Chapter V: Blossoms and Babies 263 (8)

Coming to details for legislation within the states, it is perfectly obvious that legislation necessary for, and suited to, big cities would be useless and unsuited to the small towns and rural communities. In the case of messengers and newsboys, for example, in a town of 10,000 inhabitants, conditions are entirely different from those existing in a city of 50,000 or 100,000. What would be a perfectly harmless and unobjectionable occupation in the former city becomes in the latter a serious menace to health and morals. In the smaller community, the boy is under the supervision of his parents, his employers, and many of the citizens who know him personally. His paper business is not of the kind which takes him out upon the streets as early as four or five o’clock in the morning and as late as midnight, or after. The New York legislature, in April, 1903, amended the law relating to children employed in the streets and public places in cities of the first class, of which there are two—New York and Buffalo. The amendment provided “that no male child under ten and no girl under sixteen shall, in any city of the first class, sell or expose for sale newspapers in any street or public place. No male child actually or apparently under fourteen years of age shall sell or expose for sale unless provided with a permit and a badge. No child to whom such a permit and badge are issued shall sell papers after ten o’clock at night.” Such a law as that might, I think, be applied to the smallest town in the country without injustice to any one, but it is almost ridiculously inadequate to a great city. The city ordinance of Boston is a good deal better, though it is also inadequate to the needs of a great city. The ordinance provides that no child shall work as a bootblack or newsboy unless he is over ten years of age, nor sell any other article unless he is over twelve years of age. No minor under fourteen years of age is allowed to sell or expose for sale, in any street or public place, any books, newspapers, pamphlets, fuel, fruit, or provisions, unless he has a minor’s license. These minors’ licenses are only granted upon the recommendation of the principal of the school, or school district to which the child belongs. Of this law, again, I should say that it might very well be adopted as applying to all towns and villages in the United States up to a certain size, but that, in view of the terrible menace to the health and morals accompanying these occupations in our great cities, they should be absolutely forbidden for children or young persons under eighteen years of age. It should be borne in mind that the usual objection urged against child-labor legislation—that it would inflict hardship upon the parents—scarcely applies at all to these boys of the streets in our large cities. Most of them, it has been shown over and over again, are not at all subject to parental control, and contribute little or nothing at all to the support of their families.[184]

It seems to me important also that, in the larger cities at least, and perhaps generally, the present system of allowing boys and girls to work during the vacation period should be abolished. The system not only robs the child of the rest the vacation was intended to give it, but it is a fruitful source of child labor. Many of those who go to work during the vacation periods never return to school again. The parents become dependent upon the extra earnings of the children in a surprisingly short time, and the children themselves are naturally unwilling to lose their newly acquired freedom and the extra pocket money which their labor entitles them to. The ideal system would be to establish summer school camps, something like the school colonies of Europe, in the country, where recreation amid healthful surroundings could be combined with a certain amount of instruction.

FIVE O’CLOCK TEA IN THE COUNTRY

“Fresh Air Fund” children from tenement homes.
]

XII

In this brief sketch of suggested remedial measures, I have confined myself entirely to those measures which have been successfully tried elsewhere. I have simply tried to correlate the constructive work in child saving which has thus far been accomplished into something like a definite and comprehensive policy. Discussion by earnest men and women who have given the matters dealt with careful and patient study will, doubtless, show the need of many changes, both in the direction of modification and of extension. The important thing at the present time is to secure an intelligent discussion of the whole problem of the duty of society to the child, and I venture to hope that the foregoing may help in that direction. While I have insisted mainly upon the legislative aspect of the problem, I am not insensible of the importance of individual responsibility and effort. Much of the child labor of to-day, for example, is due to the carelessness and indifference of purchasers’ forever demanding “cheap” goods; and a recognition on their part of all the monstrous wrong and tragedy hidden in that word “cheap” would do much to diminish the evil.

