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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031228616 
 
THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 OR 
 
 SOCIAL QUARANTINE 
 
HORACE FLETCHER'S WORKS 
 
 THE A. B.-Z. OF OUR OWN NU- 
 TRITION. Thirteenth thousand. 462 pp. 
 
 THE NEW MENTICULTURE; or, 
 The A-B-C of True Living. Forty- 
 Eighth thousand. 310 pp. 
 
 THE NEW GLUTTON OR EPI- 
 CURE ; OR, Economic Nutrition. 
 Fifteenth thuusand. 344 pp. 
 
 HAPPINESS AS FOUND IN FORETHOUr.HT 
 
 MINUS Fearthought. Fourteenth thou- 
 sand. 251 pp. 
 
 THAT lXsT WAIF; or, Social 
 Quarantine. Sixth thousand. 270 pp. 
 
THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 OR 
 
 SOCIAL QUARANTINE 
 
 A BRIEF 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE FLETCHER 
 
 Ad'VQcate for the Waifs 
 
 Fellonu American Association for the Ad'vancement 
 
 of Science 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
 (i 
 
Matthiw, xvii! ; I, 2 and 14 
 I. At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus saying, 
 Who is the greatest in the kiiigdDm of heaven? 
 
 z. And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him 
 in the midst of them. 
 
 14. Even 80 it is not the will of your Father which is in 
 heaven, that one of these little ones should perish ? 
 
 COPVRIGHT, i8g8 
 
 By HORACE FLETCHER 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 1903 Preface, - - " - ix 
 Preface, , . . - g 
 The Lost Waif, - - - 17 
 Menace of the Have-to-Be, - - 39 
 Social Quarantine First, - 71 
 Quarantine, - - - 93 
 Uncivilized Inconsistencies, - 105 
 Quarantine Against Idleness - 131 
 " " Misunderstanding 145 
 " " Maladministration 157 
 Suggestions for Local Quarantine Or- 
 ganization, - - 169 
 Sarah B. Cooper, - - 191 
 Corroborative Testimony, - - 221 
 " And a Little Child Shall Lead 
 
 Them," - - - 227 
 
 Summary, - - - 233 
 
 Logical Sequences, - - - 251 
 Appendix: 
 
 It has Begun, - - - 263 
 
 Dedication, ... 269 
 
'' It was Juvenal who said, 'The man's 
 character is made at seven ; what he then 
 is, he will always be.' This seems a 
 sweeping assertion, but Aristotle, Plato, 
 Lycurgus, Plutarch, Bacon, Locke, and 
 Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same 
 idea, while leading educators of a modern 
 day are all united upon this point!' 
 \_Sarah B. Cooper, to the National Con- 
 ference of Charities and Correction of 
 
 the United States and Canada. J 
 * * * 
 
 " This institution was established as the 
 result of a quickened public conscience on 
 the subject of waifs of the State, a com- 
 prehensive understanding of the relation 
 of the State to the child, and the demon- 
 strated effect of such institutions in 
 decreasing crime. " \^The A merican Jour- 
 nal of Sociology, May, i8g8,page 7po.] 
 
 VI 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 "Waif," as herein employed, ap- 
 plies to all neglected or abused chil- 
 dren, and not especially to those who 
 have lost their parents, or have been 
 abandoned. 
 
 While the evidence of the kinder- 
 gartners may seem extreme as to the 
 possibility of making useful citizens of 
 all children, the unanimity of their en- 
 thusiasm must be taken as very strong 
 evidence. 
 
 The plea for a social quarantine 
 which shall establish protection for 
 helpless infancy during the period of 
 present neglect, and when the cost is 
 insignificant, is made in the belief that, 
 once attracted to the idea of the possi- 
 vii 
 
vili FOREWORD 
 
 bility of social quarantine, which is 
 nothing if not complete, popular senti- 
 ment will demand a continuance of 
 organized protection for each member 
 of society as long as he may be help- 
 less or weak, without reference to an 
 age limit. 
 
 Immediate special attention, how- 
 ever, should be given to the victims of 
 the "sweaters," to unsanitary work- 
 rooms and other environing conditions 
 provided by conscienceless (usually 
 alien) employers, and to the preven- 
 tion of children being employed in 
 occupations where temptation is so 
 strong as to be a menace to unformed 
 character. 
 
1903 PREFACE 
 
 When first published, five years ago, 
 this appeal for better care of children 
 born into unfortunate environment met 
 with very favorable reception, especially 
 from practical child educators and child 
 economists ; and the author received 
 numerous requests to address gather- 
 ings of altruists in various parts of the 
 country. He responded to some forty 
 of these invitations, and met with warm- 
 est encouragement and the assurance 
 that the sentiment of this book was 
 shared pretty generally, when the facts 
 in the case were understood. In meet- 
 ing men of all kinds in the outside 
 world, as well as women from whom a 
 generous sympathy might be expected, 
 
 he found that any scheme offering care 
 ix 
 
X 1903 PREFACE 
 
 and protection for neglected children 
 excited the sympathy and enlisted the 
 assistance of all classes, and most read- 
 ily the aid of people in the more lowly 
 walks of life, who came nearer to the 
 need and realized the want. The 
 wealthy Christian mother of, the Avenue 
 would respond to the suggestion of a 
 more efficient care for the helpless ones 
 with " We should certainly do all that 
 we can for these poor little unfortunates, 
 for Christ's sake;" while the ruddy bar- 
 keeper, who unwillingly pushed out the 
 bottle to a parent of neglected kids 
 in the slums, when talked to about an 
 effective quarantine to protect the ne- 
 glected ones, would say, " Certainly ; 
 yes, indeed! for Christ's sake give the 
 babies a chance." 
 
 In both cases the sympathy and sen- 
 timent were the same, and the ^author 
 believes it to be universal. All that is 
 
1903 PREFACE xi 
 
 needed to guard against helplessness is 
 concentration of interest, for a little 
 time, on this one elementary need, and 
 the full measure of reform will soon be 
 in effective operation. 
 
 While the conferences above referred 
 to were being held, the author had op- 
 portunity to learn the existing condi- 
 tions, relative to the greatest and most 
 fundamental needs in approaching and 
 perfecting a reform of the kind recom- 
 mended, and learned that uncertain, 
 irregular, or otherwise faulty nourish- 
 ment is the cause of much perversion 
 among the poor, and is especially harm- 
 ful to the young among them. The 
 author had just completed his initial 
 experiments, and had published the 
 booklet " What Sense ? or. Economic 
 Nutrition," and by them saw a way to 
 provide teachers, mothers, and other 
 child protectors with a teachable theory 
 
xii 1903 PREFACE 
 
 of nutrition that seemed to him to be 
 scientific but simple, and which had 
 been most gratifyingly effective wher- 
 ever it had been intelligently tried. 
 
 But in the course of these lecture 
 conferences it developed that more than 
 the unsupported word of a layman was 
 necessary in order to even command 
 attention in a matter that everybody 
 thought they knew all about themselves, 
 and in whose general opinion the whole 
 world joined. It did not seem cred- 
 ible, although quite logical, that health, 
 morals, temperament, physical efficiency, 
 and all the requirements of virtue and 
 good citizenship could be mended or 
 modified by mere attention to the inges- 
 tion of food and more careful eating. 
 
 As time went on it seemed evident 
 to the author that not only was a right 
 intelligence, relative to the initial act of 
 nutrition, helpful in conserving health, 
 
1903 PREFACE xiii 
 
 but that it was fundamentally necessary 
 to physical efficiency, mental clearness, 
 and moral tone, and that all work, 
 which was done by educators without 
 this basic knowledge as an underlying 
 necessity of teaching or training, could 
 but be simply ameliorative and not cura- 
 tive in its effect ; and, failing to be able 
 to say the convincing word himself, it 
 seemed necessary for the author to inter- 
 est the highest physiological authority 
 in the subject and make demonstration 
 a means of convincing them. This, in 
 order that they might speak to deaf 
 ears with the effectiveness of the mega- 
 phone, while poor lay I, the author, 
 could not raise my voice above a 
 whisper. 
 
 In transferring this book to the 
 " A.B.C. Series," and Hnking it up with 
 the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," 
 and other books of the " Series," the 
 
xiv 1903 PREFACE 
 
 megaphonic connection has been estab- 
 lished, and now the attorney for the 
 waifs is ready to turn on a renewed 
 current of sympathy and see what will 
 happen. 
 
 The work, as it originally shaped 
 itself, was dropped by the author, for 
 the time being, as being built on sand, 
 if presented without a good theory of 
 scientific feeding as one of the founda- 
 tion principles, and hence these inter- 
 vening five years have been employed 
 in getting authority for the economic 
 theory required. 
 
 These five years also have added 
 time-proof to the personal experience 
 of the author, and have added many 
 confirmatory experiences to his own. 
 Continued pursuit of the subject has 
 also developed possibilities of endur- 
 ance, efficiency, and happiness that were 
 not known to exist in former times, so 
 
1903 PREFACE XV 
 
 that we begin to doubt if the normal 
 man or woman has been seen in the 
 world since history has given us a 
 record. 
 
 During these five years of study of 
 the question, left incomplete in the 
 present volume as first issued, only con- 
 firmatory evidence of the hopes ex- 
 pressed herein has been deduced. The 
 author has had abundant opportunity 
 to add experiences in England, Italy, 
 and, in fact, all over Europe, and in this 
 country, that strengthen the faith and 
 call for action or guilt of infamous in- 
 difference. The work of Dr. Bernardo 
 in England has progressed steadily, and 
 each annual showing is better than the 
 last, while the public demonstrations at 
 Albert Hall, London, are becoming 
 more intrinsically interesting than any 
 other exhibitions or entertainments that 
 are held in that great auditorium. 
 
xvi 1903 PREFACE 
 
 The Salvation Army work, too, has 
 been closely inspected and followed, 
 and, while its aims are more curative 
 than preventive, and give promises in 
 the future rather than in the immediate 
 present, it cannot but meet with highest 
 approval for what it does in a practical 
 way among the degenerate. Quite re- 
 cently General Booth has added a De- 
 partment of Hygiene to his staff outfit, 
 and the whole tendency of the work is 
 improving and is already splendid. It 
 is not yet broad enough, however, and 
 does not deal with the basic necessities 
 of complete nutrition reform applied to 
 children. 
 
 The whole course of reform on chari- 
 table principles has been steadily pro- 
 gressive, but the most conclusive and 
 convincing demonstration of possibili- 
 ties, all the way from waif-saving to the 
 last ultimate refinement of physical and 
 
1903 PREFACE xvil 
 
 mental reform, has been given us by 
 two of the most modest and self-uncon- 
 scious persons possible to imagine. 
 To Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of 
 Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more 
 than any of us can ever pay for a dem- 
 onstration of humane possibilities, which 
 proves the full contentions of this book 
 most conclusively. Twenty-four of the 
 most unfortunate of waifs, rescued and 
 endowed with all the opportunity of 
 respectable manhood and womanhood 
 and good citizenship, is the record of 
 this one little married but childless 
 couple ; and after that who shall ever 
 dare to say that there should ever be 
 any " Have-to-be-bad " persons to fill an 
 altogether unnecessary " ten-per-cent-of- 
 submerged-stratum " of society ? 
 
 Some account of this family of true 
 and practical salvation is given in the 
 "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition " and 
 
xviii 1903 PREFACE 
 
 in " The New Glutton or Epicure," and 
 need not be repeated here, for without 
 full appreciation of the contents of each 
 of the books of the " A. B.C. Series " the 
 argument of either is incomplete. 
 
 H. F. 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. 
 Life Series 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS AND SEQUENCE IN LIFE 
 
 It would seem a considerable departure 
 from the study of menticulture as advised 
 in the author's book, " Menticulture," to 
 jump at once to an investigation of the 
 physiology and psychology of nutrition of 
 the body and then over to the department 
 of infant and child care and education as 
 pursued in the creche and in the kinder- 
 garten ; but as a matter of fact, if study 
 of the causation of human disabilities and 
 misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest 
 leads naturally into all the departments of 
 human interest, and first into these primary 
 departments. 
 
 The object of this statement is to 
 link up the different publications of the 
 writer into a chain of consistent sugges- 
 tions intended to make life a more simple 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 and agreeable problem than many of us 
 too indifferent or otherwise inefficient and 
 bad fellow-citizens make of it. 
 
 It is not an altogether unselfish effort 
 on the part of the author of the A. B, C. 
 Life Series to publish his findings. In the 
 consideration of his own mental and physi- 
 cal happiness it is impossible to leave out 
 environment, and all the units of humanity 
 who inhabit the world are part of his and 
 of each other's environment. 
 
 It would be rank presumption for any 
 person, even though gifted with the means 
 to circulate his suggestions as widely as 
 possible, and armed with the power to 
 compel the reading of his publications, 
 to think that any suggestions of his could 
 influence any considerable number of his 
 fellow-citizens of the world, or even of his 
 own immediate neighbourhood, to accept 
 or follow his advice relative to the man- 
 agement of their lives and of their com- 
 munal and national affairs ; but while the 
 general and complete good of humanity 
 should be aimed at in all publications, 
 one's immediate neighbours and friends 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 come first, and the wave of influence 
 spreads according to the effectiveness of 
 the ideas suggested in doing good; that 
 is, in altering the point of view and con- 
 duct of people so as to make them a better 
 sympathetic environment. 
 
 For instance, the children of your 
 neighbours are likely to be the playmates 
 of your own children, and the children of 
 degenerate parents in the slum district 
 of your city will possibly be the fellow- 
 citizen partners of your own family. Again, 
 when it is known that right or wrong nu- 
 trition of the body is the most important 
 agent in forming character, in establish- 
 ing predisposition to temperance or intem- 
 perance of living, including the desire for 
 intoxicating stimulants, it is revealed to 
 one that right nutrition of the community 
 as a whole is an important factor in his 
 own environment, as is self-care in the 
 case of his own nourishment. 
 
 The moment a student of every-day 
 
 philosophy starts the study of problems 
 
 from the A. B. C. beginning of things, 
 
 and to shape his study according to an 
 
 xxi 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 A. B. C. sequence, each cause of inhar- 
 mony is at once traced back to its first ex- 
 pression in himself and then to causes 
 influenced by his environments. 
 
 If we find that the largest influences 
 for good or bad originate with the right 
 or wrong instruction of children during 
 the home training or kindergarten period 
 of their development, and that a dollar 
 expended for education at that time is 
 worth more for good than whole bancs 
 of courts and whole armies of police to 
 correct the effect of bad training and bad 
 character later in life, it is quite logical 
 to help promote the spread of the kinder- 
 garten or the kindergarten idea to include 
 all of the children born into the world, 
 and to furnish mothers and kindergarten 
 teachers with knowledge relative to the 
 right nutrition of their wards which they 
 can themselves understand and can teach 
 effectively to children. 
 
 If we also find that the influence of the 
 kindergarten upon the parents of the in- 
 fants is more potent than any other which 
 can be brought to bear upon them, we see 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 clearly that the way to secure the widest 
 reform in the most thorough manner is 
 to concentrate attention upon the kinder- 
 garten phase of education, advocate its 
 extension to include even the last one of 
 the children, beginning with the most 
 needy first, and extending the care out- 
 ward from the centre of worst neglect to 
 finally reach the whole. 
 
 Experience in child saving so-called, 
 and in child education on the kinder- 
 garten principle, has taught the cheapest 
 and the most profitable way to insure 
 an environment of good neighbours and 
 profit-earning citizens ; and investigation 
 into the problem of human alimentation 
 shows that a knowledge of the elements of 
 an economic nutrition is the first essential 
 of a family or school training ; and also 
 that this is most impressive when taught 
 during the first ten years of life. 
 
 One cannot completely succeed in the 
 study of menticulture from its A. B. C. 
 beginning and in A. B. C. sequence with- 
 out appreciation of the interrelation of 
 the physical and the mental, the personal 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 and the social, in attaining a complete 
 mastery of the subject. 
 
 The author of the A. B. C. Life 
 Series has pursued his study of the 
 philosophy of life in experiences which 
 have covered a great variety of occupa- 
 tions in many different parts of the world 
 and among peoples of many different 
 nations and races. His first book, " Men- 
 ticulture," dealt with purging the mind 
 and habits of sundry weaknesses and de- 
 terrents which have possession of people 
 in general in some degree. He recog- 
 nised the depressing effect of anger and 
 worry and other phases of fearthought. 
 In the book " Happiness," which followed 
 next in oxd&rfearikougkiwdiS shown to be 
 the unprofitable element of forethought. 
 The influence of environment on each 
 individual was revealed as an important 
 factor of happiness, or the reverse, by 
 means of an accidental encounter with a 
 neglected waif in the busy streets of 
 Chicago during a period of intense 
 national excitement incident to the war 
 with Spain, and this led to the publication 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 of " That Last Waif ; or, Social Quaran- 
 tine." During the time that this last 
 book was being written, attention to the 
 importance of right nutrition was invited 
 by personal disabilities, and the experi- 
 ments described in " Glutton or Epicure ; 
 or. Economic Nutrition " were begun and 
 have continued until now. 
 
 In the study of the latter, but most 
 important factor in profitable living, cir- 
 cumstances have greatly favoured the 
 author, as related in his latest book, 
 " The A. B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition." 
 
 The almost phenomenal circulation of 
 " Menticulture " for a book of its kind, 
 and a somewhat smaller interest in the 
 books on nutrition and the appeal for 
 better care of the waifs of society, showed 
 that most persons wished, like the au- 
 thor, to find a short cut to happiness by 
 means of indifference to environment, 
 both internal and external, while habitu- 
 ally sinning against the physiological 
 dietetic requirements of Nature. In smoth- 
 ering worry and guarding against anger the 
 psychic assistance of digestion was stimu- 
 
 xxy 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 lated and some better results were thereby 
 obtained, but not the best attainable 
 results. 
 
 Living is easy and life may be made 
 constantly happy by beginning right; and 
 the right beginning is none other than 
 the careful feeding of the body. This 
 done there is an enormous reserve of 
 energy, a naturally optimistic train of 
 thought, a charitable attitude towards 
 everybody, and a loving appreciation of 
 everything that God has made. Morbid- 
 ity of temperament will disappear from an 
 organism that is economically and rightly 
 nourished, and death will cease to have 
 any terrors for such ; and ^s, fear of death 
 is the worst depressant known, many of 
 the worries of existence take their ever- 
 lasting flight from the atmosphere of the 
 rightly nourished. 
 
 The wide interest now prevalent in 
 the subjects treated in The A. B. C. Life 
 Series is evidenced by the scientific, mili- 
 tary, and lay activity, in connection with 
 the experiments at the Sheffield Scientific 
 
 School of Yale University and elsewhere, 
 xxvi 
 
Explanation of The A. B. C. Life Series 
 
 as related in the " A. B.-Z. of Our Own 
 Nutrition " and in " The New Glutton or 
 Epicure" of the series. 
 
 The general application is more fully 
 shown, however, by the indorsement of 
 the great Battle Creek Sanitarium, which 
 practically studies all phases of the sub- 
 ject, from health conservation and child 
 saving to general missionary work in 
 social reform. 
 
 HORACE FLETCHER. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 " And a little child shall lead them." 
 * * * 
 
 The text of this appeal was furnished 
 by the accidental observation of a waif 
 of not more than four years of age, 
 who was gathered into the meshes of 
 the law, and then pushed back into 
 a stifling atmosphere of criminal neg- 
 lect under ban of the official sentence^ 
 "Now get! you little bastard, and to 
 
 hell with you!" 
 
 * * * 
 
 This waif disappeared into the slums 
 
 without leaving any clue to his identity, 
 
 and without any certainty of rescue, 
 
 except by means of a quickened public 
 
 conscience that shall organize to mend 
 
 the existing defects arising from our 
 
 9 
 
lO PREFACE 
 
 careless lack of system in child protec- 
 tion, so as to rescue all waifs in need, 
 in order to include the lost waif of our 
 
 story. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The development of the day-nursery 
 and kindergarten methods of child care 
 and character-building has proven that 
 ninety-eight per cent., at least, of the 
 formerly-considered " hopelessly sub- 
 merged ten per cent, stratum of society" 
 can be saved and added to the mass of 
 good citizenship by these means, and 
 that the insignificant few, abnormally 
 weak or perverse, are better subjects 
 for industrial schools before criminal 
 tendencies develop into habit, than for 
 street schools of aimlessness and result- 
 ant crime. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Hope of success in exciting pity and 
 justice for the victims of neglect and 
 
PREFACE II 
 
 persecution within our gates is nour- 
 ished by the evidence of that strong 
 national sympathy for persecuted and 
 neglected humanity which caused the 
 sacrifice of war for the relief of our suf- 
 fering neighbors in the island of Cuba. 
 The same strength of purpose and thor- 
 oughness of aim — at one-twentieth of 
 the cost, applied to a profitable invest- 
 ment instead — would free our fair land 
 of the last vestige of the neglect which 
 now breeds ceaseless crime. 
 * * * 
 
 The spirit of reform is awake to the 
 demands of present civilized ideals. 
 What we are willing to do for the 
 reconcentrados of Cuba, let us do for 
 our own defenseless ones! 
 
 * * * 
 
 The author dedicates the proceeds 
 of the sale of this book, and what- 
 ever personal effort may seem to be 
 
12 PREFACE 
 
 useful, to the home cause, with the 
 hope that his readers may enjoy the 
 same happiness of sympathy which has 
 inspired the appeal, and join in a com- 
 prehensive movement, with their mite 
 or in the fullness of the strength they 
 are blessed with, to close up the pres- 
 ent narrow gaps in social quarantine 
 through which all disease and disorder 
 come, and thereby assist the noble army 
 of pioneers — the kindergartners and 
 the social settlement missionaries — to 
 effectively stamp out the germs of epi- 
 demic disorder which are now a shame- 
 ful reproach to our manhood and a 
 constant menace to our happiness. 
 * * * 
 
 But there is still a brighter hope 
 than that of a quickened humanitarian 
 conscience. There also is strong evi- 
 dence of a quickening of Christian con- 
 science, which prompts the putting aside 
 
PREFACE 13 
 
 differences of creed and uniting in ef- 
 forts to apply the Golden Rule of the 
 Master to all helpless ones in need, in 
 response to the prophecy and com- 
 mand: "Suffer little children to come 
 unto me, and forbid them not, for of 
 such is the Kingdom of Heaven." " And 
 
 the Last shall be First." 
 
 * * * 
 
 We have won a battle in the cause 
 of freedom abroad; and, while the spirit 
 of rescue is still keen, let us turn our 
 burning search-lights inward and purify 
 our home conditions in a manner 
 worthy of the ideals we champion. 
 
 * « * 
 
 Among the recorded utterances of 
 Christ there was no more direct pro- 
 phecy than, "And a little child shall 
 lead them." That prophecy will surely 
 be fulfilled. Why not now? 
 
" Within the past twenty-six years nine thousand 
 five hundred and fifty-six trained boys and girls, the 
 flower of my flock, have been placed out in situations 
 in the colonies, and have been continuously looked 
 after and supervised ever since by a company of 
 devoted and experienced men and women. Results 
 recently tabulated In reports to and from the govern- 
 ment of Canada show that the failures among these 
 emigrants is less than 2 per cent, (actually only 1.84 
 per cent.) of the whole." — Thomas y. Barnardo, F.R. 
 C.S., Ed. Founder of the "Doctor Barnardo^ s Homes^' 
 London, England. 
 
 »4 
 
THE LOST WAIF 
 
"The simple and salient fact is, we do not get 
 hold of little children soon enough. An unfortunate 
 childhood is the sure prophecy of an unfortunate life. 
 Implant lessons of virtue and well-doing in earliest 
 childhood, says Plato. Give me the child, says Lord 
 Bacon, and the state shall have the man. Let the 
 very playthings of your children have a bearing upon 
 the life and work of the coming man, says Aristotle. 
 It is the early training that makes the master, says 
 the German poet. Train up a child in the way he 
 should go; and, when he is old, he will not depart 
 from it, says the Revealed Word." — Sarah B. Cooper, 
 before the National Conference of Charities and Cor- 
 rection. 
 
 l6 
 
THE LOST WAIF 
 
 It was our first night in an American 
 city after the breaking out of war 
 between Spain and the United States. 
 
 The States had undertaken the war 
 for the purpose of freeing Cubans from 
 cruelties perpetrated by Spanish offi- 
 cials, and it was currently reported that 
 the government was spending more 
 than a million of dollars daily to 
 accomplish the rescue. There was no 
 doubt in the minds of the American 
 people of the justice of the American 
 cause and no one regretted the cost. 
 Seven hundred and fifty thousand men 
 had volunteered to serve in the army 
 or navy and Congress voted money as 
 
 freely as it was asked. 
 
