Part 17 (1/2)
”I wish to add a few words to Carrie's letter, to inform you of her welfare and progress. As she has said, it is now one year since she came to us; and, in looking back upon the time, I feel that, considering her mental deficiencies, she has made as much progress in learning as could be expected. Her health, which was at first and for several months the greatest source of anxiety to us, is so much improved that she is, indeed, _well._ Her eyes are better; though rather weak, they do not much interfere with her studies. She could neither sew nor knit when she came here, and she can now do plain kinds of both, if it is prepared for her. She could not tell all the alphabet, and could spell only three or four words. She now reads quite fluently, though sometimes stopping at a 'hard word,' and is as good at spelling as many Yankee children of her age. I hope she has learned some wholesome moral truths, and she has received much religious instruction. Though really quite a conscientious child when she came, she had a habit of telling lies to screen herself from _blame,_ to which she is peculiarly sensitive; but I think she has been cured of this for a long time, and I place perfect confidence in her word and in her honesty. I succeeded in getting her fitted to enter one of our intermediate schools by teaching her at home until the beginning of the present winter. I am obliged, on account of her exceeding dullness, to spend much time in teaching her out of school, in order that she may be able to keep up with her cla.s.ses. But I think this has been a work worth doing, and I especially feel it to be so now, as I am employed in this retrospect.
”I am often asked by my friends, who think the child is little more than half-witted, why I do not 'send her back, and get a brighter one.' My answer is, that she is just the one who needs the care and kindness which Providence has put it into my power to bestow. We love her dearly; but, if I did not, I should not think of sending her back to such a place as your great city. She is just one of those who could be imposed upon and abused, and perhaps may never be able to take care of herself wholly.”
Having found the defects of our first plan of emigration, we soon inaugurated another, which has since been followed out successfully during nearly twenty years of constant action.
We formed little companies of emigrants, and, after thoroughly cleaning and clothing them, put them under a competent agent, and, first selecting a village where there was a call or opening for such a party, we dispatched them to the place.
The farming community having been duly notified, there was usually a dense crowd of people at the station, awaiting the arrival of the youthful travelers. The sight of the little company of the children of misfortune always touched the hearts of a population naturally generous.
They were soon billeted around among the citizens, and the following day a public meeting was called in the church or town-hall, and a committee appointed of leading citizens. The agent then addressed the a.s.sembly, stating the benevolent objects of the Society, and something of the history of the children. The sight of their worn faces was a most pathetic enforcement of his arguments. People who were childless came forward to adopt children; others, who had not intended to take any into their families, were induced to apply for them; and many who really wanted the children's labor pressed forward to obtain it.
In every American community, especially in a Western one, there are many spare places at the table of life. There is no hara.s.sing ”struggle for existence.” They have enough for themselves and the stranger too. Not, perhaps, thinking of it before, yet, the orphan being placed in their presence without friends or home, they gladly welcome and train him. The committee decide on the applications. Sometimes there is almost a case for Solomon before them. Two eager mothers without children claim some little waif thus cast on the strand before them. Sometimes the family which has taken in a fine lad for the night feels that it cannot do without him, and yet the committee prefer a better home for him. And so hours of discussion and selection pa.s.s. Those who are able, pay the fares of the children, or otherwise make some gift to the Society until at length the business of charity is finished, and a little band of young wayfarers and homeless rovers in the world find themselves in comfortable and kind homes, with all the boundless advantages and opportunities of the Western farmer's life about them.
CHAPTER XX.
PROVIDING COUNTRY HOMES.
THE OPPOSITION TO THIS REMEDY--ITS EFFECTS.
This most sound and practical of charities always met with an intense opposition here from a certain cla.s.s, for bigoted reasons. The poor were early taught, even from the altar, that the whole scheme of emigration was one of ”proselytizing” and that every child thus taken forth was made, a ”Protestant.” Stories were spread, too, that these unfortunate children were re-named in the West, and that thus even brothers and sisters might meet and perhaps marry! Others scattered the pleasant information that the little ones ”were sold as slaves,” and that the agents enriched themselves from the transaction.
These were the obstacles and objections among the poor themselves. So powerful were these, that it would often happen that a poor woman, seeing her child becoming ruined on the streets, and soon plainly to come forth as a criminal, would prefer this to a good home in the West; and we would have the discouragement of beholding the lad a thief behind prison-bars, when a journey to the country would have saved him. Most distressing of all was, when a drunken mother or father followed a half-starved boy, already scarred and sore with their brutality, and s.n.a.t.c.hed him from one of our parties of little emigrants, all joyful with their new prospects, only to beat him and leave him on the streets.
With a small number of the better cla.s.ses there was also a determined opposition to this humane remedy. What may be called the ”Asylum-interest” set itself in stiff repugnance to our emigration-scheme. They claimed--and I presume the most obstinate among them still claim--that we were scattering poison over the country, and that we benefited neither the farmers nor the children. They urged that a restraint of a few years in an Asylum or House of Detention rendered these children of poverty much more fit for practical life, and purified them to be good members of society.
