but I heard every word.
"Teacher tells us to emphasize, and I thought I
would see how he did it, but he didn't do it at all.
Never emphasized a word from the time he began
till he got through.
**But, my, didn't he make the pictures stand
out. I shall see everything in it till I die.
**The way he read made me think of God."
The voice of the father or mother reading in the
family circle has a more far-reaching influence than
one can know. An elderly English woman whose
own language culture was exquisite, wrote this of
the memory of her father's voice: **I am a very
old lady now and my father has been dead a great
many years, but I can hear his rich voice and beauti-
ful accent as he read to us from his favorite poets.
All his children love the poets that he loved."
In the selection of poetry, for reading and for ^f^jj/^
memorizing, the home is very much helped by the poetry
school. Teachers of every grade have choice lists
for their grades and libraries are ready with sup-
plementary lists. The child's own bookcase should
contain volumes of the poets the child loves best, and
a few choice volumes of collected songs and poems
such as the following:
PouLSSON.— Child Stories and Rhymes.
Humphrey.— Treasury of Stories, Jingles and Rhymes.
Norton.— Rhymes and Jingles.
44 POETRY REFINES LANGUAGE
Welsh.— Book of Nursery Rhymes,
Smith.— Songs for Little Children.
Jenks and Walker.— Songs and Games for Little Children.
WiGGiN AND Smith.— Pinafore Palace.
WiGGiN AND Smith.— Posy Ring.
WiGGiN AND Smith.— Golden Numbers.
Burt.— Poems Every Child Should Know.
Bacon.— Songs Every Child Should Know.
Hazard.— Three Years with the Poets.
IV
THE VALUE AND USE OF BIOGRAPHY IN
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER
A WORD TO MOTHERS
H. A. Davidson, M. A., Author and Editor of the
Study-Guide Series
part of the mother 's task is more difficult ^he value
.... and use of
than the responsibilities that fall upon her biography in
in the period of transition, when the little of character
lad at her side is changing into the man,
and the woman-to-be looks forth from the eyes of
her girl-child. These are two-fold : one part con-
cerns herself, the conduct of her own life, her at-
titude of mind toward the young souls in her
charge. Usually, by this time, habits of motherly
solicitude and watchfulness have become fixed; often
younger children require the maintenance of close
supervision and care just at the time when the wel-
fare of the growing boy or girl would be promoted
by a relaxation of authority and personal super-
vision. The mother's relation to her children in
future years often depends upon her power of ad-
justment now. New impulses wakening in her child
call for a new motherhood, that of the mind and
spirit. Honored and blessed she may be if she choose
to remain the mother of children to her gro\^^l youths
and maidens, but — will she, nil she — they must leave
her by the fireside when they go forth to encounter
the difficulties of life in a new age.
A growing separation between two generations
45
46
VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
Biography
not easily
appreciated
by the young
often deprives youth of the experience and wisdom
of their elders at the very time when it would be
most useful. The mother moves on to a conserva-
tive old age, while her youth advance to deal with
new conditions, in a new time. Happy the mother
who discerns, w^hen the time of transition arrives,
that personal care and service must gradually yield
place to an understanding comradeship in which
whatever new path the youth enters he shall find in
it, a little in advance, the woman who, erstwhile
mended his ball, or bound up broken fingers and
bathed tired feet. If the mother be able to slip im-
perceptibly from the role of monitor and care-taker
into that of comrade, adviser, best friend, granting
at each step the independence so jealously claimed
by positive young folk in the first stride of youth,
she will, in years to come, continuue to be the in-
timate and valued counsellor of her own grown chil-
dren. If her active mind and quick perception lead
in quest of the new, with zest equal to their own, her
young people may escape many of the pitfalls of
youth, guided by a wise and gentle friendship. The
problems arising in the life of the mother who would
thus become friend and teacher of her children are
not for discussion here ; each woman must meet them
alone and work out her own solutions with such
depth of nature, such force of character, as she can
find within.
The consideration of ways and means of giving
lads and lassies a store of experience gleaned from
the lives of those who have, before them, tried the
experiments to which they must soon set themselves
is, however, pertinent. Among these, no resource is
so rich or so neglected as the use of biography. Many
subtle elements enter into the problem of rendering
VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
47
the experience of one generation available to another
and younger. The first obstacle encountered is one
often overlooked; namely, the natural limitation of
the human mind in imagining with the vividness of
reality conditions or events belonging to phases of
experience not yet passed through. All mothers
thrill with remembrance of an hour of supreme
revelation in which, for the first time, the significance
of life and birth became clear. The seven ages of
man are revealed, one by one, as we enter on each,
but our eyes are holden, our minds darkened in re-
gard to the years that lie before us. This is es-
pecially true of the young whose main business is
with the facts of the world and the conditions of
life as they find it. The passion of the man who
would sell his soul for a woman's smile has no mean-
ing for the youth, and tales of altruism or patriotism
appeal to him chiefly through the approval they win
from those whom he admires or loves. The talis-
man to lead the mind of the boy is that of adven-
ture, of new experiences through which he himself
wanders as hero. This fact must be borne in mind
in any discussion of the use of biography as a factor
in the formation of the character of the young.
The use of the lives of great men for the purpose
of pointing a moral or inculcating a tale, must be
in great degree a failure. The boy, already lessoned
too much by wise sayings, too little by life itself,
discounts the precept, and rejects the ideal char-
acter as unreal. Wliat he needs is intimate con-
tact with the individuality of his hero, identifica-
tion with him in his difficulties, or mistakes, or
achievements. If the story of the man 's life is worth
placing in the hands of the boy at all, it may be
left to exert its own influence; just close human
Bequirements
in the
selection of
biographies to
be read by
young people
48 VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
contact of boy's mind with man's life will instil the
lesson — if anything. Often, the real value of the
reading lies chiefly in the storing of the mind with
the incidents of lives rich in experience the mean-
ing of which after years will reveal. The first re-
quirement, then, in the selection of biographical
stories for the young is that the life narrated be
one suited to enlist and captivate the mind of youth
as yet unacquainted with the subtleties of life and
undisciplined by deep experience. To this end, the
narrative should be one of objective achievement,
of deeds, decision, and action. Stanley in search of
Livingstone, or Emin, easily becomes the boy's hero,
while the narrative of patriotic self-sacrifice in the
lives of American statesmen, as usually told, is far
beyond the admiration of children.
A second essential in a biographical story for
youthful readers is found in the manner of writing;
the story must seize and captivate the imagination
and hold the interest ; it must move on with rapidity,
interrupted by few long explanations; details must
be well grouped as a part of the dramatic develop-
ment of the life story the important movements
of which are set forth clearly and thus will remain
in the memory. Ethical reflections and psychology
should be conspicuously absent from life stories
selected for the young. All the world is, just now,
busy with analyses of the minds of children and
youth, but they themselves, young growing things,
are as unanalytic as ever; they value men by what
they do and seem, and take at face value the world
and most things in it.
Other considerations of importance in the selec-
tion of biographical stories for the young are found
in the individual reader. Child differs from child as
VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
49
man from man; something in one person draws us
and, in the mutual attraction, lies a master key that
unlocks sympathy and gives understanding — lifelong
friendship ensues. So with these other friends,
books, especially of biography; in them we meet the
unreserved personality of some man or w^oman who,
in the contact of real life, might have won ©ur love
and confidence. We choose our friends here, as in
life, through some kinship of the mind or spirit, some
leadership, some appeal, that is an open door to
intimacy. The same subtle influences work almost
unrecognized in the minds of the young, but, often,
the finding of the book-friend is due to some chance
contact, unless, indeed, a wise acquaintance intervene.
In the w^orld of books, a happy introduction is often
more essential than in real life, but he who effects
it must surely know that he is bringing the right
parties together. "We choose the necktie, the ribbon
for the hair, to correspond nicely with the complex-
ion and clothing of the person it is to adorn. Food
must suit the palate ere it please or nourish; but
temperament is more delicately varied than com-
plexion, aptitude and liking are more individual
than appetite. The book should suit the individual
youth. 'Tis his nature, his temperament, his nat-
ural gifts, should respond to the lure of the nar-
rative, and often these must be awakened. For this,
no hasty choice of books in accordance with super-
ficial observation of likes or dislikes will answer.
This brings us to a consideration of the bio-
graphical stories within the range of choice. The
important point, here, is to distinguish the many
and varied fields in w^hich men have led lives of
value to their fellowmen, and to select with reference
to the special need or aptitude of the reader we seek
Biographical
stories
within the
range of
choice
Vol. VI.— 4
50 VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
to interest. The choice of books for the youth should
be made by one who is able to define the value of
the life story in its keynote. One life pursues with
intense dramatic interest some secret purpose and
the story, as it goes on, reveals to the child without
comment or lesson, the patient effort through which
an invention or discovery was at length achieved.
In another, from early childhood to mature years,
some love of nature, some habit of careful observa-
tion, like Tennyson's gleam, led the youth on until
he attained the success and usefulness of Agassiz.
Or, a great emergency of human need called a woman
from her quiet life and made her the first of a host
of nurses who follow the army and care for soldiers
in the field. In the wide range of recorded human
achievement, there is room for careful selection in
accordance with the special need or the natural apti-
tude of the individual youth of our care. Each life
intimately known exerts its own influence on the
growing boy or girl, but, usually, each stands chiefly
for some dominant element in the character, some
single purpose guiding and controlling the life. So,
in after years, we remember the friends we have
known. In reading, as in life, children and youth
often seize unerringly on this dominant note in the
character and follow with dramatic interest every
manifestation of it, letting pass unheeded, or not
understood, other qualities w^hich for their elders ob-
scure the real intent and significance of the life. For
this reason, it is not always necessary to reject the
story of a man's life because his character, or his
morals, or his friends, were not ideal. Achievement
wins the heart of youth : the man-to-be in the nature
of every boy approves accomplishment honestly and
well made, and accounts other matters of slight im-
VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
51
portance while following with keenest attention the
main thread of interest. In fact, the careful culti-
vator of the moral nature may easily err here. Did
Grant lead the armies to victory where others failed?
How and why did he succeed? These are the vital
questions for the lad when the hot blood of youth
begins to burn in him. The omnipresent cigar would
better pass unnoticed, else it may be fixed in the
child's mind as characteristic of his hero, and there-
fore a mark of greatness.
It goes without saying that one who aims to guide
the reading of youth and develop a love of good
books, must work with the discretion and diplomacy
of the astute politician. "Way should be made, wher-
ever possible, for individual choice or fancy mani-
fested by the lad or lass. Nothing is so precious as
the spontaneous movement of the mind; it should
never be checked or disregarded without grave rea-
son. The fact that the elder sees a wiser choice, a
better way, is not sufficient. The young plant must
take root, ere its growth becomes vigorous. Guidance
by suggestion, by presentation of alternatives, by
discussion, will usually work the desired result in
great part; the necessity for more positive direction
and control, narrowed to a few instances, will then
seem reasonable and the control be effective.
It may be granted, at once, that, in these days
of hustling activity, few youth will give the time
or close attention required for the enjoyment of
biography. Their interest is not yet fixed upon men
and women as individuals, nor even as actors in the
great drama of life, the parts of which depend upon
character. The doing of things is rightly more in-
teresting than the reading of what another, a stran-
ger, did, sometime, somewhere. For this reason, the
Individual
preferences
must be
considered
The need of
an interpreter
in the
reading of
biography
62 VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
aid of a fellow-reader, at once comrade and inter-
preter, is essential. Other books children and youth
will read by themselves, but not biography. An
older person reading with the young, unconsciously
bridges the distance between two ages and, now
and again, interprets, explains, vivifies. If such an
one is wise, she will adopt a boy 's point of view as she
reads with him, and strive simply to make real the life,
to explain matters of which the lad has no experience.
If there be a temptation to pertinent comments or
moral lessons such as the lad may need, it should
be resisted. The boy's attention should remain fixed
upon the man of whom he reads ; if comparison with
himself or his own conduct arise in his mind, the
suggestion should come from within. Frank dis-
cussion of the life story may best come, if at all, at
the end of the reading when all is before the mind
and it is possible to speak of the man or woman as
of a neighbor in full view of his acts and conduct.
Many biographies most suitable in content and
interest for youth are composed in language unin-
telligible to young readers. Sentence structure, es-
pecially in literary composition, has been derived in
great part from classical models. The decadence
of Latin studies in public schools deprives youth of
the power of understanding readily language more
complicated or varied in phrase than the direct col-
loquial speech in use in business and in daily life.
Moreover, the boy or girl cannot be expected to an-
ticipate the vocabulary of his more advanced studies
and mature years. Thus, the story of Robinson
Crusoe, Mariner, that best of all tales of biographical
fiction, is most interesting to boys not yet advanced
enough in knowledge of the mother tongue to catch
the meaning of the sentences as written. Many at-
VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY 53
tempts have been made to simplify such classics, but
without great success. The result, usually, is un-
literary in language, and, in atmosphere, far re-
moved from the original conception of the author.
But worse than these faults is the placing of beau-
tiful old stories in the category of '^children's books."
The writer of this paper believes that the man or
woman who has been brought up on simplified ver-
sions will rarely rediscover in maturity a favorite
book. Another and better way lies open to the care-
ful parent or teacher. The writer once tried read-
ing from the original text the story of Robinson
Crusoe, paraphrasing, omitting, etc., as she read, so
that the story should be easily intelligible to young
boys. It was necessary to omit many explanatory
passages in order to give rapidity to the narrative,
but a bit of conversation, a little discussion of how
or why — which always interests the active mind of
the boy — often conveyed, in brief, the substance of
the omitted passage. A pencil and paper for maps
and diagrams added to the interest, and there are
few children of school age who would not enter
eagerly on the scheme of laying out Crusoe's island
in the yard, bounding it with an imaginary beach
of pebbles, and afterwards, as the story proceeds,
plotting, building, tracing paths until the whole is
reproduced. In this way, a teacher once aided a
group of school children to build, at original cost,
a duplicate of Thoreau's hut on Walden Pond. In-
terest in the achievement drew children and teachers
less enterprising from many miles around to see
the little house.
It may be objected that work of this sort takes
time. This is true; careful nurture, whether of
plants or of young folks, costs, but surely there are
54 VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
few mothers who could not, by scanning closely the
week's duties or engagements, find something less
important to omit, and thus win the necessary time
both for the hours with the children and for the
careful preparation that insures success. The years
between childhood and the going forth of the youth
to wider fields than he finds at home are very few.
In the quiet years of his absence, the mother will
find time for the omitted privileges and functions
of this short period. But even in families where
child succeeds child and the quiver is full, shall
the mother at cost of vitality and risk of life bear
sons and daughters, and nourish them with care
through the trying age of infancy, but in the few
years in which the boy becomes a man, the girl a
woman, turn them over to the chance influences of
the hour? Science has taught us when and how the
wonder happens and points the way. In these brief
years, is the seedtime, but the harvest of the sowing
is life-long; nay, longer than life, for the boy will,
in turn, beget sons, the girl bear children.
The lort art There remains one topic which naturally follows
the last, namely, the necessity of cultivating in the
young a habit of reading, of reading slowly and
carefully in one book, or on one topic, until it be-
comes familiar and the spirit of it is mastered. Books
have multiplied but the power of distinguishing one
from another has lessened and, today, we seldom find
a reader who really makes his own the content of
the volume he chooses. The miscellaneity of modern
life has bred in us all an inconsequent habit. We
choose our reading by chance contact, chance recom-
mendation; or by the lowest of tests, the entertain-
ing quality of the narrative. Many teachers com-
bat the tendency valiantly, but the tide setting to-
VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY 55
ward the moving picture shows, the public games,
the pageant, is too strong for them. Only through
the home may be expected the reaction which shall
restore to the youth his rightful heritage of years of
careful nurture and quiet growth, ere he enter,
single-handed, on the complex conditions of modern
life. This is not a plea for isolation or for separa-
tion from the strenuous activities of our own en-
vironment. That were the easier task, but a more
difficult problem is ours^ the one of letting our
youth mingle with other youth and carry their parts
while at the same time we restrain the hot zeal of
their years and reserve a generous proportion of
leisure and play-time for quiet household occupa-
tions, not necessarily work, nor always play.
There should be time and leisure in the life of Sm^^and *°'
each for following favorite pursuits, and a little of leisure
the quiet in which the mind turns over and adjusts
new knowledge, and the spirit grows. The mutual
interests and occupations that belong to the family
group fulfill, also, an important part in the culture
of the younger generation. In no other way do dif-
ferent generations mingle so effectively as in the old-
fashioned family isolated in some degree from the
community. In city and country alike, isolation
by natural conditions has well-nigh disappeared, and
the family group seems in danger of dissolving into
the community. The unity of the family must be
maintained, if at all, by the two who found the
home, who deliberately bring into existence the chil-
dren there to be nurtured. Only in homes thus or-
ganized and maintained is the love of good books
and the habit of intercourse with them to be cul-
tivated successfully. There, it must be the mother
who guides and leads, who studies the spirit of the
56 VALUE OF BIOGRAPHY
home, the needs of individuals. The father will re-
turn from the pressure of business eager to fall into
the carefully made plan if only it seem spontaneous
and is well related to the interests and tastes of the
family. Books, maps, illustrative material from the
library or the book shop, must be ready, assembled
with prevision and pains equal to the care that ar-
ranges in advance the smallest details of a well-
ordered meal.
The open The drift of what has been said must be evident.
door of
opportunity It is not the cursory reading of biography that in-
fluences the mind and moves the heart, thus mould-
ing the character. Rather, the life story of the man
or woman must be dwelt upon, the personality gath-
ered up from many sources until an intimacy is be-
gotten never to be given up. This experience does
not happen by chance. In matters of the mind and
spirit we are led by some great teacher who is so
filled with knowledge, understanding, and interest
that from his quick and loving zeal our own spirit
is kindled. Such an one we may find in the master
for whom we perform tasks, or in the friend who
awakens admiration and gives sympathy, or in an-
other. The essential, without which the life of the
spirit may not be born, is the personal guidance and
inspiration of some quickened intelligence, some liv-
ing spirit, and the main purpose of this paper lies
in the suggestion that of all human beings the mother
may most easily and effectively fill this role in the
lives of her children provided she will pay the price.
Nor is the price a light one to pay, for she must at-
tend to the business of the hour in the time of the
growing. Devotion and zeal most mothers give; but
more than in the generation before us we fail in
concentrating upon tasks such as these the best men-
YAETJE OF BIOGRAPHY 57
tal and social gifts we possess. We omit careful
preparation for the children's hour of reading, not
noting that the librarian, fresh from her own books,
with carefully prearranged story to tell, lures our
young from our side. The inference is ready. The
mother must become the librarian, reading, selecting,
and re-reading with her little family. She must study
bibliographies, examine the books, consult the chil-
dren's librarian trained to this service. When her
book has been chosen, she must herself become famil-
iar with its contents that she may easily follow the
reading of her young people, share their interest, and
readily, at a moment's notice, answer questions or
carry on conversation about details. Supplementary
material she must gather and use incidentally, when
interest calls for it. In brief, the task calls for the
intelligence, the care, the preparation, even the self-
culture, the teacher in the schools must give if she
fulfill the requirements of her position. — [For Mrs.
Davidson's outline of the study of biography, see
Vol. VIIL— Ed.]
HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
JOSEPHINE HEERMANS GREENWOOD
Author of "Stories from the Hebrew"
HERE are two things that held me to my
home like a vise," said one of the most
successful men of the day not long ago —
"to hear my father talk at the table, so
that I never wanted to eat anywhere else, and to
hear my mother read in the evening so that I rarely
wanted to go out. Those two things in our home
life did more to start us five boys and girls off right
than all the education we got in school or college.
And all of those five boys and girls are now men
and women prominent and effective in their different
lines of work. Through the most effective method
of education there is today, the indirect method, these
children were sent into the world influenced by fine
home talk and interesting home reading. And in
their soil lie the roots of true home progress."
What a wealth of good influence there is in the
above extract taken from the Home Progress Maga-
zine! Truly the home should be the center from
which the child draws his power of adjustment to
the activities of his after life. Mothers must stand
responsible for a great deal besides what may be
called the school studies, and many parents wish to
and do direct the education and play activities of
their children. It is to such that I speak, knowing
well that it means sacrifice and Spartan resolution
58
HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
59
on the parents' part to use the leisure time of home
life for any specific educational purpose.
History is one of the subjects in which a good
foundation may be laid at home. How can a mother
teach history in * * out-of-school-time ' ' ? and what shall
she teach ? and why shall she teach it ? Let us answer
the last question first: What shall she teach history
for? History is a means to an end, and that end
the development of a noble, law-abiding citizen who
sees in all the experiences of life the eternal right.
The study of history is of the highest importance in
inculcating the virtues of self-control, self-denial,
self-reliance and self-respect, a quartette of qualities
that make for the highest type of character.
What shall the mother select as history material?
Without the child 's knowing them as such the mother
bases her selections of history material on religion,
philosophy, government, literature and art. Hence,
in early years history may be approached through
Old Testament Bible stories, such as the history of
Moses, etc.; through legends of Rivers, Mountains,
and Towns, as legends of the Rhine, of the Alps, of
Rome, etc. ; through Roman, English, French, Ger-
man and Indian traditions; and through American
pioneer life. There are other approaches, also, if
one wishes a wider range, among which are folklore
of all nations, such for instance, as the history of the
names of the days of the week, etc. ; memorization
of poems founded on our nation's history, as are
many of Whittier's ballads, (or any other nation's his-
tory) ; anecdotes of great men; tales of great men
of all countries and times, such as Philip Augustus
and Louis IX. In the first years of a child's study
of history, the historical incident taught him should
deal rather with peace than with war, with admirable
The value of
history in
training
Material
60
HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
Historical
poems
Historical
narrative
qualities, domestic virtues, duty well done, devotion
to honor. Children from six to eight years of age
need concrete facts about specific persons or things,
without analysis or sentiment, the action or incident
moving rapidly to a conclusion, and in language
which appeals to the child's own experience and com-
prehension, complete without any moralizing. Per-
sons and not events attract at this age.
The years from eight to twelve are precious years
for providing a rich background for history, for at
this period imagination is very active. In these years
historical events begin to have some significance,
hence historical poems, historical narratives and suit-
able books are important. A few words on method
may be helpful here;
Poems founded on historic incident abound. Every
nation has a wealth of them. The Destruction of
Sennacherib, Bannockburn, The Landing of the Pil-
grims, Mabel Martin — will do as examples. It is well
for the mother to have the poem typewritten and
explain it line by line; then she should read it
through as it should be read; then read it with the
child, and then, if he is old enough to read it by him-
self she may give it to him to learn.
This simply means the history story. The mother
can throw the child on his own resources by asking
him to prepare himself to tell her about some specific
historical character. Then listen to his effort, help-
ing him to other points of view, drawing him out
not so much in fuller details as in broader generaliza-
tions; at least such work may be begun at this age.
At twelve years of age, and sometimes earlier, in-
terest in history from a textbook begins to dominate,
biographical narratives and descriptions of events
full of human interest being most preferred. Imag-
HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
61
ination and thought are both active now. At this
age, too, the child often likes his history in poetio
form. This is the time for such martial ballads as
the ''Lays of Ancient Rome.'* This is the time for
historical romantic epics, ''Miles Standish/' "Evan-
geline,'* and their like.
A wise choice of books based upon history for the
child to read, brings its own reward to the con-
scientious mother. There are many published lists
from which selections may be made. "Plutarch's
Lives" was much more read in a former generation
than it is now. Madame Roland spoke of it as "the
pasture of great men"; Henry IV. said Plutarch
was the instructor of his early years from the time
when he was little more than an infant.
Long before the child is of school age, he may be
made to realize in a degree, that he is blessed in his
surroundings. Somebody has sowed what the child
of today reaps. Some one has planted what the child
of today gathers. To appreciate this and to learn
the first lessons of the four great qualities of char-
acter already mentioned, children must be taught that
the present comfort and opportunity are results of
a struggle in an earlier time. Through the present
help him to understand the past. The child can not
realize in himself the experience of the race, for
which let us be thankful, but he can be taught to
respect the struggles of the past and to perpetuate
its honor. Let us cherish that old Mosaic law : ' ' Thou
shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which
they of old time have set in thine inheritance,"
Deut. 19:14.
In the study of the American pioneer, the child
gets valuable lessons in responding to the social needs
of community life. The pioneer stood for sound
Plutarch
Pioneer life
62 HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
citizenship in his narrow sphere. Instead of national
education as we have it today, the pioneers had
education for nationality. They had the stern educa-
tion of conquering the soil, warring with wild beasts
and savages, overcoming foreign political interfer-
ence, and establishing domestic government. They
were making history no less than were older nations
firmly established. All of these pioneer activities
make excellent material for history lessons, the age
of the child being duly considered. In these les-
sons, there ought to be some comparison of the polit-
ical, economic and social needs of the pioneers, with
our present like needs (without using these terms).
In this way the child will develop from within,
through interest in and sympathy for conditions and
situations no longer existing, into an efficient mem-
ber of his group in the life of today, a life of much
wider range and variety, a life that none the less
includes his political, his economic, and his social
self. Particularly in the development of the child's
social self, the mother can do much more than the
school.
Dramatization A delightful means by which to kindle a child's
interest in historical incident is simple dramatiza-
tion. Some incidents can not and ought not to be
dramatized. But for those that can be thus treated,
if the child * * acts out ' ' the story, if for a few minutes
he lives the part, he catches its real meaning in a
fuller, livelier degree. "Without costumes, or these
only occasionally, using the child's own language,
dramatize an incident spontaneously whenever such
treatment will give a clearer perception. If there are
not enough children to take all the required parts,
let a chair do representative work and let the mother
herself take a part. Any two children at three years
HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN 63
of age can play Jack and Jill. From such a simple
beginning to "Washington and the cherry trees, "Wil-
liam Tell, scenes from *' Hiawatha," Landing of the
Pilgrims, Purchase of Manhattan from the Indians,
"William Penn's Treaty with the Indians, etc., is but
a step. Choose material that presents noble and
lovely traits. Let it be a happy time. Simple drama-
tization is better for home work than studying text-
books only, in that it gives life and human spirit.
Action often clarifies an obscure paragraph. This
gives a certain richness to the lesson in which the
mimic stage contributes to the process of character
building. Many other subjects will suggest them-
selves to the mother who deems it worth while to
thus implant in her child a love for history.
Pageantry has its use in conserving community Paae^ntry
traditions and local history. " Pageantry '^ is a stately
term which may be made to cover much that is very
simple. It may include historical tableaux, proces-
sionals, or any spectacular presentation of an his-
toric event. It may be very gorgeous, prepared at
colossal expense, or it may be a series of simple
tableaux arranged in a kindergarten or in the home
sitting-room on a very small scale. In the pageant
there is no talking and little, if any, acting; some-
times folk-dancing or May-pole twining are admis-
sible. It is a silent spectacle. If we add action and
speech it becomes dramatization. For home use the
scenes may be set outdoors or indoors. Besides local
history, by means of pageantry, the history of print-
ing or book evolution, or cotton culture, or trans-
portation, or scenes from Eskimo or Indian life may
be illustrated; ballads and biograph that feed the
natural youthful craving for hero worship ; dress,
manners, customs, may also serve as material, the
64 HISTORY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
more simple the presentation the more helpful to
the imagination. In devising and managing home
pageants, mothers will find pictures of much assis-
tance. In this way the stiff restraints of formal his-
tory may be so modified that children will consider
its study a recreation rather than a task.
[For a vivacious account of a simple dramatiza-
tion, see Kate Douglas Wiggin's ''Penelope's Prog-
ress in Scotland." One does not need to be a child
to enjoy "Sir Patrick Spens" in action. For other
helpful books along the line of Mrs. Greenwood's
paper see the *'One Thousand Good Books for Chil-
dren," put out by the National Congress of Mothers.
— The Editor.]
BOSTON ''CRIES"
No. 1 — Cry of the Children on Boston Common.
No. 2 — Book Cry at the Old South Meeting House.
No. 3 — Cry of the Children in the Boston Gardens.
VI
HISTORIC CRIES OF BOSTON
EFFIE SEACHREST and FRANCES M. DEAN
S I was walking down Boylston street, my at-
tention was attracted by a charming print
in the window of an art store, one of the
famous "London Cries" by Wheatley. In a
picturesque London street a quaint little maiden was
singing her wares. "Buy my strawberries," she
cried, with a winsome smile that brought her, no
doubt, many a penny.
The pretty custom of crying one's wares in the TI13 ancient
streets of the cities has come down the centuries, ^*^®®* ^"®*
and many of these quaint scenes have been preserved
for us by the artists. As far back as the sixteenth cen-
tury Annibale Carracci immortalized the street cries
of his native town in the ''Cries of Bologna." A
little later, in Charles II. time. Tempest and Wheat-
ley painted their ''London Cries." And here in
Boston in the twentieth century, the owner of the art
store, by displaying the lovely Wheatley prints in
his window for the purpose of advertising them, is
simply modernizing the street cries of the time of
Charles II. In so doing he was forced, however, to
forego the strong personal appeal of a pretty face, a
winsome smile, and a sweet voice.
As I looked at the picture, I thought of the many
different cries that have been heard down the cen-
turies — the commercial, the intellectual, the spiritual.
Sometimes one of these cries rang out clear and
strong so that none of the others could be heard. At
Vol. VI.— 5 65
66 HISTORIC CRIES OF BOSTON
no time have all three cries sounded in perfect unison.
Nations and individuals have voiced them — Judea,
Greece, Rome — the country, the State, the city, the
people. The cry of the spiritual as sounded by
Savonarola stirred the religious feelings of the Flor-
entines into activity; Luther's cry of purification
made for greater religious freedom in the church;
the cry of the people of France for bread gave them
their political freedom; and so down the ages have
the cries of the people been sounded.
A burst of laughter near by brought me back to
the present. Across the Commons came ''The Cry
of the Child," first heard in the same spot many
centuries before. In 1633, Gov. Winthrop purchased
for a public playground the fifty acres of land
bounded by Beacon, Spruce, Pinckney, and the an-
cient border of the Charles River. Gov. Winthrop
heard "The Cry of the Child" and thus set the prec-
edent which has established playgrounds all over
our beautiful country. So if today you should stand
in Central Park, New York; Pairmount Park, Phil-
adelphia; The Fenway, in Boston; Lincoln Park,
Chicago; Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; or any
other of the great playgrounds of our large cities,
don't forget to give thanks to Gov. Winthrop for
having heard the ''Call of the Child."
Quite a different cry is heard when you enter the
Old Corner Book Store, for this building was erected
on the spot where, in old colonial days, lived Anne
Hutchinson, who sounded again in the New World
the Old World's cry for religious freedom. Today
the Old Corner Book Store takes up a new note of
the old cry, for on the shelves and counters, side
by side, are books advocating New Thought, Theos-
ophy, Catholicism, Sociology, and what not — all voic-
HISTORIC CRIES OF BOSTON 67
ing the cry of freedom, the freedom of the press that
prevails in this great land of ours.
Not far away from the Old Corner Book Store is
a flower stand, having for its rooting place a tiny
nook between the old colonial porch of King's Chapel
and the east side of the main part of the building.
Here, at all seasons of the year, the pansy, the violet,
and the rose repeat, in spirit, the old London cry of
**All-a-growing — All-a-blowing. " But the chapel
with its ancient burial ground containing the ashes
of Governor Winthrop, John Cotton, and other fa-
mous men of the colonial days, takes up another and
quite -different cry, ''The Cry of the Past." To the
passerby, if he will only listen, it whispers many a
significant message. To the antiquarian, King's
Chapel says: "I am built on the oldest ground in
Boston"; to the musician comes the message, *'I
housed the first organ that was sent over to the
colonies," and to the art lover is whispered, *'I tried
to make a house beautiful by having the escutcheons
of the king, George III., Governors Dudly, Shirley
and others hang on my walls"; and so, each and all,
listening, receives a personal message from the King's
Chapel.
With memories of the many messages of King's
Chapel in my ears, I approached the Old South
Meeting House, in front of which is heard the ''Old
Book Cry." A man is turning the yellow leaves of
one of the leather-bound books which are displayed
in a little booth in front of the church. The books,
alluringly arranged to catch the unwary, voice the
"Buy my books" cry of the Charles II. age. A
musty odor is wafted my way, bringing with it mem-
ories of the past and again the Old South Meeting
House rings with that memorable cry, "Boston Har-
68 HISTORIC CRIES OF BOSTON
bor a teapot tonight." Then, too, we associate with
this building the cry of repentance, for it was here
that Samuel Sewell tried to clear his name of the
stigma that will always rest upon it on account of
the part he played in the witchcraft delusion that
darkened the pages of New England history.
While we associate two notes — the liberty note
and the note of superstition — with the Old South
Meeting House, with the Old State House, only one
note rings out strong and clear — the liberty note.
Sometimes in front of this building may be seen a
laughing bootblack, who, with shining teeth and pre-
occupied air, tries to allure his customers.
The memory of the bootblack plying his trade on
the streets of Boston was still fresh in my mind when
I stood in front of the monument on Commonwealth
Avenue erected to William Lloyd Garrison. It was
his cry for the colored people that made possible the
incident of the bootblack. Then, too, the Old State
House gave William Lloyd Garrison a haven of
refuge during the anti-slavery agitation of 1834.
While William Lloyd Garrison was preaching
justice through the pages of the Liberator, William
Ellery Ghanning was writing his beautiful sym-
phony — *'To live content with small means — to seek
elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather
than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and
wealthy, not rich — to study hard, think quietly, talk
gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, babes
and sages, with open heart — to bear all cheerfully —
do all bravely, await occasions — never hurry; in a
word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common."
But all of the ''London Cries" are housed in one
place in Boston — Faneuil Hall; for underneath the
re
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HISTORIC CRIES OF BOSTON 69
great hall is the market, where, in modern language,
the Old World's street cries are repeated. Passing
around from stall to stall I hear again the ** Tempest
Cries''; ''Small Coal," ''Birds and Hens," "Fyne
Pomgrante," "Fyne Gate Cakes," "Rype Walnuts,"
"Buy my Parsnips," "Hot Cross Buns." Upstairs
in the hall where the famous speeches on the burn-
ing questions of the hour were made in colonial and
pre-revolutionary days range portraits of the men
who helped to shape our country's destiny. The
Copley and Stuart portraits sound the realistic cry
of old colonial days, and put us in touch with the men
who, by their cries, commercial, intellectual, and
spiritual, have made possible the Boston of today.
[Children are vitally interested in the present.
This may be used to stimulate interest in the past.
The author's idea is that by connecting the familiar
cries of a city's streets with associated significant
events, the child may be led to find a keener interest
in our history. — Ed.]
VII
OUR HISTORY IN STORY TELLING
Paul Revere Won Fame by Half an Hour
"He said to his friend, ^If the British march
By land or sea from the town tonight,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light —
One if by land and two if by sea,
And I on the opposite shore will be/ "
F course you remember who made that classic
remark — certainly, it was Paul Revere. And
then he dashed on through several stanzas of
spirited verse until he reached Lexington
and Concord. As he did all these things just 138
years ago tonight, it's a good day to brush up on
Paul Revere.
In the first place, about that ride, Revere didn't
take it exactly as Longfellow fancied. He wasn't
waiting, booted and spurred, on the opposite shore,
pacing impatiently beside his horse and looking
for the signal lights in the tower. Revere, who, by the
way, was forty years old when he made his famous
ride, had left directions about the lantern signals;
then, at the request of a Doctor Warren, he got two
friends to row him across the Charles River in a
boat, right under the nose of the British man-of-war,
which had been posted there especially to see that
no messenger got away from Boston with news of
English maneuvers.
70
OUR HISTORY IN STORY TELLING 71
That trip by boat across the river must, in itself, b^at^^Ap"^
have been exciting enough; the moon was out, and
Revere, and his friends knew that any minute a
musket ball from the warship might lay one of them
low. Swiftly and with muffled oars, dipping the
water as gently as they might, and seeking the
shadows they crossed the river and landed safely.
Friends were waiting to meet them and they told
Revere two lanterns had been displayed in the North
Church tower. Then a horse was procured, and he
rode away to Lexington and Concord, making the
gravel fly.
It is not generally known that Paul Revere had
an understudy on this midnight ride ; a certain "Wil-
liam Dawes had been dispatched, also on horseback,
to ride by land across the "neck," and up to Lexing-
ton and Concord. Warren, who sent Revere and
Dawes, gave both men the same errand because he
feared one of them would almost certainly be cap-
tured by the British. Neither one was. Revere ar-
rived in Concord a half hour ahead of Dawes, and
Dawes, who had ridden just as hard and ridden a
greater distance, was immediately forgotten, while
Paul Revere had made for himself a niche in the hall
of fame.
The principal object of the expedition — warning ordered wm
the villages, was really incidental — was to tell Samuel
Adams and John Hancock of the movements of the
British forces. Adams and Hancock were sleeping
in the house of a clergyman in Concord, when Paul
Revere thundered into the yard on his horse. There
were guards around the house to protect the two
patriot leaders, and they ordered Revere to make no
noise lest he waken the sleeping statesman.
''Noise!'* bellowed Revere, "you'll have noise
enough before long. The regulars are coming."
to be quiet
72 OUR HISTORY IN STORY TELLING
While the spectacular dash to Lexington and Con-
cord is the thing that made Paul Revere famous, he
performed other and equally valuable services for
his country. He was a man of marvelous versatility
and quickness, jack-of -all-trades and master of not a
few. Before the Revolution, he had been a copper-
plate engraver, a surgeon, a dentist, a printer, a
soldier and a poet. He had taken part in the cam-
paign against the French and Indians ten years
before around Lake George; he was one of the Sons
of Liberty who dumped the British tea into Boston
Harbor.
How he In November, 1775, six months after the famous
powder recipe ride, he was sent to Philadelphia to learn from the
only powder mill left in the country the secret of
making gunpowder. The British had destroyed all
the other powder mills, except this one, and the owner,
Oswell Eve, knew he had a monopoly. He didn't
care to hand over any trade secrets, and he let Re-
vere know it promptly. So Revere dropped the sub-
ject, and talked entertainingly and pleasantly of other
topics. So congenial and delightful a companion, in-
deed, he proved himself to be, and so quick and tact-
ful in dropping the subject of powder making, that
Eve led him through the factory and let him look
at things for a few minutes before bowing him out.
Little enough danger in that, thought Eve. But Re-
vere, who already knew something of chemistry, kept
his eyes wide open, remembered what he saw, went
back to New England and started a powder mill of
his own on the strength of what he had seen. And
he made powder that the American troops were glad
to use.
When the Revolution broke out in earnest, Re-
vere, unlike many of the men who had been most
OUR HISTORY IN STORY TELLING 73
active in talking it, played an active part. He was
lieutenant-colonel of a Massachusetts regiment and
fought through the war. At the same time he was
printing bank notes for the government, and the rec-
ords of the Continental Congress show that that body
audited his bills carefully and generally cut them
down a third or more.
After the Revolution, failing to get any one of a°pom'icai^^*
a number of government jobs he wanted, Paul Re- job
vera went into the business of copper refining and
manufacturing. He coppered the dome of the Boston
Statehouse, the hull of the old frigate Constitution —
Old Ironsides, you know — and he sold church bells
of his own making to all and sundry.
He was one of the men in Massachusetts who
worked hard for the adoption of the present federal
constitution. Massachusetts, always independent,
didn't know at first whether it cared to ratify the
constitution or not. Even Samuel Adams hesitated.
They tell a story of Adams' meeting Paul Revere,
after Revere had presided over a mass meeting of
mechanics who urged the adoption of the constitu-
tion.
*'How many mechanics," asked Adams, *'were at
the Green Dragon last night?" "More, sir, than
the Green Dragon could hold," replied Revere. **And
where were the rest, ' ' Mr. Revere ? " "In the streets
outside, sir." "And how many, should you say,
were in the streets?" "More, sir, than there are
stars in heaven."
Samuel Adams may have believed it, and he may
not; anyhow he swung his influence in favor of the
adoption of the constitution, and it carried, 187 to
168.
Revere must have been a delightful person to
74 OUR HISTORY IN STORY TELLING
know. He had about him a vivacity and sparkle
which made him very different from the average citi-
zen of Massachusetts, qualities which are accounted
for when we remember that Revere was the son of
an exiled Huguenot who had left France when the
Edict of Nantes was revoked.
Paul Revere lived to be eighty-four. When he
was eighty and Boston was believed to be in danger
of capture by the British in the War of 1812, Re-
vere was among those who volunteered to do service
digging trenches and casting up embankments. His
services were not needed, but it shows something of
the spirit of the man. Paul Revere all his life long
was up and doing. — [Kansas City Star.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF READING
The Children's Reading Frances Perkins Olcott
(Covers all the problems of why, how and where to
select books.)
The Choice of Books C. F. Richardson
(One of the standard books, and delightful reading.)
How TO Tell Stories to Children Sara Cone Bryant
(One of the best.)
Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them
Richard Wyche
(The other best.)
Poems of Action David R. Porter
Lest We Forget David Starr Jordan
(A good little book to lead young folks to an under-
standing of our government. )
Loan Papers of the National Congress of Mothers^
806 Loan & Trust Building, Washington, D. C.
One Thousand Good Books for Children
Margaret Worcester
(Graded and classified. Address The Congress.)
75
NATURE
QUOTATIONS
''Who knows the joy a bird knows,
When it goes fleetly?
Who knows the joy a flower knows,
When it blows sweetly?
Bird wing and flower stem.
Break them who would?
Bird wing and flower stem,
Make them who could?"
"Nature has been the 'Old Nurse' of mankind since time
began, and any plan of education that leaves her influence
upon mind and character out of the account is lacking at
a vital point"— Clifton Hodge.
"To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language ; for his gayer hours,
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathj^, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware."— Sr^/awf.
"Whence is the flower?
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing.
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being;
Why thou wert there, rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew !
But in my simple ignorance, suppose
The selfsame power that brought me there brought you."
— Emerson.
79
A BIRCH
In Boston Common.
See Chapter X.
VIII
THE LESSON OF NATURE FOR THE CHILD
CORA CAMPBELL
Principal of the Bancroft School, Kansas City, Mo.
ATURE is a" source of inspiration and joy
and culture within the reach of everyone.
The skies with their glory of changing clouds
and stars and moon and sun are above us
always; the rain cools the air for us all and washes
our dusty gardens ; the rainbow shows its beauty to
everyone ; perfectly shaped crystals of snow fall upon
our doorsteps; long blue shadows are thrown across
the fresh snow when the western sky is glowing at
sunset, every twig and blade of grass sparkles in
the morning sunlight which follows a night of freez-
ing rain or sleet. These are some of the beauties that
are at our very doors, but, more than that, the woods
are within our reach with something new to reveal
at every visit — something which children are eager
to discover.
