Thieving—For "Juvenile Delinquency"—Number of Girls under Fifteen
Years Old Imprisoned—Great Decrease of Crime among Girls—Crime Checked
among Boys—Commitment of Boys for Vagrancy—For Petit Larceny—Number
of Boys under Fifteen Years Old Imprisoned—Number between Fifteen and
Twenty—Arrests of Pickpockets—Of Petty Thieves—Of Girls under
Twenty—Estimate of Money Saved in One Year by Reduction of
Commitments … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … pp. 429–439
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS OF THE WORK.
This Charity has always Encouraged Self-help—No Pauperism Stimulated under it—The Laborer in this Field sees the Fruit—Harmony with Natural Laws sought for constantly—Advantage Taken of Demand for Labor—The Family Home sought for, rather than the Asylum—Lodging-houses not Permitted to become Homes—Evening-schools—Savings'-bank, Religious Meeting, and Day-school—All Stimulates Self-help—The Forces under the Society the Strongest Forces of life—The Work Founded on Natural Principles—Just Treatment of the Employes by the Trustees—This Charity as well served as any Business-house—The Aim of the Executive Officer with the Employes—Great Success of many of them—One Million of Dollars passed through the Treasury, and not One Squandered—High Character of the Board of Trustees—The Success much Dependent on them—Tabulation of the Accounts—Long Services of the Treasurer, Mr. J. E. Williams—The Sectarian Danger—Great Care to Avoid this—The Utmost Publicity a Necessity—Need for State Aid—Sensation to be Avoided—Hopes that this Charity will Scatter its Blessings for Generations to come..pp. 440–448
THE DANGEROUS CLASSES
OF NEW YORK;
AND TWENTY YEARS' WORK AMONG THEM.
——
CHAPTER I.
CHRIST IN CHARITY AND REFORM.
THE CONDITION OF NEGLECTED CHILDREN BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.
The central figure in the world's charity is CHRIST. An eloquent rationalistic writer—Mr. Lecky—speaking of the Christian efforts in early ages in behalf of exposed children and against infanticide, says:
"Whatever mistakes may have been made, the entire movement I have traced displays an anxiety not only for the life, but for the moral well-being, of the castaways of society, such as the most humane nations of antiquity had never reached. This minute and scrupulous care for human life and human virtue in the humblest forms, in the slave, the gladiator, the savage, or the infant, was indeed wholly foreign to the genius of Paganism. It was produced by the Christian doctrine of the inestimable value of each immortal soul.
"It is the distinguishing and transcendent characteristic of every society into which the spirit of Christianity has passed."
Christ has indeed given a new value to the poorest and most despised human being.
When one thinks what was the fate before He lived, throughout the civilized world, of for instance one large and pitiable class of human beings—unfortunate children, destitute orphans, foundlings, the deformed and sickly, and female children of the poor; how almost universal, even under the highest pagan civilization—the Greek and Roman—infanticide was; how Plato and Aristotle both approved of it; how even more common was the dreadful exposure of children who were physically imperfect or for any cause disagreeable to their parents, so that crowds of these little unfortunates were to be seen exposed around a column near the Velabrum at Rome—some being taken to be raised as slaves, others as prostitutes, others carried off by beggars and maimed for exhibition, or captured by witches to be murdered, and their bodies used in their magical preparations; when one remembers for how many centuries, even after the nominal introduction of Christianity, the sale of free children was permitted by law, and then recalls how utterly the spirit of the Founder of Christianity has exterminated these barbarous practices from the civilized world; what vast and ingenious charities exist in every Christian country for this unfortunate class; what time and wealth and thought are bestowed to heal the diseases, purify the morals, raise the character, and make happy the life of foundlings, outcast girls and boys and orphans, we can easily understand that the source of the charities of civilized nations has been especially in Christ; and knowing how vital the moral care of unfortunate children is to civilization itself the most skeptical among us may still put Him at the head of even modern social reform.
EXPOSURE OF CHILDREN.
The "exposure of children" is spoken of casually and with indifference by numerous Latin authors. The comedians include the custom in their pictures of the daily Roman life, usually without even a passing condemnation. Thus, in Terence's play (Heauton: Act iii., sc. v.), the very character who uttered the apothegm which has become a proverb of humanity for all ages—"I am a man, and nothing belonging to man is alien to me"—is represented, on the eve of his departure on a long journey, as urging his wife to destroy the infant soon to be born, if it should prove to be a girl, rather than expose it. She, however, exposes it, and it was taken, as was usual, and brought up as a prostitute. This play turns in its plot, as is true of many popular comedies, on this exposition of the abandoned child.
It is frequently commented on by Roman dramatists, and subsequently by the early Christian preachers, that, owing to this terrible custom, brothers might marry sisters, or fathers share in the ruin of their unknown daughters in houses of crime.
Seneca, who certainly always writes with propriety and aims to be governed by reason, in his treatise on Anger (De Ira: i., 15), comments thus calmly on the practice: "Portentos foetus extingnimus; liberos quoque si debiles, monstrosique editi sunt, mergimus. Non ira, sed ratio est, a sanis, inutilia secernere." (Monstrous offspring we destroy; children too, if weak and unnaturally formed from birth, we drown. It is not anger, but reason, thus to separate the useless from the sound.)
In another work (Controversi, lib. v., 33), he denounces the horrible practice, common in Rome, of maiming these unfortunate children and then offering them to the gaze of the compassionate. He describes the miserable little creatures with shortened limbs, broken Joints, and carved backs, exhibited by the villainous beggars who had gathered them at the Lactaria, and then deformed them: "Volo nosse," "I should like to know" says the moralist, with a burst of human indignation, "illam calamitatum humanarum officinam—illud infantum spoliarium!"—"that workshop of human misfortunes—those shambles of infants!"
On the day that Germanicus died, says Suetonius (in Calig., n. 5), "Subversae Deam arae, partus conjugum expositi," parents exposed their new-born babes.
The early Christian preachers and writers were unceasing in their denunciations of the practice.
Quintilian (Decl. 306, vol vi., p. 236) draws a most moving picture of the fate of these unhappy children left in the Forum: "Rarum est ut expositi vivant! Yos ponite ante oculos puerum statim neglectum * * * inter feras et volucres."
"It is rare that the exposed survive!" he says.
Tertullian, in an eloquent passage (Apol., c. 9), asks: "Quot vultis ex his circumstantibus et in christianum sanguinem hiantibus * * * apud conscientias pulsem, qui natos sibi liberos enecent?"
"How many, do you suppose, of those standing about and panting for the blood of Christians, if I should put it to them before their very conscience, would deny that they killed their own children?"
Lactantius, who was the tutor of the son of