Friendly Visiting among the Poor Part 4

Some of the most intelligent and devoted workers in child-saving agencies have sounded the note of warning on the subject of children wage-earners. "The fact," says Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, "that the world of industry has found out and established methods of labor which can utilize the work of children to profit, gives to that world of industry, as an upper and a nether millstone, the greed {82} of employers and the cupidity and poverty of parents, between which the life of the child is often ground to powder." [3] And Mrs. Florence Kelley, writing from her experience as a factory inspector in Illinois, says: "I do not mean that every boy is usually ruined by his work, but I do mean that, the earlier the child goes to work, the greater the probability of ruin. I mean, too, that there is to be gained, from a scientific study of the working child, an irradiating side-light upon the tramp question, the unemployed question, and the whole ramifying question of the juvenile offender. . . . One reason that immigrants cling so closely to the great cities is that they find there far more opportunity to get money for their children's work. There is probably no one means of dispersing the disastrously growing colonies of our great cities so simple and effective as this one, of depriving the children of their immediate cash value." [4]

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Another hindrance to the proper education of the children is the habit of keeping them from school to run errands, to carry their fathers'

dinners, or to help with the housework. The girls are often taken away from school very early for trivial reasons.

Recent developments in child study show that many of the moral and mental obliquities of children may be traced to physical defects. In dealing with wayward and dull children, the visitor should bear this fact in mind, and, either by observation or by the help of a physician, discover wherein the child is defective. The sooner a defect is discovered, the easier it will be to cure it, and for this reason the visitor should learn to apply simple tests for defective sight and hearing.

In a very instructive article, which every visitor should read, on "Child Study," [5] Professor Krohn says that "dull" children suffer from defective hearing in ninety-nine out of one hundred cases. He tells of one girl in a cla.s.s who failed to answer correctly, and was said by the teacher to be the most stupid child in the {84} school.

"After the cla.s.s was dismissed, I told the teacher that I did not believe that the little girl was intellectually stupid; that there was probably some physical defect clogging the pathway to her active little brain; and I requested an opportunity to talk to the child at recess, when I found that she could not hear my stop-watch tick until it was within nine inches of her right ear, and eleven inches of her left ear.

The average child, under the same local conditions, can hear the same watch tick at a distance of twenty-one feet. How could the poor child answer correctly when she could not hear what was asked? Every answer was a mere guess. After a time any child would become stupid under such conditions, believing it of no use to attempt to answer at all.

This little girl was, at my suggestion, given a seat not far from the teacher's desk and especial pains was afterward taken to speak distinctly to her. . . . She has since manifested such marked improvement that, at the close of the last school year, she ranked second in her cla.s.s."

In puzzling cases of waywardness, the visitor {85} should seek the advice of the agent of the local children's aid society, who is often an expert, and glad to help one who is in earnest in such work. The Report of the Boston Children's Aid Society for 1896,[6] cites two cases of truancy due to physical defects. One was a girl of ten years, whose eyes were found to be defective. After fitting her with proper gla.s.ses, the Society's agent had her returned to school. Another was a boy of eight, with a slight impediment in his speech. No one had noticed that his schoolmates teased the child, until he told the agent.

After the boy's teacher had been seen, there was no more laughing and no more truancy.

Ma.s.sachusetts has an excellent system of placing juvenile offenders on probation for a first offence. This same report contains ill.u.s.trations of the work of the Children's Aid Society's probation officer. "A boy, fifteen years of age, already on informal probation, and apparently doing fairly well, was suddenly brought into court, charged with breaking and entering his employer's shop at night. On {86} account of his past good character, he was put on probation by the court under our agent's care. He told Mr. Lawrence that he got into this criminal state of mind by bad reading and by attending low theatrical performances. With the aid of the boy's Sunday-school teacher he has been encouraged to do his best, and is now working regularly, taking good books from the Public Library, and is doing very well."

The charitable are only beginning to discover the importance of such personal and preventive work among children, founded upon an intimate knowledge of their habits and character. Such work must be done in large measure by volunteers, and the friendly visitor's relations to poor families render him specially fit for the service. The ill.u.s.tration just given emphasizes the importance of guiding a child's reading. It is not enough to teach the children to use the Public Library; we should know what they are reading and teach them to enjoy the right books. An admirable system of lending libraries having this object in view has been established by the Boston Children's Aid Society. These little Home Libraries in small {87} hanging book cases are placed in certain homes in poor neighborhoods, and the visitor in charge of a library meets at regular intervals a group of children of the neighborhood who form the library circle, explaining the books to them, playing games, and getting well acquainted. A friendly visitor might easily establish such a library in any poor neighborhood; the details of the plan may be had upon application to the Children's Aid Society.