Little children learn all things by observation
and experiment. They are naturally curious, alert,
keenly alive to new sights, new sounds, new colors.
The whole world is wonderful to them. We know
how gleefully they will search the woods for birds'
nests or bright leaves or flowers; how intently they
will watch a strange insect; with what pleasure they
collect shells or pebbles. We have all heard the eager
questions that they ask about these treasures and
the persistent **Why?" which drives parents almost
to distraction. Do not despair because his questions
Vol VI.— 6 81
82 LESSON OF NATURE FOR THE CHILD
are too deep for a sage, but rejoice in the inquiring
mind of your child, and ask him questions in re-
turn — simple questions that he can answer by ob-
serving more closely. He can be led on, by sym-
pathetic suggestion, to almost any extent of inquiry
into the qualities of things. And he learns to see
and to think — he gains a self-confidence that is more
valuable to him than any amount of mere informa-
tion.
The real difference between the poet and the
plodder, the sage and the dullard, is merely a differ-
ence in ability to see and to hear accurately. All cul-
ture begins with listening, with looking. A feeling
of kinship with the real things of life is the basis
of all knowledge. Peter Bell sees only a yellow prim-
rose by the river's brim, a Wordsworth or a Burns
sees a poem in a flower. The geologist, listening and
looking, learns the story of the rocks. The astronomer
hears the music of the spheres. The botanist's trained
eyes find the rare plant which hides itself from the
careless throng. Agassiz, listening in the forest of
the Amazon, discovered the secrets of the boughs
and birds. Newton sees in the fall of an apple a law
of the universe. Millet explained his fame by saying
that he copied the colors of the sunset at the mo-
ment when the reapers bowed their heads at the sound
of the evening bell.
Corot said, ''After one of my excursions, I invite
nature to come and spend a few days with me. Pencil
in hand, I hear the birds singing, the trees rustling
in the winds; I see the running brooks, and the
stream charged with a thousand reflections of sky and
earth, nay, the very sun rises and sets in my studio."
Shakespeare tells us that we can find ''tongues in
trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones.
LESSON OF NATURE FOR THE CHILD 83
and good in everything." We cannot all be Shake-
speares, Newtons or Corots, but we can be more like
them in one thing. We cmi see and can hear more
than we do. This power of seeing and hearing, once
gained, can never be entirely lost, and will aid the
child, as he grows into youth and manhood, in what-
ever he undertakes to do.
There is also a discipline in close companionship
with nature that is of great value. One who studies
nature cannot help learning that the world is ruled
by law — law absolutely unchangeable. He will learn
that one who would love must obey the law. He will
learn that the things most worth possessing are the
things that require the greatest effort for their attain-
ment. Did not Robert Bruce learn the lesson of
perseverance from the spider?
Perhaps of more importance to the child is the
phj^sical benefit which comes from outdoor life. A
child should, first of all, be a healthy animal. He
cannot have a sound mind unless he has a sound body,
and the best things to give him a sound body are the
sunshine, pure air and exercise which he will find in
the fields and woods. But more important than all
is the effect of these things in forming the child's
character. I do not believe in natural perversity
and native cruelty in children. Part of what we call
by these names is curiosity, part thoughtlessness, and
part, bad training. A child who plants a seed and
cares for the plant as it grows, will not destroy
flowers for pleasure. A child who has been led to
see the beauty of the gauzy wrings of a fly will find
no enjoyment in pulling off its legs. A child who
has listened to the different bird notes until he can
recognize the songsters by their calls, will not rob
nests or shoot the birds lest he destroy the music of
84 LESSON OF NATURE FOR THE CHILD
the woods. A child who is taught the uses of the
so-called ugly animals will grow to realize that *'A11
are needed by everyone, nothing is fair or good
alone. ' '
All living things appeal to his sympathy, and he
is made more thoughtful, gentle, earnest and consid-
erate. From this care and love for living creatures
grows, almost insensibly, a reverence for their Cre-
ator. *'At the gates of the forest is a sanctity which
shames our religions, '' Emerson tells us. Louise
Alcott says of her early life: "My wise mother,
anxious to give me a strong body to support a lively
brain, turned me loose in the country and let me
run wild, learning of nature what no books can teach,
and being led — as those who truly love her seldom
fail to do — through nature up to nature's God. I
remember running over the hills just at dawn one
summer morning, when pausing to rest in the silent
woods, I saw, through an arch of trees, the sun rise
over river, hill, and wide green meadows as I never
saw it before. Something born of the lovely hour,
a happy mood, and the unfolding aspirations of a
child's soul seemed to bring me very near to God;
and in the hush of that morning hour I always felt
that I *'got religion" as the phrase goes. A new and
vital sense of His presence, tender and sustaining
as of father's arms, came to me, never to change
through forty years of life's vicissitudes, but to grow
stronger for the sharp discipline of poverty and pain,
sorrow and success."
To him who really loves nature and would learn
from her she indeed "speaks a various language."
One who goes often among the hills and rocks and
trees and learns to love them worships God as truly
as he who is called the "pillar of the church." A
LESSON OF NATURE FOR THE CHILD 85
quiet Sunday afternoon in the heart of the woods
may be as spiritually inspiring to the child as the
morning Sunday school has been. The music of the
winds and waters may bring him diviner message
than the roll of the great organ in the church built
by human hands.
The appreciation of the beauty and the divinity
of the woods and fields, and flowers and sky, is the
foundation of appreciation of the beauty of literature
and art. Poetry and painting interpret nature for
us and a study of nature interprets poetry and paint-
ing. We can appreciate in literature and in art only
that which appeals to some experience of our own.
How can a child really read that grand old forest
hymn if he has never felt the ''sacred influence" of
the ''stilly woods," "of the gray old trunks" of the
"mighty trees," and of the "invisible breath that
sways at once all their green tops"?
How can one fully appreciate the dainty song
"Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,"
unless he has watched for glimpses of blue, sunny
skies through the dancing leaves, among which joyous
birds were singing?
And, on the other hand, the happy song telling
of the rare June day makes the springtime ever more
beautiful to us — sets it to music, as it were. And
who does not enjoy more keenly the pale moon peer-
ing out from among fleecy clouds for having thought
of it as "That orbed maiden, with white fire laden"?
Who does not find even more beauty in the hazy, lazy
autumn days than he did before he read Lowell's
"Indian Summer Reverie"?
IX
HOW TO LEAD THE CHILDREN INTO THEIR
BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE
ANNA MAY PALMER
Normal College, New York City
ARLYLE says ''The wealth of a man is the
number of things which he loves and
blesses," and we have only to count our
treasures to realize the truth of his words.
To love a thing is to bless it as absolutely as the
love is absolute, and blessing will follow love — bless-
ing whose character is derived from the nature of
the love itself. Let us then reckon a man's wealth
simply by the things he loves. Does he love money?
The wise old book estimates his wealth for us — "The
love of money is the root of all evil." Does he love
power? There are words of warning — ''Shun ambi-
tion, by it fell the angels." A love more worthy
of its name, a love that casteth out all fear, enriches
him who lives in this wondrous world with heart
and brain alert in the midst, not of images, but of
realities governed by the laws that are the laws of
his being, and who, feeling his oneness with them,
loves all things both great and small. His wealth
is the love of nature which entitles him to "com-
munion with her visible forms," whose language ever
speaks of that which is invisible and spiritual. He
is made one with nature. He shall know the truth;
it will make him free as the stars of heaven are
free, because "their joy is to obey the laws."
86
CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE 87
"Let him go where'er he will,
He hears a sky-born music still;
It sounds from all thinj2:s old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.
It is not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird.
Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.
'Tis not in the high stars alone.
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone.
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers.
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings."
This song is no indefinite, illusive product of the
brain of the theorist who builds a scheme of nature
upon some a priori conception. Take but a drop of
the scum from some stagnant pond and listen to its
song. A microscope will reveal to you a world of
living things struggling for the preservation of their
kind much as we struggle towards the same end. Note
the exquisite forms of these tiny creatures, their
wondrous colors, their powers of motion — some ever
whirling in a grotesque dance, others darting like
meteors across the field, a few moving in a purpose-
less way — here is all that suggests the activity of the
beings at the other end of the spiral. The longer
you look, the longer you listen, the stronger will grow
the melody. The drop of mud will give no less to
him who hath the eye to see and the ear to hear,
and perhaps he who finds the song in the literal mud
and scum of things will not fail to find it in the social
88 CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE
mud and scum that seem to promise nothing. The
wealth of the possessor of such an eye and ear cannot
be computed. It is the gift of the science that begins
in the love of nature. And the love of nature begins
for some of us generations before we are born. There
are those who have not this inheritance. However,
we find the poets and other great thinkers turning
to the little child as the one nearest to the heart of
nature. Emerson says, *'To speak truly, few adults
can see nature. Most persons cannot see the sun.
The sun illumines only the eye of a man but it shines
into the eye and the heart of a child. The lover of
nature is he who has retained the spirit of infancy,
even in manhood." Agassiz says that children are
born naturalists and as one reads his simple, unaf-
fected writings, one feels that this born naturalist is
ever a child. Shades of the prison-house begin to
close around us so early that we may find it difficult
to adjust our experience to that of the seers. Indeed,
it seems that some little ones are born in the prison-
house and only when a liberator comes to them are
they momentarily freed from their consciousness of
self to let the sunshine into their eyes and hearts.
In this I may err because I have failed to see things
as they are. My experience with little children leads
me to believe that they differ in their relation to
nature almost as much as their elders.
The love of '^ out-of-doors" is universal. The
baby expresses joy in its whole being at the sight of
the hat and cloak that mean going out. Is it the love
of the free light and air or simply the love of mo-
tion that makes him glad? Another joy common to
all is that of digging in sand or dirt. Some babies
are fastidious and demand a shovel, some need noth-
ing and dig with their hands, but he is the exception
CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE 89
among them who does not love to play at nature's
great sand-table, and I question whether the little
ones do not gain more under the guidance of this
teacher, who leaves them to discover for themselves,
than they do later at our sand-tables where we lead
and sometimes drag them to find out what we would
have them see. Not long ago I saw a family of three
children who differed widely from one another. The
eldest looked pale and listless, the youngest rosy as
an apple. The mother apologized for this child's ap-
pearance by saying, "I can't keep her in white, she
plays on the rocks from morning till night. My first
I brought up differently. We lived in a flat in a
crowded neighborhood and she went out only when I
took her ; she isn 't very well. But Johanna has come
up wild and we have never had a doctor for her."
Now Johanna may have had a far better start in
life than her elder sister, but freedom in the dirt and
fresh air cannot be denied a share of credit in the
production of this fine child. As I looked into the
merry, sun-burned face, I felt that Johanna's opin-
ions were already of value. She had lived in the
midst of the realities of sand and rocks — there was
little else in her playground — and there was truth and
naturalness in all she said and did.
If to an environment of sand and rocks, a brook
be added, the child, set free in it, enters a university.
The water itself offers endless opportunities. With
it come possibilities for paddling, w^ading, mud pies,
landscape gardening, rushing torrents, water-wheels,
millraces, dams, boats, wharves, and hosts of things
which I have forgotten but which the water will
bring to the mind of the child towards whose in-
struction and development this part of nature can
do so much. But the stream per se is a small part
90 CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE
of the Tiniversity. Living things follow the water
courses. The banks of the brooks are gay with flow-
ers, their bright colors attract children much as they
attract insects and some find in them more than even
the busy bees. Nature punishes the child who
snatches and crushes the flowers by giving him noth-
ing; and she quickly recognizes one who may be a
lover of flowers, and to him who loveth much she
giveth much. But the flowers cannot hold a child
as the wonderful moving things that live in and on
the water. The shining black beetles that dart with
tireless energy from place to place, and the great
spiders that skate over smooth surfaces, attract the
lovers of motion and lead them to look into the brooks
where the world of fishes is revealed. Then ''Ho,
for hook and line ! ' ' and the utilitarian becomes an
angler. I have seen an active child of four years sit
motionless on a log for half an hour at a time, in-
spired by the hope that his bent pin and flimsy line
would catch a fish. If catching fish is the desire of
the child's heart, he will learn the habits of fishes
and the arts of fishermen, and there is gain aside
from the sport.
But I fancy the heart of nature is nearer to the
little child who stands by the brook and wonders
how the beetles keep on the surface of the water?
Why the fishes don't drown? Where the little fishes'
mamma is? What they have for supper and whether
they will go to sleep in the water when night comes ?
Nature in her perfect wisdom never feels our tempta-
tion to drown such a child in a flood of knowledge.
She is sure that, if he really wants to know he will
one day find the queries. She does not resent our
aid to her child if we give it simply and refrain
from anticipating his questions, but if, through our
CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE 91
lack of wisdom, we develop a querist who asks for
the sake of asking then nature punishes us by cast-
ing our child aside and I think we can restore him
to her favor only by humbly following her method
and answering his questions as she would answer
them, "Look and think and you will know." And
if he, unaided, solves a good problem, he tastes the
joy of intellectual independence which, once tasted,
can never be forgotten. I remember as if but yester-
day an experience of this kind that came to me when
I was about four years old. I suffered intensely from
the cold. My doll was alwa3^s cold and that dis-
tressed me. I wrapped her in the warmest garments
I had, still she was cold. I put her under the covers
of my o^Ti bed where I had been so warm, but there
was no heat for her. Old Allie, my cat, who liked
nothing so much as a soft bed, came to my aid. One
day he was my baby and good naturedly submitted
to taking a nap in my bed. When I arranged to
dress him I found that Allie had made a warm place
in the very bed in which poor Bella had been so
miserably cold. Then the solution came to me. Allie
and I were alive but the doll was not. ''Live things
are warm inside like stoves ; blankets and clothes keep
the heat from going away till they too grow warm."
I knew at once that this was true and the joy of
discovery and of the consciousness of the power to
think was so keen that it has rescued this circum-
stance from the oblivion that hides most of the hap-
penings of those days.
No one is called upon to do more independent,
exact thinking than the student of nature. "We cannot
warp her to suit our own views. "She brings us
back to absolute truth as often as we wander." That
is the great charm of learning from nature herself.
92 CHILPREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE
There need be no intervention between the mind of
the learner and the physical fact he is striving to ap-
prehend, and when physical facts are regarded as
thoughts of the Creator they become as sacred as
moral laws.
Little children love to deal independently with
natural objects and they learn reverence for nature's
laws through their experiences. The child who for-
gets to feed a pet bird and finds it dead in its cage
learns something of the sacredness of life. No power
on earth can restore the life that a little care might
have saved. In a large penal institution it was found
that not one among those condemned for acts of
cruelty had in childhood owned or cared for a pet
animal. They had had no direct contact with things
weaker than themselves at a time in their lives when
sympathy and kindness might have been natural.
The child's love of nature is a precious part of
his wealth in this life, whether he is born to it as
a heritage or whether it is merely a latent possibility
depending for its development upon his environment,
and we who would give good gifts to the children
have, I think, no greater opportunity than that of
protecting and developing this wealth. As we learn
to do by doing, so we learn to love by loving, and
there must be scope for the child to exercise his love
of nature or it will suffer atrophy as surely as will
any other unused power. The all-prevailing walls
of this stony town pitifully limit many a city child's
chance to become acquainted with the works and
ways of nature, but let us attack the walls them-
selves — granite, sandstone, brick and limestone may
become fertile soil and blossom with bright flowers.
Moreover, children delight to hasten this transforma-
tion. The pebbles and bits of stone which they pound
CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE 93
to atoms are no mean gateways to the science of
geology. Here they have part of the answer to the
question, *' Where does the soil come from?'* The
breaking of the quartz pebble requires their utmost
strength, the sandstone is easily broken, and yet the
products of both of these experiments are wonderfully
similar. Here they are close to the answers to other
fundamental questions. Children need only a hint
to become collectors, and no collections are more
readily and satisfactorily made than collections of
minerals.
The city child has also the sky, the sun, the moon
and the stars, though he may have to look through
a canyon of brick walls to see them, but if he would
look at them how much might they do for him!
There might be more children's ''Dreams of Stars."
Emerson says, ' ' If the stars should appear one night
in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore
and preserve for many generations the remembrance
of the city of God which had been shown." Bring
but the eyes to see and we will be of the wise child's
opinion — ' ' The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."
Perhaps no teacher ever helped his pupils to use
their eyes as did Agassiz. Read the well-known story
of Agassiz 's pupil with the fish. I think that what
one feels most strongly in this lesson is the force of
the great teacher — the perfect mastery of his subject,
the power of his comment, his interest in his pupil.
And next to this the entire absence of any interven-
tion on the part of the teacher between the pupil
and the object of his investigations. Independent,
hand to hand struggle with the actual — look! look!
look! and the end of this struggle is power to see.
We will not give little children dead fishes to work
94 CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE
upon, nor will we have them look at one thing for
three days, but we can put objects into their hands
and take care to do nothing but that which will bring
the child and the object closer together. Questions
that can be answered only by examination of the
specimen may help, suggestions for drawing the ob-
ject, careful directions for its dissection, etc. A few
days ago, we had been drawing cherry blossoms in
various positions. After this we had removed the
petals and drawn them and what remained sep-
arately. Then we dissected the blossoms, still further
drawing as we worked. We drew (1) because it was
the best possible aid to sight; (2) because, knowing
that we were to draw checked ruthless destruction.
At the end of the lesson a pupil who had been es-
pecially interested, said, ''But we can't be Mr. Emer-
son's friends!" This catastrophe was unexpected
and the explanation was a surprise. The child simply
said, *'Hast thou loved the wood rose and left it on
its stalk?" But it is meet that a few blossoms perish
if thereby we learn that reverence for all blossoms
that can come only with a knowledge of them.
It is our great privilege to help the little children
intrusted to us to come into the full possession of
the glorious heritage that the love of nature will
make their own. To really avail ourselves of this
opportunity requires all the intelligence, all the com-
mon sense, all the tact and loving skill that we can
bring to bear upon it.
Lest we should overlook any items in the ideal
inheritance which might be a child's birthright may
I recall some of them that are mentioned in a famous
will?
''I leave to children, inclusively, but only for
the term of their childhood, all and every, the flowers
CHILDREN'S BIRTHRIGHT IN NATURE 95
of the fields, and the blossoms of the woods, with
the right to play among them freely according to
the customs of children, warning them at the same
time against thistles and thorns. And I devise to
children the banks of the brooks, and the golden
sands beneath the waters thereof, and the odors of
the willows that dip therein, and the white clouds
that float high above the giant trees. And I leave
the children the long, long days to be merry in, in
a thousand ways, and the night and the moon and
the train of the Milky Way to wonder at, but subject,
nevertheless, to the rights hereinafter given to lovers.
''I devise to boys jointly, all the useful idle fields
and commons where ball may be played ; all pleasant
waters where one may swim ; all snow-clad hills where
one may coast, and all streams and ponds where one
may fish, or where, when grim winter comes, one may
skate ; to have and to hold the same for the period of
their boyhood. And all meadows with the clover
blossoms and butterflies thereof, the woods and their
appurtenances, the squirrels and birds, the echoes
and strange noises, and all distant places which may
be visited, together with the adventures there found.
And I give to said boys each his own place at the
fireside at night, with all pictures that may be seen
in the burning wood, to enjoy without let or hin-
drance and without encumbrance or care. ' *
TREES IN WINTER
FLOY CAMPBELL
Head of the Department of Instruction in Art for the
Schools in the Island of Porto Rico
O recognize all of the common species of our
native trees on sight is a nearly impossible
task. Some of them are so similar one to
another that only the trained botanist can
distinguish between them in their winter dress; but
a few of them are easy to know, and a speaking ac-
quaintance with these few will be a life-long pleasure.
If it does no more, it will accustom the eye to the
observation of, and delight in, the exquisite tracery
of bare branches against the sky, and will make the
winter world a place of beauty as striking as the
more familiarly admired summer landscape.
Of course the most easily recognized division of
the trees is the one that broadly and unmistakably
classifies them as deciduous or evergreen. Even the
little baby can see whether the tree stands bare to
the storms, or whether it holds its foliage throughout
the winter ; and the smallest of children has the coni-
cal form of the fir and pine impressed upon him by
the Christmas tree that is one of his earliest emblems
of joy. All the commoner species of evergreen, or
more properly, of Gymnospermae, are very similar
in their silhouette, and in their manner of growth.
They nearly always approximate the cone in shape,
and the main trunk extends unbroken from the
96
THE OAKS
See Chapter X.
TREES IN WINTER 97
ground to the topmost twig, the branches, entirely
subordinate in size to the trunk, being arranged in
whorls about it. To really name the different ever-
greens, one must study the leaves and fruit of the
tree ; but the amateur will probably be content, at
first, to know that the trees that bear long needles
arranged in clusters are pines, while those that have
short needles set thick along the twigs are spruce, fir,
or hemlock. The great tree in the garden belongs to
probably the former division, while the Christmas
tree is one of the last three — generally a fir.
The deciduous, or leaf shedding, trees are far more
varied in form than the ordinary evergreens, and
among them are some which are so strongly char-
acterized that they may be easily recognized as far
away as they can be seen. First, most unmistakable
of these is the elm. Its trunk grows straight to the
point of branching, which may be ten or fifteen feet
from the ground, and then splits at once into about
half a dozen strong limbs, which in turn subdivide
into smaller branches, until the whole treetop looks
like a bit of beautiful gray seaweed pressed against
the blue page of the sky. This description of the
elm's habit of growth would often apply equally well
to the soft maple ; but after a very little observation,
you will be in no danger of confusing the two trees.
The elm branch follows a perfect and regularly
curved Grothic arch, and an avenue of elms gives the
effect of a true cathedral aisle ; while the maple limbs
spring more stiffly from the trunk, and bend more
suddenly down, sometimes assuming almost a * 'weep-
ing" attitude at the ends of the branches. They lack
the perfect grace and balance of the elm, and they
are, besides, lighter in the gray color of their
branches.
Vol. VL — 7
98 TREES IN WINTER
Usually the manner of growth is also strongly
characteristic in the oak trees of all kinds. Probably
more adjectives have been applied to them than to
any other of our common trees. "Rugged," "strong,"
"gnarled," "irregular" — when the oak has become
fairly mature, all these words are accurately descrip-
tive of its appearance. The main trunk does not
often lose itself at once in the mass of branches, as
does the elm, but persists at least two-thirds of the
height of the tree, in a vigorous, irregular line. From
it strong branches start in a purposeful way, often at
a right angle to the main direction of growth. Never
is there a drooping branch or twig. The elm is a
most feminine tree — strongly feminine, not weakly
SO; but the oak is masculine in every line. No other
tree has in this same degree the quality of sturdy,
human, man^s will. Once the oak is known, no char-
acteristic specimen can possibly be passed unrecog-
nized, no matter what the season of the year, or the
special type of leaf on the tree; but it must be re-
membered that young trees are seldom strongly char-
acteristic, and many species of young oaks might
readily be mistaken for hard maples, if the judgment
were based on the silhouette alone. There is one
other point about the winter aspect of the oak that
is quite as noteworthy as the rugged branching; and
this point is even more marked in young trees than
in the old ones. It is the garment of dead leaves
that hangs, nearly always, about the lower branches
throughout the entire winter, and falls only when
the swelling buds of spring are ready to replace it.
A little poem by Margaret George suggests this habit
in a lovely and memorable way:
"Oh, chill brown oak-leaves, clinging to the branches.
You shine like golden mail the winter through.
TREES IN WINTER 99
The biting frost but made you gleam more bravely :
How one warai rain has crushed and faded you!
Beat at a heart with scoffing and reproaches,
How it will arm itself to meet the fray!
Gently draw near it, how the frozen armor
At one warm breath of love will melt away !"
Of the other common trees, one may remark the
tall, irregularly branched hickory, and its very simi-
lar first cousin, the walnut; the delicate, slender-
twigged willow, red or golden toward the ends of
the smaller branches; the low, stunted, straggling
haws and crabs; the fine, compact head of the hard
maple ; the larger and more majestic, but equally
even and compact, ash ; and the black-barked, uncer-
tain, shambling lines of the old honey-locust. All
are interesting, some few may be guessed at from
their traced branches, but he would be a bold man
who named them confidently from afar, without veri-
fying his judgment from a closer examination of
bud and bark. They may be confounded with other
trees, if judged from the manner of grov^rth alone;
an oak or an elm never can be so confounded.
There are other trees that we may recognize from
a distance, however — from their bark, not from their
shape. They are our two ghost trees, the sycamore
and the cottonwood. You may at first think that
they are too much alike to tell apart. Both are dark
on the trunk and lower limbs, and light on the higher
branches, and they are not very unlike, sometimes,
in shape. A little observation of known specimens
will show, however, that the branches grow from
the trunk at a different angle, that the trunk per-
sists higher in the sycamore, as a general thing, and
that the sycamore is apt to be broader at the base
100 TREES IN WINTER
of the limb-mass, and more pyramidal in general
form. The cottonwood varies greatly in general
mass, and I have seen some trees growing almost like
giant elms, while others, nearly as old, approximated
the Lombardy poplar in shape.
Near at hand, the likeness between the trees al-
most disappears. The bark of each is quite unmis-
takable; the cottonwood being securely sheathed in
heavily ridged, dark brown bark, half way to the
top of the tree, and the upper limbs, except in some
species not common here, being pale gray, not white
at all. The sycamore, on the other hand, is splotched
all over, from the root to half the brandies, with
brown, black, pale gray, green, and white, the white
patches growing more numerous as the tree ascends,
until the ends of the branches are pure white. The
brown and black splotches are old bark, hanging loose
on the trunk ; the gray and greenish ones are slightly
weathered bark, still securely fastened. And the
white ones are a part of the new, living, inner bark.
They gleam like snow, too, and if you put your
fingers on them, you will find your hand covered with
white powder. As a further means of identification
it may be remembered that the sycamore is what one
small boy called *'a ball-bearing tree,'^ and from its
higher branches hang dozens of the little brown
spheres that give the tree its nickname of ''button-
ball tree.''
The birch tree is another white-barked tree, not
native to Missouri, but is often seen in the parks,
or in private gardens. It seldoms grows large here,
and it is easily distinguished from the two native
ghost trees by the white that extends even to the
root, and is ringed and belted with darker color, but
not splotched at all. The bark peels around the
trunk, never lengthwise, as in most trees.
TREES IN WINTER 101
The shag-bark hickory also possesses a bark easily
recognized if one is close enough to see its quality.
Like the beggars of the song, it is dressed in '*rags
and tags" hanging loose all down the trunk, ready
to break away in every breeze. The bark is rather
light gray, and the tree cannot be said to have any
characteristic shape. Few would dare distinguish
it from its cousins, the mocker, the pignut, the bit-
ternut, and especially the walnut, from a distance;
but the bark is its personal hallmark, and quite un-
mistakable.
There are other trees that are easy to recognize
because of strange fruits that hang on them all
winter. The ash tree is sometimes so thickly clothed
with dry tassels until February, that a careless ob-
server would think it still held its leaves, like the
oak. The button-ball fruit has been already noticed.
The ironwood is a little tree that lays claim to the
nickname of *' Hop-hornbeam " on account of the
dried hop-bells that hang from its branches, grad-
ually torn by the wind until, by mid-February, only
a fragmentary bell or tw^o can be found. The linden,
too, clings to its fairy aeroplanes until the New Year
is well begun, though every strong wdnd, from the
first of October, tears away a few of them. All the
bean-trees, the honey-locust, the catalpa, the coffee
tree, hold their browTi pods, exactly like those of our
common or garden bean, except in size, far into the
winter. I have even known the little bean-pods of
the redbud to fringe the branches throughout two
entire winters, the blossoms being killed by frost the
second of these years, before fruit had formed; and
at the end of the seoond winter they still held the
polished brow^n seeds.
There is great beauty in all winter trees. No
102 TREES IN WINTER
summer loveliness can surpass the arabesques of the
bare branches on the blue or steely sky; no blossoms
of spring can rival the blossoms of snow that so
often clothe them; yet we have too generally formed
the habit of considering them ugly. The reason for
this may be that we are most accustomed to the ap-
pearance of the trees about our own dwelling, and
these trees are too often shamefully mutilated, and
deformed by the trimmer. A tree that has survived
the attentions of the ordinary ** trimmer '^ has about
as much grace and beauty as a man who has survived
a nap on a railroad track. The wind trims the trees
of the forest, and its method is to break away a
whole limb, which, through being crowded by other
limbs, is weak. In Europe, the forester never lops
off a large limb, unless he removes it in this way.
If he wants a compact, a regular tree, for the sake
of some architectural effect, he pinches each tiny
sprout that grows too long for the general harmony
of form. He trains, but does not break.
The wind's way, nature's way, makes a free-grow-
ing and characteristic tree, and the best foresters in
this country are following it when the home owners
will let them. The foreign method of training,
though it controls the free tree, and fits it into a
formally planned design, does so without mutila-
tion. The individual character is sacrificed, but
sacrificed in such a way that the tree remains dig-
nified, beautiful, complete, with no hideous blunt
stumps reaching tragically upward, and making a
blot on the prospect in their naked winter ugliness.
If we would have our children grow to see beauty in
the trees of winter, we must use all our influence
to prevent, about our city, the butchery that is still
too common under the name of trimming, and to
A TYPICAL ELM
See Chapter X.
TREES IN WINTER 103
see that the necessary shapeliness and convention-
ality of the tree planted near the house, and the es-
sential thinning of the top branches, are gained in
one of the two right and beautiful ways, and never
by lopping off great limbs a few feet from the main
trunk.
XI
THE ANT MOTHER
MARY HARMON WEEKS
Vice-President of the National Congress of Mothers
H, no, I would not step on the little ant. She
is not thinking about hurting you. She is
trying to get away with that tiny white
bundle. It is her baby and she wants to
find a warm, dry place in which to give it fresh air
and sunshine. The ants do just as nurse does with
baby brother only they themselves are the baby car-
riages.
The baby ants do not look at all like their fathers
and mothers. Many people call them grubs. They
are soft, white bundles when they come from the eggs
which mother ants lay and the nurse ants im-
mediately carry them to the nursery, which is a
little room under ground. Here they wash the babies
every day just as the cat washes her kittens, and
the room is kept as clean and sweet as baby Jack's
nursery. The ants are very fond of the little white
things, and pat and stroke them, and turn them
over, so that they may lie more comfortably. Isn't
that what mamma does with brother?
On warm, sunny days, the nurses give the little
ones an extra fine cleaning, and carry them, one by
one, to the top of the ground and lay them in the
sunshine. Once a man saw the nurse ants bringing
out the babies, and he wondered if ants could count.
So, when they were gone for another set of babies,
104
THE ANT MOTHER 105
lie gently placed four of those that were already out,
behind different stones. When the ants had laid down
the last bundle, they seemed to be in great trouble,
and ran here and there as though looking for some-
thing. At last they found one of the stray babies
and carried it to the right place. They stroked it
with the little feet that you are afraid of, and acted
just as your mamma would, if you should be lost and
found. They hunted 'till all four were brought back.
Do you believe that they counted their bundles?
You will not try to step on another ant, I am
sure ; for you know now that they are somewhat like
people, although their bodies are so different.
There are other ways in which they are like us.
They have stables underground, in which they keep —
guess w^hat — tiny green lice like those mamma has
shown you on her rosebush. The right name for
these little things is *' aphis." The stable ants take
great care of them, and bring them tender green
leaves to eat. The aphis is the ants' cow. It does
not give exactly the same kind of milk that we drink,
but the ants are very fond of the milk. When an
ant wants some, he touches the aphis in a certain
place, and the aphis gives a tiny drop of honey. This
seems to me a wonderful thing, and makes me feel
as if the ants w^ere related to us in some way. Per-
haps as nearly as third cousins. Indeed, each little
live creature has something about it so much like us,
that the more we watch it, the more we know that
it is a nice part of the lovely, useful world where
we live.
XII
MOTHER SPIDER
FRANCES BLISS GILLESPY
T was a beautiful day in mid-summer. The
meadow was alive with busy little people
astir in the bright sunlight. A long line of
ants came crawling down the path, carrying
provisions to their home under the elm tree ; the
crickets and grasshoppers were chirping their gayest ;
and an old tree toad came hopping down the path,
blinking in the warm sun. Just a little higher up,
the bees were droning drowsily, as they flew from
flower to flower; and above them all, seemingly al-
most in the blue sky itself, a robin was calling to his
mate.
Pretty soon Mrs. Spider came down the path. She
seemed to be in a great hurry. She looked neither to
the right nor to the left, but kept straight ahead, and
held tightly to a little white bag which she carried
in her mouth. She was just rushing past Mr. Toad,
when a big, black beetle came bumping by, stumbled
against Mrs. Spider, and knocked the bag out of her
mouth. In an instant Mrs. Spider pounced down
upon him; and, though he was so much bigger than
she, he was tumbled over on his back. While he was
trying to kick himself right side up once more, Mrs.
Spider made a quick little dash, took up her bag and
disappeared in the long grass.
"Well, I never!" said Grasshopper Green, who
was playing seesaw on a blade of grass. **Nor I/'
106
MOTHER SPIDER 107
grumbled Mr. Beetle, as he wriggled back to his feet.
**I didn't want her bag. She needn't have made such
a fuss." ''She must have had something very fine
inside," remarked Grasshopper; "for she was so
frightened when she dropped it. I wonder what it
was," — and he balanced himself on the grass blade,
and thought about it until a stray breeze blew him
off; and then he hopped away over the meadow and
quite forgot Mrs. Spider and her bag.
About two weeks after this, Grasshopper Green
started out for a little exercise before breakfast.
Just as he reached the edge of the brook, he saw Mrs.
Spider coming toward him. SI e was moving quite
slowly and no longer carried the little white bag;
but as she came nearer he could see that she had
something on her back.
"Good morning, neighbor," he called. "Can't I
help you carry your things?" "Thank you," she
answered, "but they wouldn't stay with you a
minute, even if they could hold on when you gave
such great jumps." "They!" said Grasshopper
Green; and then, as he came nearer, he saw that the
things on Mrs. Spider's back were baby spiders.
"Aren't they beautiful children?" she asked
proudly. "I was so afraid that something would
happen to my eggs, and that I never would have
these dear children. I never let go of the bag one
instant, except when poor, clumsy Mr. Beetle knocked
it out of my mouth. " " Oho ! ' ' cried Grasshopper
Green ; " so that was what frightened you so ! Your
bag was full of eggs ! And now are you going to
carry all those children on your back? Doesn't it
tire you dreadfully?" "I don't mind that a bit,"
said Mrs. Spider, "if only the children are well and
safe. In a little while, you know, they will be able
108 THE STORY OF LIFE
to run about and take care of themselves; and then
we shall be so happy here in the meadow. Oh, it's
well worth the trouble, Neighbor Grasshopper."
''Yes," said Grasshopper Green, "I have a dozen
wee boys of my own at home; and that reminds me
that it is quite time to go home to breakfast ! Good-
bye, neighbor, I hope the children will soon be run-
ning about with you. You certainly are taking good
care of them. Good-bye."
XIII
STOEIES OF LIFE FOR VERY LITTLE
FOLKS
BELLA THOMPSON LUTES
NE of the very first questions which all little
children ask is, "Where did the baby come
from ? " It is not the human baby alone with
which their questions are concerned, but the
young of all living creatures. The great mystery of
creation stirs the natural curiosity and interest of
even the smallest child.
How to answer these questions truthfully and yet
according to their understanding, and how to present
these truths in such a way as to arouse only reverence
for the act of creation, is a problem which every con-
scientious parent, and particularly every mother, has
to meet.
We have made an attempt to tell a few of the first
stories of creation in such a manner as to enlist the
hearing and understanding of even a small child.
And in each attempt effort has been made to lead the
developing mind gradually up to the great climax of
creation, that of human life itself, which will answer
the child's first question.
THE BABY MORNING GLORY 109
THE BABY MORNING GLORY
I ID you ask me a question ? Ah, yes, I thought
so, but you whispered it so very gently that I
was not sure.
' ' Where do babies come from ? ' ^
Now, that 's a big, big question, to be sure, and will
require a big, big answer. I shall have to tell you a
great many stories before I can tell you that one, else
you couldn't understand it, for it is a very wonderful
story. To-day I'll tell you the first one, and to-mor-
row the next one, and on Wednesday the next one,
and so on, one each day, until we've told all the first
ones and come to the big one.
Let's go out in the garden, because gardens are
always full of babies, and with them all about us we
shall enjoy and understand the stories better.
"How can there be babies in the garden?" Just
you wait and see. You see there in the tree is a
birdie 's nest and there are baby birds in it, but we are
not going to tell tliat story to-day, although it's a
perfectly lovely one and if I should begin it you'd
never let me stop until it was quite finished. Down
there in the brook are baby frogs and baby fishes,
and they have each a story all their own, but we
haven't got to those either. And up there in that
old hollow tree are some wee little baby squirrels, but
we can't tell their story for quite a long, long time.
So you see there are plenty of babies after all, and
all waiting to have their stories told. Their stories
are quite a good deal alike, too, for, after all, babies
of every description come into life in pretty much
the same way, and yet each story seems more beautiful
and wonderful than the one before it.
Now, where shall we begin? Here is a Morning
110 THE BABY MORNING GLORY
Glory, a lovely pink and white Morning Glory. She
looks as if she might have a very pretty story, so we
will tell hers first.
Little Miss Morning Glory was not always a
gro^^^l-up Morning Glory, you know. Once she was
just a tiny, baby flower. And it was this way. "We
will break the Morning Glory's stem and hold her in
our hands — so — while we tell her story.
You see this lovely pink and white petticoat that
stands out so frilly and bell-like? That has a name
all by itself. Will you try to remember when I tell
you that it is called a corolla? And each separate
part of the corolla has a name also. This name is
petal.
Now look down inside the petticoat or corolla and
you will see some little, fine stems and a yellow, dust-
like powder which is sprinkled all over the inside of
the petals. This powder is a very wonderful thing
indeed, and I will tell you more about it later.
We will take off the pretty pink and white petti-
coat now, petal by petal — so — and see what is hidden
down here at the bottom. Gently as we have pulled,
however, some of the delicate, threadlike stems that
we saw standing upright in the Morning Glory 's cen-
ter have fallen away with the petals. That is because
they were fastened to the lower edge of the corolla
and so were a part of it. These dainty little stems
have a name also, and are called stamens. Look at
them again and you will see that each one of them has
a heavy little head, a double head with two cells.
This cell-like head is called an anther, and the anthers
hold the yellow dust that you saw scattered on the
inside of the petals. This golden dust is called pollen.
You are having to learn a good many new words,
are you not? But you will be glad afterward that
THE BABY MORNING GLORY 111
you have learned them, for they wdll be a help to you
all through the stories.
You know we say that flowers "get ripe" and ''go
to seed." This means that they have fulfilled their
mission as flowers and are ready to give up blossoming
and do their next work, which is to be a family and
make more blossoms.
This is a new thought, is it not, that there should
be families in flowers? But indeed there are, and
what is still more wonderful, there are fathers and
mothers in flowers, and of course where there are
fathers and mothers there are babies. So now let us
see where the baby Morning Glories come from.
Right in the very midst of the flower we saw a
very straight, upright stem, which, now that we have
pulled away the corolla, is still standing. You have
already learned that every part of the flower has a
name all its own, so I know you will be eager to know
what the name of this part is. It is called the pistil
and has two parts, the style<f which is the stem itself,
and the round ball-like top, which is called the stigma.
The pistil extends down into this thick, round part at
the bottom from which we pulled the corolla.
Now listen very closely, for I am going to tell you
a wonderful thing. This pistil and the thick, round
part at the bottom which is called the ovary are the
mother part of the plant. Ovary means egg-case or
seed-case, so you may imagine that in this ovary are
little eggs or seeds — for all eggs are really seeds, only
in plants we call them seeds and in other living crea-
tures of a higher order we call them eggs.
I have a knife here ; let us cut this ovary straight
across — so. See, there are the little round things that
would have ripened into seeds if the flower had
remained on the stalk. But — and here is another
112 THE BABY MORNING GLORY
wondel'ful thing — those little seeds could never have
ripened if it were not for the golden pollen dust which
we found on the anthers. For the stamens and
anthers with their pollen are the father part of the
plant, and so, you see, there was a family after all.
When God made the world His most beautiful
thought was that of the home and family life. He
planned everything He made for the comfort and hap-
piness of His children, and He knew they could never
be happy unless there were families. So He made
fathers and mothers in everything. Flowers, plants,
trees, birds, fishes, animals, people — to everything that
lives and moves — He gave family life with, the power
to create others like themselves.
In some plants, like the Morning Glory, the father
and mother parts are both in the same flower. In
others the mother part will be in one flower and the
father part in another.
And, what is still more wonderful and beautiful,
neither the father nor the mother can produce oihers
like themselves alone, but they must come together
in order to make a new one. So in the Morning
Glory the father part, which is the pollen, when the
anthers burst open, is either blown by the wind over
onto the mother part, or stigma, or else the bees or
birds or butterflies carry it over.
The stigma, when the flower is quite ripe and
ready, becomes sticky and the pollen in touching it
sticks to it. Now each grain of pollen, although so
smaU that you cannot see it without a microscope,
contains two or more tiny, living bodies which are
called gernis of life. This life must touch the seed
cells that lie in the ovary before they can ever grow
or become a real seed. The pollen grains slowly pass
down the style of the pistil until they reach the inside
THE BABY MORNING GLORY 113
of the ovary, and there, like a Fairy Prince touching
with a magic wand the Sleeping Princess, they touch
the sleeping seeds and start them into life. Then the
seeds grow and ripen until they fall to the earth.
The earth covers them, the rains moisten them, the
sun warms them, and finally they grow into other
Morning Glories. And so you have the story of where
one baby came from — the baby Morning Glory — from
a seed which was a part of her mother and a part of
her father.
In some plants the mother nature will be in one
part of the plant and the father nature in another
part, like the corn. Let us go farther into the garden,
where the sweet corn grows. Here is a plant with
the pretty silk peeping out from an ear. Now, in the
corn the silks are the mother part of the plaut — and
where do you suppose we shall find the father part?
Look up here at this waving tassel. Yes, that's the
name of it — the tassel. And the tassel is the father
part and has the pollen. Now look back at the ear
again. See how it is protected by all these husks.
How is the pollen ever going to get inside all those
husks in order to fertilize the kernels, for each kernel
must be fertilized, else it will never grow and be a
seed.
Look at the silks again. These dainty little silks
are to the com what the pistil is to the Morning
Glory. They contain the stigma, which is the sticky
head for the pollen to stick to, and the style, which
is the tube down which the pollen grain containing
the germ of life must travel to get to the ovary and
seeds. So the wind blows the pollen from the tassel
to the silk and the silk carries it down inside the husks
to the kernels.
