ARTICLE VI.

THE CHILD-SAVING MOVEMENT.

BY THE REV. HASTINGS H. HART, LL. D.

THERE is in progress in the United States an organic Child-Saving Movement. It is not a plan devised and put in execution by some wise individual or society. It is an evolution, developed by inward and unseen forces; but certain principles are now clearly defined and generally accepted.

THE STATE RESPONSIBLE.

The first principle underlying the child-saving movement is this: The great mother state is responsible for the welfare of the dependent and neglected child. When the natural protectors of the child fail to meet their obligation, either through death, misfortune, incapacity, or depravity, then the community, collectively or individually, must as sume the burden: first, because the child has a natural right to an opportunity for normal and healthy development; second, because the care of such children is essential to the preservation of the community. The hopelessness of stemming the tide of pauperism, vice, and crime by remedies applied to adult dependents and delinquents has long been recognized, while experience has demonstrated the efficacy of wisely directed efforts for the rescue of children. It is true that even these efforts do not go to the roots of the social problem: they do not remedy the social conditions from which these children spring. Nevertheless, they offer the most immediate and practical means yet devised for the prevention of pauperism, vice, and crime.

IMPORTANCE OF ENVIRONMENT.

The second principle underlying the child-saving movement is this: Environment, rather than heredity, controls the destiny of the normal child. There is a fraction of the children in the community which includes children who inherit feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, syphilis, etc., condemned by hereditary conditions to dependency. There is a very small fraction which includes children who are "moral imbeciles"-children born without the sense of right and wrong; whose viciousness is apparently inherent, and unaffected by their environment. It has been fashionable to ascribe to heredity all of the vices and virtues of the community; but within the past few years there has been a remarkable change in the tone of medical writers and students of sociology alike. Physicians are much more cautious in their claims as to hereditary diseases. Consumption, for example, is no longer recognized as a hereditary disease. The effort of certain sociologists who demonstrate the existence of a criminal type has not been successful.

Heredity must be recognized as a powerful force in the making of human character; but experience has demonstrated, that, in the case of the great majority of children of unfortunate antecedents, if taken in time, a good environment will overcome a bad heredity. This fact has been abundantly shown by the experience of the children's aid societies of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and other similar organizations, which for many years have followed the plan of changing the environment of young children. The testimony of these organizations is, that children of unfavorable heredity, if placed in a favorable environment before the age of four or five years, turn out fully as well as the average children of the community. The disadvantage of the unfavorable heredity is overbalanced by the great advantage of being able to select choice homes with

people of character, wisdom, and patience. The homes secured by a careful society are far above the average homes in a community, in these respects.

However strongly people may believe theoretically in the power of heredity to control the destiny of the child, in practice, nineteen parents out of twenty believe in the controlling power of environment. How many parents have sufficient confidence in the good heredity of their own. children so that they would be willing to expose their young children, for even a fortnight, to the influences and the vicissitudes of the slums? It is unanimously recognized among wise people, that the contagion of vice is so dangerous that it is utterly inexcusable to expose a child of tender years to it. It is instinctively recognized that a bad environment will infallibly overcome a good heredity if continued for only a brief time. But the converse is almost equally true, namely, that a good environment, if continued for a sufficient time, will infallibly overcome a bad heredity, if the child be young enough.

It must be borne in mind that there is a tendency to ascribe to heredity many influences which. really belong to environment. Even the prenatal influences which affect the welfare of a child, belong in part to environment. For example, malnutrition of the mother, and efforts to produce abortion, may handicap the child from its birth. In like manner, neglect of a child by an inexperienced or vicious mother, exposure in a baby farm, or a foundling hospital, or an orphan asylum, may start the child in life with an unfavorable bias which is to be ascribed, properly, not to heredity, but to environment.

Thousands of cases have clearly established the fact that children of questionable parentage often develop into as beautiful, wholesome, and useful members of the community as their more favored competitors.

LARGE INSTITUTIONS UNDESIRABLE.

The third principle underlying the child-saving movement is this: The family home-the ordinary family home of virtuous, industrious people-is the best institution under the sun for the care of homeless, orphaned, and neglected children. This principle is by no means selfevident. For fifty years an earnest and sometimes bitter discussion was carried on between the advocates of the institutional plan of bringing up dependent children and the plan of placing such children in family homes. The abuses of the apprenticing system and the wrongs suffered by bound boys and girls were vividly set forth. It was shown that in many cases the societies and individuals engaged in the placing-out plan had placed children in homes with little discrimination, and that the foster parents often sought either to gratify their personal pleasure; or, in the case of older children, took them with a view to financial gain, by securing unpaid servants. On the other hand, the advantages of the institutional plan were set forth. was formerly believed by many that institutions could be created which would be superior to the ordinary family home. There was present at the meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, several years ago, a delegate from Kansas. She said: "We are engaged in the State of Kansas in building up a new institution for girls. We have a large tract of land where we expect to provide accommodations for five thousand girls, and we shall create a new race of women to become the mothers of the next generation." She said: "The ordinary mother is unfit to bring up a child. Mothers do not understand the principles of child-study, child-nurture, child-training, and all that sort of thing. We shall employ as matrons, caretakers, and teachers, choice, selected women, who shall be free from the foibles and weaknesses of the ordinary mother, and we shall achieve results that will astonish the

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world." Some time ago the writer received a letter from this same woman, who was then engaged in carrying on a home for old people in the State of Indiana. That ideal institution for girls which was to be so much superior to the ordinary family home did not materialize.

It is not the purpose of this article to decry institutions; they have their place and their work to do. Institutional care is needed for defective children, the deaf, the blind, the feeble-minded, the epileptics, the crippled, the diseased, and the moral imbeciles. Experience has demonstrated that a large proportion of these children can be more wisely and tenderly provided for in institutions built with reference to their special needs and directed by trained superintendents and employes. Institutional care is needed, temporarily, for many delinquent children; those who have become so far perverted that they cannot be successfully redeemed by such training as they can receive in the ordinary home. It has come to be seen, however, that institutional care for such children is needed in only the minority of cases, and that it is not necessary to protract it. As a rule, not more than a year or two of temporary institutional care is required. Institutional care is needed for many children whose parents are in temporary distress. As a matter of fact, a large proportion of the orphan asylums and children's homes have become, largely, children's boarding-houses, where parents who are in temporary dis tress can pay a small sum, from fifty cents to two dollars per week, to have their children cared for until such time as they themselves may be able to resume their charge. It has come to be recognized that children who have good parents ought not to be ruthlessly separated from them, if there is a fair probability that the parents will be able to resume their care within a reasonable time; and some of the most useful and helpful work of institutions is done along this line.