The Dangerous Classes of New York Part 30

Though this is a mere estimate, there is a strong presumptive evidence of its not being exaggerated, from the enormous proportion, in New York, of stillbirths, which reached in one year (1868) the sum of 2,195, or more than seven per cent of the whole number of births. Now, it is well-known that the women who are mothers of illegitimate children are much more likely to be badly attended or neglected in their confinement than mothers in wedlock, and thus to suffer under this misfortune.

As to the relation of illegitimacy to crime, there are some striking statistics from France. Out of 5,758 persons confined in the bagnios in France, there were, according to Dr. Parry, in 1853, 391 illegitimate.

Of the 18,205 inmates of the State Prisons in France during the same time, 880 were illegitimate, and 361 foundlings. "One out of every 1,300 Frenchmen," says the same authority, "becomes the subject of legal punishment, while one out of 158 foundlings finds his way to the State Prisons." In the celebrated Farm-school of Mettrai, according to recent reports, out of 3,580 young convicts since its foundation, 534 were illegitimate and 221 foundlings, or more than twenty per cent.

There can be no reasonable doubt, then, that a large number of children born out of wedlock, and therefore exposed to great hardship, temptation, and misery, are cast out every year on this community. A very large proportion of these unfortunate little ones die, or, with their mothers, are dragged down to great depths of wretchedness and crime.

What can be done for them? The first impulse is, naturally, to gather them into an Asylum. But what is the experience of Asylums?

ASYLUMS.

The London Foundling Hospital, one of the most famous of these inst.i.tutions, was founded in 1740. During the first twenty years of its existence, out of the 14,034 children received in it, only 4,400 lived be apprenticed, a mortality of more than seventy per cent The celebrated St. Petersburg Hospital for Foundlings contained, between the years 1772 and 1789, 7,709 children, of whom 6,606 died. Between the years 1783 and 1797, seventy-six per cent died. We have not, unfortunately, its later statistics. The Foundling Hospital of Paris, another well-known inst.i.tution of this cla.s.s, was founded by Vincent de Paul in 1638. In the twenty years ending in 1859, out of 48,525 infants admitted, 27,119 died during the first year, or fifty-six per cent. In 1841, a change was made in the administration of this Hospital, of which we shall speak later.

In this city there is, under the enlightened management of the Commissioners' of Charities and Correction, an Infant Hospital on Randall's Island, where large numbers of illegitimate and abandoned children are cared for. In former years, under careless management of this inst.i.tution, the mortality of these helpless infants has reached ninety to ninety-five per cent.; but in recent years, under the new management, this has been greatly reduced. In 1867, out of the 928 "nurse's children" or children without their mothers, who were received, 642 died, or about seventy per cent In 1868, 76.77 per cent of these unfortunates died, and in 1869, 70.32 per cent; while in the same hospital, of the children admitted with their mothers, only 20.44 per cent died during that year--a death-rate less than that of the city at large, which is about twenty-six per cent; while in Ma.s.sachusetts, for children under one year, it is about thirteen per cent.

It will be observed that the mortality of foundlings and orphans in this inst.i.tution was reduced in 1869 from 76.79 per cent. to 70.32. Again, in 1870, a still greater reduction was made to 58.99. This most encouraging result was brought about by the erection of an Infants' Hospital by the Commissioners, the employment of a skillful physician, and, above all, by engaging paid nurses instead of pauper women, to take care of the children. In Ma.s.sachusetts the experience is equally instructive. "In the State Almshouse," says the able Secretary of the Board of Charities, Mr. F. B. Sanborn, "the mortality of these infants previous to 1857, reached the large proportion of 80 out of every 100."

In the Tewksbury Alms-house the mortality in 1860 among the foundlings was forty-seven out of fifty-four, or eighty-seven per cent.

In 1867, the most enlightened experts in charities in Ma.s.sachusetts took up the subject of founding an Infant-Asylum, and resolved to inst.i.tute one which should be free from the abuses of the old system. In this new Asylum only those children should be received whose cases had been carefully investigated, and no more than thirty foundlings were ever to be collected under one roof, so that as much individual care might be exercised as is practicable. Yet even under this wise plan the mortality during the first six months at the Dorchester Asylum reached nearly fifty per cent, out of only thirty-six children; though this mortality was a great gain over that of the State Alms-houses.

The truth seems to be that each infant needs one nurse or care-taker, and that if you place these delicate young creatures in large companies together in any public building, an immense proportion are sure to die.