 17 
 
l8 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Let these facts stand as a back- 
 ground for our story. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Coming from Europe, as we had 
 done, between two Wednesdays, with- 
 out passing through New York City, 
 our first impressions of a wildly enthusi- 
 astic patriotism, as manifested by 
 the advertising class, were gained in 
 Chicago, and were especially striking 
 by contrast with the quiet of the lands 
 we so recently had left. We had been 
 studying social questions in Germany, 
 Holland and England during the past 
 year, and were therefore more observ- 
 ant of varied expressions and contrasts 
 in social life. 
 
 In the evening we strolled on the 
 streets in company of a friend from 
 New Orleans, who was the first to greet 
 us on arrival, to see the wonderful 
 window illuminations and color displays 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 19 
 
 that made the pavements at night 
 brighter than day. Crowds of men, 
 women and children, representing 
 every stratum of society, promenaded 
 past these shows or lingered before 
 them. Behind great panes of plate 
 glass were groups of ghastly wax 
 figures representing naval engagements 
 or camps of starving Cuban reconcen- 
 trados. The favorite mottoes displayed 
 were " Suffering Cuba Must Be Free," 
 and " Remember the Maine." In drink- 
 " ing places there was added to the last 
 motto, "Down with Spain." 
 
 The show windows were continuous 
 for many blocks and each shopman 
 tried to eclipse the displays of his 
 neighbors by the novelty, brilliancy or 
 sensationalism of his own. Every 
 known electrical device was used in 
 the effects and nothing that we had 
 ever seen abroad — in the Orient or in 
 
20 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Europe — approached the wonder of 
 these advertising conceits. They were 
 more marvelous than anything Madame 
 Toussaud ever designed. They formed 
 a veritable Patrio-Commercial-Midway- 
 Plaisance and continued to attract a 
 street-full of people until long after 
 midnight. Our New Orleans friend 
 declared that " they had done more to 
 excite popular sympathy for the Cuban 
 cause than the jaundiced newspapers 
 themselves." 
 
 At several points we met companies 
 of Salvation Army men and women on 
 street duty. The old army under the 
 command of General Booth and the 
 new American division under the Bal- 
 lington-Booths were both in the field. 
 They were waging quite a different kind 
 of warfare, but with an enthusiasm not 
 to be outdone by the newer cause. 
 With drum, tambourines, singing and 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 21 
 
 prayers they tried to draw an audience 
 from the stream of the promenade to 
 listen to appeals in behalf of starving 
 women and children reconcentradoed in 
 alleys, areas and cellars within a quar- 
 ter of a mile of the scene of all this 
 patriotic extravagance. The appeals 
 of the Salvation soldiers were earnest 
 and pathetic, but their cause was no 
 novelty and had lost its effect by a mo- 
 notony of iteration and reiteration, and 
 the victims of abuse and neglect that 
 the army sought to rescue were too 
 near to the feet of the crowd to be seen 
 and pitied. A few small coins, princi- 
 pally from visiting countrymen, were col- 
 lected, but scarcely enough, it seemed, 
 to support the commissariat of the 
 army itself. The protests of the speak- 
 ers corroborated this seeming. Here 
 were exhibited, side by side, expressions 
 of far-away charity and near-to neglect 
 
22 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 of it; an incomprehensible inconsis- 
 tency; a contrast, indeed! 
 
 But this is not the contrast royal of 
 our story, which furnishes us with our 
 text. We were yet to witness an evi- 
 dence of barbaric neglect such as the 
 bull ring does not engender and that 
 even the cruelty of the Dark Ages did 
 not equal. 
 
 Our party had drifted with the crowd 
 until nearly midnight, when we turned 
 toward Michigan Boulevard and the 
 lake for quiet and fresh air. We were 
 full of the idea that Cuba would be 
 made free, and proud of America for 
 realizing her destiny of being the 
 pioneer in the vanguard of progress 
 toward universal freedom; but we were 
 soon to be called back to facts, and 
 home realities, by a revelation of 
 cruelest neglect that must continue 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 23 
 
 to haunt us until the possibility of 
 such neglect has ceased to exist. Under 
 the shadow of the portal of the Pull- 
 man Building, which serves as gen- 
 eral offices of the Pullman's Palace Car 
 Company, we met an adventure that 
 showed an appalling contrast to the 
 patriotic enthusiasm that blared in the 
 thoroughfares we had just quitted. We 
 were arrested by the plaintive voice of 
 a child in the toils of a six-foot police- 
 man. 
 
 " Please, mister," wailed the child, 
 "lemme go. I didn't swipe none ov 
 dem cakes; 'twas me brudder and de 
 odder kids dat swiped 'em; I ain't done 
 nothin', and I won't do nothin' no more 
 if you'll only let me slide; I won't 
 never come out annudder night — hon- 
 est I won't — if you'll let me go. Me 
 brudder an' de udder kids '11 go home 
 widout me an' I don't know de way. 
 
24 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Please, mister cop, lemme go; please! 
 please!! — " 
 
 The child could not have been more 
 than four years of age, but his small 
 vocabulary was as full of the slang of 
 the slums as it was deficient in the terms 
 of childhood and innocence. The po- 
 liceman was kindly disposed, but felt 
 compelled to administer some sort of 
 correction, and this is how he did it: 
 His reproof was well meant, but oh! 
 how evil was it in its suggestions to a 
 soul just receiving its first impressions 
 of life, and of the world, out of which 
 to build a character. 
 
 " What's the use of your lyin' to me, 
 yer little monkey? You know you're 
 a thief and the kid of thieves. The 
 gang you trains wid is the toughest in 
 town. Every mother's brat of you'll 
 deckerate a halter one of those days — 
 sooner or later anyhow, an' probably 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 25 
 
 sooner. You're born to it an' can't 
 help it, I s'pose, but if I catches yer 
 'round here again I'll thump yer on the 
 head wid my club and you'll find that'll 
 hurt wurser'n a lickin'. — Where does 
 yer live, anyhow?" 
 
 The child answered, giving an indefi- 
 nite address on the West Side that was 
 undoubtedly false, as charged by the 
 ofificer, but which was as glibly given 
 as a parrot's favorite phrase. 
 
 "Oh! I knows you're a-lyin,' but I 
 knows yer gang just the same; it's the 
 rottenist in the city and turns out more 
 thieves and murderers than all the rest 
 of town put together. Well! yer 
 h'aint got much show to be different; 
 and, (turning to us, who had stopped 
 to listen ) — I don't s'pose the kid's ter 
 blame for doin' what all the people he 
 knows does all the time and thinks it's 
 workin.' I s'pose his father and mother 
 
26 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 sends him out to steal; that is, if he's 
 got a father — which 'aint likely. 
 There's a gang of about fifty of 'em 
 that works my beat and durin' these 
 excitin' times when there's big crowds 
 on the streets and plenty of hayseeds 
 in town they give a pile of trouble. 
 They hangs around and swipes any- 
 thing they can get hold of. The little 
 rascals knows that we 'aint got no place 
 to jug 'em 'cept in the regler coolers 
 and as there 'aint no more'n enough 
 room in them for the big crooks we has 
 to let 'em go, and the little cusses 
 knows that as well as we does. They 
 knows a trick or two besides; fer in- 
 stance, they rushes a fruit stand or a 
 bakery in a gang, carryin' the babies 
 along wid 'em. The big fellers — the 
 biggest of 'em 'aint more 'n about ten 
 — is all as spry as cats and darts in and 
 collars the plunder and then out again 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 27 
 
 into the crowd in a jiffy, leavin' the 
 babies to be scooped by the shop peo- 
 ple and turned over to us. This satis- 
 fies the shop people all right and the 
 real thieves escapes. We take the lit- 
 tle cusses in charge an' have to do 
 something wid 'em, so we takes 'em 
 round a corner, lectures 'em and lets 
 'em go. That 's all we can do an' as 
 the kids knows it, it 's a part of their 
 game." 
 
 Turning again to the boy, who all 
 the time had been begging to be allowed 
 to go, the officer said, "Who's them 
 kids on the other side of the street — 
 your brudders, is they ? Well, you tell 
 'em when you sees 'em that if I ever 
 catches 'em on my beat again I'll brud- 
 der them so 't they won't ferget it. I'll 
 learn 'em to dance the shuffle as a defi' 
 to me. An' if you git into my hands 
 again I'll cut your ears off close ter yer 
 
28 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 head, and I'll sew yer mouth up so's 
 yer can't eat no cakes, an' then I guess 
 yer won't want ter steal' em. Now git! 
 yer little bastard, and ter hell wid you P' 
 
 The baby " crook," scampered across 
 the street to where his companions 
 were waiting for him. All the boys put 
 their thumbs to their noses in the direc- 
 tion of the officer, screamed a derisive 
 yell, and disappeared around the corner 
 to "work some other beat" or seek 
 some further amusing adventure. 
 
 The policeman was in a communica- 
 tive mood and answered our questions 
 as freely and as frankly as they were 
 asked. There seemed to be no secrecy 
 about the lapses of the law. He told 
 us of " panel saloons" not three blocks 
 from the Auditorium, where drugged 
 whiskey could be had for a wink — the 
 wink of a wanton or a confederate of 
 the house — where "greenies" were 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 29 
 
 "run up against" every sort of a "skin 
 game," sometimes ending with choking 
 and robbery, when they would be 
 "thrown out" on the street, too sick to 
 protest, or too ashamed to complain. 
 
 We were shown several great fronts 
 of brick or stone, surrounding the Pull- 
 man Building, labeled " hotels," but 
 wherein no registers are kept, as re- 
 quired by law, and where the only 
 credential of respectability called for 
 is, " Room rent in advance." Couples 
 entered and left these "hotels" in an 
 almost unbroken procession. But of 
 these things and sand-bagging and 
 burglary and other crime that is ram- 
 pant in many large cities our story 
 does not concern itself. Most of these 
 expressions of unwholesome conditions 
 are the result of just such neglect of 
 children as that revealed to us by the 
 incident of the little waif we had just 
 
30 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 seen reengulfed by a tide of criminal 
 suggestion, more putrid, malarious 
 and hopeless than the ooze of the 
 Chicago River. 
 
 We were so much interested in the 
 revelation, as it progressed, that we did 
 not grasp the immediate situation of 
 the child, and develop the personal sym- 
 pathy the case deserved until the little 
 fellow had gone beyond recall. But, 
 as soon as we began to think about it 
 in the quiet of the deserted boulevard, 
 we were seized with a frantic desire to 
 rescue the tiny victim of evil chance, 
 and make it possible, at least, for him 
 to choose between the good and the 
 bad, a privilege boasted by our cant as 
 the birthright of all Americans, but en- 
 tirely denied to this helpless and hope- 
 less stranger among us. 
 
 The more we thought, the more the 
 desire yearned within us, until It was a 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 31 
 
 constant menace to our peace of mind. 
 The face of the child had been but 
 faintly visible in the frowning shadow 
 of the great arch where we encoun- 
 tered him, and he had given a "fake" 
 address. He was as unidentifiable as 
 would be a shot escaping back into a 
 bag of its fellows. The simile of the 
 pellet of shot occurred to us again and 
 again, and finally suggested a scheme 
 of redemption to include our waif. The 
 only way to be sure of getting the lost 
 shot was by bagging all of the shot. 
 The only way to rescue our waif was to 
 furnish facilities for rescuing all waifs 
 in need of intelligent care. The idea 
 then seemed colossal, but our focalized 
 anxiety to save the baby was equally 
 strong; but, how could it be accom- 
 plished ? That was the important ques- 
 tion. We told the incident of the ad- 
 venture to our Chicago friends, as we 
 
32 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 met them, and wrote about it to distant 
 friends asking for help, for encour- 
 agement, at least, that it might be 
 done. 
 
 Sympathy was not denied our waif 
 in any instance, but substantial hope 
 came quickest from the practical kin- 
 dergartners. They assured us that it 
 would not be a difficult matter to en- 
 compass the entire field of need with 
 complete and adequate care, if only 
 there were combined effort. They 
 said that the kindergarten had won its 
 way to approval by parents of both the 
 poor and the rich by the beautiful 
 results it had achieved in character- 
 building; that practically all children 
 were susceptible of being trained into 
 good citizens if cared for during the 
 period of present neglect — from dawn- 
 ing perceptions until seven to ten years 
 — and that until the money-earning age 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 33 
 
 no opposition on the part of careless or 
 depraved parents was encountered. 
 The kindergarten had proved its value 
 and it was only a matter of furnishing the 
 facilities required to rescue the present 
 and all future generations from the 
 possibility of such neglect as had ex- 
 cited our sympathy. 
 
 We then remembered the example 
 of the kindergarten system of the city 
 of Rotterdam, in Holland, that we had 
 examined at the invitation of the Pres- 
 ident of the Board of Education of that 
 city. Protection was practically assured 
 to all children by a cordon of thirty 
 large character-building schools, which 
 they also call by the name of kinder- 
 garten, where not only habit-forming 
 instruction, but milk and cakes neces- 
 sary to supplement any lack of nour- 
 ishment at home, were supplied freely 
 at a cost of only eighteen cents per 
 
34 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 week for each child to the treasury of 
 the school fund. 
 
 An interesting feature of the Rotter- 
 dam example is that if parents pre- 
 fer not to have their children receive 
 free nourishment they are privileged 
 to pay the cost to the teacher in charge 
 of each school, to be refunded to the 
 city. Nine-tenths of the parents volun- 
 tarily make the payment rather than 
 be considered too poor or too indiffer- 
 ent to do so. 
 
 We remembered the example of 
 thirty- four States of the United States in 
 passing child-saving laws, leading nat- 
 urally to child-protection, and also the 
 experience of the New Orleans com- 
 bined associations in establishing, within 
 a year, five free kindergartens in con- 
 junction with the Charity Organization 
 Society, and the unanimous support that 
 their plans of reform had received at 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 35 
 
 the hands of both municipal councillors 
 and a constitutional convention. Why 
 might not all cities be as progfessive 
 as the Dutch city across the ocean, and 
 why might not all municipal councillors 
 and the state legislators emulate the 
 example of the most progressive, when 
 character of Apprentice Citizen was at 
 stake ? Why might not the people who 
 accomplished the World's Columbian 
 Exposition, the World's Parliament of 
 Religions, and who spend eight millions 
 of money annually — forty dollars for 
 each pupil — on higher education, set 
 the world a new example, by establish- 
 ing such perfect social quarantine that 
 no child could suffer the neglect that is 
 a present reproach to civilization ? 
 
 We learned, in our inquiry as to 
 conditions prevailing in Chicago, that 
 many kindergartens were already in 
 existence, under the support of both 
 
36 THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 the Board of Education and that of 
 missions and private individuals, and 
 also that the several College Settle- 
 ments and Social Settlements in slums 
 that we visited were attempting to 
 accomplish the redemption and care 
 of the young, but the efforts were only 
 partial and the progress was slow. 
 They might not, and probably would 
 not, reach our lost waif and hundreds 
 of his kind. How would it be possible 
 to draw a net around all of them so as to 
 include this and every last one of them? 
 How could a perfect quarantine be 
 established so that the wall of protec- 
 tion should be complete ? These seemed 
 to be the questions of burning impor- 
 tance. A desire to excite cooperation 
 for the purpose of answering these 
 questions affirmatively and quickly so 
 as to reach our waif and the last of the 
 others is the inspiring motive of this 
 appeal and argument. 
 
THE MENACE OF THE HAVE- 
 TO-BE 
 
"The foundations for national prosperity and per- 
 petuity are to be laid deep down in our infant schools. 
 And the infant school, to be most successful, must 
 be organized and carried forward on the kindergarten 
 plan. The kindergarten has rightly been termjd t'lj 
 'Paradise of Childhood.' It is the gate through which 
 many a little outcast has re-entered Eden." — Sarah 
 B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities 
 and Correction. 
 
 38 
 
THE MENACE OF THE HAVE-TO-BE 
 
 What are the Have-To-Be? 
 
 In England and America they are 
 the neglected or unfortunate members 
 of communities who have been con- 
 demned by evil chance to be classified 
 in the social category as "The hope- 
 lessly submerged ten per cent. Stratum 
 of society," mentioned elsewhere in 
 this appeal, and, of late, frequently 
 referred to under that cruel classifica- 
 tion in order to ease the conscience of 
 society as to their presence in its midst. 
 
 We are not sure of the origin of the 
 phrase, but have been told that it is 
 used by the Salvation Army to excite 
 sympathy for the "submerged" and to 
 elicit support for the army of rescue. 
 
 39 
 
40 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 They argue in this wise, and wisely, 
 too, from their point of view of the 
 evils they aim to attack: "The churches 
 cannot reach these people in the depths 
 of slums, and the wretches will not 
 come to the churches. Religion is the 
 only means of combating sin, and we 
 must take religion to these unfortu- 
 nates even if we have to employ spec- 
 tacular means to accomplish it." 
 
 The Salvation Army, the King's 
 Daughters, private missions, and the 
 several churches, together with the 
 more recent experiments of College 
 and Social Settlements among the 
 "Submerged" have accomplished 
 noble results in pioneering, but they 
 need reinforcement to complete the 
 work, and adequate co-operation must 
 include a popular movement whose 
 object shall not be less than a Strict 
 Social Quarantine. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 41 
 
 A shot is no better than its aim, 
 
 irrespective of the force behind it. 
 
 •Partial measures are always ineffective 
 
 in the same way that any faulty aim 
 
 is ineffective. 
 
 Aim at anything short of Perfect 
 Social Quarantine and you can have no 
 quarantine at all. 
 
 By evidence of numerous experi- 
 ments and the successful results which 
 have been accomplished we are made 
 bold to assert that the combined effort 
 that has been put forth by the mis- 
 sions, by private charity, by the Salva- 
 tion Army, and other detached bodies 
 of altruists, if it had been applied to 
 the aim of a Strict Social Quarantine, 
 by means of ample creches, kinder- 
 gartens, manual-training and parental- 
 farm schools, during the last twenty- 
 five years of social experiments, would 
 have cleared the social atmosphere of 
 
42 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 its malarial condition^, and to-day 
 there might have been no Have-To- 
 Be-Bads loose in the community. 
 
 Of all this restless striving to bene- 
 fit mankind and purify social conditions, 
 nothing else has been so successful in 
 proving the error of the hypothesis of 
 the "hopelessly submerged" as the 
 kindergarten. The character-forming 
 schools which have had opportunity to 
 care for childhood from earliest per- 
 ceptions until character has made an 
 impression, have proven that it is ab- 
 solutely unnecessary to have a Have- 
 To-Be-Bad class at large and that the 
 condemnation carried by the tradition 
 is as unjust as it is cruel. 
 
 EVIDENCE. 
 
 Let us consider two bits of practical 
 evidence which refute the hideous as- 
 sumptions of Buckle, Malthus, and 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 43 
 
 even the latter-day gloomy philoso- 
 phers. 
 
 The examples are but echoes of 
 the information from all directions 
 where intelligent effort at character- 
 building has been put forth. No one 
 will deny the universality of the appli- 
 cation and corroboration of this evi- 
 dence without confessing inefficiency 
 behind the effort that has failed of its 
 purpose. 
 
 The following is an extract from a 
 letter written by the Hon. William J. 
 Van Patten, President of the Kurn 
 Hattin Homes Farm School at West- 
 minster, Vermont, to the author, in 
 answer to a question as to the results 
 of the New England experiment. The 
 Kurn Hattin institution cares for chil- 
 dren from all over New England, but 
 receives most of its charges from the 
 congested districts of the city of Boston. 
 
44 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 President Van Patten writes : " It 
 has been a surprise to me ever since 
 we started this work to find that the 
 boys who were taken from the worst 
 homes, and who had, until they were 
 rescued, been under deplorable condi- 
 tions, were readily changed to thor- 
 oughly good lads, with no trace of the 
 evils that came from their former en- 
 vironment. This certainly carries out 
 your thought in respect to social quar- 
 antine, and shows that, properly done, 
 it can be made very effective." 
 
 The other evidence chosen is that 
 of Chief of Police Crowley of San 
 Francisco, whom the author knows to 
 be a careful observer and conservative 
 judge of his observations. General 
 Brinkerhoff, of the National Confer- 
 ence of Charities and Correction of 
 Canada and the United States, is au- 
 thority for the statement of Chief 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 45 
 
 Crowley, which was in effect as fol- 
 lows : " I have not known of the ar- 
 rest of a single person who has had 
 the advantage of a good kindergarten 
 training, and I believe that it is per- 
 fect protection against criminal ten- 
 dencies." * 
 
 Now here is the evidence of a dis- 
 tinguished philanthropist and also of 
 an honored and successful officer of 
 the corrective branch of government 
 fi-om widely separated communities, 
 one of them the most mixed in its 
 constituent parts of any city of Amer- 
 ica, and where frontier development 
 has offered extreme temptation for 
 criminal tendencies, coupled with the 
 fever of speculation. 
 
 In the " Report of Committee on 
 History of Child-Saving," now unfor- 
 tunately out of print, which was pub- 
 
 * See corroborative testimony page 221. 
 
46 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 lished in 1893 by the National Confer- 
 ence of Charities and Correction, we find 
 a contribution, based on the San Fran- 
 cisco character-building work, by the 
 revered, the late Sarah B. Cooper. 
 
 We esteem the paper of Mrs. Cooper 
 so highly, as being a most convincing 
 argument for social quarantine, that 
 we have begged permission to print it 
 as a chapter of this brief. It car- 
 ries words of burning truth that should 
 not be "out of print," but on the con- 
 trary should be graven deep in the 
 memory of all citizens for whose com- 
 mon good Mrs. Cooper labored in the 
 field of practical Christian experiment. 
 
 Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general sec- 
 retary of the National Conference of 
 Charities and Correction, who is in 
 close communication with six hundred 
 correspondents who are especially inter- 
 ested in child-saving work, assures us 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 47 
 
 that if there is no obstruction offered to 
 the free choice of children, and faciH- 
 ties are available for proper training, 
 practically all can be made useful citi- 
 zens, and that by cooperation to attain 
 that aim, social quarantine is possible. 
 The present headquarters of the Na- 
 tional Conference of Charities and Cor- 
 rection is in Chicago, in the Montauk 
 Building, 115 Monroe Street. The Con- 
 ference is doing a great work in stimu- 
 lating and organizing reforms. The 
 annual subscription — $2.50 — -entitles 
 members to the published proceedings 
 of the Conference, which are an epit- 
 ome of the history of progress towards 
 social quarantine. There is no more 
 profitable cooperation than by means 
 of membership in this association. 
 
 We wish to say further with refer- 
 ence to the comprehensiveness of Mr. 
 Van Patten's evidence, that his range of 
 
48 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 observation is, like that of Mr. Hart, 
 as wide as the country. His activities 
 include both the church and the po- 
 litical fields. He has twice been mayor 
 of Burlington, was the first president 
 of the United Society of Christian En- 
 deavor, and is still a director; is presi- 
 dent of the Congregational Club of 
 Western Vermont, as well as of the Kurn 
 Hattin Farm School. He was instru- 
 mental in establishing kindergarten 
 work in his home city, and also a Social 
 Mission, where he and other Christians 
 meet the laboring people of the com- 
 munity on the basis of friendly and citi- 
 zen equality. But Mr. Van Patten's evi- 
 dence and Mr. Hart's is the same as 
 that of all who have entered personally 
 into the sympathies of unfortunates, es- 
 pecially by the way of giving their 
 children the means of proper training, 
 and they are as one in the bejief that 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 49 
 
 thorough measures, which would effect 
 a Perfect Social Quarantine, would rid 
 society entirely of the "hopelessly sub- 
 merged" class, and sift out of its pres- 
 ent mass the diseased and incompetent, 
 who should have the care of an asylum 
 instead of the curse of a prison. 
 
 One evil that follows in the wake of 
 such a wicked assumption as that car- 
 ried in the idea of a Have-To-Be-Bad 
 class is that it is not only a loop-hole 
 for willing indifference, but is a blind- 
 ing influence cast about those who are 
 not willingly indifferent. 
 
 Under such a general assumption 
 an earnest philanthropist or a would- 
 be altruist may pass expressions of 
 deplorable misery, want or neglect with 
 doubt, if not with calm unconcern, 
 under the belief that they are of the 
 Have-To-Bes, whereas, if there were 
 even an attempt at Perfect Social 
 
50 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Quarantine no case of distress nor 
 neglect could show itself in a commu- 
 nity without its becoming the business 
 of everybody to enquire why the social 
 quarantine officers had not attended to 
 their business. 
 
 In this manner the professional 
 beggar, the tramp, the Need-Not-Be, 
 and all that tribe of parasite humanity 
 who prey upon the credulity of unor- 
 ganized charity would be discovered 
 in their true light, and would shrink 
 out of sight or would be forced to seek 
 useful occupation, if it were to be had, 
 or would then hold just title to public 
 assistance if no occupation were avail- 
 able. 
 
