The Family and its Members Part 13

In all the things that experts should direct, and in all the things that mean health and comfort and happiness to individual children, parents, even if not very learned, should have a voice and seek to make their convictions work to actual progress.

=Individual Sharing in the Social Inheritance.=--For the last point of our list, namely, the right of every child to be made a conscious heir to the social inheritance of his time and place in the world, little need be said. The tendencies in American life which give thoughtful people the most satisfaction are the tendencies toward extension of culture privileges in public libraries, lectures, tax-supported and educationally supervised playgrounds, in young people's organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, in summer camps (not all for the rich), in vacation houses full of the flavor of the best of life, in the varied clubs and cla.s.ses of the settlements, in the pageants and other forms of pictured world-life--all these, and more that might be named, show an exuberance of effort to share with utmost speed and fullest generosity the things that seem to the privileged few the most precious heritage of our race.

Yet, with all our effort so much more needs doing that mult.i.tudes live and die wholly ignorant of the world they have come to or of the race-life of which they are a part. Doctor Du Bois, in his cla.s.sic appeal for human comradeship for all, _The Soul of Black Folks_, has shown what suffering comes to the cultured black man who finds all cultured men and women of white races forcing him to be an alien because of his skin. There is a sadder and more terrible, because unconscious, deprivation; it is that of any one, white or black, rich or poor, who loses the chance to partake of the culture of the past.

The man or woman, whether able to accomplish much or little on the practical side of vocational service, whose outlook is bounded by the narrow, the superficial, the personal, the ephemeral, is missing the best part of his social inheritance, the capacity to "look before and after and pine for what is not."

Such a little time we are here! Even a Methuselah might wish to have in his mental furnishings the glory of the past and the prophetic hope of the future. All children, not merely a fortunate few, should have this sense of a group-life of which each is a part, should be able to see life and see it whole in the social inheritance that belongs alike to each one of us. Children make a large order upon each generation as they come into a vast group of all that have been and reach consciously toward the expanding life of the coming time.

The family must begin that culture by which the order shall be filled, but no family can answer even the least of the social demands by itself. "Culture," says Emerson, "shall yet absorb chaos itself,"

Every child has a rightful citizenship in that order-giving world of thought, of history, of poetry, of art, of science, and of religion.

What a nation we might become if only every child had this, its right, recognized and fulfilled!

QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY

1. The eighteenth century was called the century of man, the nineteenth century, of women, and the twentieth, that of the child. What facts justify this statement?

2. What are the main elements in the modern standard of child-care, child-protection, and child-nurture?

3. What of these elements can and should the private home supply, and what must be the community provision and control?

4. In trying to effect both private and public conditions favorable to the best development of child-life, what should be the scale of values used, or what should be the order of effort?

5. Dr. Alice Hamilton, in a Chicago study of I,500 families, found that the infant death-rate in large families of six children and over was two and one-half times greater than in small families of four children or less. Was that an indication that infant mortality rises with fecundity or was it one of many indications that the better-to-do have smaller families? In any case, should such statistics always include the statement of the social standing and the income of the groups studied?

6. In _The Child_ of August, 1920, Miss Julia C. Lathrop summarizes the Child-welfare Standards proposed by the Children's Bureau as follows:

(1.) Minimum standards for children entering employment:

A. Minimum age, sixteen years in all employments; eighteen years in mines and quarries; twenty-one years for girls as telephone or telegraph messengers; twenty-one years for special-delivery service of U.S.

Post Office; prohibition of minors in dangerous, unhealthy, or hazardous occupations.

B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year.

Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight hours a week.

C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of work unless found to be normal in physique and health.

D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as part of working-day.

E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar agency.

F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision.

G. Employment certificate as needed protection against industrial exploitation.

(2.) Minimum standards for public protection of health of mothers and children:

A. Maternity aids; B. Infants; C. Pre-school children; D.

School children; E. Adolescent children.