When one remembers the difficulty of carrying any child in this climate through the first and second summers, and how a slight change in the milk, or neglect of covering, will bring on that scourge of our city, cholera infantum, and how incessant the watchfulness of our mothers is to bring up a healthy child, we can understand why from one-half to two-thirds of the foundlings, many of them fatally weakened when brought to the Asylums, die in our public inst.i.tutions. Where the mothers are allowed to take care of their own children in the Asylums, as many survive as in the outside world. But to support one mother for each infant is an immense expense; so that two children are commonly put under the care of the mother. The neglect, however, of the strange child soon becomes apparent even to the casual visitor; and these poor foundlings are often fairly starved or abused to death by the mother forced to nurse them. The treatment of these poor helpless infants by brutal women in our public inst.i.tutions is one of the saddest chapters in the history of human wickedness.

What, then, is to be done for these unfortunate foundlings? No Asylum can afford to board and employ one wet-nurse for each infant. How can the children be saved at a moderate expense? The feasible and practicable course for this object is the

"PLACING-OUT SYSTEM."

This plan has been in operation in France for centuries, and is now carried out under a public department called _"Les services des Enfants a.s.sistes"_ recently under the direction of M. Husson, and known generally as the Bureau Ste. Apolline. This bureau deals with the whole cla.s.s of abandoned and outcast and dest.i.tute infants. Instead of keeping these children in an Asylum, this office at once dispatches them to nurses already selected in the country.

The whole matter is thoroughly organized; there are agents to forward the nurses and children, inspectors to select nurses and look after the infants and take charge of the disburs.e.m.e.nts, and medical officers to investigate the condition of both children and nurses, and to visit them monthly, and give medical attendance. The nurse is obliged to bring a certificate of good character from the Commune, and of her being in proper condition to take care of a foster-child. She is not permitted to take charge of an infant unless her own is nine months old, and has been weaned. The nurse is bound to send her foster-child, as she grows up, to school, and to some place of religious instruction. The bureau has thus relieved a great number of children during ten years, from 1855 to 1864, the total number amounting to 21,944.

That it has been wonderfully successful is shown by the mortality, which is now only about thirty per cent., or nearly the same with the general death-rate among young children in New York. Under this new poor-law administration for dest.i.tute and abandoned children, the famous Hospital for Foundlings has been changed into a mere depot for children sent to places and nurses in the country, with the most happy results in point of mortality. Thus, in 1838, the hospital admitted 5,322 children, and lost 1,211; in 1868, of 5,603 admitted, only 442 died, or about eight per cent. Of 21,147 sent to the country, the deaths were only 1,783, or less than ten per cent Of 6,009 admitted in 1869, 4,260 were abandoned children, and the deaths from the above number were 495.

The French administration does not cease with paying the board of these foundlings in their country homes; it looks carefully after their clothing, their education, their religious instruction, and even their habits of economy. The outlay by the Government for these various objects is considerable. In 1869, the traveling expenses of these little waifs reached the sum of 170,107 francs. The payments to the peasants to induce them to educate the foundlings amounted to 85,458 francs for the same year; the savings of the children, put in official savings-boxes, amounted to 394,076 francs, while 15,936 francs were given out as prizes.

The moral effects have been encouraging. In 1869, out of the 9,000 _eleves_ from thirteen to twenty-eight years, only thirty-two had appeared before Courts of Justice for trifling offenses; thirty-two had shown symptoms of insubordination, and nearly the same number had been imprisoned.

It should be remembered that this bureau has charge of the whole cla.s.s of juvenile paupers, or Almshouse children, in Paris, as well as foundlings, whom it treats by placing out in country homes. In 1869, it thus provided for and protected 25,486 children, of whom 16,845 were from one day to twelve years, and 9,001 from twelve to twenty-one years.

For this purpose, it employed two princ.i.p.al inspectors, twenty-five sub-inspectors, and two hundred and seventy-eight physicians.

The expense of this bureau has been wonderfully slight, only averaging two dollars and sixty cents per annum for each child. In an Asylum the average annual expenditure for each child could not have been less than one hundred and fifty dollars. This Bureau Ste. Apolline must be carefully distinguished from the private bureaus in Paris for a.s.sisting foundlings, under which the most shocking abuses have occurred, the death-rate reaching among their subjects 70.87, and even ninety per cent.

The "boarding-out" system has been a part of the Alms-house system of Hamburg for years, and has proved eminently successful and economical.