114 THE BABY MORNING GLORY
And here you have the story of another kind of
family life.
Bees and birds and butterflies and insects of all
sorts carry pollen from one flower to another and
from one plant to another. See that big, lumbering
bumblebee over there on the clover blossom? Look
at his legs. They are covered with pollen. Some of
that pollen will be shaken off as he goes from flower
to flower, and the pollen, you must always remember,
is the fertilizing agent and has in it the germ of life
which makes the seeds grow.
But here is another very wonderful thing about
these family lives — you see the whole story is fairly
running over vdih wonderful things. The pollen
from one kind of flower or plant will not fertilize
another kind of flower or plant. So if the bumblebee
goes from the clover blossom to a Morning Glory,
the pollen from the clover blossom will have no effect
on the Morning Glory. But if he goes from this
clover blossom to another clover blossom then this
pollen wdll fertilize the other blossom and make its
seeds ripen and grow. The pollen from the red
Morning Glory might fall upon the ovary of a white
Morning Glory and make a pink Morning Glory, but
it would always be a Morning Glory and never any-
thing else.
The pollen from a maple tree would have no effect
upon any other kind of tree, nor any plant or flower.
And so it is throughout all the forms of creation.
Like begets like. Flowers of the same kind, but of
different colors, may mix, but pansies will not mix
with roses, nor hollyhocks with peonies. And you \\dll
find the same inexorable law holding true in all forms
of life. We shall see how true this is when we come
to the stories of the fish and the birds.
THE STORY ,0F THE YELLOW JACKET 115
Neither are all seeds fertilized, and neither do all
seeds grow that are fertilized. There are so many
millions and millions of seeds that a great many can
afford to be wasted and still there be plenty.
But when we come to the higher forms of life we
shall see that such waste cannot be afforded.
XIV
THE STORY OF THE YELLOW JACKET
OU have seen how, in the Morning Glory, the
seed or egg is in the ovary, or egg-nest, from
the very beginning of the flower, but that the
seed could never grow or develop without the
magic touch of the fertiliziiig agent — the pollen. And
you learned that the same thing is true of all plants,
flowers and trees. There is the mother part, or
mother plant, with the ovary or seed-nest, where live
the unfertilized seeds. And there is also the father
part or father plant, which contains the pollen.
With flowers, plants and trees, the pollen is carried
from the anthers to the stigma by wind, bird, bee or
butterfly. The stigma, being sticky, holds it, and it
is then drav^Ti down through the style to the ovary and
seeds.
With some flowers and plants you learned that
both father and mother parts may be in the same
flower. This is not true, however, of insects or fishes
or birds or any other creatures. In all of these there
are distinctly male and female, fathers and mothers.
Do you see that clump of mud up yonder in the
corner of the woodshed? That is the house of Mr.
and Mrs. Yellow Jacket.
It is not always easy to tell which is the male and
which the female of insects unless you are a student
IIG THE STORY OF THE YELLOW JACKET
of nature, and we haven't time for that just now.
We want to know where little Baby Yellow Jacket
comes from.
In Mrs. Y^ellow Jacket's body, down underneath
those queer, round, little rings, are two tiny ovaries,
or egg-nests, one on either side. In these ovaries
are the eggs or seeds of other Yellow Jackets, but, as
■with the flowers, they will never grow or develop or
become anything at all unless they are touched by
the fairy magic of the fertilizing agent of the male
Yellow Jacket.
Now, the father Yellow Jacket's fertilizing agent
is not a pollen, but a liquid, and since it cannot be
blo\vn by wind nor carried by bee or butterfly, he
must take it to the mother himself. And this he does.
Just as from the ear of corn the silks protrude to
carry do^\^l their delicate threads the magical grains
of pollen, so from the ovary of the wasp there extends
a tiny tube, or style, to the outside of her body. The
male wasp puts his body close to hers, that part of it
which carries the fertilizing agent coming into close
contact Tv^th the edge of the tube or style of the female
body, the fertilizing fluid is dra\\Ta down the tube or
egg-duct until it reaches the eggs and is deposited
upon them. Then, when the seeds or eggs have
grown in the mother body a certain time, until they
are quite ready, she deposits them in the nest she has
been preparing for them.
If you watch the insects, grasshoppers, flies, bees,
wasps, butterflies, you will often see this wonderful
thing happening. You will see the body of one closely
fastened to the body of another, and you will know
that the fertilizing power, the Magic Touch, is being
laid upon the tiny eggs, which will turn them into the
young of its kind.
THE STORY OF THE FISH 117
The insect world is full of beautiful stories, and
as you grow older I should like you to study them.
Suggested reading:
''Life and Love," "Song of Life" and "Renewal
of Life," by Margaret Morley.
' ' The Spinner Family. ' '
"Eyes and No Eyes."
"The Bee People."
THE STORY OF THE FISH
HE story of the fish is not so very much differ-
ent from that of the wasp in the essential
elements that we are studying; and, in fact,
as we go on, you will see that all the ' ' Where
did they come from?" stories are pretty much alike.
The reason for this is that all life comes from the egg.
And all eggs are seeds. All life is divided into two
forms — male and female. The female body holds the
ovaries or egg-nests, and the male body has the fer-
tilizing agent, whether it be pollen or liquid. Neither
one is complete without the other and so they must
come together in union before they can reproduce
others like themselves.
This is the law of nature and of God. In the very
beginning the Bible tells us that God made two of
every kind of flower, insect, fish, fowl and animal.
Then he said, "Multiply and increase the earth."
All living creatures understand this law and obey
it. They know that this is what they must do — unite
their forces and create others to take their places when
they are gone.
The story of the fish is different from that of the
Yellow Jacket in several ways, and I will tell you
118 THE STORY OF THE FISH
how. The eggs are in the mother body, just as they
are in all mother bodies. They grow there.
During the winter a great many — oh, thousands
of tiny eggs grow in the mother fish's body. When
spring comes and the waters of streams and rivers
and lakes grow warmer, the fish come out of the deep
water, where they have been all winter, and swim
away up the shallow streams where the sun shines,
or near the shores of the lake where the sand is warm.
Fish have quite a little family life among them-
selves in spring and choose their mates quite as ani-
mals do. One male fish and one female fish will swim
away together toward a warm, sunny place, and when
they have found one that pleases them they make
ready a nest for their eggs. With their fins and tails
they sweep away pebbles and twigs and dead leaves ;
they even use their noses to poke things out of the
way. When the place is cleaned quite to suit them,
the mother fish will ' ' lay ' ' her eggs — expel them from
her body into the warm, shallow water. Then the
male fish swims slowly over them and from his body
flows a thick, whitish substance, which is the fertiliz-
ing power, and which will give life to the thousands
of eggs which it touches.
In this way the fish and insect differ ; the body of
the male fish does not need to come into contact with
that of the female.
Sometimes the mother and father fish swim about
near their eggs during the days when the sun and
water and air are developing them to keep other fish
from eating them. But the majority of fish, having
laid their eggs, swim away and never think of them
again. The eggs hatch and we have tiny minnows —
thousands of them. Larger fish eat them by the hun-
dreds. This may seem cruel, but it is the law of
THE STORY OF THE FROG 119
nature. If it were not so there would soon be more
fish than the waters of the earth could contain, for
one fish will sometimes lay millions of eggs.
With the fish, as in every other form of life, the
law of "like begets like" holds good. The perch and
the sunfish do not mate. The bass and the pickerel
do not swim away together in the springtime to make
a nest for the eggs.
It is* Mr. Bass and Mrs. Bass; Mr. Perch and Mrs.
Perch. Nature has made this law an immutable one,
so that each kind of life shall be reproduced by itself.
THE STORY OF THE FROa
R. FROG is a very interesting creature and
has quite a wonderful story.
Mrs. Frog does not lay nearly so many
eggs as Mrs. Fish. It doesn't matter very
much if some of Mrs. Fish's eggs are eaten up or
lost, for there are so many of them. But Mrs. Frog's
eggs are more valuable. It doesn't matter if the fer-
tilizing fluid doesn't cover every one of Mrs. Fish's
eggs so that some of them never develop. But it is
necessary that every one of Mrs. Frog's eggs are fer-
tilized, and so nature has taught the frogs to be very
careful and see that they are.
Mrs. Fish's eggs are all separate — ask your mother
to let you see the fish's eggs some day when she is
cleaning fish for dinner — tiny, little, round things
they are, tumbling this way and that in the water.
But Mrs. Frog's eggs are all held together in a
mass with a thin, jelly like substance, in order to pre-
vent loss.
Then, immediately the eggs are laid by Mrs. Frog,
Mr. Frog throws upon them, and carefully upon each
120 THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN
one, so that all shall be developed, the fertilizing fluid.
Then the eggs lie there in the sun and water, growing
larger and larger, until one day — what do we find?
Little baby frogs? No, not yet. Tadpoles! Funny
little things that are half frog and half fish. They
have gills at first like a fish, and a tail. But very
soon the gills disappear, the tail grows smaller and
smaller, the tiny feet and legs grow larger, until one
day when w^e visit the pond we do find — ^little baby
frogs.
And this is the story of the frog — Mother Frog
carrying in her body the ovaries or egg-nests, Father
Frog carrying in his body the life-giving fluid; the
depositing of the eggs by the mother and the ma^c
touch of the father. Then — gro\vth, development,
new life.
THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN
IFE, you see, grows continually into higher
and higher order. First there are the tiny,
tiny things, whose stories we have not told at
all, but which are, in their minute way, the
same stories of the two natures, male and female, the
egg, the fertilizing agent, and final growth to maturity
and the repetition of the process.
Then there are the plants, the fish, the frog, and
now we come to the story of the birds. And by birds
we mean all the creatures of the air, and the fowls of
the yard, the meadow and the field — all those whose
covering is of feathers, and which we call the
^'feathered tribe."
In the last lesson you learned that as the order
of life grows higher greater care must be taken of
THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN 121
the young, because not so many eggs are laid and
more time is required in caring for the young.
You know the Morning Glory scatters its seeds on
the ground and leaves it to chance to see that all are
fertilized and grow. A great many other plants, par-
ticularly some weeds, scatter their seeds wherever they
may be blown by wind or carried by bird, and there
are so many of them that if great numbers of them
were not destroyed or eaten by birds and insects they
would overrun all the world.
You remember that the fish lays thousands of eggs
and that a great many are destroyed. The frog,
which is of a little higher order of life than the fish,
lays fewer eggs and is more careful to see that a
greater number is fertilized.
The bird, of a still higher order, lays still fewer
eggs and builds a nest for them that greater protection
may be given.
In all the stories which we have studied, except
those of' the insect, the egg has been expelled from
the mother body before being fertilized, the fertiliz-
ing pollen or fluid, as the case might be, being depos-
ited upon it afterward. It has not been necessary in
any of these forms of life, except the insect, for the
body of the male to come in contact with that of the
female.
With the bird we have a different story. The
mating season for all things is in the spring of the
year, when the flowers blossom, leaves come out on
the trees and all nature seems to be singing a song
of life.
So, early in the springtime, almost before the snow
is off the ground in our Northern States, Mr. Robin
chooses his wi^e and they begin to look about for a
nice place to build a home.
122 THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN
With birds, it is always easy to distinguish the
male from the female. The male is of much more
brilliant plumage and sings a louder song. The
mother bird is generally a plain little creature,
although very sweet of voice. Her feathers are with-
out color and of the tints of leaf and twig and grass
so she can sit on her nest and cover her eggs without
being noticed by creatures that would wish to destroy
her or her eggs.
"When the male robin wishes to choose a certain
little brown female to help him in building a home,
he begins to sing to her his most joyful air. He swells
out his crimson breast, struts proudly about, hops up
and do\^Ti from twig to twig, and otherwise endeavors
to attract her by his wiles.
Everywhere throughout meadow, wood and field,
in springtime you will see the birds flaunting their
gay colors, singing their brightest and most jubilant
songs, and giving every evidence of being joyous and
happy. And this is because within themselves they
feel the stirring of abundant life — life so abundant
and joyous that it must overflow into other lives —
new lives that will also learn what a beautiful thing
life may be.
A little later in the spring we shall see the birds
quite as frequently, but we shall not hear them so
much. They will be very, very busy. Can you guess
at what? Building nests, of course. Mr, Robin and
Mrs. Robin have chosen a quiet spot in the corner of
the old fence. Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow are building up
under the eaves. Mr. and Mrs. Swallow have their
nests in the barn. Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird have a
home in a hollow limb of an old apple tree. Mr. and
Mrs. Oriole have a wonderful house swinging from
the very tip end of a limb of the maple tree. Down
THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN 123
in the meadow, snuggled deep in a tuft of grass, Mr.
and Mrs. Meadow Lark have cozily built their home.
And so everywhere the nesting, homing season is
going on. In the barnyard the fowls are also mating
and maturing their eggs, and they would build their
own nests if no one built them for them. But people
want to find and use the eggs of the hen, the duck, the
goose and the turkey, so they build nests for them
which can be easily found.
Madam Turkey doesn't care much herself about
the nests that men make for her, for she's a wild
creature at heart, and loves to steal off in the fields
and woods and hide her eggs in a nest of her own
making. Then one day she stalks forth with a whole
brood of little turklings peep-peeping after her, and
the farmer's wife says, '^There's that old hen-turkey!
I 've been looking for her for weeks. ' '
In the female bird, as in the female fish, frog,
insect and flower, there is the egg-nest or ovary — two
of them — one on each side, deep within her body, so
nothing can harm them.
In the ovaries the tiny seed-egg is formed, devel-
oped and grows. From the ovary extends a long,
narrow tube, the outer end of which opens at an
opening in the bird's body, which is covered and
protected by the tail feathers. Out of the tube the
eggs, when they have grown to the proper size, are
forced and expelled, or ''laid" in the nest.
The Qg^, however, like the seed of the flower, would
never reach maturity, would never be able to bring
forth other robins, unless it became fertilized with
the fertilizing agent which only the male robin can
supply.
Deep within Mr. Robin's body are tiny sacs which
hold the magic wand — the fertilizing fluid, that which
124 THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN
corresponds to the pollen in the flower, and these tiny
sacs correspond with the anthers at the end of the
stamens in the Morning Glory. So you see how the
same wonderful laws of nature are holding true to
the same plan all the way through. It is a beautiful
story, is it not? And a marvelous one — planned by
a wise mid loving Father so that the things of His
world may reproduce themselves with the divine crea-
tive power which is a part of God Himself.
It would never do to leave these precious birds'
eggs to be fertilized by chance, as are the fishes and
the flowers and the frogs, by having the fertilizing
fluid poured over them after they are laid.
Birds lay perhaps only a dozen eggs in a whole
year, instead of millions as the fish do, so nature has
planned that great care must be taken in fertilizing
every one. Therefore the fertilizing fiuid must enter
the mother bird's body before the egg leaves it. For
this reason the body of the male bird must come into
contact with the mother bird's body and the precious
fiuid be sent on its way up the tiny duct until it meets
with the egg on its way down.
You will remember that in our story of the Morn-
ing Glory we said that each tiny grain of pollen
contained a living, moving germ of life. That is true
of all fertilizing agents. In the liquid that the insect
injects into the body of the female insect, in the fluid
that the male fish spreads over the eggs of its female,
and in the fertilizing agent of the male bird, are tiny,
tiny, moving germs of life — so tiny that they can be
seen only with a strong magnifying glass.
When the fluid touches the long tube that extends
from the outer opening of the bird's body to the
ovary, it begins to move and to work its way upward.
Sometimes it meets with the egg partly down the tube,
THE STORY OF MR. AND MRS. ROBIN 125
and sometimes it travels all the way until it reaches
the egg-sac, or ovary, but at least it will keep moving
until its work is accomplished.
Then, when the egg has reached its full size, when
it has been nourished by the blood and life of the
mother bird until it is quite complete and its pro-
tective shell is formed, it moves down the tube, tho
mother feels its approach and goes to her nest, where,
very carefully, she deposits or ' ' lays" the egg. "When
a sufficient number are laid, she ceases to lay any
more, but continues to sit upon those already laid for
days and days, and nights also, keeping them warm
and moist with her feathers.
During all this time the father robin flies about
and finds worms and insects which he brings in his
mouth and feeds to the brooding mother. He sits
near her on the tree or fence, sings to her quietly at
times, calls shrilly to warn her if any danger threat-
ens, and in every way is a careful and considerate
head of his family. Sometimes, indeed, he takes his
turn at sitting upon the eggs in order to relieve the
tired mother.
When the little birds finally come out of the shell —
we call it ''hatching" — the birds do not fly away and
leave them to themselves as the fish and frogs do.
It seems that the higher up in the scale of life we
go the more helpless are the young and the more care
and consideration is required of the parents. This
we believe to be so planned by God to increase our
love and affection for our young, and to give us the
more happiness in life.
So when little birds are hatched — ^brown, ugly lit-
tle things, all mouth and head — the father and mother
are kept busy enough bringing them things to eat.
Worms, bugs, flies — ^these are food for the insatiable
appetite of the young birds.
120 THE STORY OF BABY SQUIRREL
Some birds first swallow the food themselves, when,
in the crop, it is changed into a thick, pasty sub-
stance, which is then brought up and fed to the
young. Others feed to their young the food just as
they find it; the young of domestic fowls, such as
chickens, ducks, turkeys, are fed by people, soft stuffs,
such as bran and cornmeal mush. But if they were
not their mothers would scratch and dig in the soft
earth until they found worms and insects for their
little ones to eat.
There are a great many lessons of love and care
and responsibility to be learned from the birds of the
air and the field. They never question whether they
*'want" to work for their homes and their little ones
or not. God has given them this instinct as a law, and
they fulfill the law — never questioning.
Next time you go for a walk in the woods and
fields I want you to remember all these wonderful
stories and think about them. When you see a bird 's
nest, remember that it is a home and that great care
and work have gone to its building. And when you
see little, young birds in the nest, think of all the long,
wonderful process that has gone into their creation,
and what a wonderful privilege God gave to all these
creatures to let them make other creatures like them-
selves.
THE STORY OF BABY SQUIRREL
OU said, when you began, that all life comes
from an egg. And now I know that the
Morning Glory and the fish and the frog
and the wasp and the bird do. But baby
squirrels don't come from an egg, do they? I never
saw a squirrel egg.^*
THE STiORY OF BABY SQUIRREL 127
So you didn't. But nevertheless the great prin-
ciple holds true. All life comes from an egg — and an
egg is a seed; so therefore the baby squirrel does;
and what is more, so, also, does the rabbit and the
mouse and the rat and the cat and, in fact, all ani-
mals. But, as you will see when I have explained all
about it to you, there is quite a big difference between
the egg stories we have already learned and those we
are going to talk about now.
You remember how the Morning Glory, when her
seeds were ripe, dropped them upon the ground for
the sun to warm, the earth to nourish and the rain to
moisten until they grew and developed I You remem-
ber how Mrs. Fish did the same ? And you remember
what great care Mrs. Bird took of her eggs — how she
built a nest for them and sat upon them for days and
days to keep them warm, until the little baby birds
grew large enough to crack the shells and come out
into the world?
You remember that I told you the ovaries^ or egg-
nests, were placed deep within the mother bird 's body
so that no harm could come to them, and that the fer-
tilizing fluid from the father bird's body must come
into contact with the eggs before they left the mother's
body, else no little birds would ever grow within them.
Now, remembering all these things, I want you to
listen very closely while I tell you the story of the
baby squirrel.
When the cold and snow of winter are almost
past, when the pussy-willows begin to grow yellow,
and the first frog puts his head up out of the cold, icy
water and croaks a greeting to the springtime, what
do we say happens to the trees? We say ''the sap is
beginning to run."
Now, the sap is to the tree what the blood is to our
128 THE STORY OF BABY SQUIRREL
own bodies. It gives life to the tree. When the sap
begins to run the tree is all aquiver and aglow with
life. Its branches and twigs turn green. Tiny little
leaves burst out all over it and swdng and sway in the
breezes. The tree is so full of life that it really seems
joyous and happy.
What is true of the tree is also true of all other
living things. You remember, don't you, that I told
you how joyous and happy Mr. and Mrs. Robin were
in the springtime, so happy and full of life that they
wanted to give life to other robins so they could be
happy too?
Well, early in the springtime, when the sap begins
to run in the trees and make them joyous and thrilling
with life, the blood begins to flow faster and more
vigorously through the bodies of all squirrels. They
are glad the long winter is over. They love to climb
the trees and whisk in and out amongst the leafy
branches. They feel the thrill and pulse of life in
their veins. They are glad to be alive, so glad that
the instinct is strong within them to bring other little
squirrels into life to be happy also.
So Mr. Squirrel, like Mr. Robin, chooses for him-
self a mate, and they set about making a home to go
housekeeping in.
Now, before we go any further, I must tell you
about the egg-nests in Mother Squirrel's body, else
you will never understand how Baby Squirrel comes
into the world in almost exactly the same way that the
little Morning Glory does.
I shall ask you to remember again how Mr. and
Mrs. Robin huilt a nest for the eggs which Mrs. Robin
laid. Now, here is just where Mrs. Robin and Mrs.
Squirrel differ. Mrs. Robin had to build her nest for
her eggs, and, of course, there is always danger of
THE STiORY OF BABY SQUIRREL 129
something happening to these eggs ; sometimes snakes
eat them; sometimes storms beat upon them and
destroy them; sometimes other birds throw them out
of the nest; and sometimes thoughtless little boys steal
the nests — eggs and all — and then, oh, how sad Mother
Robin's heart is. Sometimes, after the eggs are
hatched, a cat or a weasel or some other animal will
eat the young birds. So, you see, there is always the
chance of something happening so that not all of the
young birds will hatch. But there are a great many
birds, although not nearly so many as there are of the
young of lower orders of life. If something did not
happen to a few of them there would soon he too
many; they would eat up all our fruits and grains.
Therefore, it doesn't matter so much if something does
sometimes happen, although we're always sorry when
we know that a bird's nest has been destroyed.
A bird, you know, lays four or five or six eggs —
one each day — and then she sits on them until they
hatch. When she has helped feed and care for them
until they are grown large enough to care for them-
selves, she lays some more eggs and repeats the proc-
ess. This she does two or three times between spring-
time and winter, so you can see that each mother and
father bird, if nothing happened to the young, would
bring quite a good many young birds into life each
year.
Mrs. Squirrel will not have as many babies during
the year as the birds do, and squirrels are more val-
uable than birds because of a higher order of life, so
God planned differently with regard to Baby Squirrel,
that his life might be surer.
The ovarieSf or egg-nests, are deep within Mother
Squirrel's body, just as in Mother Robin's — one on
either side — but the nest is inside her body also. You
Vol. VI.— 9
130 THE STORY OF BABY SQUIRREL
see, since little squirrels are fewer than little birds,
God saw that greater care would have to be taken to
preserve their lives. So, instead of having Mrs. Squirrel
deposit the egg in a nest that big birds, or snakes,
or other animals, or men might destroy, He has her
place the egg, after it has been fertilized by the father
squirrel, in a little warm nest inside her body, right
near the ovaries.
And now you are going to learn some new names.
From each of the ovaries, or egg-nests, is a little
tube or oviduct — a tube which conducts the ova, or
egg — connecting with a small, warm organ or little
empty room, called the uterus, or womb. This is the
nest where the little, tiny, ti^^v baby squirrels will lie
and grow, nourished by the blood of the mother, until
they are large enough to come out into the world
and be taken care of, just as the baby robin grows in
the egg.
When the body of the father squirrel comes into
contact with the body of the mother squirrel, and the
fertilizing fluid leaves his body and passes into hers,
it goes through the little path provided for it — the
oviduct — searching until it finds the little eggs and
has laid its magic touch upon them. Then the eggs
pass through the oviduct into the uterus, or womb —
the little empty nest waiting to receive them. Here
they stop and fasten themselves upon the sides or
walls of the nest and remain. The food which the
mother eats, through her blood, nourishes them and
here they grow and develop for a certain number of
weeks.
During this time Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel have been
building a home to be ready for their little ones — a
home of dried leaves — in a cozy hollow of some old
tree.
THB STORY OF BABY SQUIRREL 131
Then, one day, Mrs. Squirrel crawls quietly away
into the house, and out from the little nest in her
body, through a little door provided at the opening
of the oviduct, comes the baby squirrels.
Then — ^how are they fed? Do Mr. and Mrs.
Squirrel go out and find nuts for their babies to eat, as
Mr. and Mrs. Robin do worms for their babies ? No,
indeed. For now we have a very different order of
things and you will begin to see what a very wonder-
ful thing blood is.
The food that IVIrs. Squirrel eats makes blood.
Part of that blood goes to keep Mrs. Squirrel alive;
part of it goes to nourish the baby squirrels and make
them grow, and part of it turn^ into milk for the baby
squirrels to drinh after they are horn.
Inside of Mother Squirrel s body are certain little
tubes and glands which answer the same purpose as
a little baby's bottle, and hold milk. The months of
the little milk glands are outside of Mother Squirrel's
body, on the underside where they will be protected.
"When little squirrels are born into the world the
mother squirrel cuddles them close up against her own
warm body, their soft, little, warm mouths find the
tiny mouth of the milk glands, and so, from their
mother's body again they draw the nourishment for
their own.
Mr. Squirrel, while Mrs. Squirrel is nursing and
caring for their babies in the home, runs about out-
side and finds food for himself and Mother Squirrel
and scolds very shrilly if anyone comes near his home.
And here you have the story of Mr. and Mrs.
Squirrel and little Baby Squirrel.
Now you see, do you not, how true it is that all
life comes from the eg^l The tiny flowers of the field,
the vegetables in our garden, the fruit on the tree,
132 THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOYS
the fish in the water, insects, reptiles, birds of the air,
fowls of the yard, all animals from the "wee bit
mousie" to the ponderous elephant, all follow the
great law of nature — the mother life, the father life,
the egg, the fertilizing agent, the young.
Throughout all the different kingdoms of creation
the same great principle holds true. And in the next
story I shall tell you how, ercn with the greatest of
all God's creations — ^Man — the same law maintains.
And in telling you this, I shall answer your first ques-
tion, if indeed, I have not answered it already:
* * Where does our baby come from ? ' '
XV
THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOl^S
you wonder why I ask you so many times
to go back over each story and remember all
that has been told before ? It is because each
separate story has its bearing upon the one
that follows, and remembering the stories that you
have heard before makes each one as it is told easier
to understand. So now I am going to ask you again
to remember some of the things that were told in the
Little Folks' Stories.
What did we call the thick, round part of the
Morning Glory to which the petticoat corolla was
fastened? The ovary — yes. And what were the
names of the mother part of the flower? Style and
stigma — together forming the pistil. And the father
part? Stamens and anther. That is right. But
what part have we neglected to mention, without
which the seeds would never grow, and the style and
stigma be useless ? The pollen — ah, yes — the wonder-
ful Fairy Prince with his Magic Wand. /^
THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOYS 133
I want you always to remember these names and
the work that all these wonderful little parts have to
do. You know that from the stigma to the ovary the
pollen is carried through that tiny, tiny tube, the
style, and that in every grain of pollen is the germ of
life.
You remember how the same principle holds true
with fish and frog except that in these there is a sharp
division of sex, the mother nature being distinct in the
female and the father in the male; and that the egg-
nests are in the mother body, and the fertilizing agent,
now a liquid instead of a pollen, is in the father body.
You remember that in plants, trees, flowers, even
in frogs and fish, it is difficult to distinguish male
from female. But, as the order of life ascends, not
only is the distinction of sex made clear in separate
beings, but the sex is easily distinguished by coloring
and size, and also by different formations of the body,
the reproductive organs of male and female growing
more and more unlike, and yet more and more comple-
mentary as the order ascends.
"With birds the male is larger than the female, bis
coloring more pronounced, his voice louder and
stronger. In animal life the male grows larger and
coarser than the female, although the coloring may
be the same.
You will remember that in all life since we left the
order of fish and frogs, it has been necessary for the
fertilizing agent to enter the mother body before
the eg^ left the nest, that there may be no chance of
the egg escaping contact with the magic touch. And
you will remember that in each form of life the ovaries
or egg-nests have been placed within the mother body,
and the fertilizing power in the sacs within the father
body.
134 THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOYS
Now, bearing all these things in mind and remem-
bering all the names you have learned, we will proceed
with the next story — that of the human baby.
Man belongs to the animal kingdom, but he is the
highest and last form. He is God's greatest creation,
anu most precious. In each form of life that we have
studied we have seen how life grows more and more
precious and how in each case greater care is taken to
produce it and to conserve it after being reproduced.
It takes a longer time for the squirrel baby to
reach the stage from genesis to birth than it does
the bird baby. It takes the young of the dog longer
than that of the squirrel. And the little calf and colt
are still longer reaching that development which
means birth into the world. Also, as we ascend in the
scales of life, the young are fewer. The female fish
lays a million or more eggs in a season. The bird
lays less — but a few dozen. The mother dog has per-
haps four or six babies in a year, and the mother cow
but one. So you can easily see now, as life grows
more valuable and yet more scarce, what great care
must surround it from the very beginning, that there
may be no waste. You see how necessary it is that
we should understand all the processes, that we may
give intelligent care to our domestic creatures and to
ourselves. For, after all, the processes of life are
with us much the same that they are with the lower
order of animals, except that God has, in His gra-
ciousness, given us minds and reason with which to
understand and enjoy our wonderful abilities.
With human life, as in the animal kingdom, there
is family life — the father, the mother, the child — ^but
it is a much higher order and more valuable family
life.
You remember how in springtime we learned that
THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOYS 135
the bird and the squirrel and all other forms of life
are bubbling over with life and joy, so overfull that
they must needs choose a mate and through her create
new life out of the abundance of their own in the
young of their kind.
Man, in the prime of his youth, is in the springtime
of his life. His blood bounds through his veins with
such ardor and joyous vigor that he instinctively —
because God so made him — longs to give vent to his
fullness of life in the creation of other lives.
So, like the bird and the animal, he chooses a mate.
But, having reason and a mind with which to enjoy,
he chooses his mate, not solely as a means of bringing
new life into the world, but also to be to him a com-
panion and a lielpnuite in his home. He chooses a
woman whom he can love, and who will be his mate,
not for a season, but for a lifetime.
And then, like the bird and the squirrel, they set
about building their home, only, again, having been
blessed by God with a mind and soul with which to
enjoy, they build a permanent home and furnish it
for their happiness and comfort.
Then, having built this home, having been wedded
by form of State and Church, the father and mother of
the human family await the coming of their little ones.
And now I shall tell you the story of your own
little baby life — ^the life that was yours while your
father and mother waited for your coming.
In every human mother's body, deep within where
the bones of the hips will protect them from injury,
are the little egg-nests, just as they are in all other
mother bodies, called — as you will remember — ovaries.
Extending from each ovary is a little tube or duct,
called a Fallopian tube, the same that in the squirrel
we called the oviduct, and these both enter into a
136 THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOYS
little pear-shaped organ called the uterus, or womb,
the same organ you iieard of in the mother squirrel's
body, the little warm nest that held the baby
squirrels.
Now, in the ovaries of every mother body are
little egg-cells waiting to be developed into life.
As a girl grows from childhood into youth we say
that she tnatures or enters into womanhood. As she
enters womanhood the egg-cells develop and become
ready to be fertilized.
Nature has provided that once each month at least
one egg-cell shall slip away from the ovary, creep down
through the Fallopian tube and into the uterus. Now,
if, on its way through the uterus, the egg-cell shall
come into contact with the fertilizing power of the
father body, it will not travel any further. It will
fasten itself upon the walls of the uterus, the tiny
blood vessels with which the uterus is lined will
nourish it, and it will grow and develop until — ^won-
der of wonders — it becomes a little child. For all
but three months of a year the little seed-baby will
lie snug and warm in its nest beneath the mother's
heart. It will grow from a tiny little seed that could
only be seen with a microscope into a round-limbed
little child that will weigh seven or eight pounds. In
the beginning the uterus is only a very tiny chamber,
but as the little occupant grows and needs more room,
its chamber grows also to fit its needs.
And so you were once a tiny seed-baby growing
from a wee little e^g not so large as a Morning Glory
seed into a sturdy baby which moved its arms and
legs so vigorously that your mother felt them within
her body and longed to hold you in her arms and love
you.
Finally, one day — a day your mother will always
THE STORY OF BABY GIRLS AND BOYS 137
remember — she went into her own room, a room she
had lovingly and carefully prepared, and lay down
upon her bed, for she felt that the time had arrived
when you were coming into the world and to her arms.
Your father was very kind and gentle with her, for
she suffered greatly, and he suffered also in seeing her
pain.
There were long, dark hours, little girl, when your
mother fought mth Pain for your sake, but she was
glad to do so, thinking of the hour when she should
hold you and nurse you against her breast. And all
your life long, little girl, you will love your mother
and be tender with her, for the sake of the great
anguish of body she bore in order to give you life and
to have you with her; and you will love and honor
your father also, for you are a part of him, even as the
pink and white baby Morning Glory was a mingling
of both father and mother.
Then, when they laid you, all warm and sweet and
clothed in the soft little garments that your mother
had so carefully prepared, beside her in the bed, she
held you against her breast, and you drew from her
the nourishment that made you grow strong and
sturdy until you could run upon your own little legs,
just as the baby squirrel nursed food from his mother.
And so you see how like is your ovm story to that
of the other babies that we have talked about, and
how God's great and wonderful plan of creation runs
truly through all the different kingdoms of life upon
earth.
XVI
THE DETECTION OF MENTAL
MALITY
SUBNOR-
E. A. FARRINGTON, B. S. M. D.
President Bancroft Training School, Haddonfield, N, J.
Mental
sabnormality
defiued
Its causes
ENTAL subnormality* is the result of phys-
ical disease or injury. If the body is nor-
mal in structure and function, the mind
will be normal in growth and activity. If
organic or functional defects are present in the body,
the mind or personality w^ill be maimed or impris-
oned. This is one of the most important precepts in
all education ; its application is universal, and when
viewed broadly, there is no exception to it.
2. The danger of physical disease or injury, re-
sulting in mental subnormality, is ever present in
childhood. From the earliest days of prenatal life to
the latest years of adolescence, this danger must be
guarded against by the watchful mother who would
insure her children their full legacy of bodily health
and mental vigor. Not only must she make certain
that her offspring have the benefit of good maternal
and paternal heredity; she must also acquaint her-
self vrith those causes of subnormality that may be-
*Tlie term mental subnormality is used here in its widest sense,
to mean any child whose mental faculties are below the standard
accepted as normal for the average child. Some writers prefer to
differentiate the merely dull child from the permanently subnormal,
calling the former backward, the latter mentally subnormal, deficient,
or feeble-minded. But some easily understood term of an all in-
clusive scope is needed, and none seems to be so well suited or so
free from offensive asso lation as tbe one here adopted.
138
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
139
come active before, during or after birth, so that she
may, by deliberate effort, avoid them.
3. It is in disease or injury of the nervous sys-
tem that the underlying physical causes of mental
subnormality are to be found. This is easy to under-
stand when we reflect that the brain is the organ of
the mind and that the nerve fibres which emerge
from it are the sole means of communication between
the personality or ego and the objective world.
Through the innumerable sensory nerve paths, im-
pressions from without reach the central structure;
there they are associated and co-ordinated; thought
is developed; the will is aroused to act; and the out-
ward expression of the mental state is produced by
motor impulses traversing the outgoijig nerve paths.
4. Disease or injury, either of the nervous sys-
tem itself or of other structures that react upon the
nervous system, may cause damage to the receiving
or transmitting organs or may impair the integrity
of the nerve pathways. Message to and from the
brain are thus improperly transmitted or perhaps
fail entirely to reach their destination. When com-
munications are thus broken the mind is isolated —
just as a city would be whose telegraph wires were
broken down by a great storm. The result is mental
subnormality.
5. The early recognition of those abnormal phys-
ical conditions that commonly bring with them some
form of mental subnormality is of paramount im-
portance. The plastic, rapidly growing tissues of the
infant afford far better opportunity to remold in-
jured parts, to develop new pathways and to awaken
new areas to activity than could be gained in an
older child or an adult. This plastic period is thus
the time to recognize and as far as possible to remedy
those physical defects.
Necessity of
early
recognition of
abnormal
physical
condition
140
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
Normal
proportions of
the body
Height
Weight
Proportion of
head, trunk
and limbs
6. But in order to judge intelligently as to the
child's physical development, and to detect abnormal
conditions as soon as they appear, it is necessary to
be familiar with the development of the normal
child. The more important points in this develop-
ment will therefore be taken up briefly before pro-
ceeding further.
7. The average height at birth is between nine-
teen and twenty inches. During the first year, there
is an increase of about three-quarters of an inch per
month. During the second year, the growth is about
four inches; during the third year, about three
inches. At the end of the eighth year, the height
has reached four feet.
8. At birth, the average infant weighs seven and
one-half pounds. During the first week there is a
slight loss followed by a weekly gain of half a pound,
which continues for about four months, gradually
falling off thereafter. The child's weight is approxi-
mately doubled in five months and trebled by the end
of the first year.
9. At birth, the head and neck form one-fourth
of the height. At two years the child is five heads
high, at six years, six heads, at fifteen years, seven
heads, and in adult life, eight heads high. At birth
the arms are longer than the lower limbs; later, this
proportion is reversed. There is normally very little
disparity in the length and girth of the arms and
legs as compared with their fellows of the opposite
side. At birth, the circumference of the head is
fourteen and one-half inches. The chest is thirteen
and one-half inches. At six months, the head is sev-
enteen and one-half inches, the chest seventeen. At
one year, the head is nearly eighteen inches, the
chest (now larger than the head) nearly nineteen.
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
141
Bone
development
At the end of the second year, the head measures
nineteen and one-quarter inches, the chest twenty
and one-half inches.
10. Normal growth of bone, together with healthy
bone hardening, are important factors in develop-
ment. The two fontanels or ''soft spots" of the skull
serve as good early indicators of the state of the
bony system. The fontanel farthest back hardens or
closes early in the third month; the anterior fon-
tanel closes at the sixteenth or eighteenth month.
11. The first or "milk teeth" begin to come Teeth
through at about the sixth to the ninth month. At
about the end of the second year, the last of this set
has been cut. The first permanent teeth appear
during the sixth year; the last during the twelfth
year (except the ''wisdom teeth," which are delayed
until the eighteenth or even the twenty-fifth year).
12. Free muscular activity is normally present at
birth but the proper co-ordination or "working to-
gether" of various muscle-groups must be acquired
gradually. Control of the eye muscles comes during
the second month. The infant also learns to turn the
head voluntarily at this time. At the fourth month,
the head is held erect and intentional grasping at-
tempted (unconscious grasping appears very early).
At the fifth month, the child picks things up, and
puts objects in his mouth. By the seventh month, he
can sit up without support ; by the eighth he uses
both hands co-ordinately; at the tenth month he
creeps and at the twelfth stands erect with the sup-
port of nearby objects; at the fourteenth month he
walks with support; takes a few steps alone at fif-
teen months; walks well at the sixteenth or seven-
teenth month ; runs at the eighteenth month ; and
climbs, jumps and goes up and down stairs by the
end of the second year.
Motor
developnient
142
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
Sensory
development
Attention and
memory
Wm and
imitation
Emotions
13. All the sense organs are probably active at
birth, although less acutely than later, but none of
them is consciously or co-ordinately used. Hearing
begins early; but sound discrimination is not shown
until the fifth or sixth week. Taste and smell may
be detected during the first few days; sensitiveness
to touch appears at the same time. Sensitiveness to
pain is doubtless present in lessened degree from
the beginning. Perception of light is present at
birth, but real focused vision is only occasional or
accidental until toward the end of the second month.
14. The attention may be momentarily held as
early as the latter half of the first month. It is
clearly defined by the fourth month. Memory for
taste and smell develops first, followed by memory
for hearing, touch and sight. The human voice is
recognized by the second month and the child soon
learns to recognize and remember the mother or
nurse.
15. Evidences of voluntary opposition to the will
of others (stubbornness) are apparent at about the
fifth month. Imitation is seen at about the same
time, but is not well established until the end of the
first year. At the eighth month, cries of animals are
imitated; at the twelfth or fourteenth, attempts are
made to imitate words.
16. Some consciousness of pleasure is shown dur-
ing the first two weeks. Smiling is seen at the third
week, tears at about the same time. Laughter from
tickling comes in the second month; laughter from
joy and crying from anger during the third or
fourth month. Desire (a tendency to *'w^ant"
things) is manifested at the fifth month. Astonish-
ment comes at about the seventh month; fear at the
eighth or ninth.
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY 143
17. During the first month, the vowels ah, ee, speech
ohy 00 are sounded. These are followed at about the
sixth week by the consonants m, p, h. All the vowels
and consonants can be pronounced by the end of the
first year, but they are not as yet used definitely for
speech. The child has learned by this time to un-
derstand simple words, questions and commands. At
the fourteenth or fifteenth month, syllables are re-
peated ; by the eighteenth month, words are used ; at
two years, speech is well developed ; and by the first
half of the third year, sentences are spoken.
18. Any marked deviation from the normal de-
velopment outlined above may be a symptom of sub-
normality. Retardation of growth, lateness in erup-
tion of the teeth ; delay in sitting up, walking or talk-
ing; failure of the special senses to respond to ap-
propriate stimuli; absence of normal emotions;
marked apathy or general dullness — all these signs
should be carefully studied.
19. But it is to be remembered that what is called ??®JrmS"°'
the *' normal" is simply the average or "mean" of a
very large number of healthy children. Deviation
from this average may takp place within wide limits.
It does not follow that a child who walks late or
fails to talk at eighteen months is subnormal. It is
only when the departure from the average is very
marked, when it shows itself in many different ways
or when it accompanies or follows acute illness that
we are justified in regarding the future mental de-
velopment of the child with concern. In other
words, when examining a given case, these devia-
tions from the normal should be considered as sug-
gestive of possible subnormality, rather than as
actual diagnostic indications of it. The decision
must be based on the symptom-picture taken as a
whole; not upon any single sign or deviation.
144 DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
20. Let me now consider in some detail the com-
mon signs indicative of those diseases and abnormal-
ities that warn us of possible subnormality. To de-
scribe them all would require a volume. We can,
however, review some of the most important ones.