 It is well to bear in mind when con- 
 sidering the question of the Have-To- 
 Be or Need-Not-Be classes that con- 
 crete society has to care for them in 
 one form or another anyhow, whether 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 51 
 
 they work or whether they are idle or 
 steal. They bring nothing with them 
 and must live off the land. If they do 
 not work they live off the workers. In 
 infancy, the cost of caring for them in 
 a manner supplementary only to home 
 care is very little, but the profit of that 
 care increases in value in geometrical 
 ratio as does also the cost of the neg- 
 lect of right training. 
 
 And also, in answer to a question 
 often asked by those who are not in- 
 formed about kindergarten efficiency, 
 relative to securing the willingness of 
 parents to accept outside care for their 
 children: The question of voluntary 
 or compulsory compliance on the part 
 of parents or children need not be 
 feared during the earliest character- 
 forming age, for until the child is old 
 enough to earn money no selfish objec- 
 tion can be offered, and the greater the 
 
52 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 need, as stated elsewhere, the more 
 easy is the compliance accorded. As 
 this is the period of present neglect, as 
 well as the time when all students of 
 child-life agree that the character of the 
 adult is moulded, the vexing question 
 of parental control need not be raised. 
 
 The duty of social quarantine is to 
 seek out the children of the greatest 
 need first and work back through the 
 strata of misfortune to those of fortune, 
 in the same way that a process of 
 cleansing should first use a shovel, then 
 a broom, and finally a wash rag and a 
 polishing cloth. 
 
 The habit-of-thought of a com- 
 munity aiming at quarantine efificiency 
 will become impregnated with the idea 
 that there Must-Not-Be unwholesome 
 units in their midst as soon as it has 
 been delivered of the evil suggestion 
 of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 53 
 
 class, for it is wonderful what the mere 
 change of a point of view will effect. 
 
 On the question of the virtue, or 
 merit, of Strict Social Quarantine, there 
 seems to be no difference of opinion 
 about the desirability of the aim, and 
 the efificacy of available means to ac- 
 complish it has already been estab- 
 lished. 
 
 We have heard it said that the 
 kindergarten method is splendidly 
 adapted to the children of the poor 
 but not to the children of the rich in 
 America, because rich children are pet- 
 ted beyond endurance, and have toys 
 in such lavish abundance, that even in- 
 structive amusements and wholesome 
 care are but a burden when added to 
 home superfluities. This may easily be 
 so, as there is a point of surfeit in 
 everything, even in the best of nour- 
 ishment, but it is proof of the wisdom 
 
54 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 of a wider distribution of the effort so 
 as to really nourish instead of causing 
 a surfeit of care. 
 
 It is not the rich and the strong and 
 the healthy that need the direct care of 
 social quarantine, but its rescues from 
 among the presently neglected and 
 warped defenseless ones would create 
 a wave of average improvement of 
 ideals that would be felt in the most 
 luxurious homes to the benefit of the 
 pampered possessors of fortune's birth 
 prizes. 
 
 At the present moment, the summer 
 of 1898, there rests in the custody of 
 the mayor of Chicago, Hon. Carter H. 
 Harrison, 2nd, a report of a special 
 commission appointed by him to rec- 
 ommend changes in the educational 
 methods of the city of Chicago and the 
 county of Cook, that are intended to 
 bring them up to the level of the 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 55 
 
 highest ideals. Among the recom- 
 mendations it is advised that an ample 
 kindergarten shall be attached to every 
 school, and that there shall always be 
 school facilities so that every child of 
 school age shall have a seat at his 
 disposal. The recommendations rela- 
 tive to the higher branches of educa- 
 tion do not concern our present argu- 
 ment, but the suggestion relative to 
 extending kindergarten facilities is of 
 the greatest importance. 
 
 The mayor and a majority of the 
 aldermen are believed to hold the wel- 
 fare of the community they govern in 
 earnest care, so that it is a good time 
 to strengthen their hands to do the 
 best and completest thing in the way 
 of reform while changes are being 
 made, and to insist on nothing less 
 than Strict Social Quarantine to pro- 
 tect all the children of tender ages in 
 
56 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 order that the work of reform may 
 begin now, at the root, and insure a 
 generation of eager students and 
 workers to use the splendid facilities, 
 already supplied, when they arrive at 
 school age. 
 
 It is not necessary to wait for the 
 construction of fine buildings, apd there 
 will be ready for any need a competent 
 army, if required, to take up the work 
 of training.* 
 
 Many young women are beginning 
 to learn that true happiness is the evi- 
 dence and fruit of conscious usefulness, 
 and that the work of the kindergarten 
 and industrial schools, in producing 
 conscious good results, creates much 
 
 *In the city of Saint Louis, at the end of the 
 1896 school-year, there were seventy-one volunteer 
 kindergartners, and the length of the waiting list of 
 the training schools precluded promise of even vol- 
 unteer appointments for three years to come. This 
 is but an illustration of the trend of interest in the 
 direction of character-building school employment. 
 
■ OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 57 
 
 happiness and enthusiasm in their 
 devotees, and they are being drawn to 
 appreciate, and will eagerly participate 
 in, so pleasurable an occupation, — 
 the only one that quite satisfies the 
 mother impulse within them. 
 
 It is also a recognized fact, as an 
 outgrowth of the development of char- 
 acter-school training, that no other pre- 
 liminary experience is so good in fitting 
 a young woman for the duties of 
 married life as a course of kinder- 
 garten study; and, furthermore, there 
 is no part of the kindergarten work 
 that is not useful, in its simple sug- 
 gestiveness, to anyone, of no matter 
 what sex or age. 
 
 This is not, however, a plea for any 
 particular system of pedagogy, although 
 the method of Froebel seems to merit 
 all praise, but for the recognition of 
 the fact that Character-Building and 1 
 
58 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Habit-Forming schools should be 
 appreciated as the most important 
 branches of government and not as minor 
 branches of education, and that they 
 should be supported as becoming the nur- 
 series of good citizenship. 
 
 Don't wait for fine buildings; any 
 habitable room in the deepest part of a 
 slum, cleaned and whitened to suggest 
 Godliness, such as have already been 
 used effectively for mission kinder- 
 gartens is better than nothing, and 
 sometimes better than the best, for the 
 initial work of redemption. 
 
 PROFITABLE SUGGESTIONS. 
 
 It is the proper function of the 
 government of a community to sup- 
 port so important a thing as a nursery 
 of Apprentice Citizenship. Charity ex- 
 ercises great good in that " It is more 
 blessed to give than to receive," but it 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 59 
 
 is a poor regulator of unbalanced con- 
 ditions. When it is most needed, as 
 in cases of industrial depression, it is 
 hardest to find. 
 
 Perfunctory charity gets weary of 
 giving and demands the stimulation of 
 novelty to excite it to action. It is 
 such a poor regulator of unbalance 
 that helpless infancy should not suffer 
 neglect by its caprice. 
 
 As long as charity is lending its sup- 
 port to partial measures of relief it 
 seems almost as if it were throw- 
 ing money and effort in a hole, for 
 there is little appreciable diminution 
 of the need. This is why charity gets 
 weary of its good work. 
 
 Were there a complete aim to be 
 sought, and an estimate of cost pre- 
 pared, the additional expense would not 
 be large, while the results would soon be 
 very evident in a community purified 
 
6o THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 of its expressions of persecution and 
 neglect, and the city or the State or the 
 nation or whatever branch of the fed- 
 eral government which assumed the 
 charge would always be ready to meet 
 any need of the service of social quar- 
 antine as its first duty to its sovereign 
 units. 
 
 SOCIAL ASPHYXIATION. 
 
 Organized unofificial initiative must 
 lead the way, however, in social experi- 
 ment, in fostering new measures of 
 reform, until the State adopts them. 
 Suggestions, relative to local quarantine 
 organizations, gathered from many 
 sources of social wisdom, are given in 
 another chapter. When such a measure 
 as Perfect Social Quarantine is the aim 
 of organization it is well to insist upon 
 adoption by the State by all possible 
 means. Voluntary taxation of one one- 
 hundredth of the income of half of a 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 6 1 
 
 community, as suggested, will accom- 
 plish a Perfect Social and Sanitary; 
 Quarantine. Families voluntarily tax 
 themselves twenty per cent, of income 
 for comfortable houses alone. One- 
 twentieth of this single item, properly 
 applied, would accomplish Perfec* 
 Social and Sanitary Quarantine and 
 make living anywhere comfortable. 
 
 And finally, the chief menace of the 
 lying hypothesis, expressed by the as- 
 sumption of the necessity of a " hope- 
 lessly submerged," or Have-To-Be-Bad 
 or Have-To-Be-Miserable class, is that 
 it is not much of a stimulant to charity 
 and is an anesthetic to public and 
 individual conscience. 
 
 Conscience is an expression of Char- 
 acter. Conscience is Character, and 
 anything that helps to dull conscience 
 "helps to kill character; and, as character 
 is the only firm foundation on which 
 
62 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 a republic can stand, indifference to 
 neglect is an influence which must wash 
 away, in time, the very foundations of 
 liberty and happiness. 
 
 Pessimists constantly echo the cry of 
 the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad 
 class. Do not listen to this cry. If it 
 is true under present methods of in- 
 different and uncertain protection it 
 need not be so. You can correct the fault 
 in a generation. Listen to Mayor Van 
 Patten, to Chief Crowley, to Mr. Hart, 
 and to the state secretaries of the 
 National Conference of Charities and 
 Correction of Canada and the United 
 States. These altruists know. . Pes- 
 simism, assumption and many a ste- 
 reotyped tradition lie. Don't listen 
 to the lie. There is better news in 
 Truth. Seek the Truth about your 
 fellowmen and helpless waifs and 
 learn that a social quarantine such as 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 63 
 
 we propose, protecting childhood be- 
 tween the age of earliest perceptions 
 and that of reasonable public school 
 age, will give them a choice between 
 good character and habit and bad 
 character and habit, and that ninety- 
 eight per cent, of the " hopelessly sub- 
 merged ten per cent." will choose the 
 good and become useful citizens.. 
 
 This is what we mean by a Perfect 
 Social Quarantine, and this is the 
 menace of a Have-To-Be hypothesis by 
 which to dull the conscience and kill 
 the character of our republic. 
 
 Ninety-eight per cent, of the ten 
 per cent, defective characters have 
 been saved after becoming warped, 
 and saved by the methods of the kin- 
 dergarten. What would not the same 
 method of character-building accom- 
 plish in the way of protection instead 
 of correction? It would also prevent 
 
64 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 deep scars being marked on the tender 
 soul matrices confided to our care. 
 
 SUSPICION REMOVED. 
 
 One excuse for the assumption of a 
 Have-To-Be-Bad class lurks under the 
 suspicion of irremedial hereditary taint. 
 This suspicion has been proved to be 
 without foundation. 
 
 Heredity is race memory. Physical 
 heredity is memory and perpetuation 
 of physical characteristics, like legs, 
 arms, senses, color, etc., but is con- 
 stantly being modified by environment. 
 Mental heredity does not follow the 
 physical but is a sensitive undeveloped 
 film which holds itself a blank in the 
 darkness but develops in the light of 
 environment. While physical hered- 
 ity goes on adding to its proportions, 
 if allowed to normally develop, newly- 
 born mentality must be attended by 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 65 
 
 example, books, or other monuments, 
 to start it on the plane of intelli- 
 gence of its progenitors or it becomes 
 as blank as that of a savage ; with 
 force, but no aim. The remark- 
 able mental difference of children, 
 while there is strong physical resem- 
 blance, in a family, denies the close 
 continuity or potency of mental hered- 
 ity in the matter of equipment and 
 tendencies, which constitute the basis 
 of character. The force is there but 
 each is a distinct, new and important 
 message from the Creator, given us to 
 interpret and cultivate according to 
 the best intelligence available to us. 
 
 Note: The careful observations of Ernest Bick- 
 nell, Esquire, (secretary of the Indiana Board of 
 State Charities, at the time the observations were 
 made, but at present secretary of the Associated 
 Charities of the City of Chicago,) relative to the 
 transmission of Feeble Mind in parents to their off- 
 spring, only serve to strengthen our assertion rela- 
 tive to mental heredity. 
 
 Feeble Mind is a lack of healthy brain tissue and 
 
66 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 relates to quantity of mind possibility, wfiile mental 
 bent is a matter of quality and is amenable to di- 
 rection of aim, either in the direction of good, or in 
 the direction of bad efiorts. Ingenuous childhood 
 prefers the good in all normal cases, even if its home 
 surroundings are perverse, for the good is sweeter, 
 and childi-en are especially susceptible to the allure- 
 ment of sweets. 
 
 The ranks of greatness and genius are usually 
 filled from humble parental sources, in which charac- 
 ter dominates over a desire for material accumulation, 
 and rarely from greatness or genius itself, whose 
 child-product, under parental neglect — or possibly 
 shadow — frequently drops to an insignificant place in 
 the scale of usefulness. If any fixed, progressive, 
 inexorable law of mental heredity were in force in 
 evolution, these tendencies would be reversed. 
 Mind is Nature's one unknown quantity, except that 
 it is good in preference to being bad, if it is given a 
 chance to choose; progressive, if deterrents to its 
 normal growth are removed from about it, but reac- 
 tive and resentful if denied the blessing of culti- 
 vation. 
 
 The efficacy of Character-Building 
 schools lies In their ability to teach 
 children how to aim. What they 
 learn while character is forming is 
 their chief equipment In life. 
 
 Whoever learns to swim or to play 
 billiards or to shoot when he is young 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 67 
 
 never forgets his cunning at these 
 acquired habits. It is the work of the 
 kindergartner to find out what the 
 natural born equipment of the child is, 
 and to direct it; teach it to shoot right 
 and straight, to swim safely through 
 life, and to carom, follow or draw 
 with the skill of an expert billiardist; 
 carom from the evil, follow the walks 
 of usefulness and draw unto itself the 
 happiness of life. 
 
SOCIAL QUARANTINE FIRST 
 
" Said a wealthy tax-payer to me recently, as 
 he paid me his monthly kindergarten subscription: 
 'Mrs. Cooper, this work among the children is the 
 best work that can be done. I give you this aid most 
 gladly. I consider it an investment for my children, 
 I would rather give five dollars a month now to 
 educate these children than to have my own taxed 
 ten times that amount by and by to sustain prisons 
 and penitentiaries.'" — Sarah B. Cooler, before the Na- 
 tional Conference of Charities and Correction. 
 
 70 
 
SOCIAL QUARANTINE FIRST 
 
 Man is social first and individual 
 afterward. 
 
 That is, without a social system 
 man cannot exist. 
 
 Without social advantages and 
 economical division of labor a human 
 being ceases to be a man and becomes 
 a very helpless animal. 
 
 It is only in the midst of social aid 
 and protection and by the help of in- 
 telligent cooperation that man may 
 develop an individuality having civil- 
 ized attributes. 
 
 Social Quarantine is of first impor- 
 tance because a strict recognition of it 
 applied to children during the habit- 
 forming period of their growth will 
 71 
 
72 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 render greatest aid to morals and 
 religion and also to health. An appre- 
 ciation of God and that stimulating, 
 rational and healthful reverence for 
 good that constitutes true religion must 
 needs follow as a natural result of Per- 
 fect Moral and Social Quarantine. 
 
 Perfect Social Quarantine minimizes 
 causes for fear-thought and thereby 
 destroys the arch enemy of energy, 
 growth and happiness. 
 
 To minds that have been protected 
 during the first years of life by being 
 surrounded by wholesome suggestions, 
 it is scarcely necessary to preach against 
 the passion of anger and the self-abuse 
 of worry, while religion comes intui- 
 tively to such, because fearlessness is 
 the normal condition of a protected 
 mind and religious sentiment of some 
 sort is the natural tendency of pure 
 thought. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 73 
 
 The attitude of pedagogy toward 
 character-formation from the earliest 
 times has been faulty. That is, the 
 approved methods of one generation 
 have, in turn, become classed with the 
 methods of barbarism in the following 
 generation, and will continue to be so 
 shelved by succeeding generations until 
 all the systems shall recognize a strict 
 social quarantine as the first duty of 
 instruction and cultivation. 
 « * * 
 
 What is Social Quarantine? 
 
 Social Quarantine means throwing a 
 perfect cordon of care around tender 
 souls coming into a nation or commun- 
 ity so that none shall escape contact 
 with the wholesome suggestions and 
 adequate nourishment that are essential 
 to growth and habit-forming according 
 to the best intelligence of the Science 
 of Child-Life. 
 
74 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Social Quarantine requires the ex- 
 tension of the creche and kindergarten 
 systems and the provision of parental 
 farms and manual-training schools to 
 meet all needs, and it promises in 
 return a crop of material for good 
 citizenship whose character and effi- 
 ciency shall save at least one-fourth of 
 all taxation and add a proportionate 
 percentage to the productive equip- 
 ment of society. 
 
 Until the time of Froebel, society 
 had depended on family quarantine 
 to protect it against the evils that beset 
 childhood, without furnishing models 
 by which families might learn to know 
 the best methods of care. In seaport 
 quarantine the use of independent, State 
 or municipal systems is securely sup- 
 plemented by a national system, with 
 the effect that there is a double cordon 
 of protection, so that there is the least 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 75 
 
 danger of a weak point to menace a 
 whole country by its neglect. Perfect 
 Social Quarantine, such as here recom- 
 mended, would have the quality of a 
 national, State or community quaran- 
 tine to supplement the hallowed fam- 
 ily institution, always ready to render 
 service wherever needed. 
 
 If you cannot force a horse to drink, 
 it is none the less criminal not to sup- 
 ply him with water. If society does 
 not wish to coerce the family institu- 
 tion into complying with scientific meth- 
 ods of child-care, it is none the less 
 criminal not to supply facilities so that 
 none shall escape care who need and 
 seek it. 
 
 The experience of kindergartners 
 has taught that incompetent parents 
 do not need coercion, or even coaxing, 
 to submit their children to care, and 
 that the greater the strenuousness of 
 
76 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 the need the easier the compliance fol- 
 lowing it. 
 
 Nowhere did Christ say, " Let child- 
 hood follow any course until it has 
 formed habits of evil and ruined its 
 digestion, and then send it to me for 
 right teaching." " Suffer little children 
 to come unto me (for what they may 
 need to start them aright) and forbid 
 them not, for of such is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven," is a burning protest against 
 the possibility of child neglect such as 
 prevails. 
 
 Christ's protests were misunderstood 
 by his followers, who tried to reconcile 
 them with the old traditions, until Saint 
 Froebel suggested a practical applica- 
 tion of Christ's injunctions, but out of 
 that method wonderful results have 
 already been obtained and marvelous 
 possibilities have been uncovered. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE T] 
 
 Children cannot say, "Get thee be- 
 hind me, Satan," with the authority of 
 quarantine, because they do not know 
 what "satan" is, but "satan" or evil 
 constantly lurks about them and they 
 cannot' help but absorb it unless they 
 are carefully protected. If the family 
 is incompetent to protect, society should 
 stand ready to do so until no child can 
 escape care, and the responsibility of one 
 neglected soul should hang heavily on 
 the conscience of every member of a 
 community until there is no more neg- 
 lect. 
 
 Not one word must be said to the 
 detriment of that sacred institution, the 
 family. It is the basis of society and 
 of our civilization. Nothing can replace 
 the family as a means of good influ- 
 ence, but it is imperative that it should 
 be supplemented with models of the 
 
78 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 best kind known to the best intelligence 
 in order to raise the average efificiency 
 to the highest possible point. 
 
 Parental Love itself, unless guarded 
 by the restraint of superior intelligence, 
 may become a bad teacher through 
 over-indulgence or through careless- 
 ness or neglect resulting from a form 
 of blindness especially peculiar to 
 young parents. To these, bad temper 
 is an evidence of " spirit," and way- 
 wardness is proof of qualities of leader- 
 ship. To young parents the "spirit" 
 of their " own flesh and blood " cannot 
 be bad spirit and "leadership" cannot 
 contemplate a wrong direction; and yet 
 these tendencies generally become per- 
 verse with indulgence. 
 
 According to primeval usage which 
 was imposed by once sacred traditions 
 that have become misfits in present 
 civil and social codes, society attacks 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 79 ^ 
 
 evil in front, instead of on the flanks, 
 where it is weak, or in the rear, where 
 it is impotent to oppose good. Neglect 
 of children from the time of birth until 
 the primary school age of six or seven 
 years has furnished a nursery of bad 
 habits and warped character out of. 
 which to supply a strong foe td estab- 
 lished order and industry for society to 
 fight and punish, when a tenth part of 
 the effort and expense applied at the 
 right end would have effected an ideal 
 social condition. 
 
 If it is desired to fight hereditary 
 tendency or evil environment, the time 
 to do it is before it has become a fixed 
 impression and a habit-of-thought, and 
 the kindergarten has proved that the 
 evil suggestions of depraved home en- 
 vironment are easily amenable to the 
 good influence of strong counter-sug- 
 gestion if applied early enough to 
 
8o THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 prevent an indelible impression being 
 fixed upon the memory. 
 
 There has been a sort of national 
 social quarantine for several years, but 
 at the wrong ports of entrance. More 
 or less effective attempts have been 
 made to turn back paupers, criminals, 
 insane persons and imbeciles from 
 landing on our shores. We have had 
 personal experience of a cruel case of 
 ill-judged interpretation of the law that 
 refused a young woman to land, who 
 was none of these outcasts in fact, but 
 whose fault was approaching maternity 
 without a marriage certificate to legal- 
 ize it. In the case in point the quar- 
 antine resulted in murder, for the young 
 mother was in no condition to be sent 
 back to sea and a fright experienced 
 on the voyage resulted in the death of 
 the child and serious illness to the 
 young mother. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 8 1 
 
 This is the present interpretation of 
 what should constitute " strict " social 
 quarantine, but these sources of social 
 disorder and misery are insignificant 
 and comparatively harmless when com- 
 pared with those accompanying the 
 immigrants arriving hourly from the 
 Creator, through the port of Birth, 
 brought hither on the wings of the 
 mystic stork. 
 
 There is no reason to quarantine 
 against these little immigrants them- 
 selves, for among them there may be 
 a Washington, a Franklin, a Lincoln, 
 a Bergh, a Bolivar, a Peabody, a Mar- 
 garet Haughery, a Plimsol, or a Froe- 
 bel; and of the rank and file there may 
 be a whole army of altruists whose 
 mission from abroad is to bring strength 
 and happiness to the land of their 
 chance and involuntary adoption. 
 
 We must accept and even welcome 
 
82 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 these Immigrants by birth without re- 
 strictions or credentials until they are 
 able to speak for themselves and render 
 an account of our stewardship in their 
 behalf. Until that time our social ad- 
 ministration is unworthy the name of 
 civilization unless the duty of our 
 strength to their weakness — of our 
 loyal hospitality to their involuntary 
 guesthood — shall have been fulfilled, 
 even to the last waif among them. 
 
 The duty of society is not fulfilled 
 while it has furnished only partial pro- 
 tection to a limited number of these 
 wards, and not until it has found out 
 and served the last one of them with 
 whatever mental or physical nourish- 
 ment it may need to supplement that 
 which chance of birth has furnished. It 
 is not only a duty to them, but to our- 
 selves and to our own children, who are 
 subject to the influence of these other 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 83 
 
 immigrants in the community, no mat- 
 ter how isolated they, or we, may seem 
 to be. 
 
 The experience of the kindergarten, 
 where intelligently administered, al- 
 ready proves that care of children 
 during that tender period ranging from 
 earliest perceptions to seven or ten 
 years of age is capable of securely form- 
 ing character for life, perfecting the 
 naturally good and greatly modifying 
 hereditarily bad tendencies so that the 
 good habits thus formed can be traced 
 through the whole course of develop- 
 ment in the higher schools and even out 
 into the competition of life. 
 
 There is good in every child. It is 
 the duty of the kindergartner to find 
 that good, and efficient ones do it, strain- 
 ing energy where most needed, and 
 
84 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 finding greatest pleasure in the hardest 
 problems. v 
 
 That this efficiency is due to the 
 merit of the inspiring motive and the 
 kindergarten method is proven by the 
 fact that the same earnestness and hap- 
 piness in results obtains in all lands 
 where the system is in use and is not 
 confined to isolated places. We have 
 personally seen it illustrated in the kin- 
 dergartens of Holland and Germany as 
 well as in the United States. 
 
 But there is no longer intelligent 
 controversy about the efficiency of pres- 
 ent methods in use in Character-Form- 
 ing schools where habit and character 
 are the first aims, leaving special intel- 
 lectual attainment and religion to follow 
 as natural results in due course. 
 
