That Last Waif; or, Social QuarantineFletcher, Horace
History
That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine
Fletcher, Horace
Child welfare
The contrasts and inconsistency shown by this illustration are striking
in their importance. Instead of a cost of forty cents per month to
every American citizen to free Cuba from the oppression and neglect of
the Spaniards, a cost of _three cents per month_ to every citizen of
Chicago, where extreme conditions of need prevail, would supply
protection for all of the children in need and close up a gap in social
quarantine through which a stream of evils is constantly entering.
With these figures in view, and in the light of the proved results of
character-building institutions for infants, who is there in the
community who would refuse to vote an average appropriation of three
cents per month, or forty cents per month, if needed, and who would
not cheerfully register himself "a Quarantinist?"
THE MEANS.
In the matter of teachers for character-building schools, it is as
easy to recruit an army for this purpose as it is to recruit men for
war. Training such an army, however, is much easier and less
expensive, for the cause is a more directly profitable one and the
mother instinct in women is a more potential patriotic sentiment or
incentive than is the heroism to face hardship and death in men.
There are hundreds of young, noble women on the present _waiting
lists_ of training schools, and thousands who are deterred from
taking the course of training owing to the lack of schools to give
them occupation.
* * * * *
It was creditable to wage war against the Spaniard until the last
weapon defending cruelty was surrendered, but it is even more
mandatory to plant crèches and kindergartens and parental farms and
manual-training schools in every quarter of present neglect, until
_not one waif can escape the loving influence of these blessed
institutions_.
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLENESS
"The state begins too late when it permits the child to enter the
public school only when it is six years of age. It is locking the
stable door after the horse is stolen."
"Remember that from a single neglected child in a wealthy county in
the State of New York there has come a notorious stock of
criminals, vagabonds, and paupers, imperilling every dollar's worth
of property and every individual in the community. Not less than
twelve hundred persons have been traced as the lineage of six
children who were born of this perverted and depraved woman, who
was once a pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper
influences thrown about her at a tender age, might have given to
the world twelve hundred progeny who would have blest their day and
generation."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of
Charities and Correction._
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLENESS
BY
CHOICE OF AN OCCUPATION
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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