For convenience, we shall divide them into three
groups, (a) Signs recognizable at birth, (b) Signs
latent at birth that appear during development, (c)
Signs caused by disease or injury during infancy or
childhood,
fecog^nizabie ^1. If the infant is blue, fails to cry vigorously
at birth qj. breathes imperfectly at birth, suffocation (as-
phyxia) may result. This may be due to stoppage
of the air passages (mucus, amniotic water, folded-
back tongue) and if not at once remedied injury to
the delicate brain cells may follow. The impaired
breathing may be caused by brain disturbance, per-
haps hemorrhage or injury to the brain from instru-
ments or difficult delivery, or possibly collapse from
prolonged or severe pressure on the head.
22. If breathing is normal, a careful inspection
of the child should be made. Bruises, cuts, swell-
ings, or bleeding under the skin, especially about the
head and face, such as are sometimes caused by in-
struments, are possible danger signs. Misshapen
head, overlapping bones or other irregularities of the
skull should also be regarded with suspicion. Mus-
cular activity should next be noted. If an arm or a
leg seems to be moved less freely than the other
limbs, it should be examined to see whether paralysis
is present. The cause may be a broken or dislocated
bone or pressure upon a large nerve trunk ; or it may
be brain injury. The grasping power of the fingers
should be tested and if this is defective, especially
if both arm and leg on the same side are weak or if
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
145
the mouth is drawn to one side or one eyelid droops,
the paralysis is probably traceable to the brain. This
is rendered certain if twitching or convulsions fol-
low within a few hours of birth.
23. Deformities or malformation are possible in-
dications of subnormality because they usually indi-
cate serious prenatal disturbance of the growth pro-
cesses. Among the more common are : too large or
too small head; webbed, missing or supernumerary
fingers or toes; harelip; cleft palate; and shortened
limbs.
24. Closely allied to deformities are those signs
that indicate general faulty development or un-
healthy heredity. Among them may be mentioned
the dull, dwarfed appearance of thyroid defect (Cre-
tinism and Mongolianism) ; the receding chin and
forehead, high cheekbones, narrow, high-arched pal-
ate and misshapen ears of the so-called ''degener-
ate"; and the thin, pale, old-looking body of the
inherently weak constitution.
25. It sometimes happens that an infant, at first
apparently robust and healthy, begins after a few
days or weeks to show signs indicating possible sub-
normality, because of the development of conditions
at first latent and hidden. The child begins to lose
weight, appears pale, tired and listless, the appetite
fails and sleep becomes restless. These symptoms
may, of course, be due to acquired disease (especially
marasmus) but not infrequently hereditary weak-
ness or disease (such as congenital syphilis) is re-
sponsible. Thyroid defect (Cretinism or Mongolian-
ism) can usually be detected at birth, but occasion-
ally the appearance of the characteristic signs is de-
layed for a short time.
Vol. VI.— 10
Signs latent
at birth that
appear during
development
146
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
Signs caused
by disease or
injury during
infancy or
cbildhood
Infectious
diseases as
causes
Injury to the
brain
26. So numerous are the diseases and injuries of
early life which may, either directly or indirectly,
cause mental subnormality that only a brief state-
ment of their chief types can be given here. Under
the general term malnutrition may be grouped a
large number of diseases common in early infancy
that retard growth and thus endanger the normal
development of the brain. Among them may be
mentioned marasmus, rickets, and those serious ail-
ments of digestion variously called summer com-
plaint, milk infection, cholera infantum, etc.
27. The infectious diseases of ''diseases of child-
hood'' form another most important group.
(Measles, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria,
mumps, whooping cough and others are universally
known.) These fevers are without exception ex-
tremely dangerous. They owe their virulence to a
poison or toxin which may even in apparently mild
cases involve the brain or its membranes, producing
meningitis or even more serious brain inflamma-
tions, followed by convulsions, paralysis, loss of
sight, hearing, speech and a host of lesser ills. These
diseases are one of the commonest causes of subnor-
mality. They are to be feared and avoided and any
symptom that indicates the possible appearance of
one of them (fever, sudden vomiting, a rash, ear-
ache, etc.) should be given immediate attention.
28. Injury to the brain sufficiently grave to pro-
duce subnormality can be caused, generally speak-
ing, only by a fall or blow upon the head. The dan-
ger signals are: dazed appearance, or total uncon-
sciousness, pallor, coldness, weakness (or even col-
lapse), vomiting, inclination to sleep immediately
after the injury. Later: restlessness, flushed face,
persistent crying, perhaps followed by delirium, con-
vulsions, paralysis or meningitis.
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
147
29. So far we liave been considering the signs in-
dicative of those physical conditions and diseased
states that may result in mental subnormality. The
indication of subnormality itself are not — in the
early weeks and months — so readily detected. In
the later years of childhood, when all the mental
faculties are normally in their fullest and most flex-
ible play, it is scarcely possible to make a mistake
in recognizing the more marked subnormal types.
Inability to speak plainly, to read and write, or to
learn the fundamental number operations; no-
ticeable imperfection of attention, observation and
memory; ignorance of the names of common things;
sensory defects, such as inability to recognize colors
or to imitate sounds; general dullness, apathy and
disinclination to play, especially when accompanied
by some readily observable physical disability — all
unite to make a clear picture of the subnormal child.
30. In regard to children who show slight or
even scarcely perceptible retardation, it is not so
easy to reach a definite conclusion. These cases
should be examined by an expert, and the varying
phases of their development studied closely, perhaps
for several weeks, before a final decision can be
safely made.
Having determined the nature of the physical
defect, steps must be taken to overcome it. Every
possible means must be employed to build up the
general health. Regular habits must be formed, es-
pecially in regard to the eliminative functions, for
imperfect elimination tends to produce auto-toxemia,
and thus to react upon the whole sj^stem.
The diet must be most carefully chosen. Subnor-
mal children are peculiarly liable to digestive dis-
orders, and these must be constantly guarded
Signs irUeli
indicato
subnormality
Overcoming
the physical
defect
148 DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
against. The food should be plain and simple, and
its selection varied to meet individual needs. A large
amount of proteid seems to be of benefit. Children
who are subject to convulsions should always be
given strained food, with but little meat, and that
finely chopped.
Exercise should be both active and passive.
Breathing exercises, gymnastic drills and marches,
dancing, games, walking and out-of-door play — all
of these should be utilized. Particular attention
should be paid to the development of rhythm and
muscular co-ordination, and it is well to devise spe-
cial exercises to meet the needs of individual devel-
opment. Massage and passive movements should be
employed, directing particular attention to weak-
ened or paralyzed muscle groups.
Fresh air is imperative. Plenty of time ought to
be spent out of doors, and the sleeping room should
be well ventilated. More sleep is needed by the sub-
normal child than by the normal one, and an hour's
nap every afternoon is a wise provision. The morn-
ing bath should be a sponge bath between blankets,
followed by a salt water rub. Tub baths ought not
to be permitted more than two or three times a
week.
Most subnormal children need medical atten-
tion, for it is very necessary that every possible
source of reflex irritation be removed. The eyes
should be examined and proper lenses prescribed ;
the teeth should be kept in good order ; adenoids and
other growths should be removed; special shoes or
braces should be procured for the correction of de-
formities; electrical treatment should be applied
when indicated; and medicinal aid should be con-
stantly at hand.
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
149
The mental development of the subnormal child
begins with the arousing of consciousness. Next
comes the training of special sense perceptions. Hear-
ing is often the first to respond; not infrequently a
child will listen to music when nothing else appears
to make any impression. Sight is appealed to by the
use of familiar objects. Later, smell, taste and
touch are exercised by the use of suitable substances.
One of the most difficult tasks is the fixation of
attention. Many subnormal children are unable to
attend to any single perception long enough for it to
make an adequate memory impression. This may
sometimes be overcome by swinging or rotating a
colored card or a bright light before the eyes, or by
the use of an electric bell or a gong.
Speech training is begun by teaching the child to
open the mouth. Following nature's method, the
long vowels are first taught, then the consonants, and
finally words and phrases. Any sound or gesture in-
dicating thought on the part of the child should be
at once taken hold of and developed. In the arous-
ing of the faculty of speech every possible stimulus
which may in any way aid the work should be
pressed into use.
Color sense is sometimes hard to develop. It is
wise to proceed slowly with this work, studying a
single color for some time before taking up another.
The practice of teaching color by using a dozen dif-
ferent hues and tints at one time is not productive
of good results. Various objects, all of the same
color, should be placed before the child, the color ad-
jective being invariably coupled with the name of
each one. On physiological grounds, it is advisable
to group green with red, blue with yellow, and black
with white, taking up a pair at a time and studying
Mental
development
of subnormal
children
based on
consciousness
Methods
150
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
Use of
esthetic
training
An
affirmative
necessary in
the trainer
the colors at first alone, then alternately, then to-
gether.
Having gained control of attention and sense
perception, memory and association may be more
fully developed, and reading, writing and number
work may be commenced. Accompanying this ele-
mentary training there should be some form of work
wdth the hands, at first perhaps a specially devised
employment for the individual case, and later ordi-
nary kindergarten work. This leads to the usual
forms of manual training, such as wood-working,
basketry, weaving, sewing and domestic arts.
There are many who believe that the mentally
subnormal child is incapable of advancing further
than this point, and work with the hands is therefore
made by them the acme of training. But this is a
great mistake. Even if the effect is purely subcon-
scious, the value of the higher forms of education
may be demonstrated in the majority of cases. The
development of esthetic sense is particularly useful.
An appreciation of the beautiful, both in Nature
and in Art, should be aroused. Nature study should
be utilized. The child should be surrounded with
harmonious colors, beautiful pictures, and artistic
objects of every kind. Clay modeling, drawing,
painting, music and simple dramatic art should be
cultivated, no matter how crudely the work is done.
This is the kind of training of the subnormal
child that will bring results. But in order to be truly
successful, it is absolutely necessary to preserve what
might be called an affirmative mental attitude. If
we do not believe that we can accomplish what we
attempt, we are almost sure to fail. The parent
should never allow herself to think that the child
cannot do what is expected, nor should she permit
DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
151
the child to think so; the mind should be most
strongly impressed with this thought. If the child
misbehaves, it should never be called ''naughty" or
*'bad." We may perhaps say that the little hands
or lips have been sick and need medicine to cure
them, but "badness" and "punishment" should
never be mentioned. We should never forget that
the power of suggestion is a most potent — indeed, an
indispensable — factor in the education of the child.
The training of the subnormal child may be —
and when possible should be — carried out at home,
but the task is a difficult one. What we need is more
special schools, for it is there that the child can be
provided with expert care, suitable environment and
congenial companionship. The training schools of
our various states, the special classes established by
the public school systems of many of our cities; all
of these are doing splendid work, but their funds are
limited. We need schools that are specially endowed,
so that everything required for the welfare of the
children may be provided ; so that original study and
research may be pursued; and so that well trained
teachers may be developed who can carry the work
into new fields. These teachers must be experienced
in the teaching of normal pupils before they can take
up the training of subnormal ones, for the work re-
quires advanced special knowledge in addition to
that gained in the Normal School, and wide experi-
ence is absolutely necessary.
Our State Legislature should provide for and en-
force the proper physical and mental education of
subnormal children. Their more fortunate brothers
and sisters have it; why should not they? They
come into the world maimed and crippled; do they
not deserve the more at our hands on this account?
Tbe kind of
schools
needed
Duty of
State
Legislatures
152 DETECTION OF SUBNORMALITY
Adequate provision for their physical development
and for their mental growth is not only their privi-
lege ; it is their right. And we — their parents and
teachers — have not done our whole duty until we
have insisted that their right be granted them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DEFECTIVES
Discussions on handling the deaf and the blind, in the
report of the First International Congress for Child
Welfare National Congress of Mothers
Advice on the treatment of subnormal children may be
had on application to The Children's Institute, Clark
University, Worcester, Mass. ("The laborer is worthy
of his hire.")
Any reliable institution for the cure of defective children
will give some advice to parents. (Mailed replies re-
quire stamps.)
The Conservation of the Child Arthur Holmes
(Explains the method of making tests as to mental
development. )
An Experiment Station in Race Improvement (In
the Review of Reviews, Sept, 1911)..Maule Bjorkman
153
THE PUBLIC AND THE CHILD
XVII
THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY
DAVID PHILIPSON, D. D.,
Rabbi B'nai Israel Congregation, Cincinnati, Ohio
HE human race in its toilsome journey up co^nserving
the steep of achievement has evolved certain institutions
institutions which are, as it were, the fixed
states in the moving currents of the ages.
These institutions conserve in the best sense; crises
may change governments, reformations may produce
religious innovations, revolutions may sever national
bonds, wars may change the map of the earth, but
when the smoke clears and events again move for-
ward in orderly course, it is found that the conserv-
ing institutions in question continue to be the very
foundations upon which the new order must build,
even as did the old which it has displaced. Among
these conserving institutions none has taken a higher
place in the whole past endeavor of the race than the
home, and in the perplexities and confusions of the
present, we must look still to the home for help and
remedy. Upon whatever side we may range our-
selves in the conflicts between the backward holding
powers and the forward pressing hosts that mark our
age in all the fields of endeavor, surely all of us
need to bear in mind constantly that when all is
said and done the most important thing is that we do
what we can towards placing the society in which we
live upon the surest and safest foundations. The
well being of our fellow creatures is a more vital
157
158 THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY
The Jewish
homes
The problem
and its
solvers
issue than any ism, the safety of the rising genera-
tion more import-ant than any doxy, and that well
being and that safety depend in great measure upon
the working together of all whatever be their differ-
ences of thought and practice in the strengthening
of the home ties, for, as a great thinker has well said,
*'It matters little what a people cares for second or
third, so long as it cares for its homes first."
It would seem to be quite fitting for a represen-
tative of the Jewish community to speak of the sav-
ing power of the home, for men and writers of all be-
liefs and opinions have united in extolling the '
beauty of the Jewish home life. The love of the Jew
for his home was intensified by his bitter experiences
in the world in which he lived. The ghetto shut him
off from the town or city, its activities and its pleas-
ures. Not for him were the gayeties of life open to
his Christian contemporaries; not for him participa-
tion in gorgeous revels and carnivals ; not for him
fellowship in popular games and festivals; not for
him the excitements of tournaments and contests;
not for his youth the vari-colored life of the univer-
sities. His home had to furnish him what the world
denied him. Truly, there is a soul of good even in
things evil. And for the Jew, the deepening of the
home spirit and the strengthening of the home love
were the compensations for the misery and the
wretchedness of centuries of bitterest suffering and
indescribable wrong. But the modern city has cast
its glamour over the youth of this race, and today a
common problem presents itself. Hence it is that a
descendant of this homing people has been asked to
present the topic of the Home and the Modern City.
No one can have read Miss Jane Addams' touch-
ing book, ''The Spirit of Youth and the City
THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY 159
Streets," without feeling the justice of the severe
indictment against modern civilization for the neg-
lect of the young who are exposed to all the dangers
and the evils of the street because not sufficient pro-
vision has been made to provide agencies to save
them from the streets. From the poorest child of
the slums to the curled darling of the boulevard, all
succumb to the fascination of the city street. There
is such a strenuousness in the life of the modern city
that it seems to many that highh^ spiced amusement
is necessary to offset this strenuosity. A well-known
man of affairs declared very recently that the great
problem of the workers for human betterment is to
reach the people of the cities. ' ' Here, ' ' said he, ' ' we
have an intensity of living that creates at the same
time an intensity of relaxation, and there lies the
danger." This we all recognize, but how meet the
situation? After all. Church and school, settlement
and municipal administration, cannot grapple with
the situation unless they have the co-operation of
the individual homes. I once heard a brilliant edu-
cator, in pleading with his hearers for the co-opera-
tion of the home with the work of the school, offer
the following striking illustration: '^ Children," said
he, ^'are in school five hours a day, five days a week,
that is twenty-five hours, or one hour more than a
full day per week. There are forty weeks in the
school year. That means that children are in school
forty days and forty hours, or forty-one days and
sixteen hours during the whole year. This leaves
over three hundred and twenty days that the chil-
dren are without the school. In other words, the
school session is one-ninth of the year's life. The
home has them for the remaining eight-ninths, con-
sequently the home's responsibility is eight times as
160 THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY
great as that of the school." No wonder that this
educator pleaded strongly for the co-operation of
parents, for he maintained that without it the in-
fluence of the school in the upbuilding of character
and the things that count most in life is almost
negligible. If this is true of the public school life
it is even more true of the Sunday school which,
under the most favorable circumstances, has a ses-
sion of two or three hours a week; it is no less true
of the church, which, even in its widest branching
activities, only has the young for a few hours each
week. The individual home must be the bulwark
that withstands the onrushing tide of modern city
life which threatens to materialize our aims, and
despiritualize our ideals. It is a large contract, but
as far as I can see the home is the only institution
that has the facilities for fulfilling the contract.
The spiritual Jn the hcctic life of the city, the spiritual ele-
must live . ...
ment finds little place; it is likely to be submerged
altogether. Notably is this true of our pleasure lov-
ing amusement seeking generation. Now I would
not for one moment be understood as decrying pleas-
ure or denouncing amusement so long as they can be
clean, healthy and moderate. I believe with all my
heart in the joy of life ; but on the other hand, pleas-
ure and amusement may not be made the be all and
end all of life. We are spirit as well as body, soul
as well as sense. If the body be pampered and the
spirit neglected, if the senses be satiated and the soul
starved, we sink to the level of the animal, and con-
temn our divine birthright. The divinity of our hu-
manity demands from us a life so lived that due at-
tention be given to the culture of the highest within
us. For this the home must provide, be it now
through religious exercises, such as prayers before
THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY 161
and after meals and at retiring, be it domestic de-
votion, be it by earnest talks by a wise mother com-
mensurate to the understanding of the children, or
be it by the force of example on the part of a
thoughtful father who knows life, its temptations
and its responsibilities. By some or all of such and
similar means, the home must supply the spiritual
element that city life misses, if not always, then
generally.
However, let this not be understood to imply that
the home is to be a dull place, sombre and joyless.
Here lies one of the difficulties of the situation In
so many instances religion or spiritual influences m
the home have been synonymous with cheerlessness
and the brightness of life is missed. "What wonder
that in hundreds of cases young people reared in
such so-called religious homes, w^here short-sighted
parents fail to appreciate the legitimate require-
ments of youth for bright, happy surroundings and
healthy pleasures, rush to the opposite extreme at
the first opportunity because of undue restrictions in
the home. In every possible instance the home must
be made the most attractive spot on earth. The
young man who said to some boon companions, "I
have no other place to go so I am going home," ex-
pressed the feeling of thousands for whom home is
merely the eating house and the lodging place with-
out other attractiveness or cheer. But when parents
rise to their opportunities and make the home so at-
tractive as to counteract the city's glamour, when in
the quiet of the home, the father, in his boy's adoles-
cent years, will explain the meaning of the rush of
new life that is bounding through the youth's veins,
when taking up the fiction of the necessity of sowing
wild oats, he will picture to the boy the results of
Spiritual not
synon3nnou8
with
churlishness
Vol. VI.— 11
162 THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY
this sowing in ruined health and the ruined lives of
wives and children, when the mother, because of the
responsibilities of her motherhood, will be willing to
forego some of her own selfish pleasures and give
herself with all her heart and soul and mind to the
welfare and rearing of her children, and not leave
this altogether to paid hirelings, then will the home
take the place it should hold in the complexities of
our modern city life, namely, the chief agency in
character training without whose sympathetic co-
operation the work of church and school will fall far
short of the finest results.
Sor?'*'^^ All this means individual effort ; there is no royal
necessary road here. If anywhere the doctrine of individual
responsibility holds, it is in the upbuilding of the
home life. So the call comes to every human pair
into whose keeping the immortal souls of children
have been entrusted, *'You are your children's
keepers, '^ keepers for good or for ill; you are the
builders of the future, builders for good or for ill.
If the home-makers are true to their tasks, then need
there be no fear of the modern city's vitiating in-
fluences; if the home-makers are conscious of their
responsibilities, then wdll they blend with the home
life the fine advantages of the modern city, the finest
that have yet been known of religion, education, in-
dustry, art, music and all kindred uplifting in-
fluences; if the home-makers build wisely in their
day and generation, then is the future safe, for the
nation will have a fortress impregnable against which
all the destructive inimical forces will beat in vain.
I have not considered such aspects of the theme
as the frightful housing conditions in the tenement
districts of the modern city, where thousands and
tens of thousands live in quarters that are the sad-
THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY 163
dest apology for a home, where the conditions of life
are so hard that parents have little strength or en-
ergy for the fostering of the home spirit, where for
lack of room, children are forced into the streets and
exposed to all the dangers of the city streets, where
real home life is an impossibility and even decency
is almost precluded. These conditions present an
entirely different aspect of our problem, and in the
congestion of our modern cities which deprives tens
of thousands of homes worthy the name, we all recog-
nize one of the festering sores in our body civic. The
noble efforts put forth by settlements and neighbor-
hood houses to cure this sore by providing, in some
measure at least, the home atmosphere are worthy
of all praise. The fine spirit shown by philan-
thropists of the Peabody and Octavia Hill type to
replace the sordid tenements by model buildings to
be rented by the poor at rates within their reach is
worthy of no less praise.
Aside from these evils of overcrowding in the
tenement districts, however, there are in our cities
the myriads of homes which house a great host of the
children of the nation. These homes must be our
wells of salvation from which are to be drawn the
waters of joy. The struggle is on between the con-
serving influence of these homes and the disintegrat-
ing forces in modern city life ; this is a modern phase
of the old age struggle between the powers of light
and the powers of darkness. Of old the divine fiat
sounded * ' Let there be light ! ' ' For light all the best
life in all the ages has been seeking. The home has
been evolved by the ceaseless endeavor of the race as
one of the prime sources of that light. So may it
continue in the life of this American people that
from out of these light diffusing homes there may go
164 THE HOME AND THE MODERN CITY
forth in every generation the brave spirits who, as
long as the need shall last in the complex life of the
modern city, will respond to the poet's ringing call:
"What need we then to guard and keep us whole?
What do we need to prop the state?
The fine audacities of honest deed;
The homely old integrities of soul;
The swift temerities that take the part
Of outcast right — the wisdom of the heart.
We need the Cromwell fire to make us feel
The public honor or the public trust
To be things as sacred and august
As some white altar where the angels kneel;
We need the faith to go a path untrod,
The power to be alone and vote with God."
— [From Eeligious Education, by permission.^
XVIII
THE MOVING PICTURE SHOW AS A PUBLIC
RECREATION
FRED F. McCLURE
Superintendent of the Department of Public Recreation,
Board of Public Welfare of Kansas City, Mo.
"The moving picture film is the thing to captivate and
conserve the creative faculties of childhood."— T/ios. A.
Edison.
T is estimated that ten times as many people
attend motion picture theaters yearly as at-
tend all other theaters, and that 1,000,000
children attend daily. Not only the child,
but the entire family popularize this form of amuse-
ment which has an annual income of more than
$100,000,000. The fact that so many children and
family groups patronize the moving picture show
makes it a physical and moral problem from the
standpoint of safety.
The educational possibilities of the moving picture
can hardly be properly estimated at this time, and
we must recognize that the possibilities are just as
great for improper as for proper education. We
must be wide awake, helping every agency that is
promoting good pictures. We should make popular
good pictures by patronizing them and commending
them, and condemning sensational, trashy ones. This
is effective censorship.
Educational pictures for the prevention of dis-
ease, total disability or loss of life by various agencies,
165
166 MOVING PICTURES AS RECREATION
and for promoting good housing, recreation and civic
ideals, are exhibited in first class motion picture
theaters. Stories from the Bible reach many who
do not learn them from the book. Dramatizations
of Shakespeare, enacted by noted artists, are given
with beautiful settings and costuming at a price that
all can afford. Pictures of travel scenes showing
points of historical interest, and costumes of foreign
people, give a clear conception of the life of the
various nationalities. The pictures, ^^War on the
Mosquito" and ''War on the Fly,'' are striking and
are the means of educating people to protect them-
selves from infection.
It is probable that the public school will soon
convey to the child a part of its instruction through
the medium of the moving picture, and the growing
generation can be so educated in a demand for good
pictures that the suggestive, morbid or sensational
picture will die a natural death. The parent inter-
ested in the education of his child would be reached
by this plan.
The film giving in great detail or featuring the
commission of an unlawful act, extreme brutality, or
suggestions of immorality usually featured by lurid
posters, is the picture that brings condemnation on
this form of entertainment, and educates in wrong-
doing just as effectively as the good picture teaches
high ideals. The ''yellow" motion picture is more
harmful to the youth than the "Diamond Dick" or
yellow novel, for pictures enacting heroically the com-
mission of crime are sometimes the reason for boys
being brought into the juvenile court. The claim is
often made that the picture objected to has a good
moral. Even so, the moral is often entirely over-
shadowed by the objectionable details.
MOVING PICTURES AS RECREATION 167
The elimination of the sensational picture is a
perplexing problem, perplexing because parents have
given little thought and practically no action to the
matter. It is universally agreed that the moving
picture show must be subject to some regulation.
Much objectionable legislation, or it might be said,
impractical legislation, has been enacted because of
public excitement and incorrect information, or pub-
lic prejudice against motion pictures as a class, and
because of the exhibition of objectionable pictures
in certain theaters. These highly sensational pic-
tures cause public criticism and a demand for rigor-
ous censorship.
Pictures that are proper for the adult are not
always proper for the child. Many of them are
dramatic and contain situations that carry a lesson
to the adult, and are only fit for the adult. Criticism
of the picture follows because of the presence of the
child whose mind is filled with new ideas that must
be properly explained if the child is to remain un-
harmed. Otherwise, a lasting injury is done the child.
The exhibitor's position is also perplexing in the
extreme. He must be keen or his competitor will
get all of the business, so it is necessary for him to
give a show that will please all sexes and ages. A
law prohibiting the admission of unaccompanied chil-
dren is unenforcible and therefore teaches the child
disrespect of the law. This responsibility rests with
the parent. Some cities have tried to enforce this
law, but it has resulted very unsatisfactorily.
Permitting the child to go to the motion picture
show, night after night, results in impairment of
the eyesight and stupid children in school the follow-
ing day. A natural consequence is the formation of
a habit of street loitering after nightfall. Children
168 MOVING PICTURES AS RECREATION
unaccompanied by an adult form a habit of attend-
ing every performance that they possibly can secure
the money to pay for. With many of them it amounts
to a craze.
Often the posters of picture shows are highly
colored and occasionally suggestive, though the films
are rarely as sensational as the advertisement would
indicate. Lecturers, representing themselves to be
the agents of anti-white slave societies travel over
the country giving illustrated lectures on the subject
of white slavery. Sixteen-foot lurid banners, with
a lobby display of photographs of dens of vice and
their inmates are used to advertise the exhibition.
This should not be allowed, and if films are to be
censored there should also be some restriction on ad-
vertisements in connection wuth them.
From ninety to ninety-five per cent of all motion
pictures are under the supervision of the National
Board of Censorship, an organization that has stead-
ily and effectively raised the standard of pictures.
The work of this censoring body extends over the
entire country. Every community having a moving
picture show problem to solve should confer and
co-operate with this body. Mistakes would be avoided
and profit would be derived from the experience of
that board. It is comprised of many people well
known in social betterment work, and is glad to co-
operate with any agency that is engaged in a work
for clean pictures. In several cities, this board has
representatives to see to it that the film exchanges
make certain eliminations in certain pictures passed
by the board subject to these eliminations.
The fact that there are pictures exhibited that
have not been submitted for approval to any censor
body is doubtless responsible for much criticism of
MOVING PICTURES AS RECREATION 169
the motion picture show. It is most difficult to bring
this class of pictures under effective supervision with-
out enacting a law. In enacting such law, care should
be taken not to inflict injury on films that handle
only high-class pictures. In Kansas City, Missouri,
an ordinance was proposed by representatives of va-
rious social and civic organizations for the censor-
ing of pictures. It was agreed to license pictures,
passed by the National Board of Censorship after
checking them over from a list furnished by that
board, reserving the right to recall any such picture
that there was complaint against; pictures not pre-
viously censored by this board are to be submitted
to the local censor to be passed upon before being
licensed.
Sharp competition between exhibitors results in
introducing features designed to attract patronage.
Among these, objectionable vaudeville may be men-
tioned. It is doubtful if vaudeville should be per-
mitted in motion picture theaters, as coarse songs
and jokes seem to be the stock in trade of amateur
vaudeville performers. The license department should
be empowered to license the theater for moving pic-
turs only, as vaudeville requires scenery and draper-
ies, which increase the fire danger.
A metal booth enclosing the moving picture ma-
chine is required in most cities. This booth is so
equipped that when fire causes intense heat, all open-
ings in the booth close automatically and the fire
burns out in the booth without danger to the audience.
Panic is the greatest danger and the most difficult to
combat. The cry of fire, the presence of smoke, or
a fight, may throw the audience into disorder. The
patrons, not realizing that they are safe from fire,
should be reassured before such condition occurs.
170 MOVING PICTUKES AS KECREATIOX
Some exhibitors use a lantern slide projecting an an-
nouncement of the fact that fire is confined to the
metal booth and assuring the audience of safety.
Such a precaution is a good one.
The construction of exits, aisles and seats, and the
arrangement of lights are important factors in safe-
guarding the audience. The exits should be so con-
structed and placed as to be of ample width and easy
access. Any arrangement that would eause the mass-
ing of the audience at one exit should be avoided.
Steps should never be permitted at exits. The aisles
should be not less than three feet wide and free from
patrons and obstacles. The seats should be strong
and securely fastened to the floor. Improvised seats
or folding chairs are dangerous in case of disorder
or panic.
The dark motion picture show is dangerous for
at least two reasons. In any public meeting place,
darkness encourages immorality. If for any reason,
the audience becomes excited, darkness only adds to
their apprehension. In the well-lighted theater, the
patrons can see the cause of the disturbance, and if
it is necessary for them to leave the building, they
may leave without having to feel their way out, thus
avoiding injury by running against obstructions. In
the larger cities, the first class motion picture theaters
are well lighted and exhibit clear pictures.
Undoubtedly, most cities are negligent in regard
to ventilation and sanitation in moving picture
theaters. Because of their constant use, dirt, carried
into the building, accumulates very rapidly. Dis-
eased patrons spit on the floors and this dried mix-
ture is fanned into the air by the continually shift-
ing audiences and inhaled by many who, because of
weak resistance, are subject to disease. The spread
MOVING PICTURES AS RECREATION 171
of various diseases is inevitable. The floors should
be cleansed and disinfected daily and a rigid in-
spection maintained by the health authorities. Plenty
of fresh air is available and should be required.
The bad location of the motion picture theaters
has caused much criticism. Some are placed over
basement pool halls, or under rooming houses of
questionable character. It is much better not to al-
low them to be operated in connection with other
enterprises. Early in the history of the business,
anyone with small capital could rent a vacant store-
room, install improvised seats, a motion picture ma-
chine, and the "theater" was ready for business. The
question of ventilation, lighting, sanitation and safety
was little considered, but this type of theater is
fast disappearing.
The patrons are just as much to blame as the ex-
hibitors for the continued showing of objectionable
films. When an exhibitor has repeatedly used bad
pictures, a united remonstrance on the part of his
patrons will usually bring results, and in rare cases
where this fails the aid of the proper authorities
can be sought. Good pictures should be rightly
valued and patronized, and not condemned with the
bad. The separation of the two classes of pictures
is a perplexing problem with which many cities are
struggling. The present awakening of the public
conscience will eventually solve the problem cor-
rectly, without injury to the manufacturer of good
pictures.
XIX
Father's
death
through
indufctrial
diseases or
accidents
WHY CHILDREN WORK*
The Children's Answer
HELEN M. TODD
Y first years of factory inspection gave me a
longing to resign and go where I might never
see a factory again. A civilized person can
hardly face the reality of child labor with-
out doubting the very value of life itself.
Out of 800 wage-earning children whom I ques-
tioned, in 381 cases the cause of the child's working
was the death of the father through some industrial
accident, or his sickness from some industrial disease
contracted in the course of his work. In twenty-eight
cases, the father had been killed outright. In six
out of these twenty-eight, there had been some slight
compensation given by the employers to the family;
but in three of these cases, the compensation con-
sisted only in paying the doctor's bill and the funeral
expenses.
In the other twenty-two cases the man's death
came under the assumption of risk, contributory
negligence, or the fellow servant clause, which pre-
vented the families of the men from collecting any
damages, unless they took it through a long court
process which they were unable to afford.
Ask any twenty children in a factory the ques-
tion: ''Why are you working?" The answers will
♦Copyrighted, 1913, by the McClure Publications, Inc.
172
WHY CHILDREN WORK 173
show you that a great part of child labor comes from
the premature death or disability of the father
through industrial accident or disease, or the unem-
ployment of the father through being engaged in an
industry which occupies its people only a portion of
the year, at low wages.
Over and over again, in answer to the question,
**What does your father do?" the reply is, "He's
sick"; and the same story unfolds in every factory
from most of the children you question: "He's got
the brass chills ; " " He 's got consumption ; " " He 's
got blood-poisoning;" "He's paralyzed;" "He can't
use his hands;" "He worked in a foundry, and the
cupola burst, and he got burned;" "A rail fell on
his foot, and it's smashed;" "He's dead — he got
killed.'^ He worked in the steel mills, or the stock-
yards, or on the railroad, and the engine ran over
him; he was burned with molten metal, or crushed
by falling beams, or maimed by an explosion.
These stories, told in the soft voice of little chil-
dren, are endless. To the question, ' ' Did your mother
get any money from the company?" the answer is
almost invariably, "No,'^ or a shake of the small
head, the child not caring to take enough strength
from its work even to speak; and when you ask,
"How many children are there besides you?" the
numbers usually range from five to seven. And
when you say, "How many are there of you who are
working?" the answer is sometimes one, sometimes
two, several more; and often, without looking up,
the child answers: "My mother, she works, and me."
"And how much does your mother make?" "She
makes eighteen cents an hour, scrubbing downtown."
"And how much do you make?'^ "I make six cents
a thousand, pasting on cigar bands." "And can you
174
WHY CHILDREN WORK
Average
healthy life
of the child
worker's
father
Mother and
children
support the
family
and your mother earn enough money to take care
of the family?" *'Yes, ma'am/' she answers; **we
gotta."
There can be no doubt that the average healthy
life of the father of the child worker ends at forty
or forty-five. Coming here as an out-of-door peasant,
unused to our climate, to our machinery, to our highly
specialized and speeded-up industries, his health is
rapidly undermined by the long hours of labor and
the extremes of heat and wet and cold, the lack of
any protection from occupational disease, combined
with insanitary housing, insanitary factories, and
insufficient and adulterated food.
As the man cannot get proper food or air or
rest, drink is the quickest means to drive away hun-
ger and exhaustion and supply the necessary energy
for heavy work. Young and strong, he can stand
the pace set by the machine, and keep himself and
his family above the poverty line while the children
are little ; but by the time the oldest is about four-
teen, his only capital, his physical strength, begins
to wane. Some day, when he leaves the foundry, after
from twelve to fourteen hours' work over redhot
sand pits, at sixteen cents an hour, an icy chill stabs
through his lungs as he comes out into the winter
air. So the family goes over the poverty line; the
man either dies or comes through broken and weak-
ened ; and the children fall into the struggling, suf-
fering, tumultuous mass at the very foot of the lad-
der.
I once asked the head of one of our largest foun-
dries how much he paid unskilled help. ** Sixteen
cents an hour," he replied. "Can they save any-
thing on that?" I asked. ''No," he answered; ''they
can not." "What do they do, then, when you have
WHY CHILDREN WORK
175
to shut down for months, as you did last year?"
**Well," he answered, *'as far as I can make out, the
women and the children support the entire family.
Those Poles can live on almost nothing. Sausage,
and three loaves of stale bread for five cents, is their
staple." ''How many hours," I asked, "do they
work?" ''Oh, from twelve to fourteen," he an-
swered; "they're glad enough to get work." "How
long do they last?" "Well," he said, "they're no
good after forty-five."
"But," he continued, "you ought to see those
Polish women and children work when they're put
to it. Why, a woman and a half-grown girl will
feed the whole family, and the man, too. The stock-
yards are full of them. Ever seen that box factory
in the next block? It's worth seeing. Go into one
of those rooms, and you'd think you were in the
fourth grade of a Polish school. If it wasn't for the
wages of the children and their mothers, the families
would never pull through."
The child of the working class represents the hu-
man rubbish pile, the waste material of the industrial
world. In our age of efficiency, the horns and the
hoofs of cattle, the bristles of a pig, the tar from
coal, scraps of iron, of meat and paper, all the waste
products of industry are being utilized.
The working people have, for a long time,
possessed an unsuspected mine of wealth. They have,
through ignorance, large families of children beyond
their earning power to rear; and now the economic
waste material these children represent is being util-
ized. All that is needed to make an iron and steel
machine perfect in its money-making power is the
addition of a human cog. A child will do as well
for this human cog as a man, and so a use has been
Tlie child
the utilized
waste product
of industry
176
WHY CHILDREN WORK
The tragedy
of parents'
not
understanding
another sort
of waste
found for the children of the working people. As
commercial waste products they are the source of
some of our largest fortunes.
The commercial system could not bring things to
this pass if parents understood.
A child was working and coughing in the dust-
filled air of a lumber mill which I inspected, and,
although I stood close to him and shouted, my voice
was drowned in the roar of the machinery, and he
continued to work, feeding a gleaming, carnivorous-
looking ripsaw with pieces of wood with automaton-
like regularity ; and as I waited, afraid to startle
him while his hands were in reach of those jagged
teeth, another fit of inaudible coughing shook his
thin body and brought the sweat out of his face.
I sought out a big, muscular Swede who was
evidently in charge of the mill. "Tell that child,
the one over there, to come into the office. I want
to talk to him," I shouted, my lips close to his ear.
The man looked bewildered, and I saw his lips move.
He shook his head, pointing to the machines, to in-
dicate that he could not hear. I motioned him to
follow me, and, when I had again reached the boy,
indicated that I wanted to speak to him. The boss
reached up and pulled a lever above the child's head,
and the great circular saw slowed down reluctantly,
gleaming and leaping with life. It stood still, and
the small, stoop-shouldered child who ran it, turned
toward me with a dazed look, brushing the dust from
his hair and listless, yellowish face with his thin
hands. In the office the child stood before me, stooped
and passive, covered with dust, looking at nothing,
apparently thinking of nothing.
All my stock of little jokes and playful remarks
died within me as I looked at him. I could not
WHY CHILDREN WORK 177
imagine him smiling or his eyes lighting up. He
seemed the very gray breath of weariness. ' ' Sit down, ' '
I said. ''What is your name?" ''Adolph Jenson."
''How old are you, Adolph?" " 'Bout fifteen."
"When did you begin to work?" "I don' know."
*'How old were you when you started to work?"
*' 'Bout thirteen, I guess." "When do you come to
work in the morning?" No answer. "Listen,
Adolph. What time must you start to work?"
' ' 'Bout six- thirty . " " Six-thirty ! Wliere do you
live?" "1430 Larrabee Street." "Why, that's 'way
out North. What time do you get up?" No answer.
"Adolph, what time do you get up, dear?" " 'Bout
five." "When do you stop work?" "Six o'clock."
' ' Do you have an hour for lunch ? " " Yes 'm. " " Do
you ever play?" "No'm." "What do you do at
night?" He seemed not to hear. His loose, dusty
clothes hung about him in shapeless lines, and he sat
with his eyes fixed on the floor. "What do you do
evenings, Adolph?" I insisted. He raised his dull
eyes. "I go to night school," he said, and dropped
them again. "Do you like to work?" I put my hand
on his arm to rouse him. He shook his head again.
"Do you ever play with the other boys — ball or
anything?" "No." "How long have you had that
cough?" "I don't know."
The office door opened, letting in the roar of the
factory and the shriek of the saws through the wood
as the manager came in. "How are you getting on
with the kid?" he said, good naturedly.
"This child is working eleven hours instead of
eight, which is a violation of the child labor law.
He is working on dangerous machinery, which is
another violation. And," I added, "he is sick."
The man regarded me as one would look down
Vol. VI.— 12
178 WHY CHILDREN WORK
upon an unreasonable pigmy. ''You're all on the
wrong track, Inspector!" he said. "I don't employ
that boy. There ain't no violation. That's my own
boy, working here without pay, learning the busi-
ness. Only boy I got ; all the rest's girls. D'ye think
I wouldn't take care of him? Don't I send him to
night school every night, to learn him so he will get
educated? Don't his mother cook him everything
he wants to eat? Ain't he got a bedroom with a
stove in it? Ain't I worked up and bought out this
business as much fer him as fer me? Why, I own
this here place, and he's my boy! Me and him '11 be
partners when he grows up and when I'm dead and
gone he '11 be boss over his own men, 'stead of workin '
his liver out for 'em."
I gazed at the big Swede. ''You're own child!"
I said. "You're the proprietor of this factory, and
that's your child? Is he" — turning to the dreary
little wreck in the chair — ' ' is that man your father ? ' '
The child looked at him. "Yes."
"And he works in this place from six-thirty in
the morning till six at night, and all day Saturday,
and has done that ever since he was thirteen? Y^ou're
ovm little boy? Why," I said, standing up, "why
have you done this to him?"
Something in my tone penetrated the peasant
mind of the father, and roused him. "See here," he
said, with a sort of grave dignity, "work don't hurt
nobody. Look at me. I started work in the old
country when I was a baby, and I ain't never been
sick a day. Used to tend the ducks, up in Sweden,
when I was five years old. Bound out to a farmer
when I was ten — feedin' stock and doin' chores.
Slept in the barn; never had enough to eat, or de-
cent clo's or shoes. Hauled gravel when I got older,
WHY CHILDREN WORK 179
and earned forty cents a day. Used to sleep in the
barn at night, aching from head to foot from
shovelin' dirt all day. Colder 'n Greenland I was,
an' hungrier 'n a wolf.
*'I just made up my mind, after I came to
America and my boy was born, that he should have
an inside job out of the cold and rain, and a warm
bedroom and a bed. None of your day laborers fer
him, breakin' his back fer other folks. Why, all he
has to do is to stand there and feed that ripsaw. That
ain't work. It's just play. And I'm learnin' him
the business. He'll own this factory w^hen I'm dead
and gone."
*'Mr. Jenson," I said, a great pity for the man
forcing me to speak, ''your boy is sick. Now, here's
the address of the doctor that can cure him, if any-
body can. Tomorrow's Saturday. Won't you take
him there tomorrow morning? It won't cost you
anything. Just look at him," pointing at the child
in the chair. "Can't you see there's something the
matter with him?"
The man fumbled at the card with his big hand,
staring at the child and back again at the card, an
undefined fear showing in his face. "His mother's
been pesterin' me, too," he muttered. "She says
the boy don't eat nothin'. Yes, if you say this
doctor's all right, I'll take him over there tomor-
row." ....