In Berlin, more than half the pauper children, and all the foundlings, are thus dealt with. In Dublin, both Protestant and Catholic a.s.sociations have pursued this plan with dest.i.tute orphans and foundlings, with marked success. The Protestant Society had, in 1866, 453 orphans under its charge, and had placed out, or returned to friends, 1,256; its provincial branches had 2,208 under their care, and had placed out 5,374. All the orphans placed out by the Society are apprenticed. Great care is used in inspecting the homes in which children are put, and in selecting employers. The whole a.s.sociation is well organized. The annual cost of the children, dividing the whole expense by the number of children placed and cared for, is only from fifty dollars to fifty-five dollars per head. The Roman Catholic a.s.sociation, St. Brigid's, is even more economical in its work, as the labor is mainly performed by the members of the sisterhoods. Within seven years five hundred children were taken in charge, of whom two hundred had been adopted or placed out. The children thus provided for in country families are constantly visited by the conductors of the orphanage and by the parish priest. The expense of the whole enterprise is very slight.

Similar experiments are being made in England with pauper children, and, despite Prof. Fawcett's somewhat impractical objections, they have been found to be successful and far more economical than the old system.

THE FAMILY PLAN.

The Ma.s.sachusetts Board of State Charities, one of the ablest Boards that have ever treated these questions, well observes in its report for 1868: "The tendency in all civilized countries is toward the family system, through (1st) the Foundling Hospital and (2d) the Asylum or Home System; and the mortality among infants of this cla.s.s is reduced from ninety or ninety-five per cent, under the old no-system, from forty to sixty per cent. in well-managed Foundling Hospitals, from thirty to fifty per cent. in good Asylums, and from twenty to thirty-five per cent. in good single families, the last being scarcely above the normal death-rate of all infants."

The "placing-out" system, is of coa.r.s.e, liable to shocking abuse, as the experience of private offices for the care of foundlings in Paris, and recently in London, painfully shows. It mast be carried on with the utmost publicity, and under careful responsibility. But under a respectable and faithful board of trustees, with careful organization and inspection, there is no reason why the one thousand illegitimate children born every year in New York city should not be placed in good country families, under the best of care and with the prospect of saving, at least, seven hundred out of the thousand, instead of losing that proportion; and all this under an expense of about one-tenth that of an Asylum. Why will our benevolent ladies and gentlemen keep up the old monastic ideas of the necessity of herding these unfortunate children in one building? Here there are thousands of homes awaiting the foundlings, without money and without price, where the child would have the best advantages the country could afford; or if it be too weak or sick to be moved, or the managers fear the experiment of placing-out, let some responsible nurse be selected in the country near by, and the foundling boarded at their expense. The experience of the Children's Aid Society is, that no children are so eagerly and kindly received in country families as infants who are orphans. Let us not found in New York that most doubtful inst.i.tution--a Foundling Asylum--but use the advantages we have in the ten thousand natural asylums of the country.

In regard to the question, how far the affording facilities for the care of illegitimate children increases the temptation to vicious indulgence, we believe, as in most similar matters, the true course for the legislator lies between extremes. His first duty is, of course, one of humanity, to preserve life. Whenever helpless or abandoned children are found, the duty of the State is to take care of them, though this care may, in certain cases, offer an inducement to crime. The danger to the child, if neglected, is certain; that to the community, of inducing other mothers to abandon their offering, is remote and uncertain. On the other hand, the State is under no obligation to offer inducements to parents to neglect their illegitimate children; it is rather bound to throw all possible responsibility on those who have brought them into the world.

The extreme French plan of presenting "turning-tables" to those who wished to abandon their children, was found to increase the crime, and the number of such unfortunates. It has been given up even in Paris itself. The Russian Foundling Asylum in St. Petersburg found it necessary to make its conditions more strict than they were in the beginning as laxness tended to encourage s.e.xual vice. The universal experience is, that if a mother can be compelled to care for her infant, during a month or two, she will then never murder or abandon it. But, if she is relieved of the charge very early, she feels little affection or remorse, and often plunges into indulgence again without restraint. By requiring conditions and letting some little time pa.s.s before the mother gives the child up, she is kept in a better moral condition, and made to feel more the responsibility of her position, and is thus withheld from future vice.

On the other hand, the extreme position taken substantially by the New York legislators, whereby no mother could get rid of an illegitimate child, except by publicly entering the Alms-house, or by infanticide, undoubtedly stimulated the crimes of foeticide and child-murder. No doubt the new Catholic and Protestant Foundling Asylums contemplated in New York will steer between these two extremes, will connect the mother with the child as long as possible, and require all reasonable conditions before admitting the infant, and, at the same time, not drive a seduced or unfortunate woman with her babe out to take her chances in the streets.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION FOR STREET-CHILDREN.

