That Last Waif; or, Social QuarantineFletcher, Horace
History
That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine
Fletcher, Horace
Child welfare
Care begets care as surely as carelessness begets carelessness. A
house-wife who presides in a tidy home will hasten to close all
openings when there is a dust storm raging without. This is too
axiomatic to enlarge upon, but the illustration is strong. It is only
when we have perfected the character of our own Apprentice Citizens,
by giving them every chance to develop whatever qualities they bring
with them from our mutual Creator, by the best methods known to the
Science of Child-Culture, that we can appreciably feel any good
results of closing our ports to the defective and neglected children
of China or Europe. It can only be when we are ourselves free from
expressions of criminal neglect that we can preach to the world except
in the form of a paraphrased adaptation of the saying of a political
economist of the saloon persuasion to a solicitor for a waif's home,
which was as follows: "Let the blokes as breeds vermin look out for
their vermin. I ain't got no sugar for the kids of such."
It will only be when we have attended to our own national first
principles--our Cadet Citizens--that we can notice imported dullards
and perverts among us by contrast with our own product.
When we have applied the thoroughness demanded by our highest
intelligence in character culture we can close our gates to the bad
characters of all the world, and say, with good grace and effect: "No!
No! friends. We respect the sacred title of 'Brother,' we believe in
brotherhood, and hope for the time when the mandate of Christ shall be
fulfilled in the establishment of a Universal Brotherhood of Man, but
let us begin to accomplish it in the right way. We have learned how to
cultivate the children the Creator sends us in such a way as to make
perfect chrysanthemums of good citizens out of the skimpiest little
wild flowers of waifs that have heretofore languished in neglect on
stony wastes, unnourished and uncared for. We have yet some little
gardening--kindergartening--to attend to before we are ready to open
our National Character Exposition, and in the meantime we will ask you
to excuse us from the usual conventionalities of old-time methods
while we start the brotherhood idea to propagating right here at home
where we can watch it. It will take about three or four years to
organize a Mother Branch of Government, raise and drill a sufficient
army of "Angels of the State" and make them efficient kindergartners,
and five years more to get rid of the criminals and perverts of the
present time, either by conversion under the warmth of a new
point-of-view that will throw a mantle of charity over their past
ill-doing, or by certain death which will seek them as victims within
that time, if they are helplessly lost to reform.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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