(3.) Minimum standards in relation to children needing special care:

A. Adequate income; B. a.s.sistance to mothers; C. State supervision; D. Removal of some children from their homes; E. Home care; F. Principles governing child-placing; G. Children in inst.i.tutions; H. Care of children born out of wedlock; I. Care of physically defective children; J. Mental hygiene and care of mentally defective children; K. Juvenile courts; L. Rural social work; M. Scientific information.

(4.) General minimum standards:

A. Economic and social; B. Recreation; C. Child-welfare legislation.

Read the above and compare your local conditions with these standards. Do you think all these demands necessary?

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Described briefly in _The Survey_ of November 12, 1921.

[9] In New Zealand, which has so many "modern improvements" in government, the proposition has been made to fix a basic wage for a man and wife without children, and make it the same as for a single man. In addition to this sum, each employer would be required by law to pay into a State Fund a sum slightly in advance of this wage for the single man and the childless married man, and that excess sum would be distributed in the form of a children's allowance to each parent according to the number of children. It is estimated that under this plan the total sum paid out in wages would not exceed that now distributed, but the receipt by the workers would be proportioned to responsibilities.

[10] See publications of the National Child-labor Committee.

CHAPTER IX

THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY

"What a piece of work is man! How n.o.ble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a G.o.d! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

"Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and G.o.dlike reason To fust in us unused."

--SHAKESPEARE.

"The apostolic of every age are ever calling for a higher righteousness, a better development of the human race, a more earnest effort to equalize the condition of men."--LUCRETIA MOTT.

"To every period its leaders: and the rise of every leader is according to his watching for opportunity; and the chief quality of leadership is the jewel of equity, by which alone the obedience of men is justified."--ARAB SAYING.

"He presses on before the race, And sings out of a silent place.

Like faint notes of a forest bird On heights afar that voice is heard; And the dim path he breaks to-day Will some time be a trodden way.

But when the race comes toiling on That voice of wonder will be gone-- Be heard on higher peaks afar, Moved upward with the morning star.

O men of earth, that wandering voice Still goes the upward way: rejoice!"

--EDWIN MARKHAM.

=The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre.=--In Dr. T.S. Clouston's suggestive book, _The Hygiene of Mind_, he estimates that at least four-fifths of the human race are legally "sound" and of average capacity. Of the remaining one-fifth who are "unusual" he and other investigators name only one-tenth of one per cent, as ent.i.tled to the distinction of "Genius." Clouston adds to this a cla.s.s of "lesser genius," often extremely useful to the race but often personally unhappy from ungratified ambition or lack of temperamental balance. He lists "reformers" for the most part in this cla.s.s and "inventors who do not succeed." He also specifically indicates a cla.s.s of "all-round talent" from which successful social and political leaders are drawn and heads of big business and administrators of large enterprises in educational fields. Dr. Lester F. Ward, on the contrary, believed that we estimate the rate of genius and potential genius far too low and that special talent is vastly more common than the usual observer thinks. He says, "What the human race needs is not more brains but more knowledge." In his clarion call for the better education of all people of every race and condition, he affirms his faith in environmental opportunity and a finer personal development as the chief things needed to send the race onward. Professor Woods, of Dartmouth College, writing on "The Social Cost of Unguided Ability,"

confirms this conviction of Doctor Ward.[11] He declares that "for ten men who succeed there are probably fifty more who might succeed with adequate development and specialization of effort." He shows how "education as an agency in the selection of personal ability fails because of undue abbreviation of the period of training for most individuals and the omission of elements of training of real significance for the purpose of adjusting individuals to the specific task." When we note that before the fifth elementary grade is reached there is a drop in attendance showing only 80 per cent. of those found in the second grade, and in the sixth grade only 66 per cent., and in the seventh grade only 50 per cent., and in the eighth grade less than 40 per cent. remain of those entering the first and second grades, we see good reason for his statement. When the high school statistics are added, with the drop year by year in attendance until at graduation only one in fourteen pupils remains to the end, we feel that this author is right when he says that "Society suffers less from the race suicide of the capable than from the non-utilization of the well-endowed."

[Ill.u.s.tration]