The subject of applying Religion as a lever to raise up the cla.s.s of neglected children whom we have been describing, is a difficult one, but vital to the Science of Reform. The objects of those engaged in laboring for this cla.s.s are to raise them above temptation, to make them of more value to themselves, and to Society, and, if possible, to elevate them to the highest range of life, where the whole character is governed by Religion.

The children themselves are in a peculiar position. They have many of the traits of children, and yet are struggling in an independent and hard life, like men. They are not to be influenced as a Sunday-school audience would be, nor as an audience of adults. Their minds are acute, sharp, and practical; mere sentiment and the amiable plat.i.tudes of Sunday-school oratory are not for them. Rhetoric sets them asleep.

Bombast goes by the name of "gas" among them. Sentimental and affectionate appeals only excite their contempt. The "hard fact" pleases them. They know when the speaker stands on good bottom. If he has reached "hard pan," his audience is always with him.

No audience is so quick to respond to a sudden turn or a joke. Their faculties are far more awake than those of a company of children of the fortunate cla.s.ses. And yet they are like children in many respects.

Nothing interests them so much as the dramatic: the truth given by parable and ill.u.s.tration. Their education in the low theatres has probably cultivated this taste. The genuine and strong feeling of the heart always touches them. I have seen the quick tears drop over the dirty cheeks at the simple tone only of some warm-hearted man who had addressed them with a deep feeling of their loneliness and desolation.

And yet they would have "chaffed" him in five minutes after, if they had had the opportunity. They seem to have children's receptivity; they are not by nature skeptical. They unconsciously believe in supernatural powers, or in one eternal Power. Their conscience can be reached; the imagination is, to a certain degree, lively; they are peculiarly open to Religion. And yet their "moral" position is a most perplexing one. The speaker in one of our Boys' Lodging-houses, who addresses them, knows that this may be the last and only time, for years, that many of the wild audience will listen to religious truth. To-morrow a considerable portion will be scattered, no one knows where. To-morrow, perhaps to-night, temptation will come in like a flood. In a few hours, it may be, the street-boy will stand where he must decide whether he will be a thief or an honest lad; a rogue or an industrious worker; the companion of burglars and murderers, or the friend of the virtuous. Temptations to lying, to deceit, to theft, robbery, l.u.s.t, and murder will soon hunt him like a pack of wolves. His child's nature is each day under the strain of a man's temptations. Poverty, hunger, and friendlessness add to his exposed condition, while, in all probability, he inherits a tendency to indulgence or crime.

The problem is to guard such a human being, so exposed, against powerful temptations; to raise him above them; to melt his bad habits and inherited faults in some new and grand emotion; to create within him a force which is stronger than, and utterly opposed to, the selfish greed for money, or the attractions of criminal indulgence, or the rush of pa.s.sion, or the fire of anger. The object is to implant in his breast such a power as Plato dreamed of--the Love of some perfect Friend, whose character by sympathy shall purify his, whose feeling is believed to go with the fortunes of the one forgotten by all others, and who has the power of cleansing from wrong and saving from sin.

The experience of twenty years' labor shows us that what are called "moral influences" are not sufficient to solve this problem, or meet this want among the children of the street. It is, of course, well at times to present the beauty of virtue and the ugliness of vice; to show that honesty brings rewards, and falsehood pains, and to sketch the course of the moral poor whom fortune has rewarded. But these considerations are not sufficiently strong to hold back the most pressing temptations. Moreover, we have often had grave doubts whether "the bread-and-b.u.t.ter piety" was not too much recommended in all religious meetings to children. The child is too continually reminded that righteousness brings reward in this world, though the Master calls us to "take a yoke," and "bear a cross." The essence of the religious impulse is that it is unselfish, an inspiration from above, not below, a quickening of the n.o.bler emotions and higher aspirations. Wherever gain or worldly motive comes in, there spirituality flees away. We have, accordingly, always opposed, in our religious meetings, the employment of prizes or rewards, as is so common in Sunday Schools, to strengthen the religious influence. Experience, as well as reason, has shown us that all such motives mingled with religion simply weaken its power.