 What these little immigrants become 
 in character must be the result of the 
 conditions we prepare for them, and 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 85 
 
 with which we surround them after ar- 
 rival. We are responsible for the con- 
 ditions to which they are condemned ' 
 or by which they are favored, and hence 
 all criminality or enforced idleness is 
 part of the responsibility of each mem- 
 ber of a community and in proportion 
 to his intelligence or wealth. Society 
 has heretofore neglected and perse- 
 cuted the parents, but let us not per- 
 petuate a barbarous inheritance for 
 their children. 
 
 It is therefore proper to place social 
 quarantine first in respect of impor- 
 tance. 
 
 * * * 
 
 No one form of quarantine can re- 
 place other forms, for there is need of 
 protection at every gate by which evil 
 may enter. The function of social 
 quarantine is to teach moral or individ- 
 ual quarantine. Evil finds its way into 
 
86 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 the mind and becomes a bad habit-of- 
 thought through fear in some of its 
 many forms of expression. It is an 
 easy matter to teach a child the differ- 
 ence between fearthought and fore- 
 thought and to guard the mind against 
 a tendency to fear. Social quarantine 
 itself would eliminate the chief cause 
 for fear and at the same time stimu- 
 late energy for useful accomplishment 
 of some kind. 
 
 The old idea that necessity is the only 
 mother of effort was operative only in 
 primeval times when man was yet very 
 much of an animal, when might was 
 the recognized title to right, and be- 
 fore mankind had passed " over the 
 center," as it were, in evolution, and 
 before he came within the atmosphere 
 of the dominant influence of attraction 
 towards the highest ideals. 
 
 It is only necessary to refer to the 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 87 
 
 cases around one in every community 
 to note that the spirit of work in normal 
 man is never satisfied, any more than 
 the spirit of play is ever satisfied in 
 children before they are warped out of 
 shape by unwholesome surroundings. 
 
 Society has placed its quarantine 
 against the germs of idleness and dis- 
 order at only one gate, and it begins 
 to fight them only when they have es- 
 tablished entrenched camps within the 
 borders, and have already begun their 
 depredations. 
 
 Between the outer gate of Birth and 
 the inner gate of Individual Responsi- 
 bility it has not only left open fields of 
 temptation, but it has permitted the 
 digging and maintaining of masked 
 pitfalls of vice that the youth of the 
 slums or of careless parents can scarcely 
 escape. It is true that there is a theo- 
 retical protection offered through laws 
 
88 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 forbidding the entertainment of minors 
 in saloons and other nurseries of vice, 
 but many children roam at will among 
 these pitfalls and cannot escape the 
 influence, while all children, lads es- 
 pecially, no matter how isolated or 
 protected, are sometimes drawn into 
 these maelstroms by accident, or the 
 allurements of the depraved ones al- 
 ready engulfed within them, who are 
 eager for company to share their mis- 
 fortune and disgrace. 
 
 Society practically abandons its Ap- 
 prentice Citizens to haphazard instruc- 
 tion during the most important period 
 of character-formation, and confronts 
 them with punishment when full-grown 
 tendencies to idleness and evil may 
 already have become habits. 
 
 Within the past few years organized 
 detachments of society have essayed 
 to offer protection on humanitarian 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 89 
 
 grounds and thereby have uncon- 
 sciously helped to avoid the necessity 
 of expensive correction by placing out- 
 posts as. near to the gate of birth as 
 possible, the creche being the outer 
 sentinel and the kindergarten guarding 
 one of the inner gates of entrance into 
 life, but the full benefit of protection 
 cannot be felt, and there is in reality 
 no quarantine at all until no child can 
 escape the care of these blessed institu- 
 tions. 
 
 * * * 
 
 We are not pleading for an untried 
 experiment but we are appealing for 
 organized effort to utilize already suc- 
 cessful and approved means to close up 
 the last gap of neglect through which 
 the germs of evil and discord and idle- 
 ness and waste may enter, and thus 
 derive, for a small additional cost, the 
 tenfold benefit of complete over par- 
 
go THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 tial protection. We are pleading for 
 support that shall enable us to find the 
 waif of our story, and the only possible 
 means of rescuing him is to "corral" 
 all waifs in need of care. We are 
 pleading that the conscience of our 
 nation may not be soggy with the re- 
 sponsibility of one neglected, helpless 
 one at home even while we fight in the 
 cause of freedom abroad. 
 
QUARANTINE 
 
"When the old king demanded of the Spartans 
 fifty of their children as hostages, they replied: 'We 
 would prefer to give you a hundred of our most dis- 
 tinguished men.' This was but a fair testimony of 
 the value of the child to any commonwealth and to 
 any age. The hope of the world lies in the children. 
 The hope of this nation lies in the Jittle children that 
 throng our streets to-day." — Sarah B. Cooper, before 
 the National Conference of Charities and Correction. 
 
 92 
 
QUARANTINE 
 
 Perfect protection rests only behind 
 a strict quarantine. 
 
 It is not sufificient to bar the sea- 
 ports of a country against infectious 
 physical diseases. 
 
 The greatest need of quarantine is 
 against germs of disorder that orig- 
 inate within the gates. 
 
 Quarantine can never be partial, for, 
 unless complete, it ceases to be quaran- 
 tine. 
 
 Quarantine means, in brief, exclu- 
 sion — keeping without the gates. 
 
 There are gates, however, other 
 than seaports, and germs of pestilential 
 contagious disorders other than the 
 bacilli of smallpox or yellow fever. 
 
 93 
 
94 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Social Quarantine and Moral Quar- 
 antine are even more essential for the 
 protection of communities and indi- 
 viduals than quarantine against epi- 
 demics of imported physical sickness. 
 
 Quarantine is less expensive than 
 correction. 
 
 All languages have a proverb simi- 
 lar to the Anglo-Saxon, "An ounce of 
 prevention is better than a pound of 
 cure." 
 
 Centuries of experience with quar- 
 antine, and occasional neglect of it, 
 have demonstrated that the smallest 
 neglect may engender endless mischief. 
 * * * 
 
 Why not profit by this experience 
 in dealing with all questions of social 
 and individual concern? Why not 
 adopt social and moral quarantine with 
 the same thoroughness of aim in order 
 to escape the evils of ignorance, waste, 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 95 
 
 poverty, fear, worry and unhappiness 
 when we know that these disorders are 
 more harmful to a people than the 
 most virulent imported diseases? 
 
 Moral and Social Quarantine are the 
 bases of all forms of prevention and 
 protection. They guard against ignor- 
 ance and thereby insure the wisdom 
 that institutes other branches of quar- 
 antine which throw a cordon of pro- 
 tection around society. 
 
 Social quarantine stimulates and 
 embraces moral quarantine. 
 
 Seaport quarantine is maintained 
 only while the last microbe is prevented 
 from entering the gates. 
 
 Social quarantine must extend its 
 protection to every growing human life 
 in a community during the period of 
 its growth, and influence the formation 
 of its character, in order to be signally 
 effective. It must reach the last waif 
 
q6 that last WAIF; 
 
 with its loving care. Reaching the last 
 waif necessitates reaching all waifs, 
 and that constitutes, and must be the 
 aim of, Perfect Social Quarantine. 
 
 The character of the last, or least, 
 unit of a nation is a vital test of the 
 strength and consistency of a nation. 
 * * * 
 
 Society is indebted to the mother in- 
 stinct of the race for the finest expres- 
 sions of its character. 
 
 The functions of social quarantine 
 are clearly within the province of ma- 
 ternal care. 
 
 The first necessity of social quaran- 
 tine is to protect the dawning intelli- 
 gences of children against evil or false 
 impressions by furnishing ample facili- 
 ties for gaining wholesome suggestions, 
 so that good ideas shall dominate the 
 mind and leave no room for the assim- 
 ilation of harmful impressions. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 97 
 
 The second necessity of social quar- 
 antine is to surround all children with 
 good-character-forming and health-giv- 
 ing industrial facilities and make them 
 so attractive that none shall escape 
 their allurements. 
 
 Society fails of its most important 
 duty while there is any lack of facilities 
 for the best known methods of child 
 protection and training. 
 
 More kindergartens or manual-train- 
 ing schools than are needed to ac- 
 commodate all growing children that 
 need them, is an evidence of the fore- 
 thought, wisdom and strength of a 
 community. One waif turned away 
 from care, through lack of facilities for 
 care, is evidence of criminal neglect in 
 which each member of the community 
 shares. Care of the last waif is worth 
 more to a community than the care of 
 
 hundreds of the first ones reached. 
 * * * 
 
98 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 As the "family is the basis of soci- 
 ety," so is the kindergarten the basis 
 of education, and Character- Building 
 Schools the basis of Good Government. 
 
 The strength of early character- 
 building tuition — of social quarantine — 
 — is mother love exercised without pre- 
 judice or over-indulgence. 
 
 The instinct of mother love in the 
 hearts and souls of women who are not 
 themselves mothers has been the means 
 of developing the blessings of the kin- 
 dergarten, and the wonderful enthusi- 
 asm of all good kindergartners is evi- 
 dence of the value to growth — of true 
 merit — of the method of Froebel. 
 
 In the development of the kindergar- 
 ten woman has shown her strength and 
 capacity as an architect and builder of 
 character, and in the establishment, 
 maintenance and management of char- 
 acter-building institutions she has 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 99 
 
 proved that she is master of all the 
 branches of administration of these 
 fundamental nurseries of good govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The evident, urgent and growing 
 need of beginning at the root of society 
 and building character from its first 
 foundation as the only efficient means 
 to social reform; the proving of mother 
 care to be the most potent factor in 
 character-building; the increasing will- 
 ingness of woman, in this era of our 
 civilization, to share the division of 
 political responsibility; and the need of 
 complete and thorough measures to 
 attain speedy reform, all together, call 
 for a stride in evolution that shall pro- 
 vide for a system of Perfect Social 
 Quarantine and for a Mother Organiza- 
 tion to establish and maintain it on 
 lines of the best intelligence. 
 
100 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 This is the sum and substance of the 
 contention of this book; and hence the 
 title. 
 
 An argument of the case for the 
 contention, although it should be un- 
 necessary at this present stage of 
 the development of Character-Building 
 schools, follows, inspired by the hope 
 that an earnest presentation of forceful 
 simila, striking contrasts, uncivilized 
 inconsistencies and a heartfelt appeal 
 (as we see and feel them) may arouse 
 a sympathy, of national breadth and 
 strength, that will not rest short of the 
 accomplishment of Civilized Social 
 Quarantine. 
 
 There are illustrations and sugges- 
 tions pertinent to the subject that may 
 prove interesting to those who are try- 
 ing to find and eradicate the last germs 
 of evil that are a present blight upon 
 the normal happiness of mankind. In- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE lOI 
 
 asmuch as cleanliness and sanitary care 
 are certain results of the influence of 
 character schools, quarantine against 
 uncleanly and unsanitary conditions of 
 neglect is sure to follow. 
 
 There are also some attempted ex- 
 posures of neglect and inconsistency 
 within our gates that impeach our 
 vaunted assumption of first place in the 
 vanguard of progress. 
 
 The main plea of the book embodies 
 suggestions relative to the formation of 
 quarantine or character associations in 
 communities, and a national organi- 
 zation of gentlewomen and gentlemen 
 whose aim shall be to nurture and pro- 
 tect society at its weakest roots and at 
 every point, so that the fruit shall be 
 the best material for good citizenship. 
 And the call includes all who have ex- 
 perienced the blessings of forethought- 
 ful care and parental love. 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST UNCIV- 
 ILIZED INCONSISTENCY 
 
"The prevention of crime is the duty of society. 
 But society has no right to punish crime at one end, 
 if it does nothing to prevent it at the other end. 
 Society's chief concern should be to remove causes 
 from which crime springs. It is as much a duty to 
 prevent crime as it is to punish crime." — Sarah B. 
 Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and 
 Correction. 
 
 104 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST UNCIVIL- 
 IZED INCONSISTENCY 
 
 BY 
 
 TURNING THE SEARCH-LIGHTS INWARD 
 
 There is a Chinese belief that stag- 
 nant water carries the bodies of what- 
 ever may be drowned in it in continual 
 suspense, never floating them upon the 
 surface, neither allowing them to sink 
 to the bottom. These putrid pools are 
 never drained and the water is never 
 disturbed, simply through fear of the 
 ghastly consequences. It is believed 
 also that the enveloping putridity pre- 
 vents natural decomposition, and for a 
 human being to be drawn to this death 
 by any means is evidence of some hor- 
 rible secret sin. 
 
 * * * 
 
 JOS 
 
106 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Citizens of Chicago are too familiar 
 with the Chicago River, which separates 
 its several sections, not to realize that 
 the ooze which crawls back and forth 
 in its channel under the bridges and 
 over the tunnels is an abomination of 
 filth and putridity. 
 
 According to the Chinese legend, 
 the bodies of cats and dogs and even 
 children that are engulfed by this ooze 
 are never recovered. They cannot float 
 on the surface and they cannot sink to 
 the bottom; neither do they disappear 
 by the ordinary processes of decay. In 
 a bloated, water-logged condition they 
 are destined to remain a part of the 
 ooze forever, or until the waters of 
 Lake Michigan, coursing through the 
 new drainage canal toward the Gulf of 
 Mexico, shall deliver them to the natu- 
 ral elements of pure water and pure 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 107 
 
 air, in which to dissolve back to origi- 
 nal particles and gases. 
 
 There are stagnant pools in the f en- 
 ters of Chinese cities that have attained 
 sufficiently fetid conditions to warrant 
 legends such as the foregoing. These 
 abominations of far-off Cathay are 
 noisome indeed, but we, who have seen 
 and otherwise sensed both the Chinese 
 putrid pools and the Chicago River, 
 assert that the latter is the worst of all. 
 
 * 4f * 
 
 During the World's Columbian Ex- 
 position there convened in Chicago a 
 congress of humanitarians under the 
 name of The World's Parliament of 
 Religions. By its membership and its 
 accomplishments it earned the unquali- 
 fied respect of the civilized world, and 
 the eminent teacher and scholar. Pro- 
 fessor, Doctor Max Muller, proclaimed 
 
108 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 it the most important event in civili- 
 zation of the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 ^uppose, for illustration, that the 
 members of this humanitarian congress 
 were to be gathered upon one of the 
 bridges that span the Chicago River 
 and were to witness, standing upon the 
 deck of an excursion steamer, a group of 
 well dressed women and well fed men 
 engaged in watching the frantic efforts 
 of a multitude of children of all ages who 
 had been cast into the ooze of the river, 
 and were either settling deeper and 
 deeper into the slime, or vainly trying 
 to climb up the slippery piles to the 
 wharves. Suppose that also there 
 should be seen along the banks of the 
 river a number of policemen whose 
 only duty seemed to be not to allow the 
 innocents to escape, or, If escaping, to 
 prevent their rubbing against people in 
 the streets for fear of soiling immacu- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE loq 
 
 late toilets with the filth in which they 
 had been wallowing. Suppose that no 
 one hastened to the assistance of the lit- 
 tle ones or offered them ropes or lad- 
 ders of escape, but, on the contrary, 
 some should occasionally push one who 
 had almost reached the brink back 
 into the stench as children sometimes 
 thoughtlessly torment rats that are try- 
 ing to escape drowning. 
 
 Suppose again that the scene of our 
 illustration were advanced five years 
 from the time of the Columbian Cele- 
 bration to the time following the Dewey, 
 Hobson and Santiago incidents of the 
 war for the liberation of suffering Cuba, 
 when patriotic sympathy for Spain's 
 abused colonists, as described in a for- 
 mer chapter, was at the zenith of its 
 flight. Would it not call for a cry of 
 protest from the humanitarians? Would 
 it not touch a chord of pity that would 
 
no THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 create a wave of compassion, covering 
 the civilized world, for the hopelessly 
 condemned innocents of Chicago, and, 
 by its horror, compel the formation of 
 an army of relief recruited from every 
 civilized land ? Would not this con- 
 trast put to shame the American god- 
 dess of charity for her far-away search 
 for a mission while countenancing such 
 hideous cruelty and neglect at home? 
 Would not the hearts of men hang 
 heavy with the responsibility of neglect 
 until no more wards of society should 
 be condemned by the chance of birth 
 to be littered and kenneled in condi- 
 tions of degraded animalism teeming 
 with filth, sensuality and crime? 
 * * * 
 
 There will be ready reply to our 
 illustration and simila. 
 
 "It is an exaggerated supposition." 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE iii 
 
 " Such indifference and inhumanity 
 could not be." 
 
 " Civilization has passed beyond such 
 a possibility." 
 
 " Poverty and even neglect there 
 may be, but nothing inhuman like that." 
 
 But in the face of all assertions to 
 the contrary, worse neglect and cruelty 
 than those given in the illustration do 
 exist in all the large cities of Eng- 
 land and the United States, which are 
 within the field of our personal obser- 
 vation, unnoticed, because they are 
 commonplace, unchampioned because 
 they are too near home. 
 
 « * * 
 
 Fortunately, indeed, this seeming in- 
 difference is not evidence of hopeless 
 moral turpitude in the nation or in the 
 race, as would seem to be the cowardice 
 
112 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 and selfishness displayed at the Charity 
 Bazaar fire in Paris, or the beastly 
 inhumanity and unchivalry let loose 
 among the animals who beat back 
 women and children from chances of 
 escape on board the ill-fated La 
 Bourgogne, but it arises from false con- 
 ceptions of the responsibilities of indi- 
 viduals toward the correction of un- 
 wholesome civic conditions, and from 
 the false and pernicious assumption that 
 there must always and everywhere be a 
 certain amount of unredeemable de- 
 pravity in every generation and in every 
 community. • 
 
 In England there is in vogue an ex- 
 pression, attributed, we believe, to the 
 founder of the Salvation Army, to the 
 effect that there must always be a class 
 of criminals, wantons and loafers in 
 every community, and which has been 
 classified as "The hopelessly sub- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 113 
 
 merged ten per cent stratum of so- 
 ciety." We repeat this statement be- 
 cause of the enormity of the evil that 
 lurks in the assumption of the con- 
 demnation. 
 
 Nothing could be more of an ob- 
 struction to progress than to condemn 
 ten per cent, or any percentage, of the 
 people to such an assumption. In the 
 first place, it is a lie, and proven to be 
 a lie by the contemporaneous history 
 of communities no better equipped for 
 ideal citizenship than the Anglo-Saxon, 
 but better protected by systems of social 
 quarantine. Although such may always 
 have been the case in the common ex- 
 perience of English and American 
 cities, it has no more reason to be as- 
 sumed, as an hypothesis, than that all 
 mankind is and must be totally de- 
 praved. It can be only the assumption 
 of ignorance when we know that it is 
 
114 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 possible to create a social atmosphere 
 elsewhere wherein none o£ the people 
 need be depraved, and wherein there 
 are none who are vicious, as is largely 
 the case in practically all the German 
 cities that we have studied, and as is 
 general in the Empire of Japan. 
 
 Blinded by this assumption of neces- 
 sary depravity, persons who are full 
 of altruistic impulses may overlook 
 men, women, and even children, wal- 
 lowing in moral conditions more noi- 
 some than the stench of the Chicago 
 River, in the belief that they are of the 
 " Have-to-bes " — of the "Hopelessly 
 condemned ten per cent stratum of so- 
 ciety." 
 
 * * * 
 
 We have interpolated this explana- 
 tion and excuse in order to show that 
 the presence of unwholesome civic con- 
 ditions may not be due to hopeless 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE I15 
 
 moral blindness, but to a traditional 
 astigmatism, caused by hypotheses that 
 are now out of date, and which belong 
 to periods of an uncivilized past. 
 
 Neither do we lay blame to the 
 policeman who said, "ter hell wid 
 you!" to our waif, nor to the authori- 
 ties above him, nor to the people who 
 choose the officers to wrestle with law- 
 lessness. Christ would have said of the; 
 policeman and the people, "Father, for- 
 give them, for they know not what they 
 do." But we lay all blame to the con- 
 ditions that must exist wherever there 
 is lack of Perfect Social Quarantine. 
 
 * * 4f 
 
 But let us proceed with our task of 
 turning searchlights on the inconsist- 
 encies that are the result of this social 
 astigmatism, in hope that they may be 
 the means of clearing the vision of 
 
Il6 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 individual duty and responsibility and 
 
 of effecting a cure. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The American people entered upon 
 the Spanish war in the face of an esti- 
 mated cost of a million of dollars a 
 day until the last Spaniard had laid 
 down his arms in recognition of the 
 principle of universal freedom from 
 cruelty or neglect, and of the duty of 
 the strong to protect the weak within 
 whatever family, municipal or national 
 inclosure they may be found. One 
 million of dollars is one and one-third 
 cents for each citizen of the United 
 States. If collected by equal per, capita 
 assessment it would not be much of a 
 hardship to any, even if it were all 
 wasted in burned coal and in exploded 
 ammunition, but, on the contrary, much 
 of the money went immediately back to 
 the people, giving employment to those 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 117 
 
 who would otherwise be unemployed 
 and stimulating trade and industry. 
 
 The loss of life that is liable to 
 occur in war is not so great as is sacri- 
 ficed to such worrying controversies as 
 that between gold and silver or that 
 between free trade and a protective 
 tariff. The excitement of .speculation 
 and the fever of politics are much more 
 deadly than war, while a season of 
 extended national business depression 
 is more disastrous to life and more 
 destructive of happiness than any 
 armed controversy that has ever oc- 
 curred in the annals of warfare. 
 
 None of these causes, however, is 
 so murderous as the infanticide result- 
 ing from neglect of irresponsible child- 
 hood. 
 
 In the hands of well matched con- 
 testants, as seemed to be the case 
 in the beginning of the Spanish war, 
 
Il8 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 war may be a terribly destructive thing, 
 as it has proven to be for Spain, and 
 it was this possibility that was faced 
 by the United States when she threw 
 down the gauntlet for suffering Cuba. 
 
 THE INDICTMENT. 
 
 In the face of this expression of 
 virtue stands the fact that childhood 
 has no assured protection within the 
 boundaries of the United States between 
 the time of birth and, say, six or seven 
 years of age, when infants become 
 eligible for admission to the public 
 schools. There are many who are 
 the victims of haphazard parentage 
 with neither guardianship nor court of 
 appeal for protection. 
 
 All children are the innocent and 
 helpless guests of the nation to which 
 they are born, subject to the chance 
 of haphazard parentage, without their 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE iig 
 
 own volition of choice, and are the 
 victims of whatever conditions are 
 provided in advance for them. 
 
 The neglect of the most intelligent 
 hospitality known to the Science of 
 Child-Life is the especial reproach of 
 every citizen who has a vote, a voice, 
 a dollar or any influence whatsoever in 
 the management of the national affairs, 
 and the reproach is not mitigated by 
 any possible excuse as long as one of 
 these helpless guests is denied every 
 facility for developing his God-given 
 faculties or equipment which he brings 
 to us for cultivation. 
 
 This Is the Indictment on the score 
 of duty. That on the score of economy 
 is as strong, but duty should be a suf- 
 ficient Inspiration In the midst of a holy 
 foreign war In which there is little 
 prospect of reward except the honor of 
 having championed a righteous cause. 
 
I20 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 How is the indictment met by facts? 
 
 The single case of the waif of our 
 story, the waif of our especial plea, and 
 the thousands of others of his deplor- 
 able condition, as well as the millions 
 that are influenced unfavorably by the 
 neglect that makes him and his fellow 
 victims possible, is the answer on behalf 
 of Chicago and other American and 
 English cities where similar conditions 
 prevail. 
 
 But this one alone is, or should be, a 
 stab to the conscience of every citizen. 
 
 What is the merit of the Cuban, 
 or any foreign cause, compared with 
 the moral influence of an army of neg- 
 lected waifs at home? 
 
 THE COST. 
 
 There is no present excuse for neg- 
 lect of our Apprentice Citizens and 
 helpless guests on account of cost or 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 121 
 
 inability to reach them with effective 
 methods of character-building. The 
 success of the kindergarten -system, 
 when in the hands of trained teachers 
 who analyze the hereditary equipment 
 of their children and cultivate them 
 accordingly, indicates a means for the 
 latter and has proven the cost to be 
 insignificant in comparison with other 
 branches of government or education. 
 
 That it should be considered the 
 most important branch of government we 
 reiterate because it actually is the nur- 
 sery of good citizenship. 
 
 And, as to the expense, it seems so 
 little that it will scarcely be believed in 
 the light of the cost of the higher 
 branches of education. 
 
 Kindergartens have been conducted 
 in Chicago by mission bodies at a cost 
 of forty-five cents per pupil per month, 
 including whatever nourishment was 
 
122 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 necessary to supplement that which the 
 children received at home, and exclu- 
 sive of the pennies brought by them. 
 The room used cost little or nothing, 
 for the school was established in the 
 depths of one of the lowest slums of 
 the city and wooden horses and boards 
 served for seats and tables. 
 
 This suited the children of the slum 
 better than the elegance of a modern 
 school building, and it taught the fact 
 that character and good habits are as 
 essential in mean, as in the most ex- 
 pensive and luxurious surroundings. 
 