"There's a man been waiting here to see you all
the afternoon," they told me at the office, Monday;
and, turning, I saw Mr. Jenson sitting on the bench
at the door, his big hands resting idly on his knees,
his eyes, strained and bloodshot, staring at the op-
posite wall, so sunk in wretched, anguished thought
that I had passed in front of him without his seeing
180 WHY CHILDREN WORK
me. He lifted his huge body heavily from the seat,
and looked down at me, pulling at his beard with
thick, trembling fingers. ''Adolph's got the tuber-
culosis, ' ' he told me. * ' The doctor, he says as Adolph
would 'a kept well if he'd had to sleep in a barn
and shovel gravel like me. The doctor, he says it's
the learnin' and machinery that's give Adolph this
here tuberculosis. The doctor, he says as everything
I've been doin' fer Adolph has been bad fer him.
I can't understand what he means !" The man cried,
breathing hard in his suffering. "The doctor he says
my Adolph 's sick, and he must go up in the pine
woods and live in a shanty, and keep outdoors in
the cold, and have the wind blowin' on him from the
wdndows. I — that's got up in the night to keep
the fire in the stove, so's his room w^ould be w^arm —
I 've got to send him up there, or the doctor says he '11
die. I can't understand him. When he talks, I don't
know what he means. I want to ask you if you w411
listen to him, and find out what he means, and tell
me so's I can understand."
He fixed his eyes, full of dumb suffering, on me.
"You was mad about his tendin' that ripsaw," he
said, "but you know I'd do anything for Adolph.
And his mother " He turned and, pulling his
hat down over his face, pushed open the door and
went out.
It was too late to do anything for the boy, the
doctor told me.
' ' 1 was sorry for that poor old Swede father, ' ' he
added. ' ' He was like a whale with a harpoon through
him, around here in the office when he finally under-
stood the boy had consumption and might not live.
Kept telling how he'd never let the boy work out-
doors or bum in the streets, and was bringing him
up to own a factory. ' '
WHY CHILDREN WORK
181
''That's the trouble. The parents have no con-
ception of any work being hard, except that which
requires sheer brute force. Cold, hunger, exposure,
blows, and heavy manual toil — that's all they under-
stand."
That night I read in Thomas Oliver's ** Diseases
of Occupation" these lines, which sum up the reason
why children work. Speaking of England, he said:
''Child labor was fostered by the ignorance of the
working people, by paternal greed and poverty, and
was encouraged by employers."
The disease of child labor seemed to have similar
sources in all countries. Was there any panacea for
it? I wondered. What future was it making for
America ?
In 1909 I took 500 children out of over twenty
different factories in all parts of Chicago, and asked
them this question : " If your father had a good job
and you didn't have to work, which would you rather
do — go to school or work in a factory?" Of 500
children between the ages of fourteen and sixteen,
412 said they would rather work in a factory than go
to school. These astonishing and unlooked for statis-
tics bewildered me.
I wrote down their reasons as they gave them to
me: *' Because you get paid for what you do in a
factory." "Because it's easier to work in a factory."
"Because it's easier to work in a factory than 'tis to
learn in school." "You never understands Avhat they
tells you in school, and you can learn right off to
do things in a factory." "They ain't always pickin'
on you because you don't know things in a factory."
"You can't never do t'ings right in school." "The
boss he never hits yer, er slaps yer face, er pulls yer
ears, er makes yer stay in at recess." "It's so hard
Why children
prefer factory
work to
school
182 WHY CHILDREN WORK
to learn." *'I don't like to learn." "I couldn't
learn." *'The children don't holler at ye and call ye
a Christ-killer in a factory." ''They don't call ye a
Dago. " " They 're good to you at home when you earn
mone3\" ''Youse can eat sittin' down, when youse
work." "You can go to the nickel show." "You
don't have to work so hard at night when you get
home." "Yer folks don't hit ye so much." "You
can buy shoes for the baby." "You can give your
mother yer pay envelope." "What ye learn in school
ain't no good. Ye git paid just as much in the fac-
tory, if ye never was there. Our boss, he never went
to school." "That boy can't speak English, and he
gets six dollars. I only get four dollars, and I've
been through the sixth grade." "When my brother
is fourteen, I'm going to get him a job here. Then,
my mother says, we '11 take the baby out of the 'Sylum
for the Half Orphans." "School ain't no good. When
you works a whole month at school, the teacher she
gives you a card to take home, that says how you
ain't any good. And yer folks hollers on yer an' hits
yer." "Oncet I worked in a night school in the
Settlement, an' in the day school, too. Gee, I humped
myself. I got three cards with 'excellent' on 'em.
An' they never did me no good. My mother she
kept 'em in the Bible, an' they never did her no good,
neither. They ain't like a pay envelope." "School
ain't no good. The Holy Father he can send ye to
hell, and the boss he can take away yer job er raise
yer pay. The teacher she can't do nothing."
To paste thousands of labels, strip mounds of
tobacco, make quantities of buttonholes, requires no
education that a school gives.
A boy or a girl who, at the price of much sacri-
fice, has passed the eighth grade, gets the same wages
^YHY CHILDREN WORK
183
as a child who signs his name with a cross. And to
these children, and to their parents, the object of
education is to help you earn money.
A report card makes no change in the family for-
tunes or in the child's environment. Two plus two
may be four ; but the baby has no milk, the child has
no shoes, and the house is cold, even when he has
figured and read and written for a month. But two
hands of tobacco stripped is four cents, and four times
ten equals forty, and when you bring home a pay
envelope with $2.40 in it at the end of the week, not
only your immediate environment, but that of the
baby, the mother and father, and the five other chil-
dren is immediately affected. No wonder that to
exchange the pay envelope for a report card seems a
poor bargain to the child who works.
Also, the children fear and dread corporal pun-
ishment. Inspecting in the stockyards one day, I
literally stumbled over a little creature in the base-
ment who, on being brought to the surface and into
the light of the office, proved to be not yet fourteen.
His father was laid up with inflammatory rheum.a-
tism, and the child had been given a job out of pity,
to help the family.
Upon being told that he was not old enough to
work, and must go to school, he took his pay envelope
and crawled behind a large pile of dusty wrapping
paper and boards in the corner of the room. When
we had removed this barrier, piece by piece, in order
to reach him, we found him pressed close against the
wall, weeping miserably.
As I walked home with him, I asked him: "Don't
you like to go to school?"
''No," he answered; ''I want my job," and began
weeping afresh.
Factory -work
versus
corporal
puulsliment
1S4 WHY CHILDREN WORK
* ' What, ' ' I said in despair, remembering the dark,
damp basement in which I had found him, "what is
it you like so much about your job?"
"The boss," he answered, "don't never hit me."
"Did they hit you at school?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
"They hits ye if ye don't learn, and they hits ye
if ye whisper, and they hits ye if ye have string in
yer pocket, and they hits ye if yer seat squeaks, and
they hits ye if ye scrape your feet, and they hits ye
if ye don't stan' up in time, an' they hits ye if
yer late, and they hits ye if ye ferget the page."
His voice trailed off into silence, and he stood be-
fore me with bent head, his face glazed with weep-
ing, at bay, like one of his own little stockyard sheep
being driven down into the shambles.
Out of some 800 children questioned, 269 gave as
their one reason for preferring a factory to school,
that they were not hit there.
What working What the working children need is what all chil-
children need , t ^ . .^ ' ^^ i r»
dren need, but these especially — love irom some one
who has the time and intelligence to love, work from
some one who knows what kind of work will be most
possible and useful to them; but, above all, play,
music, stories, pictures, and the personality of a
teacher who is joyful, tender, intelligent. This
anxiety and privation make their faces old at ten
years. They stand, like shabby creatures, between
the mockery of what our civilization has made of
their homes, and the wreckage that machinery and
speeded-up industry will make of their lives. Mean-
time, there is our school here. Would it not be pos-
sible to adapt this child of foreign peasants less to
education, and adapt education more to the child?
WHY CHILDREN WORK
185
To reach into the home and console and protect and
co-operate with him better than we do ?
Nothing that a factory sets them to do is so hard,
so terrifying, as learning. This ought not to be so;
but these rusty, heavy little minds, the product of
generations of child labor, need a kind of education
that we do not give. We do not make our education
fit their psychology, their traditions, their environ-
ment or inheritance. The result is, we lose them. Do
not think that that little Polish or Lithuanian child
who sits stupid and dumb at his desk, conscious that
he is the biggest child in the room, is not suffering;
for he is experiencing an agony of weariness, be-
wilderment, and sense of failure that makes the
nearest paper-box factory, where he feels that he is
of some use, a haven of refuge. He has never been
especially clean or petted, but he has always been
useful. From the time that he could stand on a
chair and wipe dishes, there has been more than
enough for him to do. Take from him at school his
one asset of usefulness, and his self-respect goes with
it, only to return with his working certificate and
his first week's pay envelope.
One August afternoon, I climbed the long flights
of stairs of a factory in Lake street. "We haven't
any children here," said the agent of a leather com-
pany on the floor next to the top. ''Can't use them
in our business. But I wish your office would get
after that place upstairs. There's a lot of children
there. It's some sort of business where they lacquer
canes; and what with the smell of the stuff they
use, and the heat of that drying furnace they've got
there going full blast in the same room, it's a tough
proposition, specially as in these old buildings, which
were built for storage houses, there are only windows
The factory
and the
weakness of
our schools
186 WHY CHILDREN WORK
at the ends and you can't get any air. You have to
burn gas all day to see. But we had to tell the
man who runs it to put up a sign saying, 'No more
children wanted.' They were running upstairs as
thick as ants, getting in here by mistake, and pester-
ing us to death, wanting a job. It beats all, what
gets into children to want to work in a place like
that. It can't be the money — they don't earn enough.
Seems as if they were all just naturally crazy for a
chance to work."
Upstairs, in the long, low attic of the building,
the heat was intense. The gas burned yellow in the
turpentine-filled air; three windows at the far ends
of the long, dark room were the only means of light
and ventilation. A long cement furnace at one end
was making intolerable the already oppressive August
afternoon, besides sending out a nauseating odor of
varnish and turpentine every time the oven door was
opened to take out or put in the canes that were
being lacquered.
Of the thirty-five people employed, fourteen were
children between fourteen and fifteen years of age.
They were all little girls, and were seated on stools
around a large table. They were putting the last
coat of varnish or lacquer on a cheap variety of men 's
canes, and as the canes went directly from their table
to the drying ovens, the children were seated as near
to the furnace as it was humanly possible to endure,
in order to save time in transportation.
''Who do you want to see, lady?" said the man-
ager sharply. "Didn't you see 'No Admission' on
that door? We don't allow any visitors in here.
Oh, the factory inspector. Well — glad to see you,
Inspector. Hope you '11 find everything all right here.
We never employ a child under fourteen years or
WHY CHILDREN WORK 1S7
without a certificate. Short hours, from eight in the
morning to five at night. Yes, it's hot here, but we
got to keep the furnace going in our business. Yes,
it smells bad to some people, but that smell's healthy
when you get used to it. Go right ahead with your
inspection, and you will find me in the office when
you're through."
When I had finished my inspection of the room,
I found an empty box, and drew it up to the table
where the children were working, and sat doTvn,
wearied and depressed. **How can you stand it
here, children T ' I asked, wiping the dirt and perspira-
tion from my face. ''It's so hot. Don't your head
ache ? ' ' They stared at me shyly and did not answer.
''Why don't you little girls go to school?'*
"School!" cried one who had given her name as
Tillie Isakowsky, aged fourteen years and three
months, shaking her head until her red bows trembled.
"School is de fiercest t'ing youse kin come up against.
Factories ain't no cinch, but schools is worst."
"Yees, ma-am — yees, ma-am," reiterated Bessie
Oxenhelder, who was prodding me softly with her
varnish brush, in an agony of fear lest, even at my
age, I might be decoyed into some school. "Yees,
ma-am. Hear to me. Me, I works two, three, four,
nine mont's for de Washin'ton schools. I will not
to mind my baby, I will not to scrub my floor, I will
not to wash the dish. I will to learn. My teacher she
hollers on me that my hair it shall be washed, that
my ear it shall be washed, that my underskin under
my clo's, it shall be washed; and I hoUers on my
mudder. I slap my baby that she spit on my book.
I kick my brudders in my bed, that they shall to lay
still in the night, for I will to sleep to learn. My
fader he gets a mad by dat Washin'ton school, and
ISS WHY CHILDREN WORK
take his pay envelope and go to de saloon. For why ?
For that I must to have a geogroffee ; my teacher she
hollers on me for those geogroffee, and I hollers on
my mudder. I say I will kill myself in the lake if I
become not a geogroffee book. My mudder she take
the money off the pay envelope of de pants of my
fader. He say, 'you want I shall work on my empty
belly,' he say, 'that youse kids shall loaf in a seat an'
feed der head?' He break de dish, he hit my mud-
der, he go to the saloon. And what do I gets for all
my works by dat Washin'ton man what bosses dose
schools? Youse knows!" Her eyes blazed. ''I gets
a bad name, dat I eats up de crackers of the lunch
of de kindergarten children. It's a lie. My mudder
she buy me the work certificate off my cousin, who's
sixteen and don't need it no more. I take dat cer-
tificate, I get me a job. I go no more to dose Wash-
in'ton schools."
''Once, in the first grade," began Marie Mam-
scalsco shyly, "I had a so beautiful teacher with a
silk waist and feathers in her hat, and when she
went for to talk it was like when my brother he
plays on de concertina. I feel for my teacher" —
a sweet passion stained red the pallor of her face —
"like — like I was dat teacher's mudder. I will to
get my teacher's rubbers. I will to fetch my teacher's
hat. I will to Stan' by the street car till she come.
I will to have my seat in my school changed. For
why? For so I can touch with my hand my teacher's
dress when she write on the blackboard."
"I never," said Bessie Oxenhelder, "had by any
teacher no such feein's like dose."
*^ ^ jf, ^ .«^ ^b ^
•Tr "3v -T^ TT *Jf flp TT
Sit down by any child in a factory and talk to
him; go from one to another; question them about
WHY CHILDREN WORK 189
the home and the family — how much the father earns,
how many children there are, is he sick, is he dead,
what killed him, why is he sick. They will answer
you, and their answers will take you into their world.
That great Hinterland of disorder and pain which
lies back of our commercial system, the children will
reveal to you; and as you do the few superficial
things an inspector in a political office can do, and
turn away, is it to be wondered at that ''What Shall
it Profit?'' appears to be written large above all the
monstrous buildings and shrieking factories of Chi-
cago? — [Fro77i McClure's Magazine, hy permission.]
[Talking one day of conditions set forth above,
a man of the country said : ' ' Thank God, the country
folks are not responsible for them. Our children have
all outdoors and plenty to eat." It did not occur to
him, that as a member of the state legislature, he
was in so far responsible for lack of legislation to
control these city conditions. — The Editor.]
XX
SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR
JOHN P. FREY
Editor, Moulder's Journal
E have had a civic awakening and a national
awakening on the question of conserving our
national resources. But it seems to me we
have not been giving the attention and
thought we should to our greatest national resource —
the children ; because it is the child of today who will
take our place twenty-five years from now.
The civilization, the culture, we are creating today
rests upon a foundation formed by those children,
and that civilization must be carried on their shoul-
ders in time. And if they are not as competent as
we, then whatever we may build up will rest on a
very insecure foundation.
So one of the greatest countries the world has
ever known has realized that through child labor it
has weakened its foundation, and it realizes that the
greatest problem perhaps that it has is that of the
progressive physical deterioration of a large group
of its people owing to child labor.
I do not want to lay a mass of figures before you.
I know how difficult it is to remember figures if they
come in too large a number; but there are one or
two that I desire to give you in the hope that you
will carry them away as one of the strongest, most
powerful evidences of the terrible national results
of unrestricted child labor in the industries.
190
began
SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR 191
The factory system and child labor, as we dis- wiiere chud
cuss it today, that is, the child in the factory, had factories
its origin in England. And as the factory system
developed, the child went into the factory, went in
at eight or nine or twelve years of age. Orphan
asylums and other eleemosjmary institutions found it
profitable to take their little charges and put them
into factories where they would become a source of
profit, and the child's welfare was lost sight of in
the pecuniary gain, and those little children, work-
ing under unsanitary conditions, working long hours,
working under the monotonous whirr of machinery,
had the results of these conditions stamped upon
their bodies and in their minds. Then when the next
generation of child workers had grown to be adults,
they married and their offspring followed them. So
we have in Great Britain today the fourth and the
fifth generation of factory workers who have been
affected by unregulated child labor.
In order that what follows may not be misunder-
stood, let me say that it is almost impossible to
separate the questions of child labor and female
labor. It is difficult to separate the one from the
other because they are inter-related, and their re-
sults are very largely the same.
What happened in Great Britain? Anyone who
has ever been in the large manufacturing cities, who
has walked through the streets of Birmingham, Man-
chester, Liverpool, and other factory districts, knows
that there is a different type there than is found
elsewhere, a different type from what you will find
on the hills and out in the open country. And it is
the type that strikes your mind, strikes your eye,
because instead of its being the full-chested, rosy-
cheeked, powerful British beef-eater, such as we are
192 SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR
accustomed to picture the Englishman, we find that
they are small, undersized and flat-chested, with lack-
luster eyes, and that they go slinking down the
street — there is no life, there is little vitality left.
And that is the result of one or two or three or four
generations of child labor, each generation having a
little more vitality taken away from it, until the
present factory worker bears no resemblance at all
to the strong, sturdy ancestry he sprang from.
eslcis^ It would be impossible today for any Duke of
Marlborough to go through the English factory towns
and recruit the regiments of soldiers that the famous
Duke was able to lead at Blenheim. Now England
has realized the price that she has been paying. Eng-
land has been gathering statistics, and in the city of
Bradford, where a large number of females wo^k in
the mills, it has been found that among these female
w^orkers the death rate for children under one year
of age is 160 per thousand. In the same city, in the
homes where women are not factory workers, the
death rate of children under one year of age is forty
per thousand. We find there a difference of 400
per cent in the proportion of deaths of children
among mothers who are workers in factories and
mothers who are kept at home.
Back of that there seems to be a great deal more,
because if 400 per cent more children die, born of
mothers who were factory workers, what about the
vitality and strength of the remainder who do not
die? Certainly it cannot be as high as that of the
children born in more fortunate families.
A few years ago, the British government made a
very exhaustive study to discover the difference be-
tween the child who worked in the factories and the
child brought up without being a factory worker.
1.
SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR 193
and for every age beginning from, eight years they
secured the average height and weight of these chil-
dren for each year up to sixteen. The difference be-
tween the vigor and vitality of the boys who were
not factory workers and those who were, was this:
The factory worker at sixteen years of age was
3.37 inches shorter than his more fortunate brother,
and he weighed 19.67 pounds less. Think of the dif-
ference at sixteen years of age. Think more of what
the moral condition or the moral fiber of those un-
fortunate factory workers must have been. Think
of the physical difference between the two, and pic-
ture to yourself what it means for a nation to sud-
denly wake up to the fact that a large proportion of
its citizenship has been degraded physically, men-
tally and morally.
An English author, in a book written a short
time ago on the question of child labor and the rapid
physical deterioration of the British workman, said
that in 1845, the minimum height of the recruits in
the British army was five feet, six inches. Now, that
is not supported by the reports of the war depart-
ment as to the recruits and their minimum height for
enlistment at that time, and we would not expect the
war department of any country to officially and pub-
licly announce the physical deterioration of a nation.
But we do know that in 1885 the minimum height
for recruits was five feet, 2 inches, and that in 1901,
** Specials*' were enlisted at five feet. There is the
evidence of what child labor has accomplished when
the child has been exploited for private profit instead
of being conserved and protected and guarded as the
nation's most valuable asset.
Other European couTit^'ies liave not donr» ih<^,
same. The German child has not had to go through
Vol. VI.— 13
194 SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR
the experience of the English child. Neither have
the children of the other manufacturing nations of
Central and Northern Europe.
We, too, have a child labor problem. We do not
know what the effect is going to be. We have not
yet reached the third and fourth and fifth genera-
tion of child workers. But as a workingman and
as one interested in studying this question upon the
ground, I have seen the little unfortunates, with bare
feet, pinched features, colorless faces, no hope in
life, and but very little prospect of developing into
robust manhood and womanhood, or developing into
proper fathers and mothers for the type of citizens
America should be proud of. And if it were not for
the influence of such an organization as the National
Child Labor Committee, if it were not for the moral
influence and the persistent efforts of the organized
workmen of this country to protect the children, I
do not know but that we might have a condition in
this country a great deal worse than England has
experienced.
A bid for Only a few years ago some of the States believed
nothing would bring capital into their borders more
quickly than a large supply of child labor, and to
say, *' Child labor is cheaper here; it can be secured
on easier terms here than in any other State in the
union.'' And just as a State will advertise its rich
gr:.i*ng lands, as it will advertise its mineral and
its other natural resources to bring capital within
its borders, so have some Stc*u^>3 of our nation ad-
vertised the fact that children within that State were
helpless and could be used by private capital for
private profit without restriction.
I have an interesting little document in my hand.
I do not care to mention the name of the State, be-
SOCIAL COST OF CE^LD LABOR 195
cause this was issued in 1898, and I know this par-
ticular State has been trying to redeem itself, or
rather I know that some of its leading citizens are
trying to redeem it, but I want to give you an idea
of how one State in this Christian nation of ours
within the last twelve years has advertised its natural
resources. This circular, which was placed in almost
all correspondence being sent out to the North and
East, read in part as follows:
''No strikes, no laws regulating the hours of em-
ployment and the age of employes. Cheap labor and
the home of the cotton plant."
When the statesmen of a community, or the busi-
ness men of a community feel that it is profitable to
advertise the fact that there is absolutely no regula-
tion or restriction of child labor, I think the State
is not only in most unfortunate hands, but is in the
hands of those who are willing to scatter its most
valuable assets to the winds in order to gain tem-
porary financial advantage and to bring capital tem-
porarily within its borders.
In one of the States where the public conscience
was being awakened to the vital importance of this
child labor question, where the legislature was on
the point of enacting a measure which would regulate
child labor, which would say that no child under a
certain age — and this age was twelve years — would
be permitted in the industries, the cotton interests
of that State held a banquet in the capitol city and
they invited the legislature there to discuss the ques-
tion. And I know that some of the arguments used
were these:
"When we brought our capital from the North to
operate mills in this State, we were guaranteed that
no legislation would be enacted which would in any
196 SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR
way limit our right and our opportunity of employ-
ing children, no matter what the age might be."
We must look this question fully in the face. If
we want a nation where the child will be used in the
industries before it is developed, then we must ex-
pect to draw our future well-developed workmen from
other countries. If we do our duty, as we should,
we will realize that the child of today is the nation's
most valuable asset, and we are going to do what we
can, not only to give that child a strong body, and a
strong mind, but we are going to do what we can
to develop both, so that the citizens of twenty years
from now will average up better physically, better
mentally, and better morally than the citizens of to-
day.
We want to go ahead. We don't want to go back-
ward. These children can do nothing for themselves.
The legislation which is going to give them the op-
portunity must be enacted by the citizens of today.
tJ.*ow5'^°"^ Just one word more, so that the attitude of the
itiboi trade union movement may be thoroughly under-
stood. I know of no movement in this country which
has been so many years actively working in the cause
of the child as the trade union movement. You are
not familiar, perhaps, with the fact that the public
school system we think so much of today came into
existence in this country, not through the interests
of educators primarily, although they lent all of the
influence they could, but through the agitation of
organized workmen in 1820, though men like Horace
Mann and others helped the movement along. It
was the organized workmen of Boston, of New York,
of Philadelphia, and of other cities, who, through the
mass meetings they held, through the agitation they
carried on by insisting that the welfare of America
SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR
197
demanded that the poor man's son should receive the
opportunities for education equal to those of the more
fortunate child — it was due to trade union activity
that we got our free public schools in the beginning.
The trade unions got behind that movement, and
would not be denied; so today we enjoy our public
schools. But unfortunately, in many places in the
South, I have seen little colored children going to
school, and little white children of the same com-
munity going to the cotton mill.
We cannot discuss these questions quietly. It is
not a question which should be spoken of in the most
polite terms and in a sort of indifferent manner. We
cannot afford to use altogether the most polite terms,
and the most diplomatic language in discussing such
a question as the labor of children in factories. It
is too important a question. It means not only some-
thing for the child itself, it means not only that a
little child should have the opportunity of growing
up as the Almighty Father fully intended that it
should, not only that there should be some sunshine
and some pleasure and a chance for the child to
kick up its heels and play the way the little animals
do, but it means a great deal more than that. It
means the welfare of this nation of ours, it means
the determination of the type of citizen who is go-
ing to follow us. Unless that type, unless the mass
of labor in this country has a high standard of liv-
ing, then it seems to me the work of our universities,
and of our statesmen, will amount to but very little.
We have the experience of the past. We have had
civilizations as great as our own, civilizations that
have handed down to us some of the most priceless
principles of democratic forms of government. We
have had Greece, Rome, with their genius, with their
Child labor
not a lubjeot
of polite
remarks
198 SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR
statesmen, but those empires fell, not for lack of
genius, but for lack of a solid foundation composed
of the ^vorkingmen of those countries who would
sustain the structure that the statesman was en-
deavoring to establish.
"^S Pi®?f -^^^ So when we plead for the children we are not
the child IS *■ , ,
to plead for pleading alone for the little child, w^e are pleading
for the nation, we are pleading that we may have
a better and higher standard of living for the mass
of our workers than we have today. We are plead-
ing that for every little child the law will say, "You
shall have an education and neither an ignorant
parent nor a greedy manufacturer shall take away
from you the opportunity offered by the public
schools. ' *
The animals never exploit their offspring. When
they have reached a certain stage, the parents may
turn them loose to forage for themselves; but they
never force their offspring to w^ork for the parents'
welfare.
The savages do not allow their young offspring to
go out and hunt for them or to work for them. It
has remained for civilized man, for the Christian
nations of the earth, to give us the most terrible ex-
amples of exploitation of the little child for private
profits. — [Reprint from the Report of the Child
Labor Committee, by permission.]
XXI
ALLOWANCES FOR DESTITUTE MOTHERS
How Missouri Came to Have a Law by Which the
State Grants Allowances to Destitute
Mothers of Young Children
ALICE MAXWELL APPO
N Kansas City, through the middle of a nar-
row street, runs an invisible line. On one
side lies Kansas, on the other Missouri. On
the Kansas side a few years ago, in a squat-
ter settlement beside the Kaw River, was discovered
the woman who afterward became celebrated as the
* ' mother of the willows. ' '
She was considered a discovery because her con-
dition was so abject that the inexperienced *' slum-
mist" could not but believe it unique. She lived in
a house made of tar paper and boards, with numer-
ous holes through which poured rain and sifted
snow, and the single room formed by the wretched
walls and still more wretched roof was living-room,
bedroom and kitchen for four children and herself.
All about grew scrubby willows. So disheartening,
indeed, was the entire aspect that the sensitive father
and the oldest son, a strong young man of twenty-
three, had found it unbearable and, without taking
the trouble to announce their intentions, had quietly
stolen away for parts unknown.
A fear then obsessed the mother that her chil-
dren would be taken from her. She worked fever-
The Mother
of the
Willows
Almost like
animals
199
200 ALLOWANCES FOR MOTHERS
ishly, secretly, weaving crude baskets out of the wil-
lows the children gathered, and, surprising to relate,
the family existed somehow, through the peddling of
these, from the time of the men's desertion until the
discovery. It was a newspaper reporter who found
them. They were shoeless, almost naked, almost
starved, on the point of degenerating into something
below human, a kind of animal family scratching
for food, the mind about as useful as the appendix.
How that mother pleaded in the juvenile court
to be allowed to keep her children! — but Judge
Sims was helpless before the law, which declared that
for their good the children must be given up. They
would be cared for in institutions, or in private
homes by adoption, but their own mother had no
more right to them than to a motor car she could not
pay for. However, to be discovered by one having the
qualifications of a willing press agent is a stroke of
luck in itself. The hue and cry was great and pri-
vate charity stepped in to do what the State of Kan-
sas could not.
The CM© of On the other side of the invisible line bisecting
the narrow street, in Kansas City, Mo., lived Mrs.
Miller. When her husband, like many before him,
mistook carbolic acid for something else, she was left
with seven children, the oldest fourteen years and
the youngest three months. Except for ' ' forty chick-
ens and a cow," the family was destitute. Frail in
body, with reason threatened by the shock that sud-
den death inflicts in any circumstances, the mother
was ill equipped to undertake the support of eight.
Her little history for the first few months of her
widowhood may be readily pieced out in imagina-
tion. The baby probably suffered most, as the moth-
er's forced absence, from morning till noon and from
the MiUers
ALLOWANCES FOR MOTHERS 201
noon till night, to earn the little she could, deprived
him of proper nourishment.
At last came a day when Judge Porterfield of the
juvenile court, looking up over the top of his glasses,
beheld the Millers. The press agent that had served
the mother's cause so valiantly in Judge Sim's court
across the line, was not present on this occasion, but
happily he was not needed.
Some formalities were gone through, papers in-
spected, a few questions asked, the children patted
on the head by Judge Porterfield 's not reluctant hand,
and in the end the mother was granted an allowance
from the State to be paid her every month for the
maintenance of her home and the safekeeping of her
children.
For explanation of this happier ending we must JJw^es a
look to Jefferson City, April 7, 1911. In the capital law
city of Missouri on that day. Gov. Herbert S. Hadley
signed House Bill No. 626. This was an act "to
provide for the partial support of poor women whose
husbands are dead or convicts when such women are
mothers of children under the age of fourteen years."
The first law of its kind to be enacted under our
government, it passed the legislature with the tradi-
tional modesty of great things — while traffic measures
and hatpin ordinances thrilled and threatened, the
Mothers' Allowance Act slipped quietly into the
statute books.
A Virginian by birth and a Missourian by happy
chance, he was elected judge of the circuit and
criminal court of Jackson County, and later selected
for the additional duty of presiding over the weekly
sessions of the juvenile court. It was not long be-
fore circumstances convinced him of the advisability
of pensioning some mothers. The children that ap-
202 ALLOWANCES FOR MOTHERS
pep^ before him, or in any juvenile court, in fact,
may be divided into two classes, neglected and de-
linquent — the one suffering physical or moral neglect
through the poverty of parents, their depravity, or
any other cause, and the other guilty of some infrac-
tion of the law from truancy to thieving. Delinquency,
if not checked, naturally leads to the penitentiary;
and as continued neglect causes delinquency, the first
care of the court is to discover the neglected child and
set about improving his condition.
To bolster up the home, if possible, is the first
consideration; and, that failing, nothing remains but
to take the child out of it. Depraved parents can-
not be reformed in a day if at all, but poverty by
comparison is easily remedied. However, Judge
Porterfield could make little distinction between
causes, and was forced to settle many cases in the
same way — by committing the children to institu-
tions.
The story of In his court, really worthy women w^ere denied
Mrs. Ward . . .
the privilege of bringing up their own children for
the sole reason that poverty had forced them out of
the home to provide for its maintenance. Mrs. Ward,
for instance, wrapped candy at a factory from 7
o'clock in the morning till 6 at night. She arose at
4:30 o'clock, prepared breakfast for her children and
laid out their cold lunch. At 6 :30 she bade them
good-bye, and they did not see her again till 6 :30
at night. Her wages were $5.50 a week, and she
walked to and from the factory to save carfare.
When she reached home, she prepared the supper,
and after clearing it away, spent the remainder of
the evening doing housework, washing, ironing and
mending. Such was her day ; but in spite of all her
efforts the court held that her children w^re neg-
ALLOWANCES FOR MOTHERS 203
lected. Children ninning wild for twelve hours
every day are not growing in grace.
This was the situation in many cases, and Judge
Porterfield found it disturbing. Motherhood was be-
ing wasted. The juvenile court was permitting an
extravagance in motherhood. It was being used to
wrap candy, so to speak, while little children were
perishing for it. The remedy was obvious, but not
simple. Making the people see why they should pass
new laws for spending money, or laws for spending
money in new ways, is ever difficult, but Judge Por-
terfield made them see why poor mothers with young
children should be assisted by the state. He drafted
a bill, a sane, safe bill, not broad enough to be seri-
ously opposed or so restricted as to be useless — and
Representative William Hicks stood sponsor for it in
the house. With flying colors House Bill No. 626
passed the legislature, received the governor's ap-
proving signature and became a law. The Millers
were among the first to profit.
It may be safely asserted that pensioning
mothers is going to cost less than paying for chil-
dren in institutions. Said Judge Porterfield, in ad-
vance of- drafting his bill, citing for the sake of ar-
gument, an abstract case of a mother and two sons:
^'The only means of support for the mother and the
two boys is the labor of the mother. She, from ne-
cessity, neglects them. They gradually but almost
surely grow into delinquent children. They soon
find their way into the juvenile court. Sooner or
later the court must send them to the reform school;
thereupon the county pays to the reform school the
sum of $10 a month per boy. Why not, if that
mother is a good mother, give her the $20 and the
opportunity to raise her own children? In most
204 ALLOWANCES FOR MOTHERS
cases we would have two mother-raised, self-sustain-
ing, self-respecting citizens instead of two reform
school graduates of doubtful value as citizens. Be-
sides the cost of keeping a boy in the reform school
that I have referred to, the administration ex-
penses run the cost to $15,16 2-3 a boy a month."
?akrit*uD* ^^^ months after the first mothers' pension was
granted in Kansas City, the funds for the Parents*
Act became operative in Cook County, Illinois. This
act, although it does not apply to convicts' wives, is
broader in scope than the Missouri bill, because it
includes, besides widows, the wives of insane and
women whose husbands are neither dead nor insane,
but constitutionally unfit to provide for their fam-
ilies. A committee of five passes on all applications
and assigns probation officers to investigate. Only
children under 14 years are eligible for considera-
tion, and not more than $10 a month for each child
may be secured.
With a little imagination one can foresee numer-
ous splendid benefits to result from these small be-
ginnings. When ground is gained we shall have
less child labor, less occasion for it; we shall realize
better that to build the home is to build the nation,
and that the help we give our children is misnamed
when in our pride or ignorance we leave out of
account the children's mothers. — [From Collier's
National Weekly, l)y permission.]
XXII
HOW THE WIDOW'S ALLOWANCE LAW
OPERATES
E. E. PORTERFIELD
Judge of the Juvenile Court of Kansas City, Mo.
ACH year brings into the juvenile court
about 150 children whose mothers are
widows and these mothers are compelled to
work regularly away from their homes and
their children in order to feed, clothe and house the
children. The earnings of the mother are the sole
support of the family. They necessarily neglect
their children as to care and training in order to
provide food and clothing for them. From morning
until night the children are adrift without any pa-
rental supervision or direction. They soon fall into
bad company and bad habits. They find the picture
show more attractive than the school and become
truants. To get to the nickel show they beg upon
the streets or steal the nickel. Without a parent's
care they go from bad to worse. Neglected children,
if they remain neglected, almost invariably run into
delinquent children.
In the interest of the child and in the interest of
good citizenship, to give the child a chance in life,
the child must be taken away from the mother, often
a good mother, and sent to institutions organized
for the care of children.
A child should never be taken away from a good
mother. If the poverty of the mother forces her to
Unsuperrliad
dxlldbood
A chUd
belongi with
its mother
205
206 WIDOW'S ALLOWANCE LAW
neglect her child the poverty should be removed
and not the child. A good mother can rear her chil-
dren better than the best institution. A mediocre
home is better than any institution. A child reared
in an institution is more or less a human machine.
The best citizens come from the home in which the
influence of the mother is felt. It is the proper pa-
rental affection, care, control, discipline and training
that mold and shape the child and the man, and to
all of this every child is justly entitled. With all
of this in mind, realizing the great hardship upon
the mother to be deprived of her children and the
great injustice to the children in being deprived of
the mother's affection, care and training so essential
to proper development, we set about to devise a plan
by which the mother might be enabled to remain at
home with her children and care for them as only a
mother can do.
How the The result was the Widow's Allowance Law,
?eg?rded the passcd by our last Legislature and approved by the
Sfthfiaw Governor April 11th, 1911. The law was made to
apply to counties having a population of not less
than 250,000 inhabitants and not more than 500,000
inhabitants. This really makes it apply to Jackson
County alone, of which Kansas City is the county
seat. There was no such law on the statute books
of any state in the Union. We had no precedent
to guide us. It was altogether an experiment. There
was no assurance that its application would be suc-
cessful or satisfactory. It was necessary to guard it
very carefully to give it any chance to pass. A sim-
ilar bill was introduced in the Legislature of Col-
orado a year or two ago and the committee in charge
of it marked it *' freak legislation" and threw it in
the waste basket. The social workers in St. Louis
operation
WIDOW'S ALLOWANCE LAW 207
seemed to be opposed to it, and for that reason the
application of the law was limited to counties of
less than 500,000. The representatives in the Legis-
lature from the country did not seem to be prepared
for it, therefore it was not made to apply to any
county of less than 250,000 inhabitants. It, how-
ever, found favor with all our representatives from
Jackson County, and not affecting any other county
in the State, was introduced in the Legislature of
1911 and passed without a dissenting vote.
It has been in operation since June, 1911. There its value in
is scarcely a law on our statute books that is giving
greater satisfaction or doing more good. It is the
most advanced bit of constructive legislation since
the passage of the first juvenile court law in this
country, which occurred in Illinois in 1899.
The first allowance to a widow was made under
this law by a juvenile court on the 2nd day of June,
1911. Up to this time, November, 1912, 47 allow-
ances have been made, of which eight have, for good
cause, been set aside. Seven, because it was no longer
necessary, and one, because the privilege was
abused. Thirty-nine mothers and one hundred and
fourteen children under the age of fourteen years are
now enjoying the benefits Of the fund appropriated
by this law. Thirty-nine mothers have been re-
stored to their children. One hundred and fourteen
children are being redeemed from neglect and de-
linquency and trained for good citizenship. This is
only simple justice to the child. Every child is en-
titled to a chance in life. Society is the gainer in
good citizenship. Every good citizen adds to the
strength and the resources of the State. Thirty-nine
homes have been re-established, built up and
strengthened. The influence of uus law upon the
208
WIDOW'S ALLOWANCE LAW
The law both
constructive
and economic
To whom the
law applies
home is its greatest virtue. It preserves and
strengthens the home. There is no other law that
touches the home so directly, and by building up,
fortifying and preserving the home, it contributes
tremendously to good citizenship.
It is not only a constructive measure of the
highest value, but it is an economical provision as
well. Out of thirty-nine allowances in force the
lowest is $8.00 per month and the highest is $22.00.
Jackson county is paying $493.00 per month to aid
in caring for one hundred and fourteen children, to aid
in building up one hundred and fourteen citizens. But
for the provision of this law many, possibly the
most, of these children would have to be sent to the
McCune Home for boys or other institutions, where
the cost of support is about $15.00 per month for
each child.
One mother came into the juvenile court with
six children under fourteen years of age. Four were
boys. The juvenile court sent the four boys to the
McCune Home at an expense to the county of $60.00
per month. After the boys had been in the McCune
Home for some months and when the Widows' Al-
lowance Law went into effect, we made this mother
an allowance of $22.00 per month and gave her back
her four boys. For more than a year she has been
taking good care of her six children at an expense to
the county of $22.00 per month as against the cost
of $60.00 per month for the support of four of her
children.
The allowances under this law are for the par-
tial support of women whose husbands are dead or
imprisoned when such women are poor and are the
mothers of children under fourteen years of age.
The law provides that the allowance shall not ex-
WIDOW'S ALLOWANCE LAW
209
ceed $10.00 a month to a mother who has one child
under fourteen years of age and not to exceed $5.00
per month for each additional child under fourteen
years.
The principal conditions upon which the allow-
ance is made are :
1. When, in the absence of the allowance the
mother would be required to work away from her
home and children for the support of the family.
2. Only when necessary to save the child from
neglect.
3. The mother must, in the judgment of the ju-
venile court, be a proper person, physically, men-
tally and morally, for the bringing up of her chil-
dren.
To determine these facts a probation officer
makes a thorough investigation of every application.
In this he is aided by the Provident Association and
the Board of Public Welfare. A careful follow-up
investigation is made after the allowance is ordered
and continued each month until the allowance is set
aside by the court. This, to ascertain if the mother
is staying home with her children, keeping them
clean, keeping the house in order, keeping the chil-
dren in school, and in every way doing her duty to
her children; otherwise the judgment ordering the
allowance is set aside.
It will be observed that the allowance is for the
partial support of the family. It would be unwise, if
not a vicious, law that would provide fully for the
family for it would impoverish them and tend to
impoverish the community. We take great care to
prevent such results. We expect and require the
mother to earn all she can at home by washing, sew-
ing, baking bread for her neighbors, sometimes teach-
Conditions on
which, the
allowance is
given
Follow up
work
Why it
proyides
partial
support only
Vol, VI.— 14
women
210 WIDOWS ALLOWANCE LAW
ing music and getting odd jobs from the mercantile
houses to be done at home. The larger children are
required to do chores and those, if any, above school
age must help the family.
Why it does Our Widows' Allowance Law does not apply to
divorced divorccd womcu. First, because it would tend to
encourage divorce. Many men hesitate to break up
the family, for the sake of the children. Second, be-
cause the father, no matter if he is separated from
his wife, is still legally liable for the support of his
minor children, and should be made to give it, in-
stead of giving an allowance from the public treas-
ury.
The value of the law as constructive legislation
is being realized throughout the country. The state
of Illinois has passed a '^ Funds to Parents Law."
New York, Massachusetts, and in fact nearly every
state in the Union has applied for a copy of the
law, and in many states bills are in preparation for
the coming Legislature asking for the enactment of
the Widows' Allowance Law.
XXIII
PREVENTIVE MEASURES IN CHILD SAVING
MRS. HANNAH K. SCHOFF
President of The National Congress of Mothers
HEN society realizes that crime is not a ne-
cessity, that the causes of it can be traced
and removed, it becomes a vital matter to
see that preventive measures are inaugu-
rated to save the children.
To prevent arrests is greatly to be desired. No
one wants a child to be subjected to that, if it can
be avoided.
As children under fourteen are usually in school, vSitor^^'^*^^^
teachers have the opportunity to see when they need
help. Often the teacher herself may be too busy to
do all that is needed. If there is a parent-teacher
association in the school, it may secure the service
of a good woman to whom the teacher could report
that a certain child needed friendly help. Tactfully
and graciously the child's home may be visited and
the causes of his trouble will often be discovered.