Considering the peculiar position of these children, we have never set the value on what is usually described as "Religious Instruction" which many do. Of course, there are certain foundation truths which should be taught to these audiences. But such subjects as the Jewish History and G.o.d's Providence therein, and many matters contained in the Old Testament, are not so immediately important for them as the facts and principles of Christianity. And yet there are pa.s.sages in the Old Testament which seem peculiarly designed for the young. There are stories--such as those of Joseph and Moses and Samuel--which, if all others should forget, children alone would not let die. It does not seem instruction that these children need, so much as inspiration. A street-boy might be perfectly familiar with the history of the Fall of Man and the flood; he might repeat the Commandments, and know by heart the Apostles' Creed, and yet not have one spark in his breast of the divine fire which is to save him from vice and ruin.

What the child of the streets, above all, needs to uphold him in his sea of troubles and temptations, is the knowledge and faith in Christ as his Friend and Saviour.

CHRIST can be presented and made real to these children as a perfect Being, the Son of G.o.d, who feels with all their misfortunes, who has known their temptations, who is their Friend, and only demands n.o.ble hearts and love from them, who lived and died for them when on earth, that they might love G.o.d and be saved from sin.

It is the old Faith, which has thrown the glory of Heaven over millions of death-beds, and sustained uncounted numbers of weak and hard-pressed men, true to honor, virtue, and goodness, amid all temptations and misfortunes. It has comforted and enn.o.bled the slave under his master's tyranny. If simply presented, and with faith in G.o.d, it can redeem the outcast youth of the streets from all his vices and evil habits, keep him pure amid filth, honest among thieves, generous among those greedy for money, kind among the hard and selfish, and enable him to overcome anger, l.u.s.t, the habit of lying or profanity, and to live a simple, humble, G.o.d-fearing, and loving life, merely because he believes that this Unseen Friend demands all this in his children and followers. When this Faith and this Love are implanted in the child's mind, and he is inspired by them, then his course is clear, and sure to be happy and good.

One mistake of Sunday-school oratory is frequently made in addressing these lads, and that is, a too great use of sensational ill.u.s.trations, which do not aid to impress the truth desired. Attention will be secured, but no good end is gained. Where the wants of the audience are so real and terrible as they are here, and so little time is given for influencing them, it is of the utmost importance that every word should tell. There should be no rhetorical pyrotechnics at these meetings.

Above all modes, however, the dramatic is the best means of conveying truth to their minds. The parable, the ill.u.s.tration, the allegory or story, real or fict.i.tious, most quickly strike their mind, and leave the most permanent impression.

One of the best religious speakers that ever address our boys is a lawyer, who has been a famous sportsman, and has in his const.i.tution a fellow-feeling for their vagrant tastes. I often fancy, when he is speaking to them, that he would not object at all to being a boy again himself, roving the streets, "turning in" on a hay-barge, and drifting over the country at "his own sweet will." But this very sympathy gives him a peculiar power over them; he understands their habits and temptations, and, while other gentlemen often shoot over their heads, his words always take a powerful hold of them. Then, though a man particularly averse to sentiment in ordinary life, his speeches to the boys seem to reveal a deep and poetic feelings for nature, and a solemn consciousness of G.o.d, which impresses children deeply. His sportsmanly habits have led him to closely observe the habits of birds and animals, and the appearances of the sky and sea, and these come in as natural ill.u.s.trations, possessing a remarkable interest for these wild little vagrants, who by nature belong to the "sporting" cla.s.s.

A man must have a boy's tastes to reach boys.

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

In treating of this subject of religious education for the youth of the dangerous cla.s.ses, the question naturally arises, how far there should be religious expression or education in our Public Schools. If it were a _tabula rasa_ here, and we were opening a system of National Schools, and all were of one general faith, there could be no question that every one interested in the general welfare, would desire religious instruction in our Public Schools, as a means of strengthening morality, if for no other purpose. As it is, however, we have at the basis of society an immense ma.s.s of very ignorant, and, therefore, bigoted people, who suspect and hate every expression even of our form of Christianity, and regard it as a teaching of heresy and a shibboleth of oppression. Their shrewd and cunning leaders, knowing the danger to priestcraft from Free Schools, use this hostility and the pretense of our religious services to separate these cla.s.ses from the Public Schools. The priests and demagogues do not, of course, care anything about the simple prayer and the reading of a few verses of Scripture, which are now our sole religious school exercises. But these furnish them with a good pretext for acting on the ma.s.ses, and give them ground, among certain liberal or indifferent Protestants, for seeking a separate State support for the Catholic Schools.