 It is a question, worthy of careful 
 consideration, whether the effect of the 
 teaching is not better by beginning 
 with a school equipment in keeping 
 with the home surroundings of waifs, 
 adding, of course, the essential element 
 of cleanliness, and graduating to better 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 123 
 
 things as the instruction progresses, 
 and whether this is not better for the 
 children than initial installation in the 
 best of quarters. Character should not 
 be associated with elegance in the 
 minds of children. 
 
 The matter of housing and equip- 
 ment is mentioned because it is an im- 
 portant item of cost. The school taken 
 as an example was presided over by 
 one of the present distinguished heads 
 of the kindergarten training school 
 movement. She began with eighteen 
 attendants, secured one hundred and 
 twenty in a few months, and then turned 
 away hundreds of applicants because 
 there was not room for more. 
 
 And this mission of rescue from crim- 
 inal tendencies and habits cost not more 
 than forty-five cents per child per 
 month, including the humble salary of 
 
124 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 the young teacher, who has now risen 
 to a high place in her chosen calling.* 
 
 The children of Rotterdam cost the 
 municipality an average of eighteen 
 cents per week each, and much of this 
 is returned by parents as a voluntary 
 offering in return for the nourishment 
 supplied to their children. 
 
 This insignificant cost is all that 
 stands between a perfect social quar- 
 antine and the present neglect. Much 
 more can be spent, and eventually must 
 be spent, on manual-training schools 
 and parental farms by which to test the 
 preferences of children to see what 
 sort of useful occupation they would 
 rather follow than not, and which they 
 
 ♦Note.— Reports from the city of St. Louis, where 
 considerable attention has been paid to liindergartens 
 in connection with the public schools, declare that 
 the average cost per child, exclusive of cost for rent 
 of building or room, is a little more than one dollar 
 per month. Similar report as to cost is reported from 
 New Orleans, so that the result noted above must be 
 credited to the personal eacritice of the teacher. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 125 
 
 will pursue with the same delight that 
 children work with at playl but in the 
 mere matter of rescue from sulphurous 
 conditions of moral asphyxiation and 
 placing children where good sugges- 
 tions can be had and good habits 
 learned, three cents per month, collected 
 from every citizen of Chicago, would 
 supply kindergarten facilities, such as 
 described above, to more than one 
 hundred and thirty thousand children. 
 Groups of five neglected waifs have 
 been taken to the homes of large- 
 hearted women and taught after the 
 manner of the kindergarten until a 
 school has been provided, and then the 
 groups have been assembled at the 
 school, but this method is open to the 
 objection stated above, that it associ- 
 ates character and cleanliness with ele- 
 gance in the minds of the children thus 
 taught. Better take suggestions of 
 
126 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 good character and tidiness into the 
 slums to enlighten and purify them also. 
 
 The contrasts and inconsistency 
 shown by this illustration are striking 
 in their importance. Instead of a cost 
 of forty cents per month to every Ameri- 
 can citizen to free Cuba from the op- 
 pression and neglect of the Spaniards, 
 a cost of three cents per month to every 
 citizen of Chicago, where extreme 
 conditions of need prevail, would sup- 
 ply protection for all of the children in 
 need and close up a gap in social quar- 
 antine through which a stream of evils 
 is constantly entering. 
 
 With these figures in view, and in 
 the light of the proved results of char- 
 acter-building institutions for infants, 
 who is there in the community who 
 would refuse to vote an average appro- 
 priation of three cents per month, or 
 forty cents per month, if needed, and 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 127 
 
 who would not cheerfully register him- 
 self "a Quarantinist?" 
 
 THE MEANS. 
 
 In the matter of teachers for char- 
 acter-building schools, it is as easy to 
 recruit an army for this purpose as it 
 is to recruit men for war. Training 
 such an army, however, is much easier 
 and less expensive, for the cause is a 
 more directly profitable one and the 
 mother instinct in women is a more 
 potential patriotic sentiment or incen- 
 tive than is the heroism to face hard- 
 ship and death in men. 
 
 There are hundreds of young, noble 
 women on the present waiting lists of 
 training schools, and thousands who 
 are deterred from taking the course of 
 training owing to the lack of schools to 
 give them occupation. 
 
128 THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 It was creditable to wage war against 
 the Spaniard until the last weapon 
 defending cruelty was surrendered, but 
 it is even more mandatory to plant 
 creches and kindergartens and pa- 
 rental farms and manual-training 
 schools in every quarter of present 
 neglect, until not one waif can escape the 
 loving influence of these blessed institu- 
 tions. 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLE- 
 NESS 
 
"The state begins too late when it permits the 
 child to enter the public school only when it is six 
 years of age. It is locking the stable door after the 
 horse is stolen." 
 
 "Remember that from a single neglected child 
 in a wealthy county In the State of New York there 
 has come a notorious stock of criminals, vagabonds, 
 and paupers, imperilling every dollar's worth of prop- 
 erty and every individual in the community. Not 
 less than twelve hundred persons have been traced 
 as the lineage of six children who were born of this 
 perverted and depraved woman, who was once a 
 pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper 
 influences thrown about her at a tender age, might 
 have given to the world twelve hundred progeny, 
 who would have blest their day and generation." — 
 Sarah B. Coofer, before ike National Conjerence of 
 Charities and Correction, 
 
 130 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLENESS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHOICE OF AN OCCUPATION 
 
 One of the important things to ac- 
 complish in the forming of character 
 in children is to find out what useful 
 occupation is, to each of them, recrea- 
 tion instead of dull work. 
 
 No individual of normal mental ca- 
 pacity is born without some useful 
 equipment if opportunity be offered for 
 its discovery and development. It is 
 this which separates man from the rest 
 of creation so distinctly that it seems 
 almost to endow him with god-like 
 attributes. 
 
 As children are tireless and persistent 
 in play, even so will men be tireless 
 131 
 
132 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 and persistent in work if the particular 
 useful occupation, that to them is recre- 
 ative, can be selected by them. 
 
 The venerable historian and diplo- 
 mat, Bancroft, while residing in 
 Washington, and still assiduously pur- 
 suing his life-work when he was nearly 
 ninety years of age, was interviewed 
 by an eminent journalist of his acquaint- 
 ance for the purpose of collecting bio- 
 graphical data. The interviewer ex- 
 pressed amazement at the evidences 
 of hard work on the desk and scattered 
 about the study of the historian, and 
 inquired, " At your time of life do you 
 not find your work something of a bur- 
 den? Most men aim to retire long 
 before they have reached your age." 
 
 Mr. Bancroft's face took on an amused 
 expression and then a broad smile at 
 the question as he replied, "Work is 
 but a comparative term. 1 never work. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 133 
 
 That is, I never work in the sense that 
 is usually meant by the use of the 
 word. I was very fortunate in the 
 choice of an occupation, A person is 
 lucky who in his youth selects the occu- 
 pation that can furnish him with recre- 
 ation in his old age." 
 
 Jacque, the great animal painter of 
 the last generation, once said to the 
 writer, " I am beginning to suffer weak- 
 ness in my eyes so that I cannot work 
 more than half an hour at a time. I 
 feel it with great sorrow, for I have yet 
 so much that I want to do in this life." 
 
 These happen to be examples from 
 men who had earned success and reaped 
 great honor, but they are not unusual. 
 There are many who never tire of 
 helping nature to raise crops useful to 
 man, others who never are weary of 
 cultivating fine breeds of domestic ani- 
 mals, and yet others who are never 
 
134 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 quite happy when absent from the 
 bench or the lathe. 
 
 The contention of pessimists, that 
 there must always be some unskilled 
 and needy units to perform the drudg- 
 ery of society that would otherwise re- 
 main undone, is pernicious falsehood. 
 
 There always will be found some 
 means of performing the drudgery of 
 work even if the time should come 
 when there are no longer any misfit 
 occupations and consequent drudgery 
 and discontent among men. 
 
 When there are no longer any ma- 
 chine men there will be automata of 
 iron, steel or wood to take their place. 
 A few years ago a wave spread over 
 the fashionable world whose mandate 
 was that it was not respectable to en- 
 gage in any useful occupation. Fortu- 
 nately, that wave has passed on, to be 
 remembered only as one of the curiosi- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 1 35 
 
 ties of social evolution, as related to 
 the progressive nations and races, so 
 that now it is not quite respectable not 
 to be useful to society in some active 
 manner. 
 
 It is true that many men and women 
 are as tireless as children in doing 
 something under the name of " Sport" 
 that they would not be hired to do un- 
 der the name of "Work," but such are 
 usually of the nouveau riche class who 
 think to accentuate their new position 
 in the stratum of fortune called "soci- 
 ety" by a show of independence and 
 leisure. 
 
 The real sentiment of the age, how- 
 ever, is that useful occupation is neces- 
 sary to respectability, and the most 
 important discovery for any age or for 
 any individual is that true happiness can 
 result only from — is the evidence and 
 fruit of — conscious usefulness. 
 
136 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Nothing else is so important to 
 character-formation as ample facilities 
 for finding out the occupation that each 
 child would rather engage in than do 
 anything else or nothing. The range 
 of the useful occupations is not so great 
 but what preference tests can easily be 
 secured in every community near at 
 hand. Manual-training institutions fur- 
 nish a very wide range of choice, and 
 parental farms can be located near to 
 urban communities for nature tests, 
 while a taste for the sea will accom- 
 pany a tendency to wander abroad and 
 will draw as a magnet to the source 
 of its fascination.* 
 
 There are millions of children born 
 in the city whose yearnings may be for 
 the farm, the sea, or the woods. The 
 pessimistic cry of the present time is 
 
 *Vacant lots in cities can even be used for the 
 purpose of nature study by planting potatoes in them, 
 as demonstrated by the Governor of Michigan. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 1 37 
 
 that country youth flock to the city and 
 congest labor conditions there while 
 the cultivation of the land is neglected. 
 With a proper appreciation of the value 
 of character-building or useful-habit- 
 forming, and systematic provision of 
 tests for preference of occupation, this 
 unbalance of the proper division of 
 labor need not obtain. 
 
 From our own observation and ex- 
 perience we know that there are more 
 city ehildren who would delight in 
 country occupations, if they only had a 
 chance to know something of the pos- 
 sibilities of pleasure in them, than there 
 are country children who can find a 
 preference for city limitations. 
 
 The parental farms already estab- 
 lished prove this to be true, and a very 
 important discovery in connection with 
 them is that they can be made not only 
 self-sustaining but profitable. 
 
138 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 The expression, " Many a good sailor 
 is spoiled by being shut up in a shop 
 when he ought to be on the bridge, or 
 aloft trimming sail," is true and might 
 be changed to adapt itself to many 
 misfit occupations. One thing is certain, 
 and that is, if the occupation is not pro- 
 ductive of happiness it is a misfit. 
 
 The development of the kindergar- 
 ten and manual-training schools has 
 revealed the possibilities of cultivating 
 character and habit along the line of 
 useful preference and has been even 
 more important to the evolution of use- 
 fulness than has the harnessing of the 
 forces of nature for the use of man in 
 performing the drudgery of work. From 
 a minor branch of education, the char- 
 acter-building andhabit-forming schools 
 that are developing out of the success 
 of the kindergarten method will come 
 to be recognized as the basis of govern- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 139 
 
 ment, in that they are the nurseries of 
 good citizenship. 
 
 Reiteration of this statement cannot 
 rightly be criticised, for it is the ever- 
 recurring theme on which the develop- 
 ment of social harmony is being built. 
 
 The restless energy of children 
 often provokes the remark, "Oh! if 
 the energy the little ones expend could 
 only be gathered and stored for useful 
 application, we grown folks might take 
 it easy." True enough! and. what we 
 propose, as a means towards a quaran- 
 tine that will prevent in some degree 
 any misdirection of this God-given and 
 irrepressible energy, can accomplish 
 the wish. Many separate movements 
 have been instituted to take children 
 out of unwholesome surroundings and 
 give them new views of life. The 
 New York Life and The Daily News, 
 of Chicago, have championed fresh air 
 
I40 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 funds for the purpose of giving infants 
 days or weeks of outing at lake or 
 sea side, or on farms, and have built 
 commodious pavilions for their comfort. 
 The Rev. Doctor Gray of the Forward 
 Movement takes many separate squads 
 of little ones into the country each sum- 
 mer for a two weeks' season of camp- 
 ing, while the residents on the shores 
 of beautiful Lake Geneva, Wis., take 
 out over five hundred waifs — ninety 
 at a time — from Chicago and give them 
 a two weeks' summer vacation at the 
 "Holiday Home," located in the midst 
 of their villas. 
 
 In this year of 1898 provision has 
 been made by the Board of Education 
 of Chicago for a two months' school 
 session during vacation, where the in- 
 struction chiefly includes courses of art 
 and nature-study. Provision was made 
 for two thousand children, but the ap- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 141 
 
 plications numbered more than four 
 thousand and the disappointment of the 
 rejected ones was pitiful to see.* The 
 parental farms established in Massa- 
 chusetts and elsewhere throughout the 
 land have done a wonderful work and 
 show a crying need for many more of 
 them.f 
 
 These are but a few of the experi- 
 ments that are being made which lead 
 to a recognition of the necessity of com- 
 plete advantages that will effect a per- 
 fect social quarantine against the influ- 
 ence of evil suggestions by giving an 
 
 * Note. — We have learned since the above has 
 been in type that the iund supporting the Summer 
 Vacation School was raised through the sale of little 
 national flags, promoted by Miss Mary E. McDowell 
 of the University of Chicago Settlement. 
 
 I Note. — And now, August, 1898, Ex-President 
 Cleveland, gives practical emphasis to his oft-repeated 
 advice relative to the training of junior citizens, by 
 the donation of a valuable farm in New Jersey for 
 the uses of a farm-cottage-school for the waifs of 
 Greater New York. 
 
142 THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 ample supply of good ones. But the 
 greatest good will come only when 
 these institutions have become syste- 
 matic instead of spasmodic; complete 
 instead of partial. Then, and only 
 then, will the progress of reform have 
 been relieved of uncivilized obstruction. 
 Governor Pingree of Michigan and 
 Mayor Jones of Toledo, Ohio, are mak- 
 ing experiments in the same direction, 
 but all such spontaneous effort on the 
 part of individual altruists is pioneer- 
 ing and leads the way to systematic 
 warfare, by peaceful means, against the 
 forces of evil and neglect that beset in- 
 fancy and childhood in their helpless- 
 ness. 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUN- 
 DERSTANDING 
 
"The beginning and end of all culture must be 
 character, and its outcome is conduct. ' Conduct,' 
 says Matthew Arnold, 'is three-fourths of life.' The 
 state's concern in education is to rear virtuous, law- 
 abiding, self-governing citizens." — Sarah B. Cooper, 
 before the National Conference of Charities and Cor- 
 rection. 
 
 144 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUNDER- 
 STANDING 
 
 CHARACTER-BUILDING AND HABIT-FORM- 
 ING SCHOOLS 
 
 The selection of a name is very im- 
 portant, especially to an organization 
 or institution that aims to exert a wide 
 influence among classes of citizens who 
 are absorbed with the affairs of every- 
 day life to the exclusion of new ideas. 
 
 A name should, as far as possible, 
 indicate its object without further ex- 
 planation. The names, "Society for 
 the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," 
 and "Society for the Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Children," accomplish their 
 aim by means of rather cumbrous titles 
 but the object justifies the handicap. 
 
 We have adopted the name "Quar- 
 ts 
 
146 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 antine" for our purpose for the reason 
 that it has only one meaning and that 
 meaning is understood by everyone to 
 relate to the keeping out of germs of 
 imported disorder at every gate of 
 possible entry. 
 
 The origin of the name "Quarantine" 
 is traced to republican Venice at the 
 time when she was mistress of the Adri- 
 atic and of the outside world of com- 
 merce as well. It referred to the 
 period of forty days prescribed as a 
 term of probation during which vessels, 
 men or merchandise coming from in- 
 fected ports should not enter the harbor. 
 
 Names of institutions often stimulate 
 the efforts of those employed under 
 the title in the direction of the aims of 
 the institution, and names given to 
 children sometimes seem to determine 
 their occupation or in other ways to 
 influence their character or career. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 1 47 
 
 Students of Child-Life find in the 
 lives of Ulysses S. Grant, William 
 Tecumseh Sherman, and many others 
 who have achieved military glory, a 
 steady inclination to be worthy of the 
 heroic names they bore, and some go 
 so far as to associate the patriarchal 
 qualities of President Lincoln with the 
 subtle suggestion insisted on by the 
 name of Abraham. 
 
 It is reasonable to suppose that 
 names in constant use carry strong 
 suggestion with them and for that rea- 
 son we have adopted the names " Char- 
 acter-Building and Habit-Forming" by 
 which to designate the several schools 
 that are intended to fit children for 
 the independent individual employ- 
 ments of mature life. ' 
 
 For the same reason we have 
 adopted — invented, if you like — the 
 name " Quarantinist," to apply to such 
 
148 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 as share our sympathy for health and 
 harmony in all branches of social and 
 individual economy, and the name 
 "Neglectist" to apply to all others, 
 not by imposition, but by inference. 
 
 Who is there that would like to be 
 known as a neglectist, and who is there, 
 having joined the ranks of the quar- 
 antinists, that would not constantly be 
 reminded to apply the suggestion to 
 matters of individual care? 
 
 " Kindergarten " is a beautiful name, 
 with fine poetic significance, but unfor- 
 tunately is not quite sufficiently descrip- 
 tive of its high purpose. In common 
 acceptance it means a something in- 
 tended principally to "amuse children 
 and keep them out of mischief until 
 they are old enough to learn something 
 useful." 
 
 The method of analysis and train- 
 ing that has ripened out of the wise 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 149 
 
 suggestions of Saint Froebel is the 
 most important acquisition to pedagogy 
 that has ever been discovered and is 
 applicable to any branch of education 
 and also to the use of industrial institu- 
 tions in improving the condition and 
 status of employees as well as estab- 
 lishing cordial relations between em- 
 ployers and their employees. 
 
 A splendid example of the latter 
 application has been carried to success 
 by the National Cash Register Com- 
 pany, of Dayton, Ohioi, whose happy 
 and enthusiastic employees number 
 nearly two thousand persons of all ages 
 and both sexes, scatte^red in every part 
 of the world where commerce reaches, 
 but the subject of this institution and 
 its methods is worthy of a special 
 treatise. It is an "object lesson" 
 which should be known to everyone 
 within the whole range of contact be- 
 
I50 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 tween directors and directed in indus- 
 trial pursuits. 
 
 The first aim of all education should 
 be Character - Building and Habit- 
 Forming in order to prepare a fertile 
 and weedless soil in which to nurture 
 seeds of intellectual attainment, manual 
 skill, and religious intuition, all of which 
 are the certain product of character cul- 
 tivation. These insure industry and 
 growth which never fail to produce 
 blossoms of religious yearnings. 
 
 Intellectual and manual training are 
 themselves most useful instruments in 
 establishing character and habit, but 
 their first and best mission is sometimes 
 overlooked, and intellect and skill are 
 frequently taught to children without 
 reference to poise, honor, order and 
 harmony, in which case the instruction 
 is like building upon sand, without 
 adequate foundation. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 15 1 
 
 Character is really the chief object 
 and recognized mission of the kinder- 
 garten and no disrespect is intended 
 by suggesting the names " Character- 
 Building" and "Habit-Forming" to in- 
 clude it in a wider scope of application. 
 
 All great world-movements in the 
 evolution of civilization are modestly 
 started. Froebel was undoubtedly un- 
 conscious of the tremendous impetus 
 toward reform that his '^Mutter Werk" 
 had put in motion. Like all great 
 movements it started in the warmth 
 of a simple and spontaneous love im- 
 pulse, but has spread a wave of true 
 charity that more nearly satisfies the 
 Christ ideal than any that has before 
 covered the world. In the simplicity 
 of its inception it received the blessed 
 name of "Kindergarten," unconscious 
 of its wide mission in the cause of gen- 
 eral reform and harmony. 
 
152 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 That the mission of the kinder- 
 garten is a very broad one is proven by 
 the fact that more victims of hopeless 
 and hardened criminal mania have 
 been touched and reclaimed through 
 kindness to the children of these un- 
 fortunates in kindergartens, as related 
 elsewhere, than by direct effort. 
 
 Until the time of Froebel edu- 
 cational methods left character and 
 habit forming to parents and religion. 
 These are not sought to be replaced by 
 the Froebel method, but they are pow- 
 erfully supplemented by it; and, when 
 character and habit schools for young 
 children, followed by an adequate num- 
 ber of manual-training and parental 
 farm schools to test older children for 
 preference of occupation, have come 
 to be appreciated as the most important 
 functions of governm-ent, as well as of 
 education, as they must do to keep up 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 153 
 
 •with the present acceleration of prog- 
 ress, the Science of Government will 
 rest on the Science of Child-Care, and 
 will have been simplified to the position 
 of greatest effectiveness. 
 
 Herein will woman find the sphere 
 of her greatest usefulness and of her 
 natural inclination. 
 
 Wherever a great light appears to 
 enrich literature, or art, or science, or 
 philanthropy, or invention, or discov- 
 ery, or whatever branch of usefulness 
 it may bless with its potential energy, 
 it is easy to trace much of the excel- 
 lence acquired to the teachings of a 
 mother. To the mother impulses and 
 instincts we owe much that is good in 
 our treasury of thought, but opportunity 
 for the best mother influence has been, 
 and still is, a matter of chance, with few 
 good models available for the parents 
 of those poor and oppressed innocents, 
 
154 THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 "The Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per 
 Cent" of ignorant and cruel tradition. 
 The "Mutter Werk" of the kinder- 
 garten, pursued anywhere, upon the 
 common, by the wayside, in a wood- 
 shed, or in a shabby but tidy room 
 in the midst of a city slum, carries 
 the opportunity of profitable lessons 
 in life to all, and fulfills the mandate of 
 the Christ in the spirit, as well as in the 
 letter, of His command. 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST MAL- 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
"What shall we do for these children? Good 
 people everywhere should combine to care for them 
 and to teach them. Churches should make it an im- 
 portant part of their work to look after them. The 
 law of self-preservation, if no higher law, demands 
 that they should be looked after. How shall they 
 be looked after? By establishing free kindergartens 
 in every destitute part of large cities." — Sarak B. 
 Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and 
 Correction. 
 
 156 
 
QUARANTINE AGAINST MALAD- 
 MINISTRATION; 
 
 OR, 
 
 PLACE FOR A MOTHER DEPARTMENT 
 IN GOVERNMENT 
 
 There was a time when woman had 
 no voice in government, when she could 
 not hold property in her name, and 
 when she was regarded as very much 
 the intellectual inferior of man. 
 
 Within a century there has been a 
 growing tendency to admit women to 
 all the civic privileges enjoyed by men, 
 even to vote in political contests. In 
 some advanced communities women 
 now vote for officers of the school de- 
 partment and serve with distinction 
 in school boards. 
 
 Women now enjoy complete equal- 
 's? 
 
158 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 ity in four, and partial political suffrage 
 in twenty-three of the United (?) States 
 of America. 
 
 Since it is recognized that woman 
 has some place in politics, it is well to 
 consider what is her especial sphere 
 within politics. 
 
 * * * 
 
 It is by a wise division of labor that 
 great ends are attained, and the bless- 
 ings of civilization are only possible 
 through the most economical division 
 of effort which assigns to each unit of 
 a community that duty which it is best 
 fitted to perform. 
 
 Woman has always borne more than 
 her share of the burdens of life, and 
 her lot has often been ill apportioned. 
 In primitive conditions of society she 
 was considered merely as the bearer of 
 children and the servant of the stronger 
 sex by the same argument that made 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 159 
 
 slaves of conquered foes or weaker 
 neighbors. 
 
 In the division of government, if 
 woman is to participate in it, she should 
 serve with unhampered freedom in the 
 departments where mother intuition, 
 mother wisdom and mother skill are 
 needed. 
 
 The development of kindergarten 
 and college-settlement work has dem- 
 onstrated that women are wonderfully 
 efificient in the establishment, manage- 
 ment and development of these char- 
 acter-forming institutions, and if they 
 were sufficiently extended so as to 
 begin a Perfect Social Quarantine the 
 sphere of woman's usefulness would 
 almost be unbounded. 
 
 If woman has been the means of 
 establishing the value of public free- 
 character institutions, and they should 
 come to be appreciated as the most im- 
 
l6o THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 portant function of government, as they 
 must eventually be appreciated, because 
 they are the nurseries of good citizenship, 
 why should not this be recognized as 
 the special sphere of the gentle sex in 
 administration, and why should there 
 not be a Mother Organization to serve 
 in a special Department of Character 
 Schools? 
 