This is the ounce of prevention worth the pound of
cure. It must be done quietly and tactfully, and
with the approval of the Superintendent of Schools.
It has proved valuable in adjusting many children
to their school life, and in showing many parents
wherein they could help their children.
Another practical preventive measure has also
proved successful and can be tried anywhere. A
group of citizens organized for child helping may
go to the chief of police and ask that children whose
conduct is such as will eventually lead to arrest be
211
212
PREVENTION IN CHILD SAVING
Tlie boyt'
elnb
Hand work In
BChooli
Making the
school
interesting
reported to this association, which should have in its
employ a tactful person who will become acquainted
with the child, and having gained his friendship,
bring new interests into his life, and straighten out
the tangle.
The boys' club formed to meet the social need is
another preventive measure. A playground is an-
other. Manual training may be another. Responsi-
bility for some less fortunate child may be another.
Belief in the boy, confidence that he will make
good, are essential to successful work with wayward
children. Often a boy who is troublesome is work-
ing off superfluous energy. To give him something
to do that is useful and requires responsibility will
often direct this energy into helpful channels. Boys
who are restless and unmanageable often change ut-
terly if asked to be responsible for helping younger
boys, for helping teachers as probation officers. There
is nothing more inspiring to a child than to feel re-
sponsibility, to know that other people need his help.
At the present time comparatively few schools
give education of hand as well as brain, and as this
is a necessity of child nature, one of the most val-
uable means of preventing crime is to introduce
manual training and domestic science as recognized
parts of every school system. School gardens, work-
shops, cooking, and all agricultural, mechanical and
household arts can be so related to the studies as to
give the child an appreciation of what education
means in his future. The child who feels that school
is preparing him to earn his living, will have an in-
terest that is impossible when he is filling his brain
with facts which seem to have no relation to his life.
One of the most vital factors in preventing crime
is to prevent truancy by making the schools so in-
PREVENTION IN CHILD SAVING
213
teresting to the children that outside force is not re-
quired to make them attend. One means of doing
this will be the requirement of more than intellectual
ability from teachers. Character, insight into child
nature, patience and a love for the work are as
necessary as understanding the subjects to be taught.
Mistaken policy is it to give place to any teacher
because of political influence, or because that person
is in need of a position. Only the question of ability
in the most influential, far-reaching work should be
the deciding factor in the choice of teachers. The
good school need never appeal to outside forces in
discipline and management. It is better equipped to
guide child life than any court or reform school. It
is an acknowledgment of inefficiency to give up to
less qualified agencies the character-building and ed-
ucation of childhood. The school should recognize
that children are liable to commit many misdeeds,
that it is to be expected they will. They are in the
formative period of their lives. They need sympa-
thetic guidance rather than criticism and punish-
ment.
The churches unused for many evenings in the
week can perform a service of inestimable value to
youth by putting work benches and tools in a base-
ment room, enlisting the aid of young men in the
church to meet and help any boys in the vicinity
who may have no suitable place to spend their eve-
nings. Reading, games and friendly chat will sup-
plement the work benches which are so popular that
often the time allowed to each boy must be limited.
It would be a very practical help to parents, teachers
and probation officers were every church to provide
this practical work for boys. To meet people on the
plane of their own interest is to open the way to lead
The school
the best
court and
probation
system
The place of
the church in
prevention
214
PREVENTION IN CHILD SAVING
Character of
judge aud
probation
officers
important
Parent-
Teacher
Associations
as preventives
them to wider and higher interests later. The church
is looking for means to enlist the interest of youth.
It will find this a valuable way.
The Boy Scouts are doing good work in setting
before boys ideals of service, courtesy and kindness.
The perfecting of the juvenile court and the de-
mand for the highest standards of service in proba-
tion work are essential measures in child saving. The
judge and probation officers, to do good work, must
understand the development of children and the
methods that are effectual in bringing out the best.
They should be specialists in child nurture rather
than in legal knowledge. For that reason, it seems
logical that educators should be responsible for the
conduct of the juvenile court and probation system.
It deals w^iolly with children in the formative age
and therefore has no place among reformative or
punitive agencies. Until this new system comes un-
der such management, it cannot do all that is pos-
sible for the children.
The home will always have the primary responsi-
bility for establishing the ideals and character of
youth. Parents with the best possible intentions
often fail because they do not understand how to
accomplish what they wish. The parent-teacher as-
sociation or mothers' circle united w^ith the National
Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associa-
tions is guided in its educational w^ork for parents,
and put in touch with the best methods of child
nurture in home, school, church and state. With
headquarters in "Washington, with the best special-
ists in child nurture on the educational board, with
its systematic method of reaching the most far-away
groups of parents w^ith inspiration and suggestion,
it becomes possible for every parent to learn the
PREVENTION IN CHILD SAVING
215
requirements of child nature and the methods that
are successful in its healthful development. No one
can be a good parent trusting only to instinct. Study
of the causes of juvenile crime reveals in the great-
est number of instances some weakness in the home.
To overcome this, the homes must be reached, pa-
rents must be shown where their own shortcomings
will surely lead their children.
Sometimes it is over-indulgence, sometimes too
great severity. Sometimes it is neglect in teaching
children as to the God-given functions of life, of the
proper care of them, and of the danger of violating
the laws of God and man concerning them. Espe-
cially is this parental neglect a danger to boys, who
meet in the world so many temptations for which
good parents may prepare them by giving them
right views and knowledge concerning pure living
and pure thinking. For girls, too, this protection of
knowledge given by parents is a preventive measure
of vital importance for self-protection. Constructive
education rather than fear is needed. The home
needs to be advised for what parental neglect in this
direction may be responsible.
The provision of wholesome pleasures for young
people by parents is another measure for child sav-
ing which many parents do not appreciate.
Every juvenile court should be able to require
the parents of erring children to be members of a
parents* association for child study. It is only
putting within each child's heart true ideals of life
and the desire to do right that will prevent crime.
It is an individual work. It must be done at the
first step downward. It must be done with intelli-
gence, love and patience. When it is possible to do
this for every erring child or youth, then and not
until then will crime decrease.
Juvenile
courts should
require
delinquent
parents to
attend parent
teacher
meetings
XXIV
PROBATION WORK IN SMALL TOWNS AND
RURAL DISTRICTS
The old way
MRS. HANNAH K. SCHOFF
President of The National Congress of Mothers
HE first juvenile court and probation laws
were enacted in Illinois in 1899. They marked
a new era in the treatment of erring chil-
dren. Before that time children and adults
who had violated the law were subjected to the same
treatment, and tried in the same court at the same
sessions with law-breakers of every kind. They were
sent to prison just as adults were, and were associated
with those whose crimes were of the gravest kind.
Was it any wonder that crime increased, that chil-
dren, ever ready to imitate their elders, were thus
educated to follow criminal careers?
The fact that children may commit grave of-
fenses T\4thout being as responsible for them as if
they were adults at last dawned on those who
through close acquaintance with criminal court pro-
cedure felt it was not the proper treatment for
youth.
The juvenile court differs from others courts in
several ways, chief among which are: (1) It provides
that children shall not be tried with adults, but that
judges shall have a separate time to listen to chil-
dren's cases. (2) It gives to children the chance to
be helped to do better, either in their own homes or
216
court
PROBATION WORK 217
in some place other than reformatory or prison, both
of which are objectionable because of the companion-
ship.
The children who find themselves in a court are ^he point of
now regarded as children needing help in character- children's
forming that will prevent continuance in wrong-do-
ing. Their parents, too, generally need advice and
help. The probation officer, if she is one who un-
derstands how to stimulate children to do right, who
can clearly show them what is right and who through
patient, faithful, frequent visits can become a
trusted friend to both child and parents, will in
most instances prevent crime at the source. The
whole system hinges on the quality of probation
work. It is character-building, and only those who
enter the work with real love of children, and \vdth
infinite patience, can hope to succeed. That ninety
per cent of the children placed on probation need
no other treatment to direct them into safer paths
has been the record made where good probation work
is done.
While many cities have adopted the system, com-
paratively few are the rural counties where children
receive probationary care, and the question of how to
adapt the system to any county becomes very im-
portant. The first thing to do is to arrange a meet-
ing in the county town if possible. Invite represen-
tative men and women from different parts of the
county, choosing those who have a genuine interest
in children. Organize a county juvenile court and
probation association whose duty it shall be to co-
operate with the court in the care of children com-
ing under jurisdiction. The association need not be
large — twelve members would do — or even less at
first.
218
PROBATION WORK
Establishing
a simple form
of county
juvenile court
Pay of
probation
officer
The right
person
The best
procedure
Visit the judge of the county, and ask him to
arrange to hear children's cases without waiting for
a court session. In rural counties several months
often elapse without a court. In such cases, judges
have agreed to have children brought to their offices
or even to their homes and have set a day each w^eek
when children should be brought before them. In
emergencies, they w^ould give them attention oftener
than this. This establishes a simple juvenile court.
Perhaps there is no provision to pay a probation
officer. This need be no obstacle. With a represen-
tative county juvenile court and probation associ-
ation money can be raised to meet this expense. In-
terest different churches to contribute something ; get
the business men of the county to give. A large
salary is not necessary to secure the services of a
good woman, who through experience with children
and love of them, can ably fill the place.
One who has studied kindergarten methods is es-
pecially equipped to understand the inner life of the
child. No one should be chosen merely because she
needs the position. It is worse than useless to fill
the place unless with one fitted to cope with grave
responsibilities. Having found the suitable person,
ask the court to give the appointment as probation
officer. This officer should reside in the town which
has the most cases, covering every part of the county
by giving certain days to outlying sections where
children are under probation care.
Ask that a child be brought into court, not by
arrest, but on petition of some citizen that the child
needs care and help. The probation officer's first
duty, after learning that a child is to come before
the court, is to investigate the matter thoroughly,
talking with the child, learning if possible the motive
PROBATION WORK
219
that led to the act, visiting the parents and the
school for further information. Then in a concise,
clear statement, he can give the data by which the
judge may decide what the welfare of the child re-
quires.
The first choice is to return the child to his own
home, unless it is a criminal one, and then by fre-
quent visits and advice begin character forming.
Where the child's home is entirely unsuitable, or
where he has none, effort should be made to find a
suitable family home. The institution or reform
school should be a last resort.
A committee may be chosen whose duty it will be
to learn of all homes in the county where children
may be placed under proper care. A committee of
women should meet with the probation officer, to
co-operate with and aid her in the many ways that
are required for the proper care of the children.
No child should be put in a jail for a single day.
Doubtless there is no place provided in a rural
county for the detention of children awaiting decisions
of the court as to what is to be done with them, but
a county juvenile court and probation association
may find a small house that can be rented for a mod-
erate sum. They can sublet the lower floor, reserv-
ing the second floor for the probation officer and fit-
ting up simply two or three rooms for children
awaiting hearing. Meals can be supplied by those
who sublet part of the house. There should be no
aspect of a prison about the house, but inside the
windows there may be heavy wire netting.
Such a detention home was run by one county for
$800 per year. Finally a law was passed that every
county must provide rooms or a building for chil-
dren awaiting hearing, and the county then assumed
Committees
Detention
rooms or
houses for
children
awaiting
hearing
220 PROBATION WORK
the expense, though keeping the same house and giv-
ing the care of it to the county juvenile court and
probation association.
See°/ed"*^°^ The co-operation of good mothers and fathers
and teachers is essential in saving these children.
Courts cannot do it, their function being judicial,
and a probation officer unaided has more than one
person can do. In countless ways, the help of many
is needed.
Why do it? Why savc these children? Because they are
standing at the parting of the ways. Because help
given now may make a useful citizen instead of a
criminal. Because God said, ''Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these ye have done it
unto me." Because there are no children who do
not possess possibilities of goodness, and through good
influence, love and sympathy it may be developed.
Because the old methods simply made criminals.
One testimony out of thousands submitted to the
writer by men and women in prisons as to what led
them into a criminal life shows that an American
twenty-six years old who was fatherless at four, com-
mitted larceny at fourteen by the help of older boys.
He was sent to a reformatory for two years and
seven months. ''The influence was detrimental.
After release I was picked up on suspicion. The re-
formatory should be done away mth. It does not
prevent crime. It educates and turns loose young
men polished in crime and criminal ethics. Do away
with such as this, establish juvenile courts and give
a chance to redeem himself."
Another prison inmate, an American twenty-two
years old, says, "Both parents drank. Was arrested
at ten for petty larceny. It was a boyish prank.
Was sent to reformatory — my downfall. Influence
PROBATION WORK 221
very bad. The hounding of the police when I got
out made it impossible to get along. Keep small
boys from going to reformatories if you wish to have
less criminals. Give men more money when they
leave prison so they will have something to fall back
on while looking for employment."
An American of twenty-three who had a drink-
ing father and stepmother says, "At eight years of
age, I was sent to reform school for petit larceny.
Was there twice — four years and nine months. No,
absolutely no, the influence was not helpful. To have
received good advice and good associates would have
helped me to live right."
Another American of thirty-seven says, "Father
died when I was a year old. We had a stepfather
who drank and abused us. At ten years old I was
arrested for stealing barrels for an election fire.
Was sent to the House of Refuge for eighteen
months. If possible, don't send boys to a reforma-
tory. It ruined me. Give them a chance and make
their home life pleasant and teach them a trade. I
have served four terms in prison. Police persecu-
tion has prevented me from living within the law."
Another prison inmate of twenty-four says, "I
spent my childhood in state institutions for crime. I
can say truthfully if I had not been sent to that
State Industrial School I would have been more of
a man than I am now. I didn't know anything about
crime before I went there, but when I was turned
loose among over six hundred, I soon learned tricks
that I never dreamed of. So there is where I met
my fate."
A Dutch prisoner aged thirty says, "If by an-
swering these few questions I am able to help only
one boy or girl from leading a dishonest or criminal
222 PKOBATION WORK
life I am well satisfied and would willingly answer a
thousand more."
Such testimony could be given from thousands.
All show that to help each child when he needs it
will reduce criminality seventy-five per cent.
Rural counties may have fewer children needing
help them a city, but the machinery that will
enable the few to be helped is necessary in any
county. In the eyes of the Heavenly Father not one
child is so poor or so lowly that His love does not
go out to him, and it is not His will that stumbling
blocks should be put in the way of His little ones.
xxy
EIGHT YEARS' STUDY OF JUVENILE OF-
FENDERS IN A LARGE CITY
At the Parting of the Ways
MRS. HANNAH K. SCHOFP
President of the National Congress of Mothers
E know," says Kate Barnard, ''that the causes of
present treatment of the criminal problem delinquency
is a failure from its conception, and will
continue to be. It is as if we had about
us a noisome marsh, bubbling up from the bottom
with all manner of foul miasma and spreading con-
tagion throughout the land. But we make no at-
tempt to drain the marsh; we are content with try-
ing to skim off the bubbles and scum as they rapidly
rise to the surface."
There is no more serious question before us than
the consideration of ways and means to help the
children who are called bad, and who, in many cases,
are supposed to belong to the criminal classes. The
study of the causes of wrongdoing of every kind,
with the purpose of removing such causes, is unques-
tionably the sensible way to prevent the unceasing
tide of criminals (?) who come into our courts, only
to be passed on to serve their time in reformatories,
houses of correction and prisons. In most cases the
first sentence is not the only one, for the fact of be-
ing an inmate of a penal institution is a serious
drawback to any honest employment afterward. The
223
224 JUVENILE OFFENDERS
prisoner, who was evidently morally weak before im-
prisonment, comes out even more seriously handi-
capped in any desire he may have to do right. He
is often driven to desperation, and compelled to prey
upon society because no honest employment is to be
procured. Trace back the history of any prisoner
to boyhood and babyhood, and there you find the be-
ginnings of the course which has ended so disas-
trously for the individual and for society.
A cruel creed once taught that some were doomed
to evil and others to good, but no one now who be-
lieves in a loving Father above can think that any
child is condemned by Him to a life of evil and
crime. In every human soul there are germs of
good. No heredity is all evil, and the child who has
the worst heredity needs the greatest wisdom, love
and insight to cultivate the good and curb the evil
tendencies. Unfortunately, he rarely has this care
at the time when character is forming, and the re-
sult is what might be expected,
^.^t ™^5*^® , The careful mother guards her children from as-
of the careful ... , oi
mother sociations With the ''bad children. She draws her
skirts about her and turns away, utterly unconscious
that she has any further responsibility in the mat-
ter than to protect her own little ones from con-
tamination. It is that selfish motherhood that has
contributed to the increase in crime. Those **bad
children" sadly need the help of loving, intelligent
motherhood. They will respond to it in every case.
They are God's little ones, each endowed with possi-
bilities for good or evil, however unpromising may
be the heredity and environment. The help given in
childhood and youth will change the whole course of
a human life. The little boys from whom you so
carefully guard your own little ones are just as dear
JUVENILE OFFENDERS
225
to the Heavenly Father as your own children — just
as worthy the interest and help of good men and
women.
The old Mosaic law has never been superseded in
the administration of the penal code, and courts and
judges sit to punish offenders. There is little com-
mon sense in the methods which have been in vogue
for hundreds of years. They greatly need an in-
fusion of the law of love, the Christ spirit which ex-
tends help rather than punishment. This is es-
pecially true in the cases of children and young men
and women who may fall into a grave error, but who
may never repeat it if the right methods are used
to prevent it. The fear method punishes by impris-
onment, with the purpose of punishment, and the
hope that fear of it will prevent a recurrence of the
offense. That is not the true way to bring out and
cultivate the highest qualities. It has not been a
success in decreasing or reducing crime. Reforma-
tories and prisons are always full, and time after
time the same offenders return. This will ever be as
it is unless effort is made to check crime at its very
beginning.
The little boy or girl who plays truant, who de-
ceives father and mother and roams about the
streets, is taking the first downward step. The child
who is permitted to stay on the streets after dark,
returning late in the evening, is in danger. The
child whose sense of mine and thine has not been
trained, and who takes what does not belong to him,
is in need of help, and will fall lower if it is not
given. The children who are sent to pick coal off
the tracks, and who go a step farther and knock it
off the train, are taking the downward road. The
victims of the cigarette habit are in danger of join-
Methods of
courts and
judges
The first
downward
step
Vol. VI.— 15
226
JUVENILE OFFENDERS
How society
ias treated
these cases
The right
point of view
ing the ranks of criminals, for the hahit controls
them, and when self-control is lost there is little
hope for better life. The disobedient, lawless, un-
controlled child is taking the first step toward crim-
inal life. The child who delights in tormenting
others, and who is cruel to animals, is cultivating
qualities which result in criminality. The child
whose mind is filled with impure thoughts, and whose
tendencies are toward impurity, is in serious dan-
ger. The child who does not attend school and who
has no employment is in a critical place and needs
care. The child who has a home where he is unwel-
come, where scolding and nagging are the only words
he hears, is in danger, for such a home drives the
boy out and causes a large amount of the vagrancy
which usually ends in crime. The child who is read-
ing trashy, sensational books, with stories of crime,
is in danger. Causes no more serious than these I
have enumerated are the beginnings that lead to
criminality.
How has society treated these cases? Has it
given them the thoughtful, careful consideration
they deserve in view of the results that come from
disregard of these conditions? It has never realized
that care, encouragement, treatment and help at this
period would mean more and have greater results
than at any other time of life. It has never consid-
ered that in nine out of ten times such care would be
effective in checking crime at its source, and that by
so guarding the impressionable years of child-life so-
ciety is furnished with a good citizen instead of a
criminal, and Heaven wins the soul whose education
for the world beyond is in the school of life.
A wide experience with children who have been
considered the very worst that a large city can fur-
JUVENILE OFFENDERS 227
nish, has proved conclusively to me that children
who have been called burglars, thieves, incorrigibles,
truants and runaways, are not hopeless criminals,
nor are they in their make-up different from chil-
dren in happier circumstances. They are the vic-
tims of circumstance for which they are • not re-
sponsible. They need all the help, all the sympathy
and thoughtful treatment that can be given them.
There is no expense too great, no work too hard, that
will turn the erring feet on the upward path.
The dirty, ragged, rough and unattractive bit of
humanity whom no one seems to love, is one of God's
little ones, of whom He said: ^'It is not the will of
your Father in Heaven that one of these little ones
shall perish." He gave the children to our special
keeping. It is His work we do when we strive to
help them to live according to His laws. It is with
His spirit of infinite patience and of love that we
must work for them if we expect to accomplish the
work He has committed to us, which is to so guide
and guard His little ones in their weakness and when
their faltering steps lead them astray that each
one shall be a jewel in His kingdom. With that
recognition of the Divine trust that has been commit-
ted to us to do a work that will count to all eternity,
the work for childhood assumes an importance be-
yond all else. Can the father and mother blessed
with children whose lives are safe and good forget
those other little ones less fortunate, who are no less
children of the Heavenly Father? Does not their
very helplessness and misery and wrongdoing ap-
peal to every unselfish heart to help them to live up
to their highest possibilities?
There are many ways in which all can help. jj^^ ^ ^^
Every father and mother can do something, and iieip
228 JUVENILE OFFENDERS
should try to do for the ''bad boy" of the neighbor-
hood what they would wish to have done for their own
boy, were he in the same condition. No child should
ever be designated as *'bad" or ''wicked." The
act may be so designated, but to brand children in
that way causes irreparable harm, and takes away
the incentive to do right. It grates on the ear of
any one who knows children to hear them called
** criminals and incorrigibles. " Such terms are not
applicable to children because they indicate a fixed
condition, and in children character is in a formative
state and susceptible to change,
that mi the The crime against property, or, in other words,
prisons -j-j^g violation of the Commandment "Thou shalt not
steal," brings more than half of prison inmates into
their sad predicament. "Whether it is called petit
larceny, grand larceny, receiving stolen goods, pick-
ing pockets, embezzlement, burglary, highway rob-
bery or forgery, the desire to get what belongs to
others is the motive, and while the law has given
many names to the offenses, they are all violations
of the command, "Thou shalt not steal," and the
simple term for all of them is stealing. More than
half the work of every criminal court consists in the
prosecution of thefts of one sort or another, while
half the space in prisons and reform schools and
half the cost of their maintenance can be attributed
to dishonesty.
The other crimes are against the person and are
even more serious. Manslaughter, homicide and
murder, seduction, bigamy and adultery are the
crimes that give the courts half their business and
the prisons half their inmates. Liquor is responsible
for a large proportion of the latter crimes, for the
larger number of murders are not premeditated but
JUVENILE OFFENDERS
229
are the result of liquor and consequent loss of self-
control.
The study of the crimes for which all the vast ma-
chinery of arrest, prosecution and punishment is
maintained, shows that by teaching honesty and self-
control to children, abolishing liquor, and teaching
purity of thought and life, the necessity for all of
this machinery would rapidly decrease.
The father and mother who neglect to instill, by
precept and example, these fundamental principles
in childish years need not be surprised if their chil-
dren fall when temptation comes. No parent need
expect that children will respect others' property
unless they are taught to do so. No parent need ex-
pect that character can be formed except by con-
structive, careful, loving guidance from infancy
through childhood and youth. More than half of
those who fill the prisons today are there through
parental neglect in character forming. No parent
need be heart-broken or shocked because the little
child does wrong. Patiently, lovingly and tenderly
must he be shown his error and taught to look to
God for help in doing right.
"Greorgia's Supreme Court last week handed
down a decision which demonstrates the cruel and
blundering inefficiency of state statutes. Three years
ago a 10-year-old boy pleaded guilty to stealing a
bottle of soda water. He was forthwith sentenced to
the reformatory until he should have attained the
age of 21 years. His father carried the case through
all the courts, to no avail. The supreme court has
just decided that under the reformatory laws there
is no relief for this youngster until he has served
out his sentence or been released on parole.
''In other words, for the theft of a 5-cent bottle
Conclnsion
from the
gtady of
crimes
A nickel vs.
a boy
230 JUVENILE OFFENDERS
of soda, committed undoubtedly in a moment of im-
pulse that may never recur, some of the brightest
and best years of this lad's life are to be sacrificed to
the law. He is to be treated, in reality, as a com-
mon felon, who may have set fire to a house or bur-
glarized a bank. Young and impressionable, he is
to be confined to an industrial farm and there spend
all his youth and young manhood in penance for a
passing mood of a moment. Reformatories for juve-
niles are, of course, excellent institutions. It is in-
finitely better to send the boy there than to throw
him into contact with hardened and professional
lawbreakers.
*'But where is the reason or profit in putting him
there at all? Why should not probation begin im-
mediately with his admission of guilt? It is not in
evidence that he has given signs of incorrigibility.
Every law of probability is that under the watchful
care of a father and in association with honest boys
of his age, the thoughtless prank of a moment would
be forgotten and he would turn out a law-abiding,
upright citizen. But the law, well intentioned, but
unintelligent, demands its pound of flesh. He must
drudge through many years, conscious always of
surveillance and suspicion, denied the opportunities
and pleasures that are youth's birthhood, and carry
with him to the grave the inevitable stigma of hav-
ing been sentenced to a penal institution.
''This is slow witted inhumanity with a ven-
geance. The statutes need revision, broadening. Do
they best serve society as they stand, or would not
their objective be better achieved by giving this and
other youthful offenders at least a chance to demon-
strate repentance and a right to untarnished citi-
zenship ? ' ' — [Atlanta Constitution.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SAVING THE CHILD
For articles on the child and the city see "The Survey,"
Bulletins of the Child Labor Committee, "Annals of
the Academy of Political and Social Science," the
Congressional Documents on Child Labor. All the
better periodicals have good discussions. Dates may
be found in "Poole's Index" at any large library.
Saving the Wayward Child Hannah K. Schoff
(Based on thousands of testimonies as to early life
obtained directly from adult prisoners.)
231
THE GOVERNMENT
QUOTATIONS
"Apprehensions of the imputation of the want of firm-
ness sometimes impels us to perform rash and inconsiderate
acts. It is the greatest courage to be able to bear the
imputation of the want of courage. But pride, vanity,
egotism, so unamiable and offensive in private life, are
vices which partake of the character of crimes in the con-
duct of public affairs. The unfortunate victim of these
passions cannot see beyond the little, petty, contemptible
circle of his own personal interests. All his thoughts are
withdrawn from his country and concentrated on his con-
sistency, his firmness, himself. The high, the exalted, the
sublime emotions of a patriotism, which, soaring toward
heaven, rises far above all mean, low, or selfish things, and
is absorbed by one soul-transporting thought of the good
and the glory of one's countiy, are never felt in his
impenetrable bosom. That patriotism, which, catching its
inspirations from the immortal God, and leaving at an
immeasurable distance below all lesser, groveling, personal
interests and feelings, animates and prompts to deeds of
self sacrifice, of valor, of devotion, and of death itself —
that is public virtue; that is the noblest, the sublimest of
all public virtues."— Henry Clay.
"What is patriotism'? Is it a narrow affection for the
spot where a man was born"? Are the very clods where
we tread entitled to this ardent preference because they
are greener? No, sir; this is not the character of the
virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended
self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and
twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It
is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the
laws of virtue. In their authority we see, not the array
of force and terror, but the venerable image of our coun-
235
236 QUOTATIONS
try's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own,
and cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He
is willing to risk his life in its defense, and is conscious
that he gains protection while he gives it."— Fisher Ames,
"Young men of America of this day, collegians and
non-collegians, come upon the scene in a veiy fortunate
era. This is the day of great things. It is the age of the
world's interest activity and the highest development. Men
are prone to look backward to a golden age. I prefer to
think this age is better than any of its predecessors and
that the best is still to come. I take no stock in the
pessimistic theory that the republic is on the high road to
perdition and that we are headed for universal chaos. The
world is progressing — particularly our part of it. True,
we have not reached the millennium yet. There are wrongs
still to be righted, reforms to be effected. There is plenty
for all of us to do in improving our methods of govern-
ment and ameliorating the conditions under which we live.''
— Champ Clark.
"Happiness depends upon our human wealth— our
health and beauty and accomplishment — upon the ideality
of our relations with other persons, upon the charm and
wholesomeness of our surroundings, upon the significance
and reasonableness of our daily toil, upon the satisfactions
of our leisure hours, upon the reverence of our intercourse
with the unseen, upon our attitude toward life generally."
— C. Hanford Henderson,
"This sort of brute prosperity, material achievement at
the price of human well being, rests upon an idea, and
can be reformed and humanized only by recasting the idea.
The present industrial world, with its vast equipment of
things, with its apparatus costing a hundred times more
than the habitations and personal equipment of the human
workers, seems well intrenched. But it is held together by
something at once more powerful and more easily dissolved
than nails and cement and tie-rods— it is held together by
QUOTATIONS 237
the consenting idea. Once withdraw this consent, and the
fabric vanishes; but morality is the compound of eflBciency
and worth, the successful adjustment of human activity
to the attainment of an individual good fortune, a personal
happiness so genuine and universal as to deserve the name
of social welfare. Prosperity, as commonly conceived, is
an out and out denial of morality, for it is not expressed
in the essential moral terms. It is not expressed in terms
of human emotion, of genuine welfare, but in the impossi-
ble terms of accmnulation. The things which now repre-
sent prosperity cannot logically represent it, for, at best,
they are only means and cannot by any sophism be made
to figure as ends." — C. H. Henderson in ^^ Children of Good
Fortunes."
XXVI
MATERIAL FOR TABLE TALKS FOR MAKING
DESIRABLE CITIZENS*
JAMES M. GREENWOOD
Ex-Superintendent of Kansas City, Mo., Schools
HENEVER a game of any kind is played, ^"^^s of the
either by the children of civilized or sav-
age people, certain rules that the players
themselves or others have made govern the
players and are called the "Laws of the Game."
Now, what is true of the actions of children in their
sports and games, has a much wider significance
when it is applied to a large body of people col-
lectively, whether it be a clan, tribe, state or nation.
Because man is social in his nature, governments are
established and maintained on the theory that people
reach a higher degree of excellence and efficiency
under a good form of government than under a bad
form of government.
The word govern is derived from the Latin verb Definitions of
. T 1 • '11 government
guoernare, to steer a ship, and this meaning has been macMnery
transferred and enlarged so as to include the direc-
tion, management and control of states and nations.
From the Latin word guhernare^ we have guberna-
torial, govern, governor and government, which are
words in common use. The popular meaning of the
word government is that of the controlling power in
a nation, yet the term may be, and very often is,
restricted to a much narrower use, as Avhen one
*From "The Desirable Citizen," by permission of O. P. Barnes.
239
240 MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS
speaks of the government of a family, a school, a
town, county, city or state.
The word civil is derived from the Latin word
civis, a citizen. A citizen is a person who owes to
the government allegiance, service and money by
way of taxes, and to whom the government grants
and guarantees liberty of person and of conscience,
the right to acquire, to hold, and to transfer prop-
erty, and also the security of person, property and
reputation. A citizen is one who enjoys, or may
enjoy, all civil rights.
Therefore, "Civil Government" may be defined
as the regularly constituted legal authority opera-
tive wdthin a state or nation. From this it will be
seen that Civil Government treats of persons living
in civilized society, of property, duties, obligations
and of rights. To determine what people may do, or
refrain from doing, places them at once under law.
Laws are made to govern the actions of men, women
and children — of children when they have reached
the age of accountability. In so far as the actions of
persons are concerned, as viewed legally, the law dis-
criminates between what is the '^declaratory part,"
which defines the rights to be observed and the
wrongs to be avoided, and the "directory part,"
which enjoins the observance of the right and the
abstaining from the wrong; the "remedial part,"
which is a method of recovering a right or redress-
ing a wrong, and the "vindicatory part," which pre-
scribes a remedy for a transgression. Laws are
enacted for the purpose of controlling the actions
of man.
Man, wherever he may be, is a subject of law.
The forces of nature always act upon him and he
reacts against them. His surroundings constitute his
WASHINGTON AND HIS MOTHER
In the Ballroom at Fredericksburg.
After the Painting by Howard Pyle.
MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS 241
environment, and whatever traits of character he
has inherited from his ancestors, constitute his orig-
inal tendencies or his hereditary influences. A child,
therefore, is born into a world governed by physical
laws, by statutory enactments, and by the practices
or customs of the people among whom his parents
reside. All these influences are governmental. The
different kinds of government under which we live
are the Home, School, County, State and Nation.
To these there are other incidental governmental
forms under w^hich we may, or may not, live, to-wit,
city, town, or village government; church govern-
ment; fraternal governments of various kinds. But
in our country, broadly speaking, each citizen con-
stantly lives under at least five recognized forms of
government. From the preceding statements it is
possible for a person to live under several different
kinds of government at the same time, and yet they
may be so regulated that no one seriously interferes
wdth the others. A good citizen is one who obeys the
laws under which he lives and performs all the
duties, both public and private, resting upon him.
Governments have been classified by writers from Svemment
the earliest times, according to where the source of
power resides. Some nations not far advanced in
civilization have an absolute monarch at the head of
affairs. Such a government is a despotism; others
again, are governed by a king, queen, emperor, or
czar, such governments being called a monarchy,
while others, like the United States, France, Switzer-
land and Mexico, have a chief executive known as
the president, and are classed as republics. But it
must not be inferred that because people live in a
republic that, by virtue of this fact, they always are
Vol. VI.— 16
242 MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS
a freer people than those living under a constitu-
tional monarchy.
In republics the supreme source of power is
vested in the people collectively, and every citizen
who votes has a voice in selecting candidates for
office, and in this act he exercises the attributes of
a sovereign, which is one of the highest privileges of
citizenship,
ifive There are five distinct institutions that lie at the
important . ^.i ..,..
institutions foundation of the Civilization we have reached,
namely, the home, the church, the school, the so-
ciety in which one lives, and the state or nation.
The family Obviously the first and simplest form of govern-
ment is that of the family. The word is from the
Latin, familia, which includes the household, not ex-
cepting the servants. In its modern comprehensive
use it is applied to all the persons living together in
one house and under the same head or management ;
but in its more limited sense, it signifies the father,
the mother and the children. No specific number of
persons is required to constitute a family, or that
they should eat at the house, or that they be em-
ployed in or about the house. The husband is legally
regarded as the head of the family, and is the person
who controls, supervises, or manages the affairs of
the house.
The family is an institution peculiar, distinct and
complete within itself, having its own laws, rules,
regulations, rights, duties and responsibilities. It is
peculiarly a ''fitting station" for other objects and
other institutions to which it is very closely con-
nected. One of the chief ends for which it exists
in a civilized community is the training and prep-
aration for the duties that the child will eventually
perform in respect to himself, to society, to the state
MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS 243
and to the Creator. As lias been previously stated,
duties are reciprocal. The parent is responsible for
the maintenance and education of his child, and
later the child owes duties to its parents. It is the
plain duty of the parent to provide for the physical
wants of his offspring and to educate them, because
the child is dependent, and needs the care and pro-
tection of its parents. Deprived of this care and
protection, it must inevitably perish, unless the law
interferes and appoints a guardian, or some kind
person comes in and adopts it. No outsider naturally
can discharge this trust with the same parental feel-
ings as the father and mother ought to have for
their own children, and this trust ought not to pass
over to another except in case of death, or disability
to discharge this sacred duty. The manner in which
this duty should be performed depends upon the cir-
cumstances and condition in life of the parents dur-
ing the minority of the child. In the eye of the law
the parent has done his duty when he has made the
best possible provision for his child that his ability
and circumstances w^ill permit. It is his duty to in-
still into the mind of his offspring such simple habits
of frugality, industry, honesty, self-reliance, truth-
fulness, and purity of mind and body as wdll cause
the child to become an honor to his parents and a
useful, independent, self-supporting citizen.
The school is an institution, organized and main-
tained at public expense, for the protection of the
citizens of the state and to perpetuate the state and
its institutions. The public school is a gradual de-
velopment from the original or parish school. The
modern state undertook the education of its youth
because the church and private benefactions could
not educate all the children and fit them for intelli-
244 MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS
gent citizenship. Schools are organized on a broader
base than is the home and for more specific purposes.
School government differs in many respects from
home government, and yet they have many features
in common, as a little reflection vrill show.
In the states and territories of our country each
state and territory enacts its own school laws
through its legislature. Of course, where there is
not a law-making power, the government (as with
the Indian tribes and in Alaska), administers the
educational affairs. But in general, there is no na-
tional system of education in the United States. By
statute or special act of the legislature, each state
administers its local school affairs through local
boards or school committees, whose duties are de-
fined by law. These local boards, by the authority
invested in them, make all needful rules and regula-
tions governing their school district. They are
usually elected by the people in the district to carry
forward the school interests of their community. In
a sense, they constitute a legislative body, prescrib-
ing what is to be done and prohibiting what ought
not to be done. The duties of boards of education in
cities, towns and villages, can be learned by an ex-
amination of the general school laws, special acts and
charters, under which each board exercises its
functions.
The teacixer The teacher occupies a unique position as the
preserver of the conduct of each pupil on his way
to or from the school, and while in the schoolhouse
or on or about the school premises. The courts have
usually held that the teacher's authority extends
over the pupil from the time he leaves home till he
returns home. On his way to or from school he is
as much under the teacher's authority as if he were
MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS 245
in the schoolhouse during school hours. The teacher
is regarded as being in the place of the parent while
the pupil is absent from the parental roof. In the
state of Massachusetts one of the courts held that
the bad conduct of two pupils on Saturday, when the
school was not in session, was detrimental to the
state and that the teacher was justified in whipping
the boys on the following Monday.
School government may be defined in its prac- fSj^im^nt
tical application, as the art of so directing the affairs
of a school as to maintain a systematic method of in-
struction, and to induce orderly conduct and effi-
ciency in. studies, and to lead the pupils into habits
of self-control and self-directed work. It is the wise
adjustment of the learner to the educational forces
and instrumentalities which act upon him and to
which he reacts. The chief function of the teacher
is to stimulate the pupils to self-exertion, self-asser-
tion, under law, and into habits of self-knowledge
and self-confidence. All true government comes from
within. It is not the overpowering pressure from an
external force organized as the state that compels
obedience, but the feeling within that prompts to
right action. School government, as a formative
power, operates under the most favorable conditions
when the home and school authorities work together.
If the home influences are exerted against the
teacher, and the Board of Education, the school is
helpless to aid the child. The home is the child's
social center during the infantile period, but the
school widens the child's experience when he begins
to form associations beyond the family circle. In
the school he is ushered into another world in which
he is only one actor among others. Others have
claims equal to his own, and he soon learns, or ought
246 MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS
to learn, to depend on himself if he takes equal rank
with others in their studies and games. The school
should level artificial distinctions by teaching each
one the nobility of honest effort. It is in the school
that the child as a participator comes in contact with
the state as an institution which he yet but dimly
realizes, even when his attention is called to the fact.
He hears something about the teacher's authority,
and less of the power of the board.
v^w ''eSl'rges "^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ learner's ideas, the teacher and pa-
rents, either or both, may drop a sentence every now
and then, telling how schools are organized in a
state, sites purchased, houses built and furnished,
books and apparatus supplied, teachers employed,
fuel and water supplied, taxes levied and collected
each year, and state, county and township funds ap-
portioned, in order to conduct a school. The matter
is brought directly home to the pupil when he learns
that his parents have to pay their part of the school
tax for his education, and that he has as much right
as any other child in the state to attend the public
school. Here, too, he may learn the lesson that a
government founded on majority action must depend
upon an intelligent and virtuous citizership, and
that he, in time, will become one of the independent
political units. Thus, as he grows in knowledge, the
child's horizon enlarges from that of the home, to
the school, the township, county, state and nation.
The child in attendance at school is expected to
obey all needful rules and regulations, to prepare
his lessons promptly and neatly as his teacher may
direct, and to be pure and chaste in speech and con-
duct; to be polite and kind to his teacher, to the
pupils attending school ; and to persons that he meets
in going to or in returning from school. It is in-
MAKING DESIRABLE CITIZENS 247
cumbent on the teacher to teach morality in school
as much as it is to teach language, geography or
arithmetic, and it is probably best taught by ex-
ample and incidentally. Conduct has reference to
behavior in general as opposed to misbehavior. Of
recent years business men generally ask, when a boy
or a young man applies for a position, for testi-
monials as to his class standing and behavior in
school. Particularly is this true in towns and cities.
Good conduct in school may be very far-reaching in
one's life work. Grovernment is designed to teach
and consolidate in one's character those habits of in-
dustry, honesty, truthfulness, neatness, correctness,
and faithfulness, that set the upright and reliable
man off from the untrustworthy one. The pupil
should keep in mind that the government of a school
is a part of the school work, a part of the school it-
self. The school is an institution as much as is the
state, though in a modified form, and inasmuch as
the pupil must live an institutional life, he is,
through the medium of the school, fitting himself to
become a participator in that fuller sphere of activ-
ity which is opening for him. It is the feeling of
responsibility that makes the pupil consider his o^ti
actions, and this is the foundation of self-control.
XXVII
A HERITAGE FROM A FATHER
A ''Survey" Associate
"WAS happy enough to inherit from my
father an interest in good causes, and how-
ever inadequate this attempt may be, per-
haps some influence may speak through me
from my father's life and memory.
To begin vrith, may I tell something of what my
father's ideas were? I might say that he died more
than thirty years ago, and that in some ways his
views seem to me to have been in advance of his
time. He was a successful business man, but he had
no ambition to build up or leave a large fortune. He
did not consider the inheritance of wealth a blessing.
The idea of ''Christian stewardship" was with him
intensely real, and he faithfully lived out this ideal,
giving away money as he made it. He used to say
that most men with the ability to make a fortune,
seemed unable to realize that it required quite as
much brains to do good with money as to make it.
All through his life, in addition to activity in
business and exceptional devotion to the interests of
his family, he gave time and thought, freely and
ardently, to many lines of philanthropy. His office
was the resort of workers in many fields who availed
themselves of his business advice and that of his
brothers. My father was one of the founders and
supporters of his own church, and a liberal con-
248
A HERITAGE FROM A FATHER 249
tributor to other churches, was much interested in
Sunday school work, in home and foreign missions,
in all the best local enterprises, in educational insti-
tutions, in philanthropic work in the South, and in a
really great variety of the causes best worth sup-
porting. In addition to his gifts of money, he gave
himself to personal work in various lines, and took a
warm interest in many individuals whom he could
help.
Now, how about the "inheritance"?
To speak in very personal terms, I will first say
that I sincerely thank my father for leaving me an
income large enough to live on comfortably, while I
am free from difficulties still comparable to those of
a camel passing through the eye of a needle! Per-
haps it is a happy thing to have the much-talked-of
** simple life" brought within easy reach by a lim-
ited income. "With the searchlights of today thrown
on our contribution of money, it is a happiness to
know that what one's father earned honorably by
work, he shared freely in his own day for the needs
of his generation, instead of ''heaping up riches."