Training in citizenship must not be overlooked. Our boys and girls should know more about our country than their parents can teach them.

The publications of the Patriotic League, 230 W. 13th St., New York, will be found very useful. The League issues a Young Citizens'

Catechism and a monthly journal, "Our Country." The Sunday-school is another help to the visitor, and it is well to know not only the public-school teacher, but the Sunday-school teacher, whose cooperation should be sought in any plans for the children's welfare. One Sunday-school is a help, but two or more Sunday-schools for one child are thoroughly demoralizing, and we {88} should do our best to discourage any child in whom we are interested from going to more than one.

It too often happens that children are sent by their parents to several churches with the deliberate purpose of making profitable charitable connections. This habit of thrusting the children forward to excite sympathy, of sending them to ask help of teachers, clergymen, and charity agents, is so obviously bad for the children that one wonders how the charitable can ever have permitted it to become so general.

Children should never be permitted to deliver begging notes and messages from a family in which there is an able-bodied adult.

Of all charitable practices that help to manufacture misery and vice, the practice of giving to child-beggars on the street is the most pernicious. One boy who has become a skilful beggar teaches another, and first the money goes for candy and cigarettes, then for gambling and low theatres. The next step is petty thieving, the next burglary, and then follow commitment to a {89} reformatory, which often fails to reform, and, later, a criminal career. I have seen children travel this road so often that it is difficult to speak without bitterness of the unthinking alms that led them into temptation. Sometimes parents connive at child-begging, but often they know nothing of it until the children have grown incorrigible. A strict enforcement of the laws against child-begging is very difficult until every one is convinced of the cruelty of giving money to unknown children on the street or at the door.

It sometimes becomes the visitor's painful duty to protect children from cruelty, criminal neglect, or immorality by legal removal from their parents' control. Here a society for the protection of children will often render valuable a.s.sistance. Such a society is likely to be hampered in its work by the unwillingness of charitable visitors to tell what they know in court. Sometimes this is due to timidity, and sometimes to a fear of losing influence in the neighborhood. Clergymen have been known to refuse their testimony for this latter reason. The friendly visitor, {90} whose interest is centred in only one family in the neighborhood, need not be so cautious, and his continuous visiting, extending over many months, makes his testimony very valuable. No fear of losing influence with other members of the family should prevent him from speaking out where a child's future is at stake. Just a few months more in evil surroundings may mean moral death to the child, and neighbors are notoriously unwilling to tell what they know.

It is impossible to enter here upon the vexed question of the relative merits of boarding-out dependent children, of placing them without pay in country homes, or of committing them to the care of inst.i.tutions, though I cannot refrain from quoting, in pa.s.sing, the opinion of Miss Mason, for twelve years an English government inspector of boarded-out children, that "well carried out, boarding-out may be the best way of caring for dependent children; ill carried out, it may be the worst."

There is a very foolish saying that the worst home is better than the best inst.i.tution, but no one who knows how bad a home can be {91} or how good an inst.i.tution can be will venture beyond the statement that, other things being equal, a home is certainly better than an inst.i.tution. The friendly visitor should make himself familiar with what has been written on this subject, and should be prepared, in any given case, to make the wisest selection of a home that local conditions make possible, always remembering, of course, that his responsibility does not end here; that he should continue to visit the child, if it be placed within visiting distance.

The visitor should also be familiar with the local laws for the protection of children. These usually include laws against child-begging; against selling liquor and tobacco to minors; against the employment of children as pedlers, public singers, dancers, etc.; against the employment of children under a certain age for more than a specified number of hours (or prohibiting their employment entirely); and against the abduction or harboring of female minors for immoral purposes.

What, above the mastery of all these details, {92} should be the visitor's clear aim? To see to it that the children are better off than their parents were, and are saved from the pitfalls into which the latter have fallen; that the boys are better equipped to become breadwinners, and the girls to become homemakers. The training given in our public schools will often seem very inadequate, and some of us look forward to the day when every boy and girl between the ages of six and sixteen shall be trained to use hand and brain, when manual training shall be part of the daily instruction of every school course.

Until this day comes, the visitor must make use of such aids as evening cla.s.ses in boys' and girls' clubs, people's inst.i.tutes, and Christian a.s.sociations. A child's capabilities should be studied and every encouragement given to his small ambitions.