 By this apportionment woman would 
 win all the advantage that could be 
 desired and ample field for her useful- 
 ness, for a vigorous and thorough ad- 
 ministration of the Mother Branch of 
 Government would insure generations 
 of good citizens to whom administra- 
 tion of all executive branches could be 
 entrusted with confidence. 
 
 Apropos of the German Lied, some 
 one has said, " Let me select the songs 
 of a people and I care not who makes 
 the laws." 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE l6l 
 
 There is also an axiom of similar im- 
 port in the Catholic Church, " If we 
 have children under our influence until 
 they are seven years of age we do not 
 fear other influences they may be sub- 
 jected to for the rest of life." 
 
 Both of these assumptions are proven 
 to be wise by the wonderful solidarity 
 of the German race and of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 "Juvenal it was who said, 'The 
 man's character is made at seven; what 
 he then is, he always will be.' This 
 seems a sweeping assertion; but Plato, 
 Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, 
 Locke, and Lord Brougham, all empha- 
 size the same idea, while leading edu- 
 cators of a modern day are all united 
 upon this point."* 
 
 A Mother Organization in politics or 
 administration might safely and appro- 
 
 *Sarah B. Cooper. 
 
l62 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 priately adopt the following assumption 
 and promise for its propaganda: 
 
 " Let us manage all of the institutions 
 relative to child care and child training 
 during the period of formation of child 
 habits and character , and whatever means 
 are necessary to maintain a perfect moral 
 and social quarantine to supplement the 
 family institution and furnish the requi- 
 site models of profitable suggestion, so 
 that no child shall escape the best care 
 known to the Science of ChCld-Life, and 
 we will promise to save, within a 
 single generation, one-fourth of the 
 present cost of government, including 
 the cost of our own branch, and add 
 to the taxable effectiveness of produc- 
 tion a measure that cannot be estimated. 
 We will also immediately reach cases of 
 shiftlessness and depravity that are a 
 menace to the peace of the community 
 and effect in them reforms that present 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 1 63 
 
 methods cannot accomplish. We will also 
 promise, through our unofficial Unsecta- 
 rian Associated Charity Societies, in- 
 timately connected with our creches and 
 kindergartens, to search out cases of silent 
 and modest distress, relieve them without 
 an offensive show of patronage, and at 
 the same time throw a search-light of 
 enquiry upon perverse idleness and beg- 
 gary that will render them impossible to 
 flourish on the credulity of unorganized 
 
 charity." 
 
 « « « 
 
 In suggesting a name for an organi- 
 zation to take charge of character in- 
 stitutions the word "Mother"' seems 
 to be the only one that suits the pur- 
 pose and aims. It would escape the im- 
 putation of "old-womanishness" by the 
 very wisdom of its purpose and aims, 
 and it might appropriately include in 
 its membership both men and women 
 
1 64 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 who approve of the proposed apportion- 
 ment of woman's sphere in the divis- 
 ion of government administration and 
 recognize its civilizing mission, without 
 breaking affiliation with chosen parties 
 in the established lines of political com- 
 petition or mission work. 
 
 And is there not good logic in the 
 suggestion of a mother organization to 
 manage an important branch of govern- 
 ment, wherein woman has proven her 
 superior wisdom and efficiency? 
 
 What has woman to do with war if not 
 to furnish brave soldiers and an incen- 
 tive to heroism? 
 
 What has woman to do with correc- 
 tion and punishment, if not to make 
 them unnecessary by seeing that chil- 
 dren are not bred to idleness and 
 crime? 
 
 What has woman to do with vexed 
 economic questions, if not to rear the 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 165 
 
 sons of productive toil and furnish an 
 incentive to civilized living? 
 
 What should woman have to do with 
 politics, if not especially with that 
 .branch of administration which deals 
 with training the tender shoots of 
 humanity to be chivalrous, honorable, 
 self-respecting and orderly as a founda- 
 tion of good character on which to 
 build a structure of good citizenship? 
 
 And, on the other hand, what has 
 man to do in the sphere of mother 
 efificiency, in keeping with the demands 
 of a rational division of labor, than to 
 furnish the support required, and, in 
 himself, show a worthy example of the 
 potency of mother influence? 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL 
 QUARANTINE ORGANIZATIONS 
 
" In the great seaport city of Hamburg — of all 
 sorts of cities the one lilieliest to prove an omnium 
 gatherum of the human refuse brought hy 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. 
 
 i6S 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL QUAR- 
 ANTINE ORGANIZATIONS 
 
 During the preparation of this ap- 
 peal 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 op- 
 portunity, 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 Chi- 
 cago; Miss Julia G. Fox, director of the 
 169 
 
I70 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 West Division Kindergarten, Chicago; 
 Miss Eva B. Whitmore, general super- 
 intendent, and Miss Estelle Taylor, 
 secretary, Chicago Free Kindergarten 
 Association and Kindergarten Normal 
 Department, Armour Institute of Tech- 
 nology, Chicago; Mr. Michel Hey- 
 mann, superintendent, Jewish Orphan 
 Asylum, New Orleans, La.; Mrs. Mollie 
 E. Moore Davis, New Orleans; Miss 
 Mary F. Ledyard, supervisor of Kinder- 
 gartens, Los Angeles, Cal.; Colonel 
 George McC. Derby, United States 
 Engineer Corps, in charge of Lower 
 Mississippi Levee District (now, Au- 
 gust, 1898, at Santiago de Cuba), New 
 Orleans; Mr. William S. Harbert, presi- 
 dent Forward Movement, and Mrs. Har- 
 bert, Lake Geneva, Wis., and Evanston, 
 111.; Rev. Dr. George W. Gray, in charge 
 of the Forward Movement schools and 
 charities, Chicago; Mr. Hugh K. Wag- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 1 71 
 
 ner, attorney-at-law, St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. 
 and Mrs. Charles S. McCoy, actively in- 
 terested in the rescue and cure of crip- 
 pled waifs, Chicago; Mr. Myron M. 
 Marsh, Chicago; the examples of the 
 National Cash Register Company, Day- 
 ton, 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 Msecenas, 
 guardian and manager is Miss Jane 
 Addams; Hon. William J. Van Patten, 
 Burlington, Vt.; Mr. Clarence A. 
 Hough, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mr. Clar- 
 
172 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 ence F. Low, president of the Charity 
 Organization Society, New Orleans, 
 La.; General Roeliff Brinkerhoff, 
 Mansfield, Ohio; and Hon. C. C. Bon- 
 ney, 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 valua- 
 ble assistance on the part of Mynheer 
 J. Drost, president of the Board of 
 Education, Rotterdam, Holland; Syd- 
 ney 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 men- 
 tioned above, and that in possession of 
 the author as the result of personal 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 173 
 
 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, exist- 
 ing 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 ob- 
 servers endorse our position without res- 
 ervation. 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 al- 
 ways elicit argument in discussion, but 
 
174 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 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 accom- 
 ■plish the complete aim. 
 
 * * « 
 
 In further encouragement of organ-- 
 ization 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 accom- 
 paniment to their evil doing, is not more 
 than three or four years. This esti- 
 mate 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 fre- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 175 
 
 quently 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 child- 
 hood, and which would disappear from 
 among us if the gaps of neglect were 
 closed by means of a Strict Social Quar- 
 antine; 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 com- 
 munities as they already are in some 
 communities; while the general dissem- 
 ination of proof of the infamous false- 
 hood 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. 
 
176 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL ORGANIZA- 
 TION. 
 
 The best work is secured through 
 committees whose aim has been defined 
 by an executive committee, composed 
 of the officers, ex-officio, and the chair- 
 men 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 ac- 
 commodate 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 Fi- 
 nance. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 177 
 
 Committee on Securing the Services 
 of Scientifically Trained Teachers, to 
 serve as directors, and on Securing Vol- 
 unteer Teachers, in process of training, 
 
 to serve as assistants. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Committee on Securing Initial Sup- 
 port 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 introduc- 
 tion and progress towards proper public 
 establishment and support is natural 
 and speedy, as the result of the merit 
 of the process of citizen culture sug- 
 gested. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Committee on Suitable Nourishment 
 and Clothing for destitute children. 
 
 WWW 
 
 Committee on Parallel Sanitary and 
 Cleanliness Requirements, which must 
 
178 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 claim attention in connection with the 
 reclamation of children from unsanitary 
 and uncleanly surroundings. 
 
 * * * 
 Committee on Emulation for indi- 
 vidual or sectional neighborhood clean- 
 liness and for home or neighborhood 
 decoration; this outside of the schools, 
 where no prizes should be given. 
 
 * * * 
 Committee on Creches. 
 
 * * * 
 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 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 179 
 
 to teach nature study, and through 
 means of which to offer prizes for the 
 best resuhs of growth obtained. 
 
 * * * 
 Committee on General Amusements 
 
 of character-building or habit-forming 
 
 suggestiveness. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Committee on Circulating and Trav- 
 eling 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 
 
l80 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 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 posi- 
 
OR. SOCIAL QUARANTINE l8l 
 
 tive pleasure that indifference or neg- 
 lect cannot carry with them. 
 
 For instance: The most careful per- 
 sons, 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 inconsid- 
 erable amount, a trifle indeed! and yet, 
 one one-hundreth of the incomes of 
 half the people would support a Per- 
 fect Social Quarantine; cut off the 
 supply of material for criminals; add 
 largely to the productive efificiency 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 discom- 
 fort of that typically American disease 
 
1 82 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 called catarrh, by cleaning up the dust- 
 producing quarters of neglect; and 
 create a rational and civilized environ- 
 ment 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 6i each community, a^ 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 183 
 
 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 preven- 
 tion of the propagation of the various 
 seeds of unhappiness. 
 
 The movement would aim to arraign 
 people under the head of quarantin- 
 ists, by approval, or under the head of 
 neglectists, by inference of indifference. 
 
 By pledging one one-hundredth of 
 one's income, at least, the contribu- 
 tion 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 help- 
 ing their less fortunate fellows who are 
 come from the same Source of Life, but 
 who have been less lucky in their intro- 
 duction into the world. 
 
 « 4: ij: 
 
1 84 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 The aim should be to locate the cases 
 of worst need first, and work back to- 
 wards 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 interme- 
 diate 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 thci c, from 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 1 85 
 
 the slums, through the intermediate 
 sections, making cleanliness helpless, 
 and hopeless to each quarter except by 
 beginning to clean the deepest slums 
 first.* 
 
 Moral and physical carelessness beget 
 and stimulate each other. You cannot 
 correct one without favorably affecting 
 the other. Social Quarantine em- 
 
 *I was walking in a country lane in England with 
 Julian Ralph, the American author, after having re- 
 ceived, and just read, a batch of mail. In thought- 
 less absbrption 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 Eng- 
 land." 
 
 The force of the suggestion was such that since 
 that time I never think of throwing anything broad- 
 cast, 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 chil- 
 dren with such a suggestion instead of those begot-, 
 ten of sheer carelessness f — [The Author.] 
 
1 86 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 bodies both Moral and Sanitary Quar- 
 antine. 
 
 * * * 
 
 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 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 187 
 
 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. 
 
SARAH B. COOPER 
 
" ' Do the materialistic tendencies of the times 
 ■weaken your church in America?' I aslied a noble 
 Paulist father whom I met once on a railroad train. 
 
 "'Oh, no,' said he, 'we Catholics catch our 
 people young and they never get away from us. 
 We hold that if we can have the care and guidance 
 of a child under seven years of age it will always 
 come back to the church in after years, in every im- 
 portant crisis of grief or joy in life. That is why 
 our great church is unaffected by the godlessness 
 that alarms others. We make Catholics of little 
 children and they never cease to grow as the twig 
 was bent.' " — Julian Ralph. 
 
 190 
 
SARAH B. COOPER 
 
 THE KINDERGARTEN IN ITS BEARINGS 
 
 UPON CRIME, PAUPERISM, 
 
 AND INSANITY 
 
 By Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, of Sax Francisco. 
 
 My theme is one in which bright- 
 eyed Hope must clasp the hand of 
 blind Despair, and lead the way to bet- 
 ter things, * * * * 
 
 I am to talk about what can be done 
 for little waifs after they are born. By 
 what process of education and develop- 
 ment are they to be made valuable mem- 
 bers of society ? The doctrine that the 
 hereditary defectiveness of the masses 
 can be corrected by education and her- 
 editary culture is the true doctrine. Any 
 system of education that does not con- 
 template these results does not deserve 
 191 
 
192 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 the name of education. What the world 
 most needs to-day is character — genu- 
 ine character. In order to secure this, 
 we must get hold of the little waifs that 
 now grow up to form the criminal ele- 
 ment just as early in life as possible. 
 Hunt up the children of poverty, of 
 crime, and of brutality, just as soon as 
 they can be reached — the children that 
 flock in the tenement houses, on the 
 narrow, dirty streets ; the children that 
 have no one to call them by dear names; 
 children that are buffeted hither and 
 thither, — "flotsam and jetsam on the 
 wild, mad sea of life." This is the 
 element out of which criminals are 
 made. 
 
 It was Juvenal who said, "The man's 
 character is made at seven: what he is 
 then he will always be." This seems a 
 sweeping assertion; but Plato, Aristotle, 
 PlutarcTi, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and 
 
OR, SOCIA:p QUARANTINE 193 
 
 Lord Brougham, all emphasize the 
 same idea. Leading educators of a 
 modern day are all united upon this 
 point. The pliable period of early 
 childhood is the time most favorable to 
 the eradication of vicious tendencies, 
 and to the development of the latent 
 possibilities for good. The foundations 
 for national prosperity and perpetuity 
 are to be laid deep down in our infant 
 schools. And the infant school, to be 
 most successful, must be organized and 
 carried forward on the kindergarten 
 plan. The kindergarten has rightfully 
 been termed the "paradise of child- 
 hood." It is the gate through which 
 many a little outcast has re-entered 
 Eden. 
 
 Froebel, that great and beloved 
 apostle of childhood, founded a system 
 that is destined to revolutionize all 
 former methods of developing little 
 
194 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 children. His battle-cry was, "Come! 
 let us live with our children!" 
 
 The simple, salient fact is, we do not 
 get hold of the little children of vice 
 and of crime soon enough. An unfor- 
 tunate childhood is the sure prophecy 
 of an unfortunate life. " Implant les- 
 sons of virtue and well-doing in earliest 
 childhood," says Plato. " Give me the 
 child," says Lord Bacon, " and the State 
 shall have the man." " Let the very 
 playthings of your children have a 
 bearing upon the life and work of the 
 coming man," says Aristotle. " It is 
 early training that makes the master," 
 says the great German poet. "Train 
 up a child in the way he should go, 
 and, when he is old, he will not depart 
 from it," says the Revealed Word. Let 
 us take heed to these entreaties, and 
 work with the children, Work with 
 little children will always pay handsome 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 1 95 
 
 dividends to the family, to the com- 
 munity, to the State, and to the world. 
 
 It is Ruskin who says, "The true 
 history of a nation is not of its wars, 
 but of its households ; " and he holds 
 it to be the duty of a State to see that 
 every child born therein shall be well 
 iioused, clothed, fed and educated, till 
 it attain years of discretion. But he 
 admits that, in order to accomplish 
 this, the government must have an 
 authority over the welfare of children 
 of which vfe do not now so much as 
 dream. 
 
 Whether such a view be practical or 
 not, one thing is certain: nothing but 
 virtue and intelligence can save a re- 
 public from ending in despotism, cor- 
 ruption, and anarchy. There must be 
 genuine character. 
 
 And, since virtue is secured by early 
 training and habit, the children of a 
 
ig6 THAT LAST WAIFj 
 
 republic must be trained in ways of 
 honesty, industry and self-control. It 
 matters not who they are nor where 
 they are, the State cannot afford to 
 allow them to grow up in ignorance 
 and crime. The great conspirator, when 
 he aimed to overthrow Rome, corrupted 
 the young men. When our fathers 
 would conserve liberty for their chil- 
 dren and for mankind, they "fed the 
 lambs": they looked to the proper 
 training of the young. We have a vast 
 number of humane institutions for the 
 reclamation and recovery of the way- 
 ward and the erring. We have reforma- 
 tory institutions, asylums, prisons, jails, 
 and houses of correction ; but all these 
 are only repair shops. Their work is 
 secondary, not primal. It is vastly 
 more economical to build new struc- 
 tures than to overhaul and remodel old 
 ones. 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 197 
 
 The prevention of crime is the duty 
 of society. But society has little right 
 to punish crime at one end, if it does 
 nothing to prevent it at the other end. 
 Society's chief concern should be to 
 remove the causes from which crime 
 springs. It is much more a duty to 
 prevent crime than it is to punish crime. 
 
 Parents should try to be what they 
 would have their children to be. Pa- 
 rents and society are very clumsy in 
 their management of children. We 
 have our duties to one another ; and 
 we may be sure of one thing: that any 
 one, however flippant or however scorn- 
 ful, who asks, like Cain, " Am I my 
 brother's keeper?" like Cain, has some- 
 how lost his brother ; like Cain, has 
 somehow slain him. It seems to me 
 that two great ministrant forces engird 
 this universe — love and law. We need 
 them both in the education and develr 
 
igS THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 opment of human beings — of little 
 children. The mother love should bind 
 the child to home and duty: the father 
 power should construct order and ad- 
 minister government. Society should 
 have both these elements in its govern- 
 ment. 
 
 As factors in society, what are we 
 doing to prevent crime ? We may be 
 very eloquent in pleading that punish- 
 ments may be quick, sharp, and de^ 
 cisive, that the gallows may have every 
 victim that it claims by law, and that 
 eternal vigilance may be kept on evil- 
 doers. But all this will not avail. As 
 has truly been said : " Crime cannot be 
 prevented by punishment. Crime can 
 only be hindered by letting no child 
 grow up a criminal. Crime can only 
 be stayed by education — not education 
 of the intellect only, but education of 
 the heart, which is alike good and 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE Iqg 
 
 necessary for all." We want that sort 
 -of education which has in it more of 
 the aim of character-building. 
 
 The end of all culture must be char- 
 acter, and its outcome in conduct. 
 "Conduct," says Matthew Arnold, "is 
 ,three-fourths of life." The State's con- 
 cern in education is to rear virtuous, 
 law-abiding, self-governing citizens. 
 
 I repeat it, the doctrine that the 
 hereditary defectiveness of the masses 
 can be corrected, both by culture and 
 by education, is the true doctrine. Vir- 
 tue, integrity, and well-doing are not 
 sufficiently aimed at in earliest child- 
 hood. The head, and not the heart, 
 comes in for. the maximum of training. 
 And yet right action is far more im- 
 portant than rare scholarship. The 
 foundations of national prosperity and 
 perpetuity are laid deep down in the 
 bed-rock of individual character. Let 
 
200 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 the plodding, the thriftless, and the un- 
 aspiring of any country have the monop- 
 oly of peopling that country, and the 
 race will gradually deteriorate, until 
 finally the whole social fabric gives 
 way, and the nation reverts back to 
 barbarism or is blotted from the earth. 
 When a nation exceeds more in quan- 
 tity than in quality, it is in a bad 
 plight. Ignorance and lack of char- 
 acter in the masses will never breed 
 wisdom so long as ignorance and lack 
 of character in the individual breed 
 folly. The intelligent tradesman, the 
 thrifty mechanic, and the sturdy yeo- 
 manry constitute the foundation of a 
 nation — the proud assurance of her 
 perpetuity, her prosperity, and her 
 strength. 
 
 " 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates and men decay; 
 Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; 
 A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
 
OR,: SOCIAL QUARANTINE 201 
 
 But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 
 When once destroyed, can never be supplied." 
 
 I tell you, friends, we do not half 
 comprehend the importance of looking 
 after the unfortunate children of our 
 streets. What said the great and good 
 Teacher on this subject? "Take heed 
 that ye despise not one of these little 
 ones ; for I say unto you. That in 
 heaven their an^ls do always behold 
 the face of My Father who is in 
 heaven." And when I see the neglected, 
 sad-faced, prematurely old, weary-eyed 
 little ones, in the purlieus of vice and 
 crime, there is just one thought, that 
 comes like a ray of sunlight through 
 the rifts of cloud, and it is this: There 
 is not one of these uncombed, un- 
 washed, untaught little pensioners of 
 care that has not some kind angel 
 heart that is pitying it in the heavens 
 above. Parents may be harsh and 
 
202 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 brutal, communities may be cold and 
 neglectful ; but the angels must ever 
 regard them with eyes luminous with 
 tender pity. 
 
 What shall we do with these chil- 
 dren? Good, people everywhere should 
 combine to care for them and teach 
 them. Churches should make it an 
 important part of their work to look 
 after them. The law of self-preserva- 
 tion, if no higher law, demands that 
 they should be looked after. How 
 shall they be looked after? By estab- 
 lishing free kindergartens in every 
 destitute part of large cities. 
 
 Said a wealthy tax-payer to me re- 
 cently, as he paid me his monthly kin- 
 dergarten subscription: "Mrs. Cooper, 
 this work among the children is the best 
 work that can be done. I give you this 
 aid most gladly. I consider it an in- 
 vestment for my children. I would 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 203 
 
 rather give five dollars a month to edu- 
 cate these children than to have my 
 own taxed ten times that amount by 
 and by to sustain prisons and peniten- 
 tiaries." This was the practical view 
 of a practical business man — a man of 
 wise forethought and of generous, 
 genial impulses. Many needy children 
 have been turned back into the street, to 
 learn all its vice and crime, who could 
 not find accommodation in the different 
 charity kindergartens. I tell you this 
 is a fact of momentous import to any 
 community. Remember that from a 
 single neglected child in a wealthy 
 county in the State of New York there 
 has come a notorious stock of crimi- 
 nals> vagabonds and paupers, imperil- 
 ling every dollar's worth of property 
 and every individual in the community. 
 Not less than twelve hundred persons 
 have been traced as the lineage of six 
 
204 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 children who were born of this one 
 perverted and depraved woman, who 
 was once a pure, sweet, dimpled little 
 child, and who, with proper influences 
 thrown about her at a tender age, 
 might have given to the world twelve- 
 hundred progeny who would have' 
 blest their day and generation. Look 
 at the tremendous fact involved ! In 
 neglecting to train this one child to 
 ways of virtue and well-doing, the de- 
 scendants of the respectable neighbors' 
 of that child have been compelled to 
 endure the depredations, and support 
 in almshouses and prisons, scores of her 
 descendants for six generations! If the 
 people of this country would protect 
 the virtue of their children, their per- 
 sons from murder, their property from 
 theft, or their wealth from a heavy tax 
 to support paupers and criminals, they 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 205 
 
 must pFoyide a scheme of education 
 that will not allow a single youth to 
 escape its influence. And, to effect the 
 surest and best results, these children 
 must be reached just as early in life as 
 possible. The design of the kindefr 
 garten system is to prevent criminals, 
 And what estimate shall be placed upon 
 9,n instrumentality which sayes the child 
 from becon>ing a criminal, and thus not 
 pnly saves the State from the care and 
 expense incident to such reform, but 
 jalso secures to J;he State all thg,t which 
 the life of a good citizen brings to jt f 
 Think of the vast difference in results, 
 liad there been twelve hundred useful, 
 iwell-equipped men and women at work 
 in that county in ^ew York, building if 
 ■up in productive industries, instead of 
 twelve hundred paupers and criminals 
 tearing down and defiling the fair her- 
 
2o6 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 itage! We have but to look at this 
 significant fact to estimate the value of 
 a single child to the commonwealth. 
 
 The true kindergartner proceeds 
 upon the principle asserted by Froebel, 
 that every child is a child of nature, a 
 child of man, and a child of God, and 
 that education can fulfil its mission 
 only when it views the human being in 
 this threefold relation, and takes each 
 into account. In other words, the true 
 kindergartner regards with scrupulous 
 care the physical, the intellectual, and 
 the moral. " You cannot," says Froe- 
 bel, "do heroic deeds in words, or by 
 talking about them ; but you can edu- 
 cate a child to self-activity and to well- 
 doing, and through these to a faith 
 which will not be dead." The child in 
 the kindergarten is not only told to be 
 good, but inspired by help and sympa- 
 thy to be good. The kindergarten child 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 207 
 
 is taught to manifest his love in deeds 
 rather than in words; and a child thus 
 taught never knows lip-service, but is 
 led forward to that higher form of 
 service where their good works glorify 
 the Father, thus proving Froebel's as- 
 sertion to be true, where he says, " I 
 have based my education on religion, 
 and it must lead to religion." The 
 little child, after all, is the important 
 factor in this universe. 
 