Then as to the interests we inherited. As I turn
back to the pages of memory, one of our first lessons
in humanity seems to have come in the attitude we
saw shown to those employed in our household. Jus-
tice, consideration and kindness for them were an
unwritten law and we were unconsciously learning to
think of all under our roof as fellow-beings — an im-
portant lesson, it seems to me. This was a **good
cause" with which to begin at home.
Then, in our household, we inherited some ac-
quaintance with *'the best people." Among our
many visitors, we had the privilege of meeting work-
ers in varied fields of philanthropy. Happy the
250 A HERITAGE FROM A FATHER
home that entertained, even briefly, Charles L. Brace
and General Armstrong! One of my earliest mem-
ories is of a Mr. Van Meter who thrilled us children
with the story of The Little Wanderer's Home — a
New York institution, I think. And what a bene-
diction seemed to rest on our household at the times
when it had as guest an elderly missionary from
Syria, whose beautiful face spoke truly of his conse-
crated life! And other missionaries made Hindoos
and Hawaiians and even South Sea Islanders seem
real people to be really helped. So our young
imaginations were well stretched.
But not only the far-off people were brought
near. Some of the remotest in our own community,
so to speak, w^re drawn into the circle of our
thoughts. My father often went to the jail on Sun-
day afternoons to talk to prisoners. I am sure his
merciful interest and racy speech must have done
them good, and from what he let fall afterward, we
learned, in part, to think of prisoners as men, not
merely evil-doers.
On other Sunday afternoons visits were made to
the truant school, where thirty or forty lively boys
were spending the term for which they were com-
mitted. Not long ago I came across a letter from
the devoted woman in charge, written after my
father's death, telling how much his interest had
helped her. He often took me with him, and to this
day I can see the boys' eager attention and hear the
Sermon on the Mount repeated by some of them in a
rich brogue.
Father had a plan by which he paid the boys, I
think at the rate of a penny a verse, for learning
chapters in the Bible. If they earned $5.00, as a
number did — this being the goal aimed at — he de-
A HERITAGE FROM A FATHER 251
posited it to their credit in the savings banks and
gave them their bank books. Their pride in these
was great, and he felt that the idea of depositing
savings later had been made definite and easy. Only
the other day, a driver from a livery stable who had
taken me out several times, said, ''You didn't know
Miss , did you, that I was one of your father's
boys?" and told me that he was one of the truants
who attained to a bank book and remembered father
gratefully. So all along through life, I have run
across footprints where my father passed and some
of the good seed he scattered so freely has sprung
up.
All my father's interests such as I have sug-
gested not only enlarged our general outlook, but
gave his children some idea of a noble army of work-
ers for human welfare who fail not from genera-
tion to generation. The life of the world can
never seem petty or dull to those with a realization
of the great battle for right always being waged,
however small one's own little corner may be. Then
the memory of my father's ovm. life must always be
an inspiration. But not only in memory does the
thought of him abide with his children. How can
we reasonably believe that such a vital, sympathetic,
far-reaching personality went out like an extin-
guished light?
"Somewhere, surely, afar
In the sounding labor-house vast
Of being", is practiced that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm."
The Survey is not only a chronicle of work for
humanity, but also an inspiration to service. Do its
252 A HERITAGE FROM A FATHER
readers altogether realize that when men serve hu-
manity they serve also their children? The desire
for wealth, for social prestige, or any form of worldly
fortune to bequeath seems poor compared with a
present sharing of wide and worthy interests and
the legacy of a memory of life devoted to human
service. — [Fro7n The Survey, by permission.]
XXVIII
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
LYMAN BEECHER STOWE
Secretary of The National Association of Junior Republics
(A reference paper)
HE Treasury of the United States is today
paying out in a single week more money
than was expended in an entire year during
the first quarter-century of the Republic.
For better or for worse, Jefferson's ideal of a mini-
mum of government is not our ideal. This being so,
it is pertinent for the citizens to inquire, "Does it
pay to be so much governed? What are we getting
for our money?" To answer these questions thor-
oughly would take a book, and a very large book. I
will here suggest some of the less obvious but very
vital considerations which should enter into such an
answer so far as the constructive work of the Fed-
eral Government is concerned.
Every well-informed person is more or less fa-
miliar with certain features of the Grovernment 's
constructive work. Every one knows something of
the work of Gifford Pinchot and his splendid For-
est Service. Every one knows something of the
great work of the Reclamation Service in turning
into prosperous farms the arid lands of the West.
Most people know something of the not less exten-
sive if less judicious work that is being done for the
improvement of our rivers and harbors. These and
some other features of the work of our Government
253
254 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
have happened to be more widely exploited, better
advertised, and more discussed than other features.
To say, however, that they are therefore more im-
portant would be hardly more reasonable than to
pronounce the rear wheels of a carriage more im-
portant than the front because larger.
Preventing Water is our most valuable natural resource.
soil erosion
Without it human life would be impossible. It is
common knowledge that deforestation is one of the
causes of floods, and that floods do great damage.
During the first ten months of 1908, the flood dam-
age for the country amounted to $260,000,000, ex-
clusive of the loss of a gigantic volume of water
which might otherwise have been used for the pur-
pose of navigation, irrigation and power. It is not
common knowledge that improper methods of agri-
culture are a cause of floods second only to defores-
tation. For instance, farmers used always to plow
their hillside fields straight across, just as they
plowed their level fields. When heavy rains came
such hillsides were soon raging torrents, and when
the rains stopped they were gullied beyond hope of
further fertility for that season at least. For twen-
ty-five years now. Dr. W. J. McGee, the expert on
soil erosion in the Department of Agriculture, has
been teaching the farmers how to prevent this. In-
stead of plowing straight across, they must follow the
contour of the hill. This is known as the contour
method of plowing. It saves crops, it saves the soil
on which the crops are grown, it lessens floods. It is
so simple that it took a scientist twenty-five years
to get any considerable number of the practical
men to adopt it. At the conclusion of a talk with
me. Dr. McGee said, ''When, last year, in traveling
between New York and Mobile, I saw that a very;
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER 255
considerable proportion of the hillside fields were
properly plowed, I realized I had not lived in vain."
Were it not for the work conducted by Dr. Mar-
shall Leighton, Chief Hydrographer of the Greolog-
ical Survey, the work of the Reclamation Service
would have been a colossal speculation instead of a
great contribution to our national wealth. Dr.
Leighton finds out how much water is available in
the United States, whence it comes, and how it can
best be adapted to its various uses. Success in recla-
mation work is absolutely dependent upon the se-
curing of an amount of water sufficient to irrigate
the land included in each project. Obviously, exact
knowledge of the amount of water available is a
prerequisite. Without such information the Gov-
ernment's forty-million-dollar venture in reclaim-
ing waste lands would have been as liable to failure
as success.
Forests protect the water supply, and water
makes forests possible. Their interdependence could
hardly be closer. Thanks to the Forest Service, we
are beginning to realize the alarming extent to which
our forests are being destroyed by fire, and the ne-
cessity for their protection. Few if any of us realize
that they have another and equally deadly enemy.
More merchantable timber is destroyed by forest in-
sects than by forest fires. Dr. A. D. Hopkins, the
forest insect specialist of the Bureau of Entomology,
made this statement before the Conservation Com-
mission: ''Investigations conducted in all sections of
the country during the past ten years indicate quite
conclusively that the average per cent of loss of
merchantable timber in the forests of the entire
country to be charged to insects during a five or ten-
year period is greater than that to be charged to
Hydrograpliic •
work
The forest
service
256 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
forest fires alone within the same period." When
we consider that our forest crop is worth more than
the combined output of all our mines, and when we
remember the enormous areas that are destroyed by
fire, we begin to realize the sensational significance of
this sober, scientific statement. So new and star-
tling are these facts that Dr. Hopkins had difficulty
in making even the members of the Commission ap-
preciate their significance. The Black Hills beetle
alone has killed nearly a billion feet of merchantable
timber in the Black Hills National Forests of South
Dakota, besides an equal or greater amount within
the states of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.
The It was reported to the Bureau of Entomology in
iStomoiogy May, 1907, that the pine timber was dying on a
great private estate near Idaho Springs, Colorado.
The Bureau at once sent an expert to investigate.
He reported that about 63,000 feet of timber was
then infested by the Black Hills beetles, whose rav-
ages, if not checked, would kill all the pine timber
on the estate. The owner was advised to take rad-
ical action, and specific instructions were given him.
He took no action in time to prevent the beetles
from swarming from the infested to other trees and
thus extending their ravages.
The expert again examined the estate in Decem-
ber, 1907. This time, instead of 63,000 he found 250,-
000 feet of infested and dying timber. The owner
then awoke to the necessity of carrying out the orig-
inal instructions. By May, 1908, he had had all the
large clumps of infested trees converted into lum-
ber and the slabs burned. This burning of the slabs
or outside strips destroyed the millions of beetles
under the bark.
In November, 1908, a fiinal inspection was made.
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER 257
It was found that the insect infestation had been
stopped, not only without expense to the owner, but
at a profit. He had sold the 250,000 feet of infested
timber at $5 per thousand feet. This gave hiin a
gross profit of $1,250, and a quite appreciable net
profit. This is one of almost innumerable instances
showing the cash value of science as applied to prac-
tical problems by our Government scientists. To
claim, however, as is sometimes done, that the Gov-
ernment should conduct no scientific investigations
which cannot be turned to immediate material ad-
vantage is about as reasonable economically as it
would be to kill all nonproductive children.
Consideration of insects takes us logically to The value of
birds, their natural enemies. The entomologists es- °^^ ^^^^^
timate that insects destroy annually in the United
States not less than five hundred million dollars'
worth of agriculture products.* Were it not for
birds, insects and rodents would drive us out of ex-
istence. They would literally devour the vegeta-
tion of the earth. Dr. H. W. Henshaw, Assistant
Director of the Biological Survey, has said: ''The
notable increase of noxious rodents in the last de-
cade in certain parts of the United States and the
resulting damage to crops without doubt is due in
no small part to the destruction of their natural ene-
mies, chief of which are the birds of prey." Birds
eat not only insects and rodents, but weeds. The
value of the principal field crops of the United
States for 1906 was $3,500,000,000. Dr. Henshaw
estimates that the combined weed-seed consumption
of the sparrow family results in an annual saving of
one per cent of the value of the crops. Hence, the
* This is equivalent to wiping out each year the entire assets of one of
the largest insurance companies.
Vol. VI.— 17
258 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
sparrows alone saved the farmers $35,000,000 in one
year.
How are such facts arrived at? By the study of
birds' stomachs — a study of great economic impor-
tance. Dr. Fisher, in charge of economic investiga-
tions for the Survey, has made a study of the stom-
achs of all the more prevalent species of birds at
various seasons of the year. If they eat pests, they
are blessings; if they eat blessings, they are pests.
If you know what a bird eats, you know what he is.
These investigations have undermined many popular
prejudices. For example, the farmer has always
looked upon the hawk as one of his natural ene-
mies. To shoot a hawk was not only good sport
but good business. Dr. Fisher has found that of
the seventy varieties of hawks in the United States,
two only are always and everywhere injurious, while
two more are, at certain places and in certain sea-
sons, harmful. All the others are beneficial, their
staple diet being field-mice, the most destructive of
all destroyers.
Teaching the Not long ago 600 acres of reclaimed arid land, in
hawks the West was sown to wheat. No sooner did the
wheat appear than millions of field mice poured in
from the country round about and began to de-
vour it. Hawks followed and began to devour the
mice. The farmers shot the hawks. The mice kept
on increasing, and the wheat kept on disappearing
down their voracious throats. In desperation the
owners appealed to the Biological Survey for as-
sistance. The Survey sent an expert to che spot. He
showed them how to kill the mice by sprinkling the
field with chopped grain soaked in poison. He
showed them that the hawks were their most impor-
tant allies — that they must give them every encour-
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHLR 259
agement; that if enougli hawks could not be coaxed
into fields, from, the immediate country, they must
import others. They followed instructions, and,
after the wholesale poisoning of the mice, the hawks
kept the remainder reduced to a relatively harmless
few. The hawks and the Government expert be-
tween them saved the 600 acres of wheat for men
instead ^1 mice.
More birds are slaughtered for their plumage
than for any other one purpose. They are killed in
their rookeries while they are nesting. Even the
most timid birds will not leave their young to starve,
no matter what the danger in feeding them. It is
the custom of the men engaged in this business to
stand near the nests and shoot the parent birds whilb
they are feeding the young. They leave the young
birds to starve. Thus the killing of 1,000 grown
birds would very likely entail the death by starva-
tion of 5,000 young birds. It is a curious anomaly
that this wholesale barbarity is practiced in the in-
terest of women — women who are traditionally ten-
der-hearted. Evidently fearing that, in spite of
fashion, women might revolt did they know the
truth, it is new common practice among milliners to
assert that the feathers which they sell are manu-
factured. Dr. Henshaw is my authority for the as-
sertion that to manufacture feathers is an absolute
impossibility, except in so far as the process by
which they are prepared for market may be so called.
On the recommendation of the Survey, ex-Presi- ^^^^ refuges
dent Roosevelt, during his administration, created
by executive order twenty-five bird refuges. Most
of these are desolate islands of little or no value for
any other purpose. Several of them are off the
Florida coast, some of the others are off the coast of
260 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
Oregon. As the Government has no appropriation
for their protection, they are policed by the patrols
of the National Audubon Society.
Animal immigration regulations are very strict.
Without special permission from Dr. Palmer, chief
of the Game Preservation Division of the Survey, no
wild animals, whether birds or mammals, may enter
the country. There are certain standardized privi-
leged characters to whom this does not apply. In
accordance with their habits of life, all alien wild
animals are classified as injurious, beneficial or neu-
tral. While I was talking with Dr. Palmer he re-
ceived a telegram from El Paso, on the Texan bor-
der. It read: "Party wishes to bring in one gray
squirrel and two chachalacas. " Dr. Palmer at once
wired back, ''Admit them." Within an hour one
alien gray squirrel and two alien gray birds — the
chachalacas — had permission from the Federal Gov-
ernment to take up their abode in the United States.
The office of In many parts of the country there has come to
be a good deal of sentimental interest in favor of
good roads. They look neater and are more agree-
able to drive over than bad roads. Probably no one
would defend the kind of public economy which re-
cently permitted a public highway in one of our
Southern states to fall into such a condition that a
wayfarer was drowned on it. While sentimental in-
terest based on feeling is good, economic interest
based on facts is better. The office of Public Roads,
under the direction of Mr. Logan Waller Page, has
assembled some significant facts. Only about 150,-
000 of the 2,100,000 miles of roads in the United
States have been in any degree improved. Almost
93 per cent of our public roads may be said to be in
a state of nature. This statement in itself is not
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER 261
necessarily startling, A man, even a Congressman,
might make the laconic rejoinder, ''Well, what of
itr' Just this — if our public highways were as good
as those in France, the gain to American producers
would exceed a quarter of a billion dollars annually.
The average cost of hauling produce in this coun-
try is 25 cents a mile per ton. In France it is 12
cents a mile per ton. "Were our roads, then, equal
to those of France, there would be a gain to our
farmers of 13 cents a mile per ton. During the crop
year 1905-6 our more important farm products,
which were hauled from the places where they orig-
inated to shipping points, weighed in the aggregate
85,487,000,000 pounds. The average length of haul
of farm products in the United States is 9.4 miles.
Hence, a saving of 13 cents a mile per ton would
have meant to our farmers a gain of $58,900,000 on
their more important crops during the single year
1905-6. According to the freight figures of the In-
ter-State Commerce Commission, about 250,000,000
tons are now annually hauled to points of shipment.
"Were our roads equal to those of France the annual
gain in hauling based on these figures would be
$305,000,000.*
Under the direction of experts sent out by the
Office of Public Roads 200 object-lesson roads have
been constructed in 34 states. These illustrate ma-
cadam, brick, gravel, sand-clay, shell, and earth con-
struction. Besides these there are a considerable
number built of new materials, and experimental in
character. The local authorities expended approxi-
mately $500,000 on these object-lesson roads, and ex-
penditure due to their inspiration undoubtedly runs
• The interest on the investment represenfed by the roads Tvould, of
course, somewhat reduce this gain.
262 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
into the millions. Between the opening of the road
material laboratory of the office in December, 1900,
and July, 1908, almost 3,000 samples of road ma-
terials, coming from practically every state in the
Union, had been received and tested to determine
their proper use and value in road-building. It is
the aim of the laboratory to discover good road ma-
terial in every section of the country, so that good
roads may be constructed at the least possible cost.
go?(i^roads"* ror Several years the scientists in this office have
been working on two great problems, the utilization
of waste products in road building, and the develop-
ment of dustless roads. Since the advent of auto-
mobiles these problems have become acute. Who
but a scientist would ever think of using molasses
as a road-building material? Near Newton, Massa-
chusetts, the first molasses road of history has now
been laid. This molasses is the useless by-product
of the great sugar refineries. Having always been a
waste product, it can be had in great quantities at
small cost. In the laboratory experiments it was
blended with oils and lime-water, mixed with rock
dust, earth and sand, and then tested as to its re-
sistance to heat and water. The experiment was suc-
cessful, and the prr.ctical test of a real road decided
upon. Simultaneous experiments proved a combina-
tion of slag and tar to be equally successful. Thus,
the use of the two hitherto useless waste products,
molasses and slag, bid fair to realize the ambition
of the Government scientists for the utilization of
by-products and the attainment of dustless roads.
Through the medium of this office each state is kept
in touch with the progress in every other state so
as to constitute a national movement along uniform
lines for the improvement of the roads of the United
States.
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER 263
From the inland highways, the rivers and the feodetic^*
roads, we may now appropriately turn to the ocean survey
highways and glance at what the Government is do-
ing to safeguard ocean navigation. This is a part
of the work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, under
the Department of Commerce and Labor. The im-
mense scope of the work of this branch of the Gov-
ernment cannot better be suggested than by this
statement, in which Mr. 0. H. Tittmann, the Super-
intendent of the Survey, summarizes the chief duties
which his field officers must at all times hold them-
selves in readiness to perform. They may be called
upon ^Ho pack a mule train or to command a ship,
to pitch a camp or outfit a vessel to sound along the
edge of resistless breakers, to climb glaciers, to break
through tropical jungles, to guide vessels through
uncharted dangers, or men along a mountain trail,
to look after the health of their men in all climates,
to provide months in advance for supplying them
mth food in regions where none can be purchased,
to build structures which shall tower over tall trees
of the Western forests in order to see distant sta-
tions, to observe the stars by night, to watch the
swinging pendulum for the determination of gravity,
to measure the forces of the earth's magnetism, to
note the tides and currents, to sound the waters of
the ocean, to map the topography of the land, to
trace international or state boundaries, to cover
the land with a network of triangulation, or to join
their no less zealous co-workers in the office in the
reduction and discussion of results."
Several years ago the Survey practically com-
pleted the original surveying and charting of all the
coasts of our continental borders. They have done
the same for the coasts of southwestern Alaska, com-
264 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
• prising all points where there is anj^ considerable
shipping. They ha^ covered also the most im-
portant third of the Philippine coast line. The ex-
tent of this latter task can only be fully realized if
you know that the intricate shore-line of the Archi-
pelago exceeds in length that of the United States
proper.
When appropriation time comes round, Congress-
men sometimes ask, ''When is the survey of our
coasts to be completed?" The answer is "Never."
In 1849, Fishing Point, on the coast of Maryland,
■ was but a bend in the shore line. By 1902 it had
'. grown out about three miles. The chart of 1849
would not have been helpful in 1902. Near Cubit's
Gap, at the mouth of the Mississippi, an area of
fifty square miles has been filled in since 1852. Ships
of the desert might now be used there, but no longer
ships of the sea. Since about the same date Sand
Island, at the mouth of the Columbia River, has
moved two miles across the river in a northwesterly
direction, thus entirely closing what was formerly
the northern channel of the river. A chart of 1852
certainly would not be helpful in entering the Co-
lumbia River today.
Economic rpj^^ ^.^^^ ^^j. insurance on ships entering un-
value of the . . n i m • • a
coast survey charted waters is practically prohibitive. As soon as
the waters are charted the rate becomes normal.
Aside from the vast but of course incomputable sav-
ing of life and property, this is the greatest concrete
advantage derived by the navigator from the chart-
ing of the coasts. One of the officers of the Survey
has comparatively recently constructed a machine
for estimating tides. It somewhat suggests in ap-
pearance a grandfather's clock, shortened and sex-
tupled as to its mechanism. By this instrument, it
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER 265
is possible to estimate the exact state of the tides at
any point at any time, no matter how far ahead or
how far back. It could be used equally well to find
out the state of the tides on the day Columbus dis-
covered America, and one hundred years hence. In
practice it is used for predicting the tides of the
chief ports of the world two years in advance.
The Burcpu of Standards, also of the Department of^^taSdM-ds
of Commerce and Labor, stands in much the same
relation to the manufacturers as does the Depart-
ment of Agriculture to the farmers. Dr. W. S. Strat-
ton, the Director of the Bureau, said to me : ' ' The
acute need for precision in modern industry was
urged before an English Parliamentary Commission
in these words: *If England is to retain her indus-
trial supremacy, we must have accurate standards
for comparison available to our research students
and our manufacturers.' In effect, precise stan-
dards are not merely desirable but indispensable to
the industrial life of a nation.*'
In order to specify, for example, what kind of
paint you want, and to make sure that you get it, you
must know its ingredients. This Bureau investi-
gates all manner of materials, finds of what they
are made, and then provides definite specifications to
all branches of the Federal Government, to the state
and municipal authorities; and, on the payment of
cost fees, to the various arts and trades. Every
weight, measure, or other standard is accurate or in-
accurate in relation to a constant. The Bureau es-
tablishes these constants in every department of the
arts and trades.
A good many years ago the Federal Government,
realizing the necessity for uniformity and accuracy,
distributed to the state governments uniform sets of
266 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
the more ordinary weights, measures, and standards.
To take charge of them the states appointed sealers,
superintendents of weights and measures, and in
some instances merely custodians. Except in Mass-
achusetts and Rhode Island, where competent of-
ficers were appointed, these sealers were usually
state officials whose time w^as already fully occupied,
who were without any preparation for the discliarge
of this scientific ofiice, who received little or no ex-
tra salary for the extra duty, and who generally
looked upon it as a nominal matter. As an inevitable
result, the standards were not applied, and had about
as much effect on the arts and trades as have the
constitutions of certain of the South American re-
publics upon the governments of those countries.
They are excellent constitutions, but are never used.
Shortly after the creation of the Bureau of Stan-
dards, seven years ago. Dr. Stratton invited all the
state sealers to a conference at the Bureau. This
invitation was the first intimation that a number
of these gentlemen had that they held such an office.
Since then there has been such a conference every
year. The conferences have resulted in awakening
many of the states to a realization of the importance
of actually applying their standards. A number
have taken practical steps in this direction. New
York has followed the good example of Massachusetts
and Rhode Island in appointing a separate official,
and a scientist, as State Superintendent of Weights
and Measures. In this and many other ways the
Bureau of Standards, although without mandatory
powers, seeks to protect against fraud and error the
honest merchant and manufacturer as well as the
consumer. For example, before New York had a
superintendent of weights and measures, it was the
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER 267
custom of some enterprising manufacturers of milk
bottles in Massachusetts to sell their undersized bot-
tles, known in the trade as "shorts," to New York
dairymen. These dairymen, so far from being inno-
cent dupes, specifically ordered "shorts," and in-
dignantly returned any full-measured bottles which
chanced to slip into their orders. It was the dis-
covery by the Bureau of Standards of this and many
similar frauds which led New York to appoint this
superintendent, and which w^U undoubtedly lead
many other states to take such precaution.
The Bureau is now testing upwards of a thousand
thermometers a month. The Bureau's heat expert
visited the manufacturers' factories, tested and
criticised their standards, loaned them precision
standards and explained their use. The makers in
turn visited the Bureau to study the methods of test-
ing under ideal conditions. When the work was
started, inaccuracy was the rule. It is now the ex-
ception. In aiding to establish a standard scale of
temperature for the manufacturer the Bureau is in-
directly furnishing precision in the measuring of
temperature to the people of the whole country. This
is only one of the many instances showing how the
Bureau of Standards co-operates with the manu-
facturer in his endeavor to produce a more satis-
factory product.
Besides these commercial tests the Bureau is con-
stantly conducting scientific researches for the im-
provement of methods. Such new knowledge is not
only applied to our own methods, but is contributed
to the International Bureau of Standards in Paris.
This International Bureau, maintained by twenty-two
nations, has as its purpose the establishment of uni-
formity of weights, measures, and standards, both
268 THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER
in theory and practice, throughout the civilized
world.
cutte/*IerSce Now that there is a movement on foot which ad-
vocates the establishment of a National Department
of Health, it is pertinent to suggest what the Rev-
enue Cutter Service does in that direction. The con-
structive duties of this service are: to aid wrecked
vessels, to construct and inspect life-saving stations
and drill life-saving crews, to protect the seal and
other fisheries in Alaskan waters, and to destroy
derelicts and other dangers to navigation. To per-
form this duty the Service has recently constructed
the first ship of her kind to be used by any govern-
ment — the Seneca, derelict destroyer.
The Gulf Coast of the United States was visited
in 1905 by a yellow fever epidemic. Almost im-
mediately a fleet of revenue cutters was patrolling
the waters of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and
Florida. For the first time in the history of such
epidemics there was not a case of the spread of the
disease by sea. During 1907 the revenue cutters
saved at sea in the neighborhood of 1,000 lives and
over $33,000,000 worth of cargoes.
Here I have merely suggested a relatively few
of the many ways in which the constructive branches
of the Federal Government are contributing every
day to the well-being of every man, woman, and child
in the country; a very few of the ways in which the
millions we pay in taxes come back to us in benefits.
Given the conditions which these facts suggest,
would the sternest Jeffersonian advocate a return to
the nearer approach to a minimum of government
which once we found satisfactory? Would Jefferson
himself, were he now alive, advocate any such re-
turn?
THE GOVERNMENT AS A TEACHER 269
Our rapidly climbing National Budget is arousing
considerable adverse comment. That there should
be some retrenchment is perhaps wise — even neces-
sary. Should such retrenchment, however, curtail
the work of the wealth-producing and wealth-conserv-
ing functions of the government, such as those here
touched upon, it would be like killing the goose
that lays the golden eggs.
XXIX
The general
problem of
the National
Bureau of
Education
Social
hygiene and
school
sanitation
THE ACTIVITIES OF THE NATIONAL BU-
REAU OF EDUCATION
P. P. CLAXTON
National Commissioner of Education
1. Directly or indirectly the entire work of the
Bureau has a bearing on child welfare. It is engaged
on the general problem of portraying to the nation
through statistical material, through special publica-
tions, and by expert help, the educational status of
tLlo and foreign lands, and the educational needs of
the children and youth of our country. It has no
general supervisory power over any state system of
education, and has no desire for any such power. A
part of its function consists in bringing together here
at Washington, all the significant facts relating to
educational progress and educational needs in all of
the States, and in publishing and distributing this
material to those who can use it to advantage. In
addition, by reason of the special information, it is
constantly receiving from all parts of our country as
well as from all other progressive countries, the
Bureau, through the trained workers it has called into
service, is able to make valuable, specific suggestions
to school officers, public and private, on many of
the vexing problems of school administration, courses
of study, and numerous other similar topics.
2. In a more specialized way the Bureau,
through its Division of School Hygiene and School
Sanitation, is doing a much needed service for child
270
NATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION 271
welfare, by dealing with matters relating to the health
of school children, and especially to school sanitation.
Through this division it is furnishing information
and expert advice on matters relating to the sanitary
construction of school buildings for both public and
private school officers in all parts of the country.
During the year it has helped in the planning of
school buildings, the combined cost of which will
approximate $10,000,000. These buildings include
all grades, from one-teacher country schools to col-
leges and universities. It has been the aim of this
division of the Bureau to secure, as far as possible,
in all such buildings, adequate lighting, good sys-
tems of ventilation, modern methods of sanitation, and
such educational conveniences as children and young
people in general deserve. It has given especial at-
tention to the needs of the rural schools, and has,
through the aid of two of the leading school archi-
tects of the country, Messrs. "W. B. Ittner, of St.
Louis, and Cooper and Bailey, of Boston, prepared
a few knock-down models of rural schoolhouses
which will be duplicated and sent out, if means to do
so can be secured, so that rural school officers may see
how to build beautiful and sanitary country school-
houses. A great number of school buildings now
being used by country school children are badly
planned, insanitary and ugly. It may seem shocking
to contemplate, but it is a fact that there are still
in use for school purposes buildings totally unfit for
children. For example, here is a partial description
made by the teacher of such a building, and while
it tells of very bad conditions, this building does
not represent the worst: ''There is no sod about the
building, but the weeds will average three feet high
all over the yard. The schoolhouse is not painted,
272 NATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION
the roof is little better than none. It is not weather-
boarded, but is just boxed up with twelve-inch planks
and the cracks stripped. The walls are ceiled with
dressed lumber, and three of the window panes are
broken out. There are no globes, maps or charts.
There are, however, a number of books for children
in the library. There are no outhouses. The spring-
has failed, and we carry our water from a neigh-
bor's well."
This is a meager account of this school building;
but one who can read between the lines will see a
dingy, dirty room, with inadequate lighting, no cloak-
rooms, a rusty stove in the middle of the room, painted
boards for a blackboard, in all probability ill-fitting
school desks, a rough single floor, and a dirty bucket
with a single rusty dipper from which all the chil-
dren drink, and no playground at all. Such condi-
tions are insanitary and totally unfair to the chil-
dren. There are still literally thousands of country
school buildings of this general type.
This division has been called on, by teachers and
social workers from all parts of the country, for de-
tailed information regarding the conservation of the
health of school children.
By the use of the facilities the Bureau has for
gathering such information, all such requests have
been complied with as far as the limited number of
clerks at its disposal would permit. The Bureau has
one of the best collections of educational books and
documents to be found anywhere in the world, and
it ought to be given ample funds so that it might
be able to furnish on short notice the latest and com-
X)'''^test information on all such questions to anyone
who could use this information to advantage. A
great number of special, annotated reference lists
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NATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION 273
have been compiled and sent out, bearing on such,
questions as the followmg: The hygiene of child
development; medical inspection of school children;
open-air schools and classes; play and playgrounds;
sanitary science and public health education; school
gardens; schoolhouses and school hygiene; the school
janitor; sex instruction of school children, and on
numerous other topics.
3. It has recently made an intensive survey of Hygienic
. . , . '^ . conditions in
the hygienic conditions of rural schoolhouses in t\vo rural schools
typical counties of each of nineteen States, and is
preparing the results of this investigation for pub-
lication. This will give the most extended informa-
tion yet compiled on the general conditions of school
sanitation in country schools, and, it is hoped, will
be useful in stimulating school officials to undertake
reforms in this part of our educational service. Among
the various facts made known by this investigation
is one that deserves attention here. The school
grounds about rural schoolhouses are altogether too
meager and very frequently ill adapted for school
purposes. Country schools should have ample play-
grounds not only for the children in school but for
the use, during vacations and holidays, of the older
boys in the neighborhood. There should be additional
ground for agricultural work, for gardening, for fruit
growing, and, in many places, for experiments in
forestry work.
The country schoolhouse ought to be the center
for all the educational and social work oi the neigh-
borhood. This would give the country school a dig-
nity, and the children an opportunity now almost
wholly denied them. It is certainly true that the
welfare of our country children, as well as of the
homes they represent, is intimitely connected witlt
Vol. VI.— 18
274 NATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION
Outlining
courses of
study
Bureau
reports and
ijuUetins
better school buildings, larger school grounds, and
a more intelligent correlation between the school
work and the needs and opportunities of country life.
4. The Bureau, through this division and other
divisions, has outlined various courses of study and
social service work for women's clubs and other or-
ganizations of like character, when their requests for
such help were centered about some phase of educa-
tional work or child welfare service. This gives the
Bureau opportunity to furnish such workers with in-
formation, and to get from them any suggestions
they wash to offer as to what special needs it ought
to seek to supply.
It is the nation *s clearing-house on all matters
relating to public and private education in our coun-
try, and to a greater or less degree for foreign lands.
No other nation has thus far approximated this coun-
try in putting at the disposal of all its citizens such
an amount of educational information as may be
found here.
5. The Bureau publishes annually two large
volumes. One volume is devoted to educational
statistics of approximately all the schools in all the
States. Those schools which neglect to report are of
necessity not included, but these are a comparatively
small and diminishing percentage. The other volume
is devoted to careful discussions of the vital edu-
cational problems of this and other countries.
Besides these volumes of the annual report, the
Bureau publishes a series of bulletins on various topics
of vital interest. Those so far published, bearing
more or less directly on child welfare, are as fol-
lows:
The continuation school in the United States;
Auxiliary schools of Germany; the apprenticeship
NATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION 275
system; Daily meals of school children; American
schoolhouses ; Provision for exceptional children in
the public schools ; Course of study for rural school
teachers; Educational status of nursing; Country
schools for city boys; The reorganized school play-
ground ; The Montessori system of education ; The
readjustment of a rural high school to the needs
of the community.
Any of these bulletins or reports, the supply of
which has not already been exhausted, may be had
without cost by those who can use them advanta-
geously. There are in preparation also bulletins bear-
ing on the following related topics: Medical inspec-
tion of school children ; General bibliography on
school hygiene ; Rural schoolhouses ; and The status
of rural education.
6. The Bureau of Education, through its Alaska ^aV^ai"*""''
Division, is making an especial effort for the welfare Division
of the children of practically the entire native popu-
lation of Alaska. Teachers, over fifty per cent, of
whom are married, are stationed in eighty-five vil-
lages. In many cases where the teachers are mar-
ried, the husband teaches the older pupils while the
wife teaches the smaller children during the morn-
ing and spends the afternoon visiting the homes and
instructing the mothers and the children in the care
of the sick and of the babies, and teaching the mother
the importance of cleanliness in the home and hy-
gienic care of the children. In many of the schools,
a bathroom has been installed and the children come
to the schools once a week for their bath, the teachers
caring for the little ones and instructing the older
children how to care for the younger members of
the family as well as themselves. Practically every
school is visited at least once a year by a physician
276 NATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION
in the employ of the Bureau and every child in the
vicinity of the school carefully examined and medi-
cal treatment given to those in need of it. Many
of the schools are visited two or three times a year
by a physician. In southeastern and southwestern
Alaska, traveling nurses visit the stations, where
they are most needed and spend from a few days
to a month or two caring for the sick, instructing
the mothers in the care of the children, and similar
duties. The Bureau maintains a hos.pital at Juneau,
in southeastern Alaska, and one at Nushagak, in
southwestern Alaska, to which natives requiring hos-
pital care are sent. It also has contracts with private
hospitals in northern Alaska. The teachers investi-
gate all cases of abused and neglected children and
see that they are properly cared for. When they find
orphans in need, they endeavor to have the relatives
of the children care for them or to find some worthy
family willing to adopt them. If, for any reason,
the teacher is unable to find some proper person to
care for needy children, he is authorized to provide
food, clothing and other necessities. In some cases,
when there is a shortage of fish and the natives are
in need of food, a daily meal has been prepared by
the cooking classes and served in the schoolroom
to the children.
XXX
THE EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE UNITED
STATES IN THE PHILIPPINES
MARY H. FEE
U. S. Correspondence Study Division for Filipino
Teachers
HE educational work of the United States
in the Philippine Islands began while war
was still in progress. As soon as our army
entered a town and the flag was run up, a
private soldier was detailed to act as teacher and to
open the public schools. In the two years, 1899 and
1900, English gained a slight foothold, so that when
civil government was made effective in 1901, and the
army transport Thomas brought its passenger list
of 516 American teachers to the islands, there were,
in every large town, two or three advanced pupils,
capable of rendering effective assistance to the peda-
gogues.
In the beginning, no attempt was made to extend
education to all parts of the islands. Teacher's were
stationed only in the larger towns where good edu-
cational material from the old Spanish schools al-
ready existed. The first need was for native teachers,
for it was clearly perceived that only by native help
could education be carried into the remote barrios,
or hamlets, of the archipelago.
Consequently, in each of the larger towns, a class
o! aspirant cs, or candidates for teaching positions,
was separated from the English school, and placed
The
beginnings
The
asDirantes
277
278 WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES
under an American teacher, who was to ''rush" them
all he could and to prepare them for first grade
teachers by the opening of the next school year. The
boys and girls composing these classes were, in some
cases, the offspring of rich, upper class families,
whose education in the colegios of Manila had been
cut short by the revolutionary outbreak of 1896, and
who were only too glad to avail themselves of the
opportunity to study and to earn money; for five
years of war had impoverished the land and greatly
curtailed the incomes of the landholding aristocracy.
In other cases, they were children of middle class
families, exceedingly desirous of improving their con-
dition.
So well did the aspirante classes succeed that, al-
though none of them was organized before October
1901, there was available a fair supply of primary
English teachers for the opening of the school year
in June, 1902. This first crop of aspirantes was put
to work in first grade classes under the supervision
of an American teacher. They continued teaching
all through 1902 and 1903, doing school work in the
mornings and attending a "teachers' class" in the
afternoon. In this way their English was kept in
advance of their pupils; and in June, 1903, they
could be pushed up to second grade teachers while
a new class of aspirantes, with longer and better
preparation, stepped into their shoes.
In 1904, intermediate schools, equivalent in grade
to our fifth, sixth, and seventh grades, were estab-
lished, all instructors being Americans. They were
necessarily limited in number but it may be generally
stated that one was established in each province. The
rapidly increasing output of Filipino aspirantes with
two, three, and four years of preparation permitted
WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES
279
the withdrawal of all Americans from primary teach-
ing, and their concentration in intermediate schools.
Soon the need of high schools became apparent ; for
many of the intermediate pupils had been previously
educated in Spanish, and as soon as their English
was well advanced there was no excuse for delaying
their secondary education.
The economic conditions in the islands were such
as to make the division of schools into grammar
schools and high schools an impracticable one. To
meet the circumstances prevailing, schools were or-
ganized as follows :
(a) The primary schools with a four years'
course. They were originally organized in the larger
towns only, but they now extend to the remotest
hamlets. In 1912, they numbered 3,364.
(b) The intermediate schools. These are found
only in the larger towns. In 1912, their total num-
ber was 283. They have specialized courses as fol-
lows: a general course; a course for teaching; a
course in farming ; a course in housekeeping and house-
hold arts, and a course for business. Circular No.
71, series of 1912, has this to say on specialization in
intermediate schools. "This specialization was made
in the belief that the child who has attended the
primary school, who has learned to read, write, and
cipher, and whose means permit him to take only a
limited amount of further study, should be helped to
secure a training that will directly prepare him for
a useful life, and should be allowed the exercise of
a choice in the kind of training to be taken. It is
believed that, in public school courses, there has been
too great uniformity, and that the hard and fast
course which all pupils are required to follow is not
primarily designed to lead to the acquirement of a
Primary
schools
Intermediate
schools
280
WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES
High schools
The
university
Financial
support
vocation, but was originally framed as a preparation
for professional training. The truly democratic pub-
lic school system must be devised, not for the sole
benefit of a small class who will prosecute higher
and professional studies, but rather for the purpose
of providing useful instruction for all classes of
people."
(c) The high schools. Thqy axe situated in
provincial capitals. There were thirty-eight of them
in 1912. Each has usually attached to it a manual
training and trade school, and an intermediate de-
partment.
In addition to these three classes of schools, the
Bureau of Education directly controls the Manila
Normal School, housed in a new reinforced concrete
structure costing approximately $225,000, the School
of Arts and Trades, a School of Commerce, and a
School for the Deaf and Blind. Both the latter, how-
ever, are administered through the city schools of
Manila.
There was established in 1908, a Philippine Uni-
versity, not under control of the Bureau of Educa-
tion. It has graduated one class, and has in present
operation a College of Liberal Arts for which a build-
ing costing $126,000 is in process of erection, a Col-
lege of Medicine and Surgery, housed in a new rein-
forced concrete structure, and a College of Agricul-
ture, situated at Los Bafios, a short distance from
Manila.
The educational system is maintained primarily
by an annual appropriation from the revenues of the
Insular Government, and by taxation levied in the
municipalities. In 1912, it received from the Insular
Government an appropriation of 3,610,000 pesos, or
$1,805,000, and from municipal taxation, 3,213,030.13
pesos, or $1,606,515,065.
WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES
281
Educational affairs are administered from the
Bureau of Education in Manila. At its head is the
present Director of Education, Mr. Frank Russell
White. He is ably assisted by Mr. Frank L. Crone,
First Assistant Director, and Mr. C. H. Magee, Sec-
ond Assistant Director. For convenience in adminis-
tration, the Bureau is separated into six divisions; a
property division, an accounting division, a buildings
division, a publication and industrial information
division, a records division, and a correspondence
study division for Filipino teachers. Over each
division is an American, officially styled a division
chief. The greater part of clerical and stenographic
work is done by young Filipino men and women, the
products of the new English school system. In 1912,
the Bureau force consisted of twenty-four American
and one hundred and eighteen Filipino employes.
From this central administrative office in Manila,
radiate the offices of thirty-seven division superin-
tendents, each office an administrative sub-center. The
Philippine Islands embrace approximately 125,000
square miles of territory and contain a population
of about 8,000,000 people. They are subdivided into
thirty-eight political units known as provinces, and
with the exception of Surigao-Misamis, each province
is an educational unit also. In the capital, is the
office of the division superintendent of schools. He
is a bonded official, responsible for the distribution,
care and preservation of tens of thousands of dol-
lars' worth of government property. He has charge
of all public schools in his division, he recommends
insular teachers for appointment or dismissal, he
stations them, he selects school sites, he actually ap-
points all municipal teachers, and is, in short, re-
sponsible for the maintenance of the school system in
Bureau of
education
The
educational
units
282 WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES
his province. His duties are those not only of a school
superintendent but of a school board. Up to the
present time, all division superintendents have been
Americans.
Supervising Under the division superintendent is a corps of
district supervising teachers, chiefly Americans,
though, as fast as they are available, Filipinos are
being pressed into these responsible positions. A
supervising teacher's district may vary, in extent,
from 100 square miles to 1,000, and it usually em-
braces several municipalities.
A municipality in the Philippines corresponds
more nearly to a township in the United States than
it does to anything else. It consists usually of a large
town together with all the hamlets, or barrios, lying
within a certain radius, and the fields and forests ad-
jacent thereto. In the largest town of each munic-
ipality, there may be an intermediate school, while
in the barrios are found only primary schools. Pri-
mary schools may be graded or ungraded according
to the size of the barrio and the number of pupils
in attendance.
