SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL QUARANTINE ORGANIZATIONS

"In the great seaport city of Hamburg—of all sorts of cities the one likeliest to prove an omnium gatherum of the human refuse brought by ships from all over the world, I lived a whole week without seeing a beggar, a tramp, or a drunkard; and what is true of Germany is more true of Japan."—Julian Ralph.

SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL QUARANTINE ORGANIZATIONS

During the preparation of this appeal for organized effort to establish Perfect Social Quarantine, the writer has enjoyed the advice and example of numerous workers in the field of child-saving and child-training, both in Chicago, where the incident which led to the appeal occurred, and in other sections of the country, representing various and extreme conditions of opportunity, need and experiment. Among them we wish especially to mention Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general secretary, National Conference of Charities and Correction, with headquarters at Chicago; Miss Julia G. Fox, director of the West Division Kindergarten, Chicago; Miss Eva B. Whitmore, general superintendent, and Miss Estelle Taylor, secretary, Chicago Free Kindergarten Association and Kindergarten Normal Department, Armour Institute of Technology, Chicago; Mr. Michel Heymann, superintendent, Jewish Orphan Asylum, New Orleans, La.; Mrs. Mollie E. Moore Davis, New Orleans; Miss Mary F. Ledyard, supervisor of Kindergartens, Los Angeles, Cal.; Colonel George McC. Derby, United States Engineer Corps, in charge of Lower Mississippi Levee District (now, August, 1898, at Santiago de Cuba), New Orleans; Mr. William S. Harbert, president Forward Movement, and Mrs. Harbert, Lake Geneva, Wis., and Evanston, Ill.; Rev. Dr. George W. Gray, in charge of the Forward Movement schools and charities, Chicago; Mr. Hugh K. Wagner, attorney-at-law, St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McCoy, actively interested in the rescue and cure of crippled waifs, Chicago; Mr. Myron M. Marsh, Chicago; the examples of the National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, and of the N. O. Nelson Manufacturing Company, St. Louis, Mo.; Miss Amalie Hofer, editor of Kindergarten Magazine, official organ of the Kindergarten Department of the National Education Association, Chicago; Mrs. Lucretia Williard Treat, Grand Rapids, Mich.; Colin A. Scott, Ph.D., professor of psychology and child-study, Cook County Normal School, Chicago; teachers of classes at Hull House, Chicago, whose Mæcenas, guardian and manager is Miss Jane Addams; Hon. William J. Van Patten, Burlington, Vt.; Mr. Clarence A. Hough, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mr. Clarence F. Low, president of the Charity Organization Society, New Orleans, La.; General Roeliff Brinkerhoff, Mansfield, Ohio; and Hon. C. C. Bonney, organizer and president of the Auxiliary Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, in charge of the World's Parliament of Religions.

We wish also to acknowledge valuable assistance on the part of Mynheer J. Drost, president of the Board of Education, Rotterdam, Holland; Sydney Whitman, Esq., author of Imperial Germany, London, England; Julian Ralph, Esq., traveler and author; and R. W. Rogers, Esq., Yarmouthport, Mass., and New Orleans, La., whose combined stores of information, supplementing that obtained from the workers mentioned above, and that in possession of the author as the result of personal observation, seem to fairly represent the field of practical suggestion.

As encouragement to those who may be interested in the cause represented in this appeal, from either the religious, humanitarian or economic point of view, and who may desire to organize local bodies to supplement the family, existing public institutions and the National Quarantine Organization, which is now under consideration, in putting a cordon of care about childhood, it is pertinent to state that all of these workers and observers endorse our position without reservation. In fact, we have failed to receive a shadow of denial or lack of sympathy from any of them.

Full-grown questions, relative to full-grown subjects of competition, will always elicit argument in discussion, but care of children during the formative period of character and before the money-earning age finds no opposition, so that Perfect Social Quarantine is only a question of organized effort to accomplish the complete aim.

In further encouragement of organization and effort, sadly deplorable though it be, it is valuable to know that the average career of criminals or peace disturbers, when they have come under the ban of ostracism, and are become social "outcasts," such as burglars, thieves, prostitutes and others, most of whom lead dissipated lives as an accompaniment to their evil doing, is not more than three or four years. This estimate of the average life of crime in an individual is from the best authorities. Criminals either die or reform after three or four years of strain, and frequently earlier, so that the average is maintained.

All of the trouble that Society suffers comes from spasmodic crime which is fed from the ranks of neglected childhood, and which would disappear from among us if the gaps of neglect were closed by means of a Strict Social Quarantine; and, within five years from the closing of the last gap, for a popular wave of prevention would effect such impetus to correction that disorder and crime would be impossible in all communities as they already are in some communities; while the general dissemination of proof of the infamous falsehood of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class would open the eyes of all citizens to the criminality of neglect and thereby effect a speedy cure.

SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL ORGANIZATION.

The best work is secured through committees whose aim has been defined by an executive committee, composed of the officers, ex-officio, and the chairmen or chairwomen of the separate committees.

SUGGESTED LIST OF COMMITTEES.

Committee on Districts or Wards and Census of Children Needing Care, and also on available rentable rooms to accommodate the neglected in groups of not more than fifteen or twenty in each class. There may be several classes in each school, all under the supervision of one director, and assistants.

Committee on Estimates and Finance.

Committee on Securing the Services of Scientifically Trained Teachers, to serve as directors, and on Securing Volunteer Teachers, in process of training, to serve as assistants.

Committee on Securing Initial Support until government shall take over the schools which have proved to be efficient nurseries of good citizenship on demand of the people. Experience teaches that this method of introduction and progress towards proper public establishment and support is natural and speedy, as the result of the merit of the process of citizen culture suggested.