 When the old king demanded of the 
 Spartans fifty of their children as hos- 
 tages, they replied, " We would prefer 
 to give you a hundred of our most dis- 
 tinguished men." This was but a fair 
 testimony to the everlasting value of 
 the child to any commonwealth and to 
 any age. The hope of the world lies 
 in the children. The hope of this 
 nation lies in the little children that 
 throng the streets to-day. Is it no small 
 
208 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 question, then, " What shall we do with 
 our children?" It seems to me that 
 the very best work that can be done 
 for the world is work with the children. 
 We talk a vast deal about the work of 
 reclamation and restoration, reforma- 
 tory institutions and the like; and all 
 this is well, but far better is it to begin 
 at the beginning. The best physicians 
 are not those who only follow disease, 
 but those who, as far as possible, go 
 ahead and prevent it. They seek to 
 teach the community the laws of heailth, 
 —how not to get sick. 
 
 We too often start out on the principle 
 that actuated the medical tyro who was 
 working, might and main, over a patient 
 burning up with fever. When gently 
 entreated to know what he was doing, 
 he snappishly replied: "Doing? Why, 
 I 'm trying to throw this man into a fit. I 
 don't know much about curing fevefsi, 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 209 
 
 but I'm death on fits. Just let me get him 
 into a fit, and I '11 fetch him! " It seems 
 to me we often go on the same prin* 
 ciple: we work harder in laying plans 
 to redeem those who have fallen than 
 to save others from falling. We seem 
 to take it for granted that a certain 
 condition of declension must be reached 
 before we can work to advantage. I 
 S'epeat again what I have said before— 
 •w^ do not bei^m soon, enough with the 
 ihildrm. It seems to me that both 
 Church and State have yet to learn the 
 vast import of those matchless words 
 of the great Teacher Himself, where He 
 said, pointing to a little child, " He 
 that receiveth him in My name receiv- 
 eth Me." He said it because, with 
 omniscient vision, He saw the wondrous, 
 folded-away possibilities imprisoned 
 within the little child. 
 
 Now, I do not propose to go into the 
 
210 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 rationale of the kindergarten system at 
 all on this occasion; but I do wish to 
 emphasize a few salient points; and, 
 first, that the kindergarten aims at the 
 cultivation of the heart. As its great 
 founder himself declared, its regnant 
 aim is to guide the heart and soul in 
 the right direction, and lead them to 
 the Creator of all life, and to personal 
 union with Him. As I before said, the 
 kindergarten is the paradise of child- 
 hood, the gate through which the little 
 children may re-enter Eden, The law 
 of duty is recognized by the little ones 
 as the law of love. Froebel recognized 
 the Divine Spirit as the true develop- 
 ing power. His theory was that the 
 human heart can only be satisfied with 
 the consciousness of the love of a per- 
 sonal God and Father, to whom we can 
 pray and speak. He said religious 
 education was more than religious in- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 211 
 
 struction. It was his aim to lead the 
 little ones to their heavenly Friend. 
 He taught them to love one another, to 
 help one another, to be kind to one 
 another, to care for one another. No 
 one can love God who does not love 
 his fellows. Froebel grieved over the 
 criminal classes. We say again, the 
 design of the kindergarten is to pre- 
 vent criminals. And what estimate 
 sthall be placed upon an instrumentality 
 which saves the child from becoming 
 a criminal, and so saves the State from 
 the care and expense incident to such 
 reform, and secures to the State all 
 that which the life of a good citizen 
 brings to it? 
 
 The State begins too late when it 
 permits the child to enter the public 
 school at six years of age. It is lock- 
 ing the stable door after the horse is 
 stolen. 
 
212 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 One of the most distinguished writers 
 oh the law of heredity, Doctor Mauds- 
 ley, says : " It is certain that lunatics 
 arid criminals are as much manufactured 
 articles as are steam-engines and calico 
 printing machines, only the processes 
 of the organic manufactory are so com- 
 plex that we are hot able to follow them. 
 They are neither accidents nor anoma- 
 lies in the universe, but come by law 
 and testify to causality ; and it is the 
 business of science to find out what the 
 causes are, and by What laws they 
 work." A republic that expects to sur- 
 vive, and to increase in pdwer and 
 greatness, must see to it that she doek 
 not carry within her the seeds of her 
 own dissolution. It remains forever 
 true of nations, as of individuals, that 
 ignorance and crime breed dissolution 
 and death. 
 
 I want to say that the men and wom- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 213 
 
 en who indorse, sustain, and advocate 
 kindergarten wofk in San Francisco 
 are among its most thoughtful, philan- 
 thropic, and far-seeing citizens — tnefl 
 who seek to crown with ceaseless bless- 
 ing the destinies of Ihiis western Worlds 
 men and women whose bettet" niature is 
 always within call, and who* with a. 
 rich and melloiA^ spirit of humanity, 
 determine to leave the world bettef 
 than they found it, happier and nobler 
 for the legacy of their fruitful lives ; 
 men and women who are always devis* 
 ing generous things, and -w^ho go 
 through life like a band of music ; men 
 and women who live to develop the 
 resources of a greit State — citizens of 
 the world made by the tihie to make a 
 new time. Such are the men and wom- 
 en who> by their generous gifts and 
 jpleading earnestness, help on this great 
 work in San Francisco. Nobler far* 
 
214 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 seeing men and women! I love and 
 honor them, every one. 
 
 Dear friends, I believe with all my 
 soul that the shortest cut to permanent 
 victory in the great and glorious cause 
 o£ temperance is through the training 
 of very little children in ways of virtue, 
 self-government, and self-control, by 
 the proper cultivation of the heart, as 
 well as the head and hand, in the kin- 
 dergarten. Only such schools as these, 
 moulding and shaping character by 
 careful habit and training, will ever 
 build up a vigorous, healthful, virtu- 
 ous national life. Only such schools as 
 these will make poorhouses, insane 
 asylums, penitentiaries, and like insti- 
 tutions unnecessary. Do they cost too 
 much? Think of it! $50,000,000 in- 
 vested for asylums, poorhouses, hos- 
 pitals, blind, deaf-mute, and insane 
 asylums in the State of New York 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 215 
 
 alone, with an annual outlay of $10,- 
 000,000 ; and this does not include 
 houses of correction, penitentiaries, 
 prisons, jails, and the like. Even a 
 portion of this money expended in kin- 
 dergarten schools would make these 
 penal and corrective institutions un- 
 .necessary in a few years. 
 
 If the civil authorities cannot and do 
 not attend to the needy, neglected chil- 
 dren that go to swell the great lists of 
 crime, pauperism, and insanity, then 
 Christian philanthropy should do it. 
 Christianity, thank God, is coming to be 
 more and more practical in its aspect 
 and work. We are coming to feel more 
 and more that a religion that has every- 
 thing for a future world, and nothing 
 for this world, has nothing for either. 
 A religion that neglects this present 
 life is a mother who neglects her infant, 
 with the expectation that manhood will 
 
2l6 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 make everything fight. There is a 
 class of persons who spend their lives 
 in trying to be good. There is another 
 class who spend their lives in trying to 
 do good. Genuine goodness is some- 
 thing more than a mere self-seeking for 
 eternity. It is something more than 
 that sort of pious living which means 
 little else than a safe and sagacious in- 
 vestment in the skies. It is a working 
 together with God in this world for the 
 uplifting and advancement of the 
 human race. It is a seeking to lessen 
 the pains and burdens of life among 
 the toilers and the strugglers. It is a 
 reaching out after the little children of 
 poverty and want — the hapless little 
 ones who have beeti hurled prematurely 
 against the life-wrecking problems of 
 existence. Help that can run to help 
 the helpless, and comfort the comfort- 
 less, always keeps closest by the side of 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 217 
 
 God. Intensity of life is intensity of 
 helpfulness. The great waiting world 
 understands good actions far more 
 readily than abstract doctrines. 
 
 Perhaps we shall find at last, in the 
 day of final disclosure, that the deepest 
 and most far-reaching influence that we 
 ever exerted was the influence that we 
 exerted over the helpless and neglected 
 little children of the streets. Perhaps 
 we shall find it to be the best work we 
 ever accomplished. At all events, it is 
 well to live well. And he lives the 
 longest who lives the best. He is great 
 who confers most of blessing on man- 
 kind. 
 
CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY 
 
'' Skilled employment must be taught to boys and 
 girls alike, at the earliest age consistent with edu- 
 cational claims. Labor must, however, never be 
 drudgery, but a delight to the young workers; and 
 to insure this, not only must the most effective teach- 
 ers be secured, but the tastes and capacity of each 
 child must be carefully studied, so that the industry 
 clfp^en shall in e^ch ca^e be congei^ial, ^nd not re^ 
 pugnant. 
 
 " Religion must occupy no secandary position in 
 such a Home. Its principles must be taught and its 
 precepts practiced with that deep and loving enthusi- 
 asm which shall secure for it ever after a sacred 
 place and a mighty influence in the hearts and lives 
 of the children."— TV/OTwa* y. Barnardo, F.R.CS.Ed., 
 Founder "Dr. Barnardo Homes" London. 
 
CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY 
 
 OHIO STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES. 
 
 Asa S. Bushneli., Governor, Prest., £x-officio. 
 RoELiFF Brinkerhoff, Mansfield. 
 William Howand Neff, Cincinnati. 
 W. A. Hale, Dayton. 
 Charles Parrott, Columbus. 
 M. D. FoLLETT, Marietta. 
 Henry C. Ranney, Cleveland. 
 Joseph P. Byebs, Clerk. 
 
 Mansfield, Ohio, 
 
 August 17, 1898. 
 
 Mr. Horace Fletcher, Chicago, 111. 
 My Dear Sir: Yours of the 15th inst. 
 received ; also proof sheets of your forth- 
 coming publication, which I have read 
 with great pleasure. 
 
 I heartily agree with you in the opin- 
 ion that the children must first be cared 
 for if we are to make any great prog- 
 ress in reducing crime. 
 
 In nearly all that I have written or 
 spoken during the past twenty years 
 
222 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 upon this subject I have taken this 
 position. 
 
 Five years ago, when I was in San 
 Francisco and spent some days with 
 Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, with whom I had 
 had correspondence for several years, 
 and with Mr. Crowley, Chief of Police, 
 I was profoundly impressed with the 
 power for good of the kindergartens as 
 there administered. 
 
 The only way to make good char- 
 acter and good habits a foundation in 
 the lives of growing children, which is 
 the aim of the kindergarten, universal, 
 is to make the training a part of our 
 common school system, and I think that 
 accomplishment must be our objective 
 point. 
 
 You quote what I said about the re- 
 sults of kindergarten work in San Fran- 
 cisco, and in the main, correctly, but 
 just what Mrs. Cooper and Chief Crow- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 223 
 
 ley said you will find in Warden Hale's 
 address, at Saint Paul, Minn., in 1894, 
 which you will find in the Annual Re- 
 port of the Saint Paul National Prison 
 Congress. 
 
 Mrs. Cooper said that in fourteen 
 years, out of about 16,000 kindergarten 
 children, they had the history of about 
 9,000, and of these not one had beeii 
 arrested for crime. Chief Crowley 
 said that out of 8,000 children arrested 
 in San Francisco, but one had been 
 trained in a kindergarten.' 
 
 Warden Hale for many years has 
 been in charge of the great prison at 
 San Quinten, near San Francisco, and 
 his testimony is valuable. 
 
 Your book is timely and will be a val- 
 uable aid in educating a healthy public 
 sentiment. In the hasty reading I have 
 been able to give it I see nothing to 
 criticise. Personally I believe that the 
 
2 24 THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 religious element in teaching should, at 
 least, have equal prominence with the 
 industrial and intellectual. Instead of 
 the three R's of first importance in old- 
 time teaching, I am in favor of three 
 H's, in the following order: The Heart, 
 the Hand, and the Head. 
 
 I give you God-speed in your good 
 work, and if I can at any time give you 
 a helping hand please command me. 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 R. Brinkerhoff. 
 
AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL 
 LEAD THEM 
 
" Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me, and 
 Forbid Them Not, For of Such Is the Kingdom of 
 Heaven." 
 
 " For inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
 the Least of These, even so have ye done it unto Me." 
 
 "A New Commandment I give unto you, that 
 ye Love One Another." 
 
 " Do unto Others as ye would that Others should 
 do unto you." 
 
 226 
 
AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL 
 LEAD THEM 
 
 Of the recorded utterances of Christ 
 about children the most direct prophecy 
 is the caption of this chapter. 
 
 It is no disrespect to the holy mis- 
 sion of Christ in the world to say that 
 He was the first Great Kindergartner. 
 
 It is in the love and solicitude for 
 children that the view of Christ differs 
 greatly from all the great teachers 
 whom the world reverence or worship. 
 
 The utterances of Christ are few, 
 but the Golden Rule and references to 
 children stand out clearly as among 
 the important themes of His mission. 
 
 In the light of our present interest, 
 
 and in behalf of our especial quest, 
 
 227 
 
228 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 the prophecy of Christ is a burning 
 tower of hope that men and women 
 will some time see Christ in the light 
 that Froebel saw Him, and as many of 
 the enthusiastic followers of the Froe- 
 bel method of missionary work now 
 see Him. May they gather to the 
 support of our cause, to the support of 
 a Perfect Social Quarantine that shall 
 not permit any child of the community, 
 of the nation, nor of the world, as far 
 as possible, to escape the mandate of 
 the Golden Rule and the solicitude 
 that Christ expressed for them. 
 * * * 
 
 Will any great number of those who 
 have been blessed with children deny 
 that one of the most potent influences 
 in their life, next to that of mother, 
 has been desire for the respect of their 
 own children ? 
 
 There are many parents who shape 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 229 
 
 their lives, consciously or unconsciously, 
 so as not to be a bad example to their 
 children. Society, public opinion, self- 
 respect and law have a due measure 
 of influence or restraint, but at the bot- 
 tom of the best of conduct is the 
 influence of the little child, for the 
 prophecy is true, "And a little child 
 shall lead them." 
 
 « ir « 
 
 Not only in the family, but in the 
 State, and in all the walks of life, the 
 attention given to children is produc- 
 tive of the most profit. 
 
 H: * H: 
 
 " And a little child shall lead them!" 
 
SUMMARY 
 
" He is at once admitted to tlie school, where in 
 most cases the influences of cleanliness,decency,and 
 home surroundings, transform him in a few weelcs 
 from a homeless, dirty waif, ragged, hungry and hope- 
 less, into a bright, well clad, well fed lad, with the 
 opportunity before him of receiving a good educa- 
 tion and learning a trade which will give him an 
 object in life. The Training Schodl is in no sense a 
 prison, and has neither bolts nor bars nor corporeal 
 punishments. The boys are governed by love and 
 kindness; and, although they are taken from the 
 street and gutter, it is surprising as it is gratifying to 
 find how short a time produces an entire change in 
 their appearance, manners and conduct." — Oscar L. 
 Dudley, Secretary and General Manager of the Illi- 
 nois School of Agriculture and Manual Training for 
 Boys, before the National Conference of Charities and 
 Correction. 
 
 232 
 
SUMMARY 
 
 The author believes that character- 
 building and habit-forming institu- 
 tions should be appreciated and sup- 
 ported as fundamental bases of govern- 
 ment, in that they are nurseries of good 
 citizenship, and not simply as minor 
 branches of education, as at present 
 classified, and that no intelligent effort 
 should be spared to make them avail- 
 able to the Last Waif'vsx a community 
 as well as to the most favored. 
 * * * 
 
 Character-building and habit-form- 
 ing institutions, as here meant, include 
 the creche, the kindergarten, domestic 
 science, manual-training schools and 
 parental farms of demonstrated useful- 
 233 
 
234 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 ness; the special usefulness consisting 
 of supplying nourishment for infants 
 ■ necessary to supplement that received 
 at home, teaching suggestions from 
 which to absorb self-respect, and also 
 respect for thrift and order, and the 
 provision of ample opportunities for the 
 discovery of that talent or preference 
 for some useful occupation with which 
 every normal human being is equipped 
 at birth — the one occupation that every 
 person would rather pursue than do 
 anything else., or be idle, — if only it 
 can be found. 
 
 # * * 
 
 The moral effect of saving The Last 
 Waif from neglect would, in itself, be 
 much greater than the saving of hun- 
 dreds of stray waifs by less thorough 
 means, and the beneficial influence of a 
 moral wave, such as the establishment 
 of Perfect Social Quarantine would 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 235 
 
 produce, would be felt in raising the 
 average efficiency of family instruction 
 in character-building in the same pro- 
 portion that a complete thing is 
 superior to anything that is weak in 
 some of its parts. A resultant effect 
 would be the establishment of Dirt 
 Quarantine and Sanitary Quarantine 
 Measures on lines of parallel efficiency, 
 as already proven by the influence of 
 kindergarten work in slums,. for clean- 
 liness begets cleanliness as surely as dirt 
 begets dirt. 
 
 * « * 
 
 The wave of humanitarian sentiment 
 that demanded freedom for Cuba cost 
 the American people more than a million 
 of dollars a day, and without hardship 
 to any except those who endangered 
 their lives in fighting for the cause. 
 
 The cost of saving the helpless 
 neglected ones at home, and the estab- 
 
236 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 lishment, for all time to come, of that 
 first requisite of civilization, a perfect 
 Moral and Social Quarantine, would be 
 but a tithe of the cost of war with 
 Spain, while all the outlay would be 
 returned to the people and devoted to 
 Construction, instead of being wasted in 
 Destruction, as is necessary in the case 
 of war. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The gaps of neglect in the present 
 partial attempts at character-building 
 and habit-forming for children, which 
 are the bases of moral and social quar- 
 antine, are not very wide, as compared 
 with what has already been accom- 
 plished for protection, but they are as 
 dangerous and expensive as would be 
 an open seaport during a season of 
 yellow fever epidemic. These gaps can 
 be closed by the judicious placing of a 
 few more character and habit institu- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 237 
 
 tions where they are needed to supple- 
 ment those already established, espe- 
 cially in the midst of the slums of great 
 cities, where idleness, disorder and 
 crime are wont to breed in neglect. 
 
 These institutions would, of neces- 
 sity, have to be scattered about in such 
 a manner that no child (apprentice citi- 
 zen) in need of them could escape the 
 influence of their profitable suggestions 
 with which to supplement or counteract 
 the influence of suggestions received at 
 home. 
 
 « * H: 
 
 A perfect cordon of care is of utmost 
 importance during the period of life 
 following earliest perceptions, until 
 character is beginning to crystallize, and 
 this is the season of present neglect. 
 * * * 
 
 Public institutions should not be in- 
 tended to replace family influence, but 
 
238 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 to furnish intelligent models and sup- 
 plement family teaching. At the same 
 time they would supplement sectarian 
 Sunday schools with unsectarian every- 
 day instruction. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The cause of child-culture appeals 
 to the everyone; capitalist and estate- 
 owner on account of ultimate econ- 
 omy; to Sociology on the score of 
 duty; to humanitarians on the plea of 
 pity; to womankind in response to the 
 mother impulse of protection and care; 
 and to Christians by order of the 
 mandate, " For inasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto the least of these, even 
 so have ye done it unto Me." 
 
 * * * 
 
 One-tenth of the present cost of 
 guarding against disorder and the pun- 
 ishment of crime, applied to the intelli- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 239 
 
 gent care and training of children from 
 the time of dawning perceptions until 
 the average of ten years of age, by- 
 methods that already have been proven 
 to be effective, would save to a com- 
 munity, within a single short genera- 
 tion, many times the amount of the 
 original outlay, besides adding enor- 
 mously to the equipment for produc- 
 tion. 
 
 * * * 
 
 An immediate effect of character- 
 school influence that is not yet suffi- 
 ciently appreciated is its power to 
 ameliorate present conditions of hope- 
 lessness and to tame and reclaim vi- 
 cious and degenerate parents with insin- 
 uating ease, whereas fighting them 
 with law and restraint at the front of 
 their offending, and in the face of their 
 full fledged and angry strength, only 
 excites their antagonisms as the color 
 
240 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 of red excites the fury of bulls in the 
 arenas of Spain. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Our appeal and argument are made 
 with the hope of inspiring organization 
 with the aim of closing all remaining 
 gaps of neglect, so that no helpless 
 soul, mind and body can escape intelli- 
 gent care in which to properly develop 
 the God-given equipment that is en- 
 trusted to our keeping. 
 
 The members of such an organiza- 
 tion might appropriately be known as 
 Quarantinists, in contradistinction to 
 those who, being indifferent to neglect 
 of children, would, with equal appro- 
 priateness, be known as Neglectists. 
 
 Every infant mentality that is born 
 into the world is a seed from the Crea- 
 tor, folded in a tiny human casing, but 
 bearing an important Divine Message 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 241 
 
 relative to the progress of human civ- 
 ilization towards God-like ideals. 
 
 The environment Society provides 
 for these Divine Contributions, so that 
 they shall develop their best possibili- 
 ties, is the measure of Man's duty 
 towards their development. 
 
 Every seed is important, for some 
 wise purpose, or the Creator would not 
 send it, and the germ of a great soul 
 flower may be wrapped within a hum- 
 ble and altogether improbable and 
 unexpected individuality, to grow pow- 
 erfully perverse, if warped at the be- 
 ginning of world-life, or potently strong 
 for good if started aright. 
 
 Society fails to do its duty to these 
 God-sent Messages unless it endeavors 
 to interpret and develop each and every 
 one of them with the ripest intelligence 
 known to the Science of Child-Life, 
 and each unit of Society fails of his 
 
242 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 duty to his Creator and to himself and 
 to his own unless he works with his ut- 
 most strength to aid in the cultivation. 
 
 * * * 
 Child-training and child-saving ex- 
 periments, within the past twenty-five 
 years have proven by results, that 
 there is no necessity of a Have-To- 
 Be-Bad class of citizens, and that such 
 a class of non-producing depreda- 
 tors in a community is the result of 
 neglect, whose cost of prevention would 
 not ,be a tithe of the present cost of 
 futile attempts at correction by punish- 
 ment. 
 
 * # * 
 
 Man reads the messages of Creation 
 in its works, and has proven by cen- 
 turies of experiment with his mental and 
 physical equipments that while God 
 creates all things capable of harmony, 
 or good, Man is the one expression of 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 243 
 
 His creation to whom is delegated the 
 power of selection, direction and culti- 
 vation. God gives the force and the 
 material, but man is given the unique ca- 
 pacity to aim, select, direct, cultivate and 
 harmonize. Even the lightning, in the 
 hands of Man, is applied to harmony 
 and construction, and is diverted frona 
 discord and destruction. 
 
 In Man's ceaseless experimentation 
 ivith his growing mental and physical 
 equipments, and with the exterior forces 
 of Nature, he has discovered that he 
 can gather and direct the lightning; cul- 
 tivate a skimpy wild flower into the im- 
 perial chrysanthemum; care for the 
 elemental horse of his earliest discov- 
 ery until it has developed into the 
 "Black Beauty" of the present day; 
 and, "last but not least," within only 
 one brief quarter of one brief century, 
 he has discovered that his greatest 
 
244 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 possibility of happiness lies in his power 
 to make good and useful citizens of all 
 his family. 
 
 Happiness is the evidence and fruit of 
 conscious usefulness. Usefulness in add- 
 ing to the sum of usefulness is, there- 
 fore, the best fruit of effort, and child 
 culture produces such fruit in abundance. 
 * * * 
 
 God reveals, therefore, in His Work, 
 what is not contradicted in His Word, 
 when interpreted aright, that He 
 creates all things good, subject to the 
 possibility of Man to cultivate and har- 
 monize and points out, as of first im- 
 portance, a plant which has stored 
 within it possibilities of endless further 
 cultivation, of itself, and all else in Cre- 
 ation — the plant which we call a child. 
 
 Shall society do its duty to all of 
 these or only such as chance has favored 
 with superior parentage? 
 
OR, SOCIAL QtTARANTINE 245 
 
 Have we not arrived at the point of 
 concrete intelligence when we should 
 assist in the fulfillment of the prophecy, 
 " And the Last Shall Be First," coupled 
 with that other prophecy of the Master 
 of our Christian Civilization, " And a 
 Little Child Shall Lead Them." 
 * * * 
 
 And finally, the way? 
 
 Ninety-eight per cent, of the con- 
 demned and neglected "Hopelessly sub- 
 merged ten per cent: stratum'' of cruel 
 tradition, have been reclaimed by 
 present methods of care, and one hun- 
 dred per cent, can be saved to useful 
 citizenship by m.eans of prevention instead 
 of correction. One one-hundredth of 
 present incomes of one-half the people 
 saved from waste and applied to 
 thorough quarantine will prevent the 
 causes which now result in ten times 
 the amount being swallowed up in 
 
246 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 futile attempts at correction by means 
 of punishment, and which do not give 
 either security from assault or protec- 
 tion from the curse of unsafe, unsan- 
 itary and uncleanly conditions. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The right way is the easy way and 
 the way to work aright is to begin 
 aright. The child is the key to the 
 solution of the problems of social dis- 
 order or of social harmony and the kin- 
 dergartners have proven themselves to 
 be the locksmiths by whose intelligence 
 and skill the key has been made to fit 
 all heretofore-closed avenues leading 
 towards hoped-for ideals. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Let us bless Saint Froebel and his 
 apostles, " The Angels of the State," 
 and the blessed institution they have 
 reared; and by saving our waste for our 
 waifs, give them the means needed for 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 247 
 
 the regeneration of the Infinite Good 
 and the eradication of the evils which 
 now beset us and mar the happiness 
 which is our natural inheritance, and 
 without which, we know that we are 
 bodily, mentally, morally and spiritually 
 inadequate, and therefore, ill. 
 