We need in our modern life something of that spirit which prompted David to pour out upon the ground the precious cooling draught his brave followers, at the risk of their lives, brought him from the well by Bethlehem’s gate. The water had been obtained at too great a cost, the risking of human lives, and David could not drink it.[185] We need that spirit to be applied to our social relations. Those things which are cheap only by reason of the sacrifice, or risk of sacrifice, of human life and happiness are too costly for human use. While it is to a large extent true that there is no problem which depends more completely upon collective action, through the channels of government, it is also true that there is abundant room for well-directed private effort. The coöperation of all the constructive forces in society, private and public, is necessary if the children are to be saved from the evils by which they are surrounded, and the future well-being of the race made possible and certain. Here is the real reconstruction of society—the building of healthy bodies and brains to insure a citizenship free from physical and moral decay, worthy of liberty and aspiring to brotherhood.

-----

Footnote H:

_Charities._

Footnote I:

See Appendices A and B.

Footnote J:

Appendix A.

V
BLOSSOMS AND BABIES

There is an affinity between children and flowers. To me the sight of a blossom often suggests a baby, and the sight of a baby often suggests a favorite flower.

Many a mother singing lullabies to the baby at her breast calls it her “blossom.”

And children, healthy children, are fond of flowers.

I once saw a boy of ten who didn’t know what a flower was. He knew what each card in a pack was, and he wasn’t afraid of a policeman. But he was afraid of a grassy and daisy-spangled field. London had destroyed for him all sense of kinship with Nature.

But most children, even city children, love flowers. The country child loves familiarly as it loves its own mother, but the city child loves and worships. Yesterday I saw a group of little girls with their noses pressed flat against a florist’s window. “My, ain’t they sweet!” they cried in chorus.

_If only the flowers could know!_

Some sympathetic and leisured ladies have formed themselves into a guild to give such children as I saw at the florist’s window growing flowers to tend and love. I do not know the ladies. We live in the same city, but in a different world.

And yet we have some things in common, these good ladies and I. Perhaps many things, but chief of all a love for children and flowers. In our different worlds, so little alike, this love flourishes with equal freedom. My wife loves blossoms and babies, too, but she is not a member of the guild. Its meetings are not held in our world.

The guild got together 10,000 little children from the tenements of this great city of New York. To each child a potted plant was given, in the hope that its presence would brighten the home, and its care “refine” and “spiritualize” the child.

Good, generous ladies of the guild!

And from each child was exacted the promise that upon a given date at the end of a full year, the plant should be brought back and placed upon exhibition. Ribbons were promised as prizes to those children whose plants should be in the most flourishing condition.

The year passed. The day of the exhibition arrived. Richly gowned women, calling themselves “patronesses,” were there. They went in luxuriously equipped automobiles to smile and be condescending toward children who went in rags and were hungry.

But not all the children to whom the year before they had given flowers were there. Some of them had drooped during the summer and died like flowers in parched ground.

And many of the plants were withered and dead, too.

What an exhibition, to be sure! Geraniums without fragrance. Geraniums which a year ago bore deep, rich, green leaves and bright scarlet blossoms, were now straggling and wretched, with pale-green—almost white—stems, with poor, sickly-looking little leaves and with no flowers. And many a pot containing only a withered and rotted stick, with maybe a little note, “Please, ma’am, it died because our rooms is dark.”

Some of the richly gowned women wept as they looked at the long rows of pitiful flowers, and at the long rows of withered and dead flowers.

Wept? I wonder why.

I wonder if they wept because they began to appreciate faintly how poverty withers and oppresses all life; or only because the sight of so many dead flowers, and flowers worse than dead, overwhelmed them? Or had they heard the flowers tell their sad little histories?

For every one of the flowers had a story to tell to understanding hearts.

Yes, madam, that tall, withered geranium stick, which made you weep as you remembered how beautiful its scarlet blossoms had looked the year before, when you gave it to little crippled Polly with the flaxen hair, could unfold a story, if you could but understand it. But it is a story of the tenement, not of your world. And you cannot understand.