But the best help, after all, is in the personal influence that the visitor can acquire over the growing child. When we think what personal influence has done in our own lives, how it has moulded our convictions, our tastes, our very manner of speech, even, we should not despair of the children, if we can {93} attach them to us and give them a new and better outlook upon life. The time when we can be of the greatest help to them is during the disorganized period that comes between the school days and the settling down in life. Many a young life has gone to wreck for lack of a guiding hand at this time, for lack of a friend to make suggestions about employment, companions, amus.e.m.e.nts, and home relations. The failure of philanthropy to make any adequate provision for this critical period accounts, in part, for the large number of married vagabonds in our great cities.

Collateral Readings: On care of infants see leaflets of local Boards of Health. "The Working Child," Florence Kelley in Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, pp. 161 _sq_. "The Working Boy," the same in "American Journal of Sociology," Vol. II, No.

3. "Child Labor," W. F. Willoughby and Clare de Graffenreid in publications of American Economic a.s.sociation. "Influence of Manual Training on Character," Felix Adler in Proceedings of Fifteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 272 _sq_. "Children of the Road," Josiah Flynt in "Atlantic," January, 1896. "Family Life for Dependent and Wayward Children," Homer Folks, volume on "Care of Children" in Proceedings of International Congress of Charities at Chicago, pp. 69 _sq_. Story of "The Child's {94} Mother," in Mrs.

Margaret Deland's "Old Chester Tales." "The Wisdom of Fools," Mrs.

Margaret Deland (see, for difficulties in reclaiming girls, the story ent.i.tled "The Law and the Gospel"). Reports of Conventions of Working Girls' Societies at Boston, 1894, and Philadelphia, 1897. For pamphlets on School Savings Banks apply to J. H. Thiry, Long Island City, N.Y.

[1] Proceedings of Fifteenth National Conference of Charities, 1887, p.

152.

[2] Miss Z. D. Smith.

[3] Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, Chicago, 1893.

Volume on "Care of Children," p. 7.

[4] Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, 1896, p. 164.

[5] "Charities Review," Vol. VI, pp. 433 _sq_.

[6] pp. 13 _sq_.

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CHAPTER VI

HEALTH

About one-fourth of all the poverty that has come within the scope of charitable investigation is directly caused by sickness. "In both American and English experience," writes Warner, "the percentage attributable to this cause sinks but once slightly below fifteen and never quite reaches thirty. The average is between twenty and twenty-five. This is one of the most significant facts brought out by these tables [of the statistical causes of poverty]. It is not one which the author antic.i.p.ated when the collection of statistics began; and yet it has been confirmed and reconfirmed in so many ways that the conclusion seems inevitable that the figures set forth real and important facts. Personal acquaintance with the dest.i.tute cla.s.ses has further convinced him that most of the {96} causes of poverty result from or result in a weakened physical and mental const.i.tution, often merging into actual disease." [1]

This fact gives added importance to all the efforts of modern charity to secure improved dwellings, open s.p.a.ces, cheap baths, and better munic.i.p.al sanitation for the poor. But improvement in these matters cannot come entirely from without; "the model tenement implies a model tenant." As a London authority puts it: "The condition of the house may degrade its occupants. The careless life and habits of the occupants will spoil the house, and make it filthy and unhealthy." The friendly visitor should try to make the family healthily discontented with unsanitary surroundings, and so prepare them for better quarters.

Removing families from unfit tenements is not enough, however, if these tenements are almost immediately reoccupied. Their condition should be reported to the Board of Health, and, if condemned, we should see that no one else is permitted to move into them.

I have often noticed that charity agents, {97} who work habitually in poor neighborhoods, get so accustomed to bad sanitary conditions that they hardly notice them. Volunteer workers are not so likely to fall into this error, though it is possible for volunteers to be very un.o.bservant. They often feel that things are all wrong, without being able to state the specific difficulties. An observant visitor will learn the condition of the cellar, walls, yard, plumbing, and outhouses; will learn to take the cubic contents of a room in order to find out the air s.p.a.ce for each sleeper; will learn the family method of garbage disposal; will see how the rooms are ventilated; and will learn all these things without asking many questions. Dampness is a very common cause of sickness; when the children cough it is a very simple matter to ask about the cellar, and even get permission to see it.

The prejudice against fresh air, especially night air, is a difficult one to overcome. One mother, who kept her children scrupulously clean, could never understand the value of fresh air until a visitor explained to her how air was polluted by the soiled air that we {98} breathed out, just as water was polluted when we washed our hands in it. When the children breathed this soiled air in again it made them "dirty inside"; and this homely statement left such an unpleasant picture in the mother's mind that her rooms were always well ventilated afterward.