The supervising teacher is the immediate active
force of the educational system, and his life is an
arduous one. He must know his district thoroughly,
no matter how wild it may be, and must keep con-
tinually on the move; he must ford rivers, or swim
them, must ride or walk over mountain trails as
chance decrees, and must face danger from natural
causes. He must be tactful, but firm; and must be
economic of his resources. He must be a business
man as well as an educator, must have energy un-
tiring, forethought, and initiative. In the beginning,
he may, being an American man, know nothing about
domestic science, Irish crochet, pillow lace, embroid-
WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES
283
ery stitches or basketry weaves; but he has an in-
dustrial system under his charge which makes it neces-
sary for him to get utilitarian information on these
and on numerous other industrial pursuits in short
order. He has only Filipinos to deal with, and must
keep them up to their tasks without antagonizing
or discouraging them. And finally, he must cheer-
fully lend his aid to every other Bureau in the
islands. If cholera or smallpox be epidemic, the Bu-
reau of Health demands the co-operation of the
Bureau of Education in disseminating information
on preventive measures to be taken. If economic con-
ditions are to be discussed, the American supervis-
ing teacher is called upon to investigate and to re-
port for his district. It is a man's work being a
supervising teacher in the Philippines, and five or
ten years' work under the Bureau is an educative
process that brings out all there is of capacity, char-
acter and endurance in the subject.
All public school instruction in the Philippines
is given in English. From a negligible quantity of
two or three hundred Filipinos able to teach primary
English in 1901, the school system has developed a
corps of 7,696 native teachers, capable of doing all
the primary course work and most of the inter-
mediate work. Almost no teaching below the eighth
grade is done by Americans. Supervising teachers
and secondary teachers are still Americans. In 1912,
there were employed 664 American teachers.
The academic work corresponds fairly closely to
our high school and grammar school work at home.
It is, however, in the industrial features particularly
that the Philippine schools have scored a success.
A system of manual training and trade schools
was planned from the first; but through the initia-
School
language
Industrial
education
284
WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES
Mannal work
of girls
Trade schools
for boys
tive and the utilitarian aptness of the women super-
vising teachers in Manila, and of the male super-
vising teachers in the provinces, industrial possibili-
ties that our first organizations hardly took into ac-
count have been seized upon and developed till they
bid fair to play no small part in the economic evolu-
tion of the country.
The Filipinos have always woven petates, or sleep-
ing mats, and have made baskets for domestic pur-
poses. American supervising teachers, knowing noth-
ing themselves of the actual details of the work, have
been so able to criticize and suggest that, little by
little, basketry work in the schools has become a fine
art. Nothing was lacking but design to put public
school basketry work into competition with European
work of the best type. In 1912, the Bureau of Edu-
cation met this need by securing the services of an
experienced designer.
The Spanish nuns had long since taught embroid-
ery and pillow-lace making in their colegios. Both
arts had fallen into desuetude during the years of
war from 1896 to 1902. They were revived, put into
the public school industrial system, and have affected
not only the school pupils, but the whole village life.
Irish crochet, hat weaving, mat weaving, basketry,
macrame work, embroidery, pillow-lace, slipper-
making, are actual industrial pursuits carried on by
public school pupils. In 1912, the sale of public school
products at the Manila Carnival amounted to $20,-
000.
The trade schools of the islands give instruction
in carpentry, cabinet work, blacksmithing, carriage
making, and metal work. They are usually es-
tablished in connection with provincial high schools.
Every primary and intermediate school has its school
WORK IN THE PHILIPPINES 285
garden, and boys of a certain age are required to
have home gardens which are regularly inspected by
their teachers. In 1912, there were 2,570 school
gardens cultivated, and 22,958 home gardens, the
products of which were sold or consumed by pupils
and patrons. Sixty-three thousand sixty-seven pupils
were enrolled in gardening classes. The public school
gardens have greatly influenced the local supply of
fresh vegetables. Successful school gardens startle
local producers into better methods and wider cul-
tivation. Lima beans, tomatoes, cabbage, corn, okra,
eggplant, wax beans, spinach, cucumbers, radishes,
lettuce, and green peas are the chief garden products.
Some of them were grown previous to American oc-
cupation, but the school product has improved both
the quality and quantity of products.
Athletics play no small part in the pubHc school Athletics
system. Before our day, the Filipino girl had no
outdoor Life. Now she plays tennis, croquet, basket-
ball, and golf, and at Baguio, the mountain capital,
she is beginning to try horseback riding.
The Filipino boys are devoted to sports. They are
good runners, jumpers, and wrestlers. Every school
has its baseball nine, and rivalry at the division meets
is very keen. The boys have clean sporting instincts,
and are becoming good losers as well as good win-
ners-
Public school athletics have raised standards, and
the younger generations of Filipinos educated in
American schools do not haunt the cock-pits as their
fathers did before them. With practically no legis-
lation to oppose them, the cock-pits have fallen off
fifty per cent in their receipts since 1901. There
could be no higher testimonial to our educational work
in the Philippines.
XXXI
The economic
value of good
roads
THE PUBLIC ROAD IN ITS RELATION TO
HUMAN WELFARE
LOGAN WALLER PAGE
Director, U. S. Office of Public Roads
HE advantages of improved roads have been
carefully computed and estimated in dollars
and cents, and so enormous have they been
thus demonstrated to be, that they present
a convincing argument of the necessity for road im-
provement. But there are other elements of advan-
tage which more urgently recommend the improve-
ment of our roads. Advantages w^hich deserve far
more serious consideration than any financial ad-
vantage which may accrue, and which cannot be
measured according to any monetary standard, but
must be looked for in the elevation of our citizenship
and the moral and intellectual advancement of our
people.
Most of our cities and toT\ms have good streets
and driveways, which facilitate business and recrea-
tion, and bring the schools and churches within easy
reach of all. Contrast the lot of the country child
on his way to school in the winter with that of his
city cousin with only a few blocks of paved street
to walk. The country child must leave home an hour
or more before school opens, in order to be there in
time. The roads are wet and muddy almost all of
the long and cold winter months ; in many places the
country is open, and the cold winds are merciless in
286
THE ROAD AND HUMAN WELFARE 287
their attacks upon him, so that by the time he reaches
the schoolhouse, which is often improperly ventilated
and poorly heated, his feet are cold and wet, and
his body so chilled that he is unfit for study or rec-
reation most of the day. This produces a lowered
condition of resistance to the attacks of pneumonia
and other disease germs, and causes broken and ir-
regular attendance, and creates an aversion for
school. Parents sometimes keep their children at
home rather than have them subjected to such con-
ditions, on the theory that the injurious effects upon
the body from such exposure will be greater than
the beneficial effects upon the mind.
In many parts of the country, the roads are im-
passable for pedestrians at certain seasons of the
year, which makes it necessary for children living
near railroads to walk to school over the tracks and
trestles. Many accidents occur every year in various
parts of the United States on this account. Only
last year, two children were killed in Cumberland
County, Pennsylvania, while making their way to
school over railroad tracks.
The report of the United States Bureau of Edu-
cation shows that in 1909 there were 24,000,000 chil-
dren in the United States, of school age, but that
only 17,500,000 were enrolled in the public schools.
This would indicate that there are several million
children who are deprived, for one reason or another,
of obtaining an education, and I have no doubt that
a large number of these are prevented from attend-
ing school on account of bad roads. Furthermore,
many schools in the country districts are closed for
varying periods on account of the impassable condi-
tion of the roads, and many of the schools which are
not closed have a nominal percentage of attendance.
288 THE ROAD AND HUMAN WELFARE
The effect of
good roads on
country
school
systems
While it is true that various factors contribute
to increase or decrease the attendance at schools in
given sections of the country, it is worthy of com-
ment that in the States having a high percentage of
improved roads, a much larger percentage of the
students enrolled regularly attend the schools than
in the States having a small percentage of improved
roads. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
Ohio and Indiana, the States which have a large
mileage of improved roads, the average attendance
of enrolled pupils in 1908-9 was eighty per cent;
while in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, South
Dakota, and Georgia, States which are noted for bad
roads, the average attendance for the same year was
sixty-four per cent — eighty per cent in the good roads
States as against sixty-four per cent in the bad
roads States. In the States first named, thirty-five
per cent of the roads have been improved, while in
the latter group of States there are only 1.5 per cent
of the roads improved.
That improved roads would revolutionize our
country school system, there would seem to be no
doubt. Improved roads make it possible to consoli-
date or centralize the schools and to establish graded
schools in the rural districts. Such schools centrally
located will accommodate all of the children within
a radius of from four to five miles. In many com-
munities having the advantage of improved roads,
commodious buildings have been provided, more
competent teachers have been employed, and modern
facilities for teaching have been supplied at a mini-
mum cost. For instance, since the improvement of
the main highways in Durham County, North Caro-
lina, the number of schoolhouses have been reduced
from sixty-five to forty-two, of which seventeen are
THE ROAD AND HUIVIAN WELFARE 289
graded and have two or more rooms and employ two
or more teachers.
There are at the present time about two thousand
consolidated rural schools in the United States. It
appears that Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana have
made the greatest progress along these lines, and it
is rather significant to note that in these States about
one-third of the roads have been improved. Accord-
ing to the statistics of the Agricultural Department,
there was expended in 1899, $22,116 in Massachusetts
for the conveyance of pupils to consolidated schools,
but in 1908 the expenditure for this purpose
amounted to $292,213. In Indiana, the expenditure
for this purpose in 1904, amounted to $86,000, while
in 1908, $290,000 w^as expended. This expenditure
for transportation reflects, in a general way, the ex-
tent and progress of this new educational movement.
It must not be understood that this is an additional
burden, as the expenditure thus made is saved in
other directions — that is, by the decrease in the num-
ber of schools and economy in their operation.
In Indiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, and other States,
the one-room, one-teacher schools are being replaced
by central schoolhouses, with a half-dozen rooms and
as many teachers. "Wagons are sent out every day
to gather up the children and to take them home
again in the evening. All of the children within
a radius of several miles are thus provided with
the most modern school facilities. In some of these
schools, courses in manual training, agriculture, and
home economics have been introduced, scientific ap-
paratus utilized, and teachers having special qualifica-
tions and training employed.
It has been found to cost less proportionately to
build, equip, and operate these consolidated schools
Good roads,
consolidated
schools and
economy
VoL VL— 19
290 THE ROAD AND HUI^IAN WELFARE
than the one-room, one-teacher variety. The aver-
age annual cost per pupil for forty-five consolidated
schools located in ditferent parts of the country in
1907, was $33.33, but taking Hardin County, Iowa,
as an example of the district school system, the aver-
age cost per pupil was $40.78, for the fifteen district
schools. Moreover, the average daily attendance at
the consolidated schools was 139, while the average
attendance at the district schools was only six. The
advantages of this new system of education are
obvious, but the chief obstacle in the way of its gen-
eral adoption is that of bad roads. The crusade for
better schools and better roads must, therefore, move
forward together, if the country boy is to receive
the same vocational training as his city cousin.
luiteracy Data obtained from the Twelfth Census of the
United States, compared with the road statistics of
the Office of Public Roads, show clearly the relation-
ship between illiteracy and bad roads. Many factors
contribute to produce illiteracy, but it is significant
that where you find one, you usually find the other.
In four States, namely, Arkansas, Missouri, Missis-
sippi, and North Carolina, where less than two per
cent of the roads are improved, there were 374,788
native born white illiterates in 1900, out of a total
population of 7,800,000, whereas in Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, where
thirty per cent of the roads are improved, there were
only 20,500 native born white illiterates in 1900, out
of a total population of 6,025,000.
Population TJ^e rapid trend of population from country to
city has been frequently commented upon as grave
cause for concern. No subject has been considered
more important by thoughtful students of the polit-
ical development of the country than the relation of
THE ROAD AND HUMAN WELFARE 291
the growth of population to the development of our
natural resources. In 1790, only 3.4 per cent of our
population dwelt in cities, but at the present time
it is estimated that about forty -seven per cent of our
people live in cities. This explains why hundreds of
millions of fertile acres remain untilled, while the
unsanitary and unwholesome city tenements are
crowded with human beings whose standard of liv-
ing must result in their mental, moral, and physical
decay. Man is a social animal and prefers misery
and want rather than isolation, and the tenement
dwellers will not go to the country, if by so doing
they isolate themselves from their fellowmen.
That the connnon road vitally affects this phase
of American life must be apparent to even the casual
observer. An examination of the statistics of popu-
lation in counties possessing first-class roads will
reveal the fact that in almost every case the popula-
tion has increased, while the sections of the country
which have lost in population are conspicuous for bad
roads. This statement is corroborated by comparing
reports of the Office of Public Roads with the popula-
tion reports of the United States Census. It is found
that in many parts of the country the average loss
in rural population varies from ten to twenty per
cent, while the gain in city population averages from
thirty to forty per cent.
In twenty-five counties located in different parts
of the country, an actual decrease in population,
amounting to 77,823, is shown for the ten-year period
from 1890 to 1900. These same counties had an aver-
age of only 1.5 per cent of roads improved in 1904.
Contrasted with this showing, we have found that in
twenty-five other counties, located in the same States,
an increase in population took place during the same
292 THE ROAD AND HUMAN WELFARE
Bural free
delivery
Healtb
period, amounting to 778,383. Forty per cent of the
roads in these counties are improved. This is an
object lesson which should occasion serious thought,
for it proves that the counties which are increasing
in population are the counties which are carrying
forward adequately the work of road improvement.
They are not only maintaining their farms, but are
attracting outsiders to them.
The communities that have no use for better roads
are usually those that have no faith in better schools
or better tillage. Mud roads, broken-down fences,
dilapidated farm buildings, ill paid teachers, and
poorly attended schools, repel rather than invite set-
tlers. From these ill kept farms and muddy roads,
boys and girls flee to the cities. If these statements
be true, then it follows that good roads are the best
investment that any community can make and the
best advertisement that it can publish.
The schools and churches of a community are its
greatest moral and educational forces. Next to them,
perhaps, stands Rural Mail Delivery, which brings
the people of the rural districts in daily touch with
the cities and business world. It places in their
hands the daily papers, magazines, and all of the cur-
rent literature of the country, so that they may be
as well informed as to what is transpiring in the
political, literary, and commercial world as their
brothers in the cities. The beneficial effects of this
service upon the happiness and home comforts of
our rural population is immeasurable, and nothing
contributes to its efficiency and regularity more than
improved roads.
The public road bears a direct relation to the
public health. Although this is sufficiently obvious
to those who have given attention to the matter, it
THE ROAD AND HUMAN WELFARE 293
is, nevertheless, a subject that has been overlooked
by the general public. Figures and statistics do not
apply to the discussion of this phase of the question,
but experience and observation will justify the state-
ment that many an infant has been sacrificed at birth,
owing to the difficulty experienced by the doctor in
reaching the farm at the proper time. Every country
doctor is an ardent advocate of road improvement,
since he knows better than anyone else the direct bear-
ing that the condition of the roads has upon his
ability to get about and provide the aid and succor
which it is his business to supply. The impossibility
of rendering first aid to the injured, whether child
or adult, over bad roads, is undoubtedly responsible
for many deaths and deformities.
The danger of spreading disease by means of dust
and poor drainage, particularly in relation to tuber-
culosis and typhoid fever, emphasizes the fact that the
condition of the public highways is a subject that
cannot be overlooked in any earnest inquiry into the
compelling reasons for systematic road improvement.
It has been said that the public road is the main dust
factory of the nation, and the thoughtful man cannot
deny the truth of the statement.
The automobile, without doubt, is having and will auu)mobiio
continue to have a very great influence upon the
development and the uplift of the dwellers in the
country. The automobile is enabling the dwellers
in the cities to reach further in their excursions and
in their influence into the rural districts. The more
progressive farmers are seeing the value of this
method of communication and transportation, and
are taking up the use of motor-driven vehicles.
Unquestionably the automobile has brought up
new problems to be confronted by the engineer. It
294 THE ROAD AND HUMAN WELFARE
Why women
should work
for improved
roads
may be said, however, that though the motor-driven
vehicle is to a certain extent a road destroyer, it is
at the same time doing more than any other influence
to bring about a correction of the evils which have
followed in its wake.
The dust problem did not begin with the intro-
duction of the automobile, although it has undoubtedly
been accentuated by this mode of travel. There are
sections of our country at the present time where
the roads have been rendered practically dustless,
and neither horse-drawn vehicles nor automobiles can
now deposit the dirt of the highways in the gardens
and houses of abutting property owners. In short,
there are many suburban and rural communities in
which life today is far more agreeable, pleasurable,
and possible than ever before, because systematic
and scientific road building has been carried on.
The good roads improvement affects the women
as vitally as it affects the men. Heretofore the prob-
lem has been left entirely to the men, but there are
as many women and girls as there are men and boys,
as many living in the country in isolated neighbor-
hoods, and these are affected by bad roads to a greater
extent than are the men and boys. As a general rule,
women are more interested in educational, social and
religious work than the men, and all of these are de-
pendent to a large extent upon the condition of the
roads. To get to church, to school or to any social
function, it is often necessary for the farmer's wife
or daughter to travel over miles of road, and miless
the roads are in a fairly passable condition, they must
stay at home.
No matter how isolated the farm may be, or how
bad the roads may become, a man will, in spite of
all these difficulties, get out and go to the crossroads
THE ROAD AND HUj\IAN WELFARE 295
store, or on an errand to the neighbor's, where he
T\ill enjoy a bit of social gossip. He will strap a
saddel to an old mule, or go horseback, or even walk
miles through the mud on a hunting trip. He man-
ages to get out in some way, but the wife and daugh-
ter are often compelled to stay at home. This situa-
tion is only relieved by the approach of spring, when
the liquid morasses, which we call public roads, dry
up and become passable for wheeled vehicles.
Experts on the diseases of the mind claim that a
considerable percentage of the inmates of insane
as3'lums are women, who are the wives or servants
of farmers, and who have been driven to despair by
the unbroken monotony of their lives. That these
conditions are largely attributable to bad roads there
can be no c[uestion.
The lack of comforts, and even the necessities of
life in many country houses, may also be traced to
bad roads. The farmer is unable to market his prod-
ucts to advantage when he has to haul them through
miles of muddy roads; it frequently costs him more
in time and effort than he is able to obtain in dol-
lars and cents. He therefore contents himself with
raising only enough for his own use, and the wife or
daughter must suffer in the end for lack of comforts
which he is unable to purchase.
Owing to the bad condition of the roads at cer-
tain seasons of the year, communication between the
country districts and the rest of the world is, to a
great extent, cut off. A large number of our people
are, therefore, isolated from the outside during these
seasons, and, living apart from one another as they
do, a mud embargo is placed upon social and business
intercourse. They are thus deprived of many of the
advantages which our present state of civilization and
advancement should afford them.
296 THE ROAD AXD HTMAX WELFAEE
A eontinned depriTation of these priTileges has
brought abont disoontent, and has resnlted in the
abandonment of many farms thronghout the conntry.
This is especially true of the young people. Grow-
ing weary of the isolation and dreariness of farm life,
they are enticed away by the attractions of the city.
That to a considerable extent these condir'riis would
be alleviated by better roads is unquest: -7^
It will be seen from these facts that :_- .uesrlon
of road improTement vitally a:reots the women as well
£s :he men. Every woman's organization in the
country should, therefore, study this subject and co-
operatt with the men in the great campaign of educa-
tion now in progress, which has for its object the
abolition 01 :::iiiy roads.
XXXII
DEVELOPMENT
ROBERT BROWNING
My father T^-as a scholar and knew Greek.
When I was five years old I asked him once,
''What do you read about?"
''The Siege of Troy."
"What is a siege and what is Troy?"
Whereat
He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat,
— Helen, enticed away from home (he said)
By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close
Under the footstool, being cowardly,
But whom, — since she was worth the pains, poor
puss —
Towzer and Tray, — our dogs, the Atreidai, — sought
By taking Troy to get possession of.
— Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk,
(My pony in the stable) — forth would prance
And put to flight Hector — our page-boy's self.
This taught me who was who, and what was what;
So far I rightly understood the case
At five years old ; a huge delight it proved
And still proves — thanks to that instructor sage
My Father, who knew better than turn straight
Learning's full flare on weak-eyed ignorance.
Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand-blind,
Content with darkness and vacuity.
It happened two or three years afterward,
297
298 DEVELOPMENT
That — I and playmates playing at Troy's Siege —
My Father came upon our make-believe.
*'How would you like to read yourself the tale
Properly told, of which I gave you first
Merely such notion as a boy could bear ?
Pope, now, would give you the precise account
Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship.
You'll hear — vrho knows? — from Homer's very
mouth.
Learn Greek by all means, Read the 'Blind Old
Man,
Sweetest of Singers' — tupJilos which means 'blind,'
Eedistos which means 'sweetest.' Time enough!
Try, anyhow, to master him some day;
Until when, take what serves for substitute,
Read Pope, by all means!"
So I ran through Pope,
Enjoyed the tale, — what history so true?
Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged.
Grew fitter thus for what was promised next —
The very thing itself, the actual words.
When I could turn — say, Buttmann to account.
Time passed, I ripened somewhat; one fine day,
*' Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less?
There 's Heine, where the big books block the shelf ;
Don't skip a word, thumb well the Lexicon!"
I thumbed well, and skipped nowise till I learned
Who was who, what was what, from Homer's tongue.
And there an end of learning. Had you asked
The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old,
*'Who was it wrote the Iliad?" — what a laugh!
"Why Homer, all the world knows; of his life
Doubtless some facts exist; it's everywhere;
We have not settled, though, his place of birth;
He begged, for certain, and was blind beside;
DEVELOPMENT 299
Seven cities claimed him — Scio, with best right,
Thinks Byron. What he wrote? Those Hymns we
have.
Then there's the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice/
That's all — unless they d^'g 'Margites' np,
(I'd like that) nothing more remains to know."
XXXIII
THE SANTA CLAUS PROBLEM
ELIZABETH CHERRILL. BIRNEY
First Editor of Child Welfare Magazine
I HAT shall we tell the children about Santa
Claus? Every year conscientious mothers
are disturbed by this question. Shall we
give the children the short-lived joy of be-
lieving in the Christmas Saint, running the risk of
having the child feel afterward that his father and
mother have deceived him, or shall we tell him no
Santa Claus myths at all, depriving him of what has
long seemed one of his inalienable rights? It is no
exaggeration to say that grown-ups are also robbed
of much of their Christmas joy. The beautiful holi-
day gets to be more or less a prosaic festival in the
house where there are no children.
The telling of the Christmas myths to the little
ones helps us all to believe in fairy tales, to let the
rosy light of romance shine on the dusty lumber of
our work-a-day minds, and to enter with the children
into the realm of ''make-believe."
The belief of the best modern educators seems to
be that those human beings develop into the health-
iest and most normal adult life who have had, at
each stage of these childish developments, the full
activities of that period. If we rob the child of won-
der-stories when he is at the age which craves them
he is to just that extent stunted in his growth as an
all-around human being. If we do not supply the
growing boy with the material for hero-worship, or
300
THE SANTA CLAUS PROBLEM 301
youth with poetry and romance to give it high pur-
pose and moral uplift they cannot take up hero tales
or poetry with the same benefit in after life. The
hour for each strikes once on the clock of life. We
cannot set back the hands, and woe to us if we try to
set them forward. We can do our best by our chil-
dren only by understanding the orderly process of
their normal unfolding.
Yes, then, let us tell the children Santa Claus
stories, let us read them ''The Night Before Christ-
mas" — let us read it ourselves to keep our hearts
young, on good Dr. Lavendar's principle: ''When-
ever you are afraid you are too old to do a thing, go
and do it at once."
The trouble with the Santa Claus myth is in our
telling of it. We should tell the story simply as a
story, not seeking to apply it locally, not trying to
explain why or how Santa gets here and there, not
putting in details which do not belong in the old
story. Let the child fit it into his own environment
as best he can. Unless we imply some question of
probability by seeking to give to mythical events "a
local habitation and a name," the child accepts it as
not more marvelous than many other things which
surround him — the whole world is to him a wonder-
book — a veritable fairy tale — and flying reindeer are
little stranger than balloons or automobiles. When
he asks too many questions, when he can no longer
accept the story simply and naturally, he is out-
growing it. One of the most important things about
Santa Claus is to recognize his limitations and to
know when his day is past. Most parents keep up
the deception and try to make Santa more probable.
They leave a window open lest the chimney be too
small, or fit Santa out with an automobile for greater
302 THE SANTA CLAUS PROBLEM
speed, piling Ossa upon Pelion of falsehood in the
effort to strengthen the shaky structure they have
reared. As a rule, the child begins to question so
gradually that his disillusionment need never be a
shock to him, if we simply begin to tell him the
truth when he is ready for it. The Christmas when
his faith is wavering, when he does not quite know
what to believe, is the time for him to help you pack
a dinner for a poorer child, to go with you to take
to3^s or books to a hospital. If he asks if Santa Claus
will not remember those children, say * ' Yes, but when
you help them you are being a Santa Claus, too, you
also are helping to make these people happy." Lit-
tle by little, he will get the thought that Santa Claus
means the spirit of love and helpfulness.
It is a great pity when children are told that
Santa Claus brings the Christmas tree. It is so much
prettier and more educative to have the children help
trim the tree as they do in the kindergarten. The
home-made trees, with popcorn and cranberries and
paper chains and strings of colored beads and straws
and cubes are much more interesting to the child
than the elaborate trees doting parents tire them-
selves out preparing — trees at which the child
scarcely looks after the first ''Oh" of wonder and
delight. The glittering fragilities, which he dare not
touch, are of no particular interest to him, but he
loves every link of the purple paper chain smeared
with paste by his own clumsy fingers.
When we begin to make Christmas gardens with
fountains and electric lights we are taking away the
child's best pleasure in Christmas — which is to have
the toys within his comprehension, and expressing
his own activities. When children are old enough
THE SANTA CLAUS PROBLEM 303
to themselves build gardens and put in electric lights
it is the time to have them.
The spirit of unspoiled childhood, content with
simple pleasures, is the real spirit of Christmas.
AYhen we allow ourselves to lose it we are losing the
meaning of the holiday.
Above all, in telling the children of Santa Claus
let us not neglect to tell them of the Christ-child
whose birthday it is ; in Germany every Christmas
tree has an image of the Child at the top. In Amer-
ica, outside of Sunday schools, we seem to lose the
religious significance of Christmas. The sweet old
story is so within a child's comprehension; he loves
all its details — the crowded inn, the manger, the
shepherds, the wise men, the star. The imaginations
and hearts of mankind, like the star, have swept
on through time and space until they paused and
finally rested over * ' The place where the young Child
lay.''
I have heard the kindergarten children sing a
little Christmas song whose poetry might be im-
proved, it is true, but which has in it the spirit we
should try to infuse into the children's Christmas
festivities :
"Christmas, meriy Christmas,
MVe greet it with glee,
"With laughter and singing,
So joyful are we.
It brings us full stocking
Crammed down to the toe,
And fine Christmas trees
On whose boughs presents grow;
But we know a reason
That is better than these
304 THE SANTA CLAUS PROBLEM
For welcoming Christmas day—
Listen now, please.
Dear God sent a Christmas gift
Long, long ago,
To make people happy
And better, we know.
And so we, too, try.
As the day comes each year,
To make people happy,
And sad folks to cheer."
XXXIV
EDUCATION AS A PEEVENTIVE OF DIVORCE
MARGUERITE O. B. WILKINSON
T this time, when the question of legislation JJ^^* dtvorco
on divorce is being discussed not only by
statesmen and clergy, but also by manjr of
the interested laity, it seems appropriate to
inquire what divorce essentially is — whether it is, in
and of itself, a social disease, a cure for a social dis-
ease, or a symptomatic resultant of more grave dis-
orders. If we decide that divorce is, in itself, the
evil, then we should expect to find a maximum of
morality and happiness w^here there is a minimum of
divorce. There are a few superficial observers ready
to make this claim. But those who have to look below
the surface of things have become suspicious of this
conclusion and have been forced to believe that there
is probably as much marital unhappiness without di-
vorce as with it, and as flagrant violations of the
moral law. But without divorce such unhappiness
and such violations are more discreetly veiled than is
possible when relief may be sought in court.
On the other hand, most right-thinking people will
agree with the clergy that divorce is a very question-
able cure for the evils from which we suffer, at best
the clumsiest sort of social surgery, frequently caus-
ing as much harm as good by poisoning the blood of
the social body.
Let us, therefore, for the purposes of this article,
accept the hypothesis that divorce is really a result
305
306
A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE
The real cure
not in
legislation
The
nonogamlc
ideal
of diseased conditions and a warning that preventive
medicine is needed. Let us admit that the real evil
lies deeper than we have hitherto realized, in our lack
of educative preparation for domestic relations, and
in our conventional thought (or lack of thought)
about the duties, responsibilities and privileges of
married life. We have not remembered soon enough
that what young men and women, or even girls and
boys think about marriage, before they marry, is an
important determinant of their subsequent way of
living.
Let us admit that the real cure does not lie alto-
gether, or even chiefly, in the hands of legislators,
much as we do need uniform legislation in this coun-
try, but rather in the hands of all those who have any
part in the education of the public mind and con-
science. Legislation can make marriage more diffi-
cult, thereby increasing illegitimate relationships, al-
ready too numerous, or it can prohibit or restrict di-
vorce with a limited and negative result in the favor
of righteousness, but right education can make the
informed mind and the poised character which are
necessary to the solution of great problems, individual
and national.
And this brings to us a momentous choice. Either
we must abandon the great monogamic ideal which
centuries of painful evolution have brought us, and
set up for posterity a lower and easier ideal, thus
taking a step backward for the whole race, or else
we must prepare men and women to live in harmony
with this ideal. Otherwise we shall always have di-
vorce.
Roughly stated, the monogamic ideal is the free
choice of one woman by one man and one man by one
woman as mates for life. It is an ideal that demands
A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE 307
more in the way of constancy and self-control than
any which preceded it, and yet, perhaps, just because
of this fact, and also because of the security it affords
the child, we have firm faith in it, and there are few
who would be willing to give it up. We are inclined
to agree that the race has, at last, made a good gen-
eral plan for the marriage relation, and that our
difficulties (as is also the case with the ideal of
democracy) are practical rather than theoretical. We
are all individuals sharply differentiated one from
another, and it has become a matter of vital impor-
tance to us to marry the right mates on the right
terms, and to be loyal to them when chosen. After
ages of rigid discipline we have developed a sense
of responsibility toward our neighbors, a realization
that our marriages are important not only as touch-
ing our own temporary happiness and consequent use-
fulness, but also as they affect the lives of others.
Therefore we have the monogamic ideal. But we
have not been able to cut away the aftermath of the
old systems of marriage, and with hardy courage
to prepare ourselves for the attainment of the new
ideal. Therefore we have with us divorce, which good
clergymen abhor, good statesmen deprecate, and good
people everywhere wish to avoid.
After centuries of shameful mythology which de- i^consis-^ °"
nounced motherhood as the ' ' curse of Eve, ' ' we have tencies as to
marnagQ
come at last to declare the truth, even with lavish
sentiment, that the functions of maternity are the
noblest and most altruistic functions of physical life,
and that spiritual motherhood is the greatest asset
of civilization. But we are still childishly ashamed
of the sex that goes before maternity and makes it
possible. In these days of acute respect for scientific
law we are apologetic for the reverent bi-sexual evo-
308 A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE
lution whose highest triumph we are, and while, in
our hearts, we thank God for making mothers, with
our lips, or by silence, we chide Him for having made
men and women diverse. Nor does the recognition of
the altruistic power of spiritual motherhood lead us
to trust in it, and to make it fully effective by turn-
ing its force into the channels of public as well as
private life.
Our young people do not clamorously demand a
knowledge of Greek, Latin, or higher mathematics,
but these things we are careful to offer them. They
do, universally, demand a working knowledge of life
and love, but this we prudishly deny. Yet we have
only to read the ''advice to the love-lorn" column
of a metropolitan daily to perceive a genuine anxiety
about the wise choice of mates, and a thwarted ideal-
ism, which, if trained and encouraged, would blossom
into the health and glory of the nation.
*j£. Ul* 4Ef 4> ^ Jb
^ TP w W Vr TT
"We have begun to develop our girls along in-
dividual lines, as we develop our boys, but we still
expect them to be contented with a submissive life
of marital dependence, in which the will of the hus-
band assumes all dignified responsibility and control,
and all liberty for achievement. If there is something
of value in each human ego, feminine as well as
masculine, then is it not as valuable after marriage
as before, and should we not either be consistently
Chinese in a refusal to develop feminine individuality
at all, or else adjust ourselves as speedily as possible
to a plan of life that will give women greater scope
for achievement? And should we not foster conven-
tions flexible enough so that a woman is not forced
to adopt either cooliing or calling as the chief duty
A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE 309
of life according to the weight of her husband's
purse ?
These are but a few of our inconsistencies —
enough, perhaps, to hint at the causes that destroy
homes tlirough ill-considered and unsuitable mar-
riages and ill-adjusted life plans. Oh, that our hu-
manity were not afraid to be rightly and fully human
in its every" manifestation !
Where there is no love — let it be many times re- "No home
,, 11.1 without lov«
peated — there is no home, even though both persons
with uncompromising firmness, resolve to stand by a
bad bargain "for the children's sake." This re-
quires a very substantial heroism on the part of
parents and is productive of good, for, in many cases,
it secures to the child a protection which would other-
wise be lacking. But it is not health, it is not hap-
piness, it is not idealism. That divorce may cease
to exist there must be right marriages, and that there
may be right marriages there must be love and educa-
tive preparation for the passions as well as the labors
of life. But we can do more than teach accurately
the anatomy, physiology and ethical hygiene of sex.
We can give young people, and especially girls, some
knowledge of the wh}" and wherefore of the right
social customs.
No one wishes to dispute the fact that the woman ^^home^ ^°^
who has a happy home, a loving and lovable husband
and sweet little children is, indeed, blessed, and is
living in obedience to the high behest of Nature and
of God. But it is time to maintain, for the good of
all, that the woman who enters into the bonds of
matrimony for a home, or because it is considered
the thing to do, without being sure of the love that
310
A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE
would illumine the way, not only degrades herself,
but paves the way to the divorce court by her in-
sincerity. And it is time to show honest respect for
the girl who is brave enough to go through life alone
rather than become a counterfeit, giving to her hus-
band an unsatisfactory and insincere relationship,
and to her children a home life unsound at the core.
And it should redound to the credit of William Taft
that he has seen this truth better than most men of
our time, and that he is decidedly on the side of good
morals when he says, ''I wish that every girl in the
world were so situated that she would not think it
necessary for her to marry unless she really wanted
to.'^
In the interests of honest living it is time to set
before girls another ideal, the ideal of service, which
bids them marry and make all legitimate sacrifices
with the right love for the right man, but, failing
this, bids them give themselves over to such labors
and pursuits as will make their lives strong, hearty,
productive and happy, and will enable them to con-
tribute to our civilization in ways for which the mar-
ried woman has little opportunity.
Idle women
and
overworked
men
We must accustom ourselves to another new idea —
that as marriage is no longer a duty for all women,
so it is no longer a trade or profession, requiring
all the time and labor of all married women. Some
confusion has arisen on this point because certain
labors have been associated with marriage in the
popular mind. But these labors may, in the near
future, come to be considered as trades in themselves,
not inseparably connected with marriage, and the
wives of the days to come may be found performing
A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE 311
diverse tasks. For we know that in our own times
a woman may be the best of good wives and good
mothers, but with small knowledge of spinning, weav-
ingy basket-making, pottery-making, agriculture or
even baking, although all of these trades used to be
inseparably connected with the lives of married
women. And tomorrow, owing to changed conditions,
the woman doctor or lawyer may seem to be as de-
sirable a mate as the cook or seamstress today. So
much is possible !
And here we come to the most potent of all causes
of divorce — the conventionally enforced idleness of
many married women — parasitism Mrs. Schreiner
calls it — and the overwork of many of our men.
* * * The rush of our present life comes to bear
most heavily on our most chivalrous. It wears them
out physically and mentally and discourages them
spiritually before they are fifty years of age. It gives
them only time enough to nourish a vague doubt of the
womanhood that is content to fatten on their toil, in-
stead of laboring staunchly vrith them as healthy wom-
anhood should do. They find their usefulness limited,
their powers exhausted and wonder why. And then,
sometimes in utter weariness they throw off the yoke
and try to begin again. But the women are not al-
ways wholly to blame for this condition. Sometimes
with a perfectly unreasoning ''I can support a wife'*
pride, a man will insist that a woman should give up
once and forever the only work in which she takes
any interest, and leaves her a choice between idle-
ness and housework in his home (which always, with
or without fitness, a man will permit a woman to
do) ! But if a woman should say to her husband be-
fore, or soon after marriage, ** John, it does not please
me that you should be a lawyer — you must become
312 A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE
a stock broker, ^ ' or ' ' James, when you marry me you
must give up the art that you love and become a
carpenter,'^ would we not be quick to decry her in-
justice? Yet there are men who still say to their
wives, ''The work you love you must give up. You
may do the work I provide or none at all."
Of course, motherhood brings to women certain
temporary limitations, but the thing we do not recog-
nize is that these limitations are temporary. And,
if, in all the ages past, women were able to combine
with motherhood the most arduous physical labors, it
seems probable that, in the present and the future
when the demands of maternity are less rigorous,
women should be able, with gain to the race, to enter
the new fields of labor and accomplish laudable re-
sults.
Surely there is no greater safeguard for man and
woman than the work in which mind and body can
delight. Surely there is no more arbitrary convention
than that which permits a man to dictate to his wife
in her choice of labor. Surely it is time to give girls
vocational training and permit wherever it is possible
and right, the exercise of individual powers by mar-
ried as well as by single women, and to say, with Mrs.
Schreiner, *'We claim all labor for our province."
Full equality '^qy jg there any srreater foe of divorce than the
of man and ^ d . . „
wife full, reverential and human companionship of the
man and woman who are husband and wife. For
both it is cultural and valuable beyond the power of
words to tell. But it is only possible between equals,
and say what he will to the contrary, no man of good
sense can respect as an equal the woman whose days
are so many efforts to kill time.
A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE 313
And, if the marriages of tomorrow are really to
be happier than the marriages of today, girls must
demand this status of full equality with the men
they marry, not an equality of privileges only, but
an equality in responsibilities, duties and powers,
which, nevertheless, recognizes that they are not iden-
tical.
The young wife must be strengthened in her vague
belief that, although married, she is still a person
and should be the director of her own physical, men-
tal and spiritual activities, and responsible for them.
For, when a woman, through force of misfit circum-
stances, becomes subservient in any great degree to
the man with whom she lives, she loses, quite nat-
urally, her sense of conscience and responsibility in
matters over which she has little or no control. The
old social custom which gave husbands absolute
power in the control of wives had, at least, consistency
to recommend it, since it also made them responsible
for their mves* behavior. Today the etiquette of
life and the law of the land hold that women are
morally responsible creatures, but the exigencies of
life place them at a great disadvantage in matters of
self-control.
When such a woman becomes restless and un-
happy in her own home, she is shorn of all power to
help herself because her thought and her desires have
no value there, and she must go out of her home, into
court, for redress, cherishing the sullen feeling that
she ** couldn't help it" and was not ''to blame"!
And, if it is true that girls should demand less of ^tandwd^^*
men in the way of unearned leisure and luxury, and
more in the way of liberty to control their own lives,
it is also of primary importance that they should
demand more of men in the way of temperance,
314 A PREVENTIVE OF DIVORCE
soberness and chastity, and that they vehemently re-
fuse the double standard of morals and stand firmly
for the pure man as a father of tomorrow's citizens.
Let the boys and girls, then, face marriage with
their eyes open, knowing that the decision about
marriage is the most important an individual is called
upon to make. Let them be trained from childhood
in the laws of sex and right living, so that they fully
understand the duties and privileges of life 's greatest
relationship. Let both be self-reliant economically,
and offer them as many legitimate forms of amuse-
ment as possible, so that, by studying together, work*
ing together, and playing together they come to un-
derstand each other and do not make choice by force
of proximity or moonlit perfervid error. Then, hav-
ing met and loved, let them, before they marry, make
their fundamental life plans, assign to each other the
places they wish to hold, agree as to their economic
relations and respective duties, and so, with the do-
mestic altar firmly built upon a rock foundation,
marry and fulfill their destinies.
Until these things have come to pass there can
be no adequate cure for the "divorce evil.'* When
they have come to pass there will be no ** divorce
evil left to cure. — [By permission of The Crafts-
man.']
XXXV
**I WANT 'UM BOFE''
EDGAR P. ALLEN
Editorial Writer for the Kansas City Journal
I ROM the sobbing heart of a little child comes
a mighty sermon on divorce, of more appeal-
ing force than any learned discourse from pen
or pulpit. The seven-year-old daughter was
confronted with the tragedy of parental separation.
Her mother and father were to be divorced and the
little girl was asked with which parent she wished
to live. Unable to understand the terrible crisis that
had come into her young life, she tearfully said: *'I
want 'um bofe."
What plea could be more compelling than these
childish words? What master of language could
paint the picture with more forceful simplicity?
Little Virginia did not know what it was all about;
she did not understand the mysteries of the law that
was about to disrupt her home and send her out into
the world bereft of half her natural right. But she
clung impartially to both father and mother and her
tender plea, "I want 'um bofe," ought to have melted
and reunited their estranged hearts.
Right here is the meat of the whole divorce ques-
tion. The right of children is of more importance
than the satisfying of parents' pique or the coddling
of incompatibility. Perhaps the father and mother
of this child considered that they had good reasons
for the separation. There may have been irreconcil-
315
316 "I WANT ^UM BOFE"
able domestic differences. But what about little
Virginia? Where were her rights and who stood
before the bar of justice to represent her? For-
tunately our courts are taking children into considera-
tion more and more. Little Virginia's rights will
not be ignored by a worthy and humane judge. Her
woe is as deep and her sorrows as poignant as those
of either her father or her mother, and the fact that
little Virginia loved "bofe" of her parents indicates
that neither could be hopelessly bad. Indeed, this is
weighty evidence that the home life of the family
was not beyond redemption. Those who brought this
little one into the world are responsible for her hap-
piness. They must answer to a tribunal higher than
any earthly court. Could not the loving arms of little
Virginia bring these two hearts together again? It
would be well worth a test.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CITIZENSHIP
Myths and Legends of the Great Plains
Katherine B. Judson
The Desirable Citizen James M. Greenwood
Historical Stories and Biographies in "One Thou-
sand Good Books for Children" N. C. M.
The Constitution of the United States.
Great Speeches of Our Great Men.
317
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m
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