But little Polly (who doesn’t understand either) can tell you enough to give you cause for tears. Real tears. Human tears.

I could tell you, for I know the tenement. It is in my world. But let Polly tell.

* * * * *

“When youse gived us th’ prutty flow’r, leddy, I put ’er in our winder so’s all th’ kids ’ud see from th’ street. An’ mamma wus so proud! An’ me little baby bruver jes’ went wild, leddy. An’ when mamma wus washin’, he’d stay so good and call out, so pert-like, ‘Putty! putty!’ An’ mamma said ‘twus a blessin’, ’cause she wus able to do th’ washin’ when baby wus playin’.

“But when winter comed, leddy, yer flow’r an’ th’ leaves wus all dead like, an’ comed off. An’ me mamma said ’twus th’ cold. An’ when I put ’er by th’ airshaft she said ’twus too dark. An’ so yer flow’r jes’ died like, an’ mamma wus so cut up washin’ days, for me bruver wus teethin’ an’ there warn’t no flow’r.

“But mamma said yer flow’r ’ud come up in th’ summer. So I jes’ kep’ waterin’, an’ when th’ fine days comed I put ’er in our winder again. An’ it growed a bit, leddy, an’ mamma an’ me wus so glad! But ’twus allus growin’ a bit an’ then dyin’ like, ’cause, mamma said, we didn’t git no sun in our rooms. An’ I used to cry in th’ nights ’bout that flow’r, leddy!

“An’ when summer comed an’ folks wus sleepin’ ’pon their fire-’scapes, I put yer flow’r outside an’ watered ’er ev’ry day. But when me little bruver wus sick, an’ th’ doctor said he mus’ go to th’ country somewheres, yer flow’r jes’ died an’ dried up like a stick, leddy. Me little bruver died, too, an’ th’ doctor said he’d ’a’ lived if he’d gone into th’ country.

“I’m sorry, leddy, fur yer flow’r. P’raps ’twus ’cause it never went to no country place. I tried me best, leddy, but—”

* * * * *

No, don’t reproach yourself, madam. You didn’t know. How could you know, living in another world? It was really good of you to think of the tenement children, and to give them your flowers.

Poor little children of the tenements! It was good of you to think of them. Their homes are squalid, and flowers do make the home brighter. And their little lives do need the refining and spiritualizing influence of flowers.

_But neither the babies nor the blossoms can flourish there. They pine and droop and die together. True, some of them live—babies and blossoms—but how?_

You are a woman and you love children and flowers. Tell me, did not the pale, sickly children and the pale, sickly plants impress you as even more saddening than the dead plants—the constant reminders of dead children?

Their slow, prolonged dying is more terrible than death to me. And I love them both, children and flowers.

I honor your tears. They proclaim you to be possessed of a human heart. But you are a misfit in your sphere. Your place is in our world.

You mean well, but your guild is only a toy. The problem is not to be solved so easily. If you would help solve it, you must give something more than plants. You must give yourself.

And this is the work which calls for your service and sacrifice:—

To bring blossoms and babies together where both can thrive. To restore the child-sense of kinship with Nature, that to every child may come the joy of understanding Nature’s eternal harmonies. To bring the freedom and beauty and companionship of beast and bird, flower and tree, mountain and ocean, stream and star, into the life of every child.

A LITTLE FISHERMAN

“Fresh Air Fund” child from a crowded tenement district.
]

It is a big task, madam; flower shows and ribbons and tears will not fulfil it. If you are serious, you will find more serviceable things to do.

_Some there are, the despised builders of Humanity’s temples, who are laboring to give this vast heritage to the children of all the world. They build patiently, for they have faith in their work._

_And this is their faith—that the power of the world springs from the common labor and strife and conquest of the countless ages of human life and struggle; that not for a few was that labor and that struggle, but for all. And the common labor of the race for the common good and the common joy will give blossoms and babies the fulness of life which sordid greed with its blight makes impossible._

_Are you of the faith of the builders? Are you a builder?_