LOGICAL SEQUENCES 
 
LOGICAL SEQUENCES 
 
 It is universally recognized to be the 
 inherent right of all groups of men, be- 
 ginning with the family, and holding its 
 inviolable sacredness in the municipal^ 
 ity, in the State and in the nation, to 
 protect themselves against immorality, 
 disease and disorder; but it is only when 
 purity and harmony exist within the 
 gates that the ' gates are effectively 
 closed to that which is bred without. 
 
 There is little use to establish na- 
 tional or State seaport quarantine, 
 either sanitary or social, if what is quar- 
 antined against is breeding and flour- 
 ishing within the boundaries. 
 
 It is of little avail to exclude the Chi- 
 nese, on account of their dull moral 
 251 
 
252 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 sense, which, it is said, precludes the 
 possibility of good citizenship, or pau- 
 pers, imbeciles and insane persons, 
 while we are cultivating crops of sim- 
 ilar defectives with an indifference of 
 neglect which shows as dull moral 
 sense among ourselves as that at- 
 tributed to the Chinese, or as imbecile 
 or insane lack of attention to first 
 principles as could be exhibited by 
 the leering and gibbering refuse of 
 Europe which we turn back from our 
 shores. 
 
 Care begets care as surely as care- 
 lessness begets carelessness. A house- 
 wife who presides in a tidy home will 
 hasten to close all openings when there 
 is a dust storm raging without. This 
 is too axiomatic to enlarge upon, but 
 the illustration is strong. It is only 
 when we have perfected the character 
 of our own Apprentice Citizens, by giv- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 253 
 
 ing them every chance to develop what- 
 ever qualities they bring with them 
 from our mutual Creator, by the best 
 methods known to the Science of Child- 
 Culture, that we can appreciably feel 
 any good results of closing our ports to 
 the defective and neglected children of 
 China or Europe. It can only be when 
 we are ourselves free from expres- 
 sions of criminal neglect that we can 
 preach to the world except in the form 
 of a paraphrased adaptation of the say- 
 ing of a political economist of the sa- 
 loon persuasion to a solicitor for a waif's 
 home, which was as follows : " Let the 
 blokes as breeds vermin look out for 
 their vermin. I ain't got no sugar for 
 the kids of such." 
 
 It will only be when we have at- 
 tended to our own national first princi- 
 ples — our Cadet Citizens — that we can 
 notice imported dullards and perverts 
 
254 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 among us by contrast with our own pro- 
 duct. 
 
 When we have applied the thor- 
 oughness demanded by our highest in- 
 telligence in character culture we can 
 close our gates to the bad characters of 
 all the world, and say, with good grace 
 and effect: " No! No! friends. We 
 respect the sacred title of ' Brother,' we 
 believe in brotherhood, and hope for 
 the time when the mandate of Christ 
 shall be fulfilled in the establishment of 
 a Universal Brotherhood of Man, but 
 let us begin to accomplish it in the right 
 way. We have learned how to culti- 
 vate the children the Creator sends us 
 in such a way as to make perfect chrys- 
 anthemums of good citizens out of the 
 skimpiest little wild flowers of waifs 
 that have heretofore languished in 
 neglect on stony wastes, unnourished 
 and uncared for. We have yet some 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 255 
 
 little gardening — kindergartening — 
 to attend to before we are ready to 
 open our National Character Expo- 
 sition, and in the meantime we will 
 ask you to excuse us from the usual 
 conventionalities of old-time methods 
 while we start the brotherhood idea 
 to propagating right here at home 
 where we can watch it. It will take 
 about three or four years to organ- 
 ize a Mother Branch of Government, 
 raise and drill a sufficient army of 
 "Angels of the State" and make them 
 efficient kindergartners, and five years 
 more to get rid of the criminals and 
 perverts of the present time, either by 
 conversion under the warmth of a new 
 point-of-view that will throw a mantle 
 of charity over their past ill-doing, or 
 by certain death which will seek them 
 as victims within that time, if they are 
 helplessly lost to reform. 
 
256 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Let us see — four years and five years 
 are nine years. We have just cleared 
 the home, as well as the foreign, atmos- 
 phere of certain impurities, of lack of 
 respect for us on account of our granger 
 and commercial habits of prosperity, as 
 if by a flash of lightning, so that we 
 may work in peace and have plenty of 
 time in the next decade to prepare for 
 the exposition which we will offer to 
 the world under the name of United 
 States and Canadian Character Expo- 
 sition and Peace Jubilee. When we 
 have opened our exhibit and given our 
 object lesson, after the manner of the 
 kindergarten, we can say to the world: 
 " Come and see what we have done with 
 material gathered from all your lands 
 and nations. Not one race or national 
 ingredient has been omitted from our 
 brew. What God makes is good and 
 within the power of man to cultivate 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 257 
 
 into usefulness, and here is the proof 
 of it. Now go home and do likewise 
 within your own national boundaries, 
 and when you have produced good ma- 
 terial for brotherhood send it to us and 
 we will welcome it, but until then, the 
 purity of our own establishment de- 
 mands that we refuse your neglects who 
 are already too set in perversion to be 
 easily reformed. 
 
 "Good friends of China and of India 
 and of Africa and of the Islands of the 
 Sea, or any of the so-called semi-civil- 
 ized or uncivilized peoples of our earth, 
 we will send you missionaries and show 
 you how to cultivate what you have as 
 well as the quality of the material will 
 permit, and we will supply all the world 
 with an object lesson, but we cannot 
 take your defectives as boarders in our 
 family." 
 
258 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 As a logical sequence of a Strict 
 Social Quarantine it is possible for any 
 civilized nation to make such an exhibit 
 as given in the illustration in ten years, 
 for the area of neglect is very small in 
 which idleness and disorder and crim- 
 inality breed, although the area of dis- 
 turbance caused is as wide as the world. 
 We say ten years as a measure of pos- 
 sibility on the authority of proved re- 
 sults, but fifteen years is a most reason- 
 able time to settle as an aim if at- 
 tempted by a majority co-operation. 
 
 It has been said that God never hur- 
 ries. This is true when the contrast is 
 made between our unit of time and our 
 idea of eternity, but when His pure at- 
 mosphere has been encumbered with 
 intolerable inconsistencies, He flashes 
 the lightning, and calls the attention of 
 the world to it by loud thunder. 
 
 In our opinion it is time that light- 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 259 
 
 ning should clear our social atmosphere. 
 We have been, shown the way and the 
 fuse has been put in our hand. There 
 is no difference of opinion as to there 
 being impurities in the social at- 
 mosphere, and methods of purifica- 
 tion have been proven to be effective ^ 
 and have been approved by social 
 chemists who have intelligently in- 
 vestigated. No creed, no political 
 pa>rty, no class interest, no selfish inter- 
 est, nothing! opposes the giving of 
 babies a chance to develop their best 
 possibilities, while the cost of it, lavish 
 though it may be in the beginning, 
 is a better investment than any other, 
 not only to the Commonwealth, but 
 to each contributing unit; to you, and 
 to me, and to our children. 
 
 Fellow Citizens, do you not see and 
 smell and feel the impurities in our so- 
 cial atmosphere? Do you not realize, 
 
26o THAT LAST WAIF 
 
 even if you are indifferent yourself, that 
 your children are breathing and are 
 being morally and spiritually asphyxi- 
 ated by this atmosphere? With the 
 fuse placed in your hand and the 
 promise of the Master of our Civiliza- 
 tion that " Of Such is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven"; the heaven that we are 
 seeking, can you resist applying the 
 fuse? Do you not think it is time to 
 lighten, when we know that the bolt of 
 destruction will consume only the evils 
 which now environ us and our own 
 children? Are we not agreed? Yes! 
 We are agreed! Then touch the fuse 
 and let the lightning strike! Some 
 children are now perishing, and we 
 know it, and the means of rescue are 
 at hand. The responsibility now is 
 ours. Then, again, our responsibility 
 demands it, IT MUST LIGHTEN ! ! 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 IT HAS BEGUN— DEDICATION 
 
Let but wise training be added, suitable to age, 
 idiosyncrasies and physical conditions, and the fu- 
 ture welfare of all those rescued is practically 
 secured, while many social problems which now 
 perplex the most thoughtful, will, in the next gene- 
 ration, have found a satisfactory solution. 
 
 These should be incentives and rewards enough 
 for the patient worker among the slums of our great 
 cities. But if further stimulus is needed, it may 
 assuredly be found in the gracious and memorable 
 words of our Divine Master: "Whoso shall receive 
 one such little child in My name receiveth Me." — 
 Thomas J. Barnardo, F.R.C.S.Ed., Fotmder of the "Dr. 
 Barnardo's Homes" London, England. 
 
 262 
 
IT HAS BEGUN 
 
 Since the foregoing pages were electrotyped 
 two incidents of the utmost importance and of 
 the greatest significance are reported. That 
 relative to disarmament at the suggestion of the 
 Tzar of All the Russias is startling and most 
 gratifying, but it is of no greater significance to 
 the progress of civilization than the revival of 
 interest in first principles in elementary educa- 
 tion in the United States. There is activity in 
 many directions and several cities have quietly 
 made important additions to their facilities for 
 the training of little children, even while popular 
 interest has been absorbed in the excitement 
 of war. 
 
 The example of the city of Chicago, the city 
 of rapid change and of great results, in securing 
 the services of a very distinguished educator 
 from the head of a university to take charge of 
 her public schools and the expressed attitude 
 of this master of " higher education " toward 
 elementary education "from the kindergarten 
 up," may be given as a typical illustration. 
 263 
 
264 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, in assuming charge 
 of the Chicago public schools as superintendent 
 gave free expression of his opinion relative to 
 the problem he was called to solve. One report 
 is as follows: 
 
 " Doctor, will you please give, for publication, 
 your ideas concerning the schools as you now 
 understand the question? " 
 
 " Certainly, and with pleasure. In the first 
 place, and of first importance, I understand that 
 rapid growth and a somewhat unsettled popula- 
 tion has found the city unprepared for the care 
 of all the small children. There are twenty 
 thousand children of primary school age for 
 whom there are no seat? in school. I believe 
 in applying first and unremitting effort to start- 
 ing children right in their life career, and this 
 must be done by especial care for elementary 
 education from the kindergarten up." 
 
 " Do you consider French, German, drawing, 
 manual-training, domestic science and other un- 
 common branches to be 'fads' of some educa- 
 tors and not suitable or necessary departments 
 of public education?" 
 
 " I do not. All branches of learning are use- 
 ful, and should be available to any who seek 
 them, but none of the other branches should 
 be supported at the sacrifice of the elementary 
 branches." 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 265 
 
 During the preparation of this appeal for a 
 Perfect Social Quarantine which shall allow no 
 child to escape intelligent care, the early galley 
 proofs of the work were sent to a large number 
 of persons, representing many different points- 
 of-view, who are engaged in educational, cor- 
 rectional, political and business affairs in this 
 country and in England for criticism and sug- 
 gestions. The responses have been generous 
 and much of the argument, as it stands, Is based 
 upon this testimony. While the book is in press, 
 however, further responses are flooding in, which 
 show the interest of all persons in the thorough 
 aim appealed for. Those who have diverse 
 ideas relative to grown-up questions of competi- 
 tive interest are of one mind relative to giving 
 babies a chance to develop the best there is in 
 them. It is recognized that, under present con- 
 ditions of neglect, there are children born who 
 " have no show on earth " to be good and useful 
 citizens. It is also recognized that while one 
 such example of neglect remains or is possible a 
 nation has no good title or claim to the distinc- 
 tion of being called a civilized country. She 
 can only be classed as "partly civilized," while 
 there is one known case of neglect. 
 
 Of especial importance are the suggestions 
 and data collected and sent to the author from 
 London by Julian Ralph, Esq., and promise of 
 
266 THAT LAST WAIF; 
 
 "a substitution of a heavy backing of easily 
 obtainable facts for the appeals, which would 
 render them unnecessary," from Prof. Graham 
 Taylor, of the University of Chicago, and of the 
 Chicago Commons Social Settlement. 
 
 These must form a separate book, for they are 
 too extended for the present volume, although 
 their evidence adds valuable support. 
 
 The history of child-training and child-sav- 
 ing in the United States is that of a discovery 
 and wonderful development of latent forces, 
 who.se cultivation or neglect product more hap- 
 piness or more unhappiness, as the case may be, 
 than any other source of power. 
 
 Child-saving, in this country on an extensive 
 scale, was inaugurated by Mr. Charles L. Brace, 
 of New York, followed soon after by the Cath- 
 olic Protectory under the care of the Paulist 
 Brotherhood, and child-training was introduced 
 from Germany into the United States by Eliza- 
 beth Peabody, of Boston. 
 
 About the same time Dr. Thomas J. Barnardo, 
 of London, established the " Dr. Barnardo 
 Homes," whose chronicles during thirty-two 
 years show only 1.84 per cent, of failure to 
 make good children of the worst product of city 
 slums.* 
 
 * Within the past twenty-six years nine thousand 
 five hundred and fifty-six trained boys and girls, the 
 
OR, SOCIAL QUARANTINE 267 
 
 The world owes these altruists, and all who 
 have followed in the development of their work, 
 a debt of happy gratitude. 
 
 The title of " Angels of the State," given to 
 kindergartners, is borrowed from a charming 
 little book by the Rev. Frank Sewall, of Wash- 
 ington, D. C. 
 
 flower of my flock, have been placed out in situations 
 in tiie Colonies, and have been continuously looked 
 after and supervised ever since by a company of de- 
 voted and experienced men and women. Results 
 recently tabulated in reports to and from the Govern- 
 ment of Canada show that the failures among these 
 emigrants is less than two per cent, (actually 1.S4 per 
 cent.) of the whole."— Thomas J. Barnardo, F.R.C.S. 
 Ed., founder of the "Dr. Barnardo's Homes" London, 
 England. 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 Auditorium Annex, 
 Chicago, August i6, 1898. 
 Miss Amalie Hofer, 
 
 Manager Kindergarten Literature Company, 
 Woman's Temple, Chicago, 111.; 
 
 Dear Miss Hofer: — In searching for the best 
 means of distributing my new book — "That 
 Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine" — my atten- 
 tion was called to the decree on the cover of 
 your magazine — " Pledged, to Make the Kinder- 
 garten Free to All Children." 
 
 Further inquiry reveals the fact that your 
 stockholders arS' deeply interested in kindergar- 
 ten-propagation work; that your profits are dedi- 
 cated to that cause, and. that you have over four 
 thousand correspondents who are enthusiastic 
 workers. 
 
 Inasmuch as I propose to contribute the 
 profits derived from the sale' of the book to 
 form the nucleus of a fund with which to cham- 
 pion the establishment of Character-Building 
 and Habit-Forming schools or institutions to 
 meet the needs of all Apprentice Citizens, and 
 for the advocacy of the creation of a depart- 
 269 
 
2 70 DEDICATION 
 
 ment of the Federal Government to promote 
 and guard Citizen-Training (especially during 
 the period of tenderest and strongest impres- 
 sions), it seems to me that your organization 
 and I should co-operate. 
 
 The kindergarten has been the means of 
 demonstrating the efficiency of character-train- 
 ing, and, while it is only one branch of elemen- 
 tary character education, it is the parent of all 
 which have come into existence as a result of 
 the success of the teachings of Pestalozzi and 
 Froebel. You may, therefore, consistently ex- 
 tend your interest to all phases of the work. 
 
 If the Child-Crop of a nation is the source 
 of all its strength or weakness — happiness or 
 trouble — why should there not be a strongly- 
 equipped department of the national govern- 
 ment to minister to its interests, as there are 
 departments of State, Agriculture and others, 
 whose heads form the Cabinet of the Executive. 
 
 I send you herewith galley proofs of the 
 book by which you may learn if you are in sym- 
 pathy with my presentation of the case. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 Horace Fletcher. 
 
INDIVIDUAL CO-OPERATION 
 
 OR 
 
 What Constitutes an Active 
 Quarantinist 
 
 ADVANCE COPIES of That Last Waif; or. Social 
 ^larantine^ were sent to a large number of per- 
 sons in different walks of life asking for sugges- 
 tions relative to practical individual co-operation in 
 promoting a social quarantine worthy of Twentieth 
 Century Ideals, to be in active operation (started), with 
 the complete aim, at the opening of the coming cen- 
 tury, January ist, 1900. 
 
 The time has been too short since the mailing of 
 the advance copies to remote points to give the entire 
 consensus of opinion. Sufficient suggestions have, 
 however, been received to formulate a plan of individ- 
 ual co-operation, and to suggest the grouping of 
 individuals into organizations for the purpose of a 
 thorough quarantine campaign. 
 
 The most hopeful signs elicited by the call for 
 suggestions come from the least expected sources. 
 Persons who are themselves under the ban of social 
 disapproval through participation in occupations that 
 are classed "not respectable" by social decree, jump to 
 support the movement, because they best know that 
 cruel conditions of persecution and neglect do exist. 
 They not only have felt the neglect or persecution 
 themselves, but are in touch with it and with the 
 children who now "have no show on earth to be good." 
 This is due to the neglect of society to provide chil- 
 
dren an opportunity to choose between the good and 
 the bad by supplying adequate infant and progressive 
 character schools as recommended in our appeal. 
 
 FORMULA 
 
 1. The title of the individual shall be 
 Quarantinist ; all others, not active quar- 
 antinists, being classed as Neglectists. 
 
 2. The insignia of the Quarantinist 
 Order ^■aW be golden yellow (the quaran- 
 tine color) ground, with the fraction -^ 
 on it in black. 
 
 3. The contribution of the Quaran- 
 tinist to the promotion of social quaran- 
 tine shall be one one-hundredth of his or 
 her time, each month, toward assisting 
 people in less fortunate circumstances to 
 favorable conditions; especial attention 
 being given to children as recommended 
 in "That Last Waif ; or, Social Quarantine.'' 
 
 THE BENEFITS ARE MUTUAL 
 
 One per cent, or i^, of income may easily be 
 saved from Some careless waste, and if applied 
 monthly would not be missed. Looking for waste for 
 the small contribution to quarantine would lead to 
 habits of care in personal and household economy that 
 would pay the quarantinist manj'-fold benefit. One 
 per cent, or rJ^, of time is seven to eight hours per 
 month. That time, devoted to the consideration of 
 the less fortunate, would reveal phases of one's own 
 good fortune that would revive a just appreciation of 
 
blessings now lost sight of in contemplation of the 
 glitter of extravagance, which flashes out in the midst 
 of still greater unhappiness and discontent in the 
 social strata above. 
 
 The insignificant contribution of a quarantinist 
 would, in the aggregate, even if participated in by only 
 halfihe people, easily effect a. Perfect Social Quaran- 
 tine worthy of the highest Christian Ideals. 
 
 Every suggestion involved in participation in the 
 quarantine movement is for the benefit of the partici- 
 pant and involves no sacrifice that does not repay in 
 cash (economy) as well as in other means of happiness. 
 
 Next to the neglected children who "have no show 
 on earth to be good," the most unfortunate class of 
 any community is the clerk or other worker, having a 
 salary of from $2,000 to $5,000 a year and having con- 
 ventional social aspirations. Turning of the attention 
 of this class of unfortunates to the suggestions in- 
 volved in quarantine, and active participation in the 
 work, even in so insignificant a degree as yj^ of time 
 and income, will remove a fruitful source of crime, 
 due to extravagance, which reflects even more dis- 
 credit upon our social system than any other of its 
 inconsistencies. 
 
 WARNING 
 
 Help people only to help themselves, if possible. 
 
 Indiscriminate charity often does more harm than 
 good. 
 
 Dispense your charity personally, if possible. 
 
 The best charity is assisting education , especially 
 Character-Building and Useful-Habit-Forming. 
 
ORGANIZATION 
 
 Supplementary to the suggestions for "Local 
 Quarantine Organizations " beginning on page 169 of 
 That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine, several good 
 ideas have been received. 
 
 A successful "boss" in politics, whose methods 
 have been invincible in promoting the interests of his 
 party says: "There is some good man or woman in 
 every city block or ward who will be your resident 
 representative. He or she will know the immediate 
 requirements of his beat or detail in the matter of 
 quarantine suggestions, and will give you all the in- 
 formation you want. District your community in as 
 small sections as possible, find the right person to 
 assist you in each section, tabulate your need for the 
 prevention of neglect, estimate reasonable cost, and 
 then demand it of the City Council or Town Board, 
 and you'll get it without a kick. If your movement is 
 all right, as it seems, the iJu dues by your quarantin- 
 ists will be more than you will want for your purpose till 
 the council acts, but any 'boodle' body, as people call 
 the progressive governments, that I know anything 
 about, will do it for you as quick as a wink and they 
 won't want any 'rake off' either. They will be the first 
 to join your order, as they can understand a ' sweep,' 
 and they know the needs. Everybody will vote to 
 give the babies a chance. Put me down anyhow; I'm 
 with you for all I've got." 
 
 The above suggestion is excellent. One serious 
 and earnest person in any community can start a 
 movement to district his or her community and get 
 co-operation in each district. The politicians will help 
 you if your aim is single and if the welfare of the chil- 
 dren, on non-political and non-sectarian lines, is your 
 
high purpose. Do this first, and know that 
 
 GOOD politics and RELIGION WILL BE THE FRUIT 
 OF THE EFFORT AS SURELY AS LIGHT DISPELS GLOOM 
 
 OR darkness! 
 
 The above method is in use in many German cities 
 for philanthropic and educational work and secures 
 for the community practically a quarantine from dis- 
 order. The " five household " method of division and 
 social supervision was the ancient method adopted in 
 Japan, to whose influence is undoubtedly due the mar- 
 velous discipline, on social lines, and the immunity 
 from disorder, that the Japanese enjoy more than any 
 other people. 
 
 ABOVE ALL: BE A QUARANTINIST YOUR- 
 SELF! ! THE REST WILL FOLLOW. 
 
Later, February ist, l8gg 
 
 "FIRED THE SHOT HEARD 'ROUND 
 THE WORLD" 
 
 Leading citizens and officials in four cities have 
 pledged their cities to accomplish Social Quarantine. 
 
 The General Federation of Women's Clubs of the 
 United States, through the president, Mrs. Rebecca 
 D. Lowe, of Atlanta, Ga., and the National Congress 
 of Mothers, through the president, Mrs. Alice G. Bir- 
 ney, have pledged their efforts to Social Quarantine, 
 and vifill make Social Quarantine the key-note of their 
 administration. 
 
 The adjourned Prison Reform Congress, which con- 
 vened at New Orleans in January last, resounded with 
 notes which advocated prevention to avoid the neces- 
 sity of punishment. Social Quarantine was explained 
 to the Congress by the author, and, at the close of his 
 address, by a rising vote, the Convention unanimpusly 
 subscribed to the practicability, desirability, and pos- 
 sibility of Social Quarantine as just expounded. 
 
 BECAUSE "IT PAYS!" 
 
 The National Cash Register Company, of Dayton, 
 Ohio, employing over two thousand employees, and 
 said by experts to be the most perfectly organized 
 industrial institution in the world, having many 
 unusual features of comfort and recreation for the 
 employees because "It Pays," and having kinder- 
 
gartens, cooking schools, gardens, etc., for the training 
 of the children of the employees and other residents 
 of the factory quarter, have published the decree that, 
 "After 191 5 no application for employment in the 
 company will be considered unless the applicant has 
 had an industrial (otherwise kindergarten) training in 
 childhood." The company will continue to publish 
 this conspicuously, and why ? Because, in their ex- 
 perience, children so trained are workers to be trusted 
 without superintendence, and " It Pays " to have such 
 workers. 
 
 This shot at old conditions relative to the improper 
 care of children is the result of experience, and it is 
 truly a shot that will be " Heard 'round the World " 
 louder than that which first belched forth in defence 
 of personal liberty at Concord, Mass. 
 
 The liberty to learn to work with skill, and to par- 
 ticipate in recreative work, is the ultimate liberty that 
 ensures the possibility of happiness. This is the aim 
 of the educational philosophy of Froebel, so ably en- 
 dorsed by Charles Dickens, so beautifully exemplified 
 by Mrs. Peabody, Mrs. Cooper, Miss Blow and others 
 by successful practice, and now brought into the eco- 
 nomics of manufacture by a great company which has 
 tried it and finds that " It Pays:' 
 
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