It is difficult to ventilate a small room without making a draft, but, next to the chimney, the upper sash is the simplest ventilator, and should not be immovable, as it is in many small houses. A board about five inches wide under the lower sash will make a current of air between the upper and lower sashes, and, better still, two pieces of elbow pipe with dampers, fixed in the board, will throw a good current of air upward into the room. Another ventilator can be made by tacking a strip of loosely woven material to the upper sash and to the top of the window-frame. When the upper sash is dropped, the stuff is drawn taut over the opening, and, while permitting air to pa.s.s through, breaks the current.

Equal in importance with fresh air inside the house is exercise out of doors. I was {99} shocked some years ago to find that, of six Sunday-school boys who went with me on a little trip to our largest city park, five had never been there before. This had not been due to lack of time or money, though they had very little of either; but its sole cause had been lack of enterprise.

There is an impatient and popular saying that soap and water are cheap; like many other popular sayings, it is only half true. Personal cleanliness is rather expensive when one takes into account the time, energy, and frequent changes of clothing required to keep the body daintily clean. Visitors should realize this in any effort to introduce a higher standard of personal neatness, and should not be impatient when they do not immediately succeed. Cleanliness and health are so nearly related, however, that the effort is very well worth making. A visitor who hesitated to complain to a mother about her little girl's neglected condition, borrowed the child to spend the day, and brought her home at night sweet, clean, and rosy, with her hair well brushed and curled. The hint was taken.

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It would be very unfortunate for the visitor to be an alarmist, for there are imaginary invalids among the poor as well as elsewhere, but more frequently the poor neglect the earlier symptoms of sickness altogether, or else dose themselves with patent medicines. The quack doctors who advertise in the daily papers draw much of their custom from the very poor, who are also large consumers of cure-alls and proprietary medicines. We have seen how children's physical defects can pa.s.s unnoticed at home, and this is the case in a less degree with the defects and ailments of adults. The very cheap grade of medical service that is sometimes given by regular pract.i.tioners in poor neighborhoods has a tendency to discourage the poor from taking sickness in time. The visitor can help them to procure better medical service at reasonable charges or, when necessary, without charge. The grade of service in dispensaries varies greatly, but the medical advice and directions given there with the medicines can be made far more useful if the visitor will go with the patient and see that the directions are understood and carried {101} out. Often no adult in the family can spare the time to go with a sick child to the dispensary.

Here, too, the visitor's service will be helpful. In cases of contagious disease, see that the Board of Health is notified promptly.

Other things being equal, an acute case of illness can usually be better and more economically cared for in a hospital than in a poor home. In fact, although hospitals were intended originally for the dest.i.tute sick, the practice of sending well-to-do patients there is rapidly spreading. The prejudice against hospitals, still so general among the poor, is a survival from a time when hospital care was far less humane than now. If the visitor has ever been a patient in a hospital, and can tell his own experience or the experiences of friends, or if he happens to know some of the doctors or nurses, and promises to see them about his poor friend, the prejudice can often be overcome. The dread of the untried and the unknown is natural enough, and yet it will happen now and then that hospital care is so clearly the best thing that nothing can take the place {102} of it, and suffering and loss will be entailed upon the family by their refusal to let the sick member go. In such cases charitable people may be justified in helping the family to a right decision by withholding all relief.

The prejudice against hospitals is strong in the negro race. In the first family I ever visited the mother, a colored woman, had been bedridden for thirteen months. According to her own account she had been "conjured," and at first the mention of a hospital made her hysterical. She consented to let a doctor, who was a friend of mine, see her, and he p.r.o.nounced her disease sciatic rheumatism. He said she could never get well at home with four small, noisy children, and, besides, the walls of her house were damp. After two months of persuading, I got the mother into a hospital and the family moved into a dry house. Among the arguments that won her were my own acquaintance with the hospital nurses, and my promise to visit her frequently while there; and my further promise to see that the children were well cared for while she was away. But the argument that tipped the scale was the {103} promise to take her away to the hospital in a carriage with two horses.

Among the cases in which hospital care is not practicable are those of chronic invalids, of patients too sick to be moved, and of patients able to be treated as "out-patients" in the dispensaries. Confinement cases, where there are children in the family who must be placed temporarily in inst.i.tutions if the mother leaves home, are best treated in the home. There are societies that provide a nurse and baby-linen at such times. Some families are so degraded that they look forward to times of confinement as times of plenty (see family cited on p. 55), and in these cases nothing but hospital care should be offered, while we place the children temporarily in inst.i.tutions or with neighbors.

For the dest.i.tute sick outside of hospitals, district nurses are now provided in many cities. When these nurses are careful to instruct well members of the household in the care of the sick, their influence is especially helpful, and they are often able not only to relieve suffering, but to raise the standard of living in the home. Diet kitchens, supplying food specially {104} prepared for the sick either free or at a nominal cost, are also found in many of our cities.