Committee on Suitable Nourishment and Clothing for destitute children.

Committee on Parallel Sanitary and Cleanliness Requirements, which must claim attention in connection with the reclamation of children from unsanitary and uncleanly surroundings.

Committee on Emulation for individual or sectional neighborhood cleanliness and for home or neighborhood decoration; this outside of the schools, where no prizes should be given.

Committee on Crèches.

Committee on Kindergartens.

Committee on Manual Training Equipments.

Committee on Domestic Science Equipments.

Committee on Vacant Lots to Be Used as Vegetable Patches, by which to teach nature study, and through means of which to offer prizes for the best results of growth obtained.

Committee on General Amusements of character-building or habit-forming suggestiveness.

Committee on Circulating and Traveling Libraries, aiming to reach remote country districts, tributary to the urban community.

Committee on Stereopticon View Circulation, in connection with other organizations so as to bring the world to the children and to their parents.

Committee on Associated Charities to co-operate with the character schools.

Committee on Transportation of Children from their homes, or from farms, or from designated rendezvous, by means of wagons or otherwise, to the character schools; an important consideration.

Committee on Statistics and Laws; following the careers of children to note effect and permanency of cultivation; to be used in legislation when needed.

Committee on Waste for the Waif.

The latter committee may well study the history of sacrifice in times of war and other emergencies and learn that these seasons of deep and common interest have often inspired the putting away of useless ornament and luxury, and the saving of careless waste in the interest of a patriotic cause, and that the sacrifice has been a means of positive pleasure that indifference or neglect cannot carry with them.

For instance: The most careful persons, in times of relaxed attention, waste not less than one cent in every dollar expended, and think nothing of it. One cent in one dollar is one one-hundreth of one's income, an inconsiderable amount, a trifle indeed! and yet, one one-hundreth of the incomes of half the people would support a Perfect Social Quarantine; cut off the supply of material for criminals; add largely to the productive efficiency of the community; decrease taxes; give more pleasure to the contributors and active workers than any other pursuit; lead to sanitary and filth eradication; do away with the constant terror of burglars that every sound in the dark now creates; take away the discomfort of that typically American disease called catarrh, by cleaning up the dust-producing quarters of neglect; and create a rational and civilized environment to take the place of one which now produces much worry, snuffling and unhappiness; and, within a brief season of time whose days would pass with pleasant acceleration in the joyous consciousness of usefulness, efficiency, progress, hope and happiness.

Efficiency lies chiefly—necessarily—in the aim, and if the aim be definite and complete, it will be found easier of accomplishment than any number or any strength of partial and detached efforts.

Of course, the first and last aim of our proposition is Strict and Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine, but the separate aims of committees should be to get one-half of each community, at least, to register as quarantinists, and volunteer to save, at least, a sum equal to one one-hundredth of their income from some inconsequential waste, and devote it to the consequential use of prevention of the propagation of the various seeds of unhappiness.

The movement would aim to arraign people under the head of quarantinists, by approval, or under the head of neglectists, by inference of indifference.

By pledging one one-hundredth of one's income, at least, the contribution would in no wise be a revelation of the amount of one's income, while all subscriptions would be equalized according to the means of each; little children not being debarred from helping their less fortunate fellows who are come from the same Source of Life, but who have been less lucky in their introduction into the world.

The aim should be to locate the cases of worst need first, and work back towards the avenues and boulevards. By this means the work would begin at the base of neglect; and it is proven by experience that much of the intermediate indifference corrects itself, as a result of a good example being set on the social terrace next below.

There is only one stratum of abject depravity and hopelessness, and that is a very thin stratum, with only detached specimens visible. Begin with that, and the strata above it, in which there must be some admixture of self-respect, if you excite it by example, will begin to do for themselves what you wish to do for them.

It is the same relative to conditions of cleanliness. Dirt does not originate in the avenues or in the boulevards, but it blows there, or is dragged there from the slums, through the intermediate sections, making cleanliness helpless, and hopeless to each quarter except by beginning to clean the deepest slums first.[8]

Moral and physical carelessness beget and stimulate each other. You cannot correct one without favorably affecting the other. Social Quarantine embodies both Moral and Sanitary Quarantine.

Present methods of conveying clean suggestion into the body of Society may well be illustrated by trying to introduce the quality of purity into a tree, by forcing it into the leaves against the current of the sap, in order to reach the branches, trunk, and roots. The method proposed contemplates placing drops of suggestion, like aniline, at the roots of the tender shoots, in order that they may course freely with the sap by natural process of growth. The old method meets with constant protest and opposition. The proposed method meets with no opposition at all.

The progressive nations can produce sufficient means to furnish the world with teachers and missionaries, and to wage foreign wars against inhumanity and neglect, in addition to supporting home quarantine, but the natural and easy method of procedure is to work from within and extend outward.

[8]

I was walking in a country lane in England with Julian Ralph, the American author, after having received, and just read, a batch of mail. In thoughtless absorption I crumpled an envelope in my hand and was on the point of throwing it away, when Ralph caught me by the arm and shouted: "Great goodness, man! Don't do that! You'll spoil England."

The force of the suggestion was such that since that time I never think of throwing anything broadcast, but put waste paper, or whatever else I may accumulate, away, often in my pocket, till I can place it in a proper receptacle or in the fire.

The other day, at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, while on the water, as a result of Ralph's suggestion, I found myself refraining from throwing waste in the water; it was so pure and clear. Why not start children with such a suggestion instead of those begotten of sheer carelessness?—[The Author.]