We, on the other hand, took the ground that, as our children were not criminals, but simply dest.i.tute and homeless boys and girls, usually with some ostensible occupation, they could not easily, on any legal grounds, be inclosed within Asylums; that, if they were, the expense of their maintenance would be enormous, while the cost of a temporary care of them in our Schools and Lodging-houses, and their transferrence to the West, was only trifling--in the proportion of fifteen dollars to one hundred and fifty dollars, reckoning the latter as a year's cost for a child's support in an Asylum. Furthermore, we held and stoutly maintained that an asylum-life is a bad preparation for practical life.
The child, most of all, needs individual care and sympathy. In an Asylum, he is ”Letter B, of Cla.s.s 3,” or ”No. 2, of Cell 426,” and that is all that is known of him. As a poor boy, who most live in a small house, he ought to learn to draw his own water, to split his wood, kindle his fires, and light his candle; as an ”inst.i.tutional child,” he is lighted, warmed, and watered by machinery. He has a child's imitation, a desire to please his superiors, and readiness to be influenced by his companions. In a great caravansary he soon learns the external virtues which secure him a good bed and meal--decorum and apparent piety and discipline--while he practices the vices and unnamable habits which ma.s.ses of boys of any cla.s.s nearly always teach one another. His virtue seems to have an alms-house flavor; even his vices do not present the frank character of a thorough street-boy; he is found to lie easily, and to be very weak under temptation; somewhat given to hypocrisy, and something of a sneak. And, what is very natural, _the longer he is in the Asylum, the less likely he is to do well in outside life._ I hope I do no injustice to the unfortunate graduates of our Asylums; but that was and continues to be my strong impression of the inst.i.tutional effect on an ordinary street boy or girl. Of course there are numerous exceptional cases among children--of criminality and inherited habits, and perverse and low organization, and premature cunning, l.u.s.t, and temper, where a half-prison life may be the very best thing for them; but the majority of criminals among children, I do not believe, are much worse than the children of the same cla.s.s outside, and therefore need scarcely any different training.
One test, which I used often to administer to myself, as to our different systems, was to ask--and I request any Asylum advocate to do the same--”If your son were suddenly, by the death of his parents and relatives, to be thrown out on the streets, poor and homeless--as these children are--where would you prefer him to be placed--in an Asylum, or in a good farmer's home in the West?”
”The plainest farmer's home rather than the best Asylum--a thousand times!” was always my sincere answer.
Our discussion waxed warm, and was useful to both sides. Our weak point was that, if a single boy or girl in a village, from a large company we had sent, turned out bad, there was a cry raised that ”every New-York poor child,” thus sent out, became ”a thief or a vagabond,” and for a time people believed it.
Our antagonists seized hold of this, and we immediately dispatched careful agents to collect statistics in the Central West, and, if possible, disprove the charges. They, however, in the meantime, indiscreetly published their statistics, and from these it appeared that only too many of the Asylum graduates committed offenses, and that those of the shortest terms did the best. The latter fact somewhat confused their line of attack.
The effort of tabulating, or making statistics, in regard to the children dispatched by our society, soon appeared exceedingly difficult, mainly because these youthful wanderers shared the national characteristic of love-of-change, and, like our own servants here, they often left one place for another, merely for fancy or variety. This was especially true of the lads or girls over sixteen or seventeen. The offer of better wages, or the attraction of a new employer, or the desire of ”moving,” continually stirred up these latter to migrate to another village, county, or State.
In 1859 we made a comprehensive effort to collect some of these statistics in regard to our children who had begun their new life in the West. The following is an extract from our report at this time:--
”During the last spring, the Secretary made an extended journey through the Western States, to see for himself the nature and results of this work, carried on for the last five years through those States, under Mr.
Tracy's careful supervision. During that time we have scattered there several thousands of poor boys and girls. In this journey he visited personally, and heard directly of, many hundreds of these little creatures, and appreciated, for the first time, to the full extent, the spirit with which the West has opened its arms to them. The effort to reform and improve these young outcasts has become a mission-work there.
Their labor, it is true, is needed. But many a time a bountiful and Christian home is opened to the miserable little stranger, his habits are patiently corrected, faults without number are borne with, time and money are expended on him, solely and entirely from the highest religious motive of a n.o.ble self-sacrifice for an unfortunate fellow-creature. The peculiar warm-heartedness of the Western people, and the equality of all cla.s.ses, give them an especial adaptation to this work, and account for their success.
”'Wherever we went' (we quote from his account) 'we found the children sitting at the same table with the families, going to the school with the children, and every way treated as well as any other children. Some whom we had seen once in the most extreme misery, we beheld sitting, clothed and clean, at hospitable tables, calling the employer, father,'
loved by the happy circle, and apparently growing up with as good hopes and prospects as any children in the country. Others who had been in the city on the very line between virtue and vice, and who at any time might have fallen into crime, we saw pursuing industrial occupations, and gaining a good name for themselves in their village. The observations on this journey alone would have rewarded years of labor for this cla.s.s.
The results--so far as we could ascertain them--were remarkable, and, unless we reflect on the wonderful influences possible from a Christian home upon a child unused to kindness, they would almost seem incredible.