Part 8

The tabulations concerning the parental condition of the delinquents show equally creditable work. They are interesting as exploding another popular fallacy (which indeed was long since exploded by Miss Jane Addams and other champions of child labor laws) that most of the working children were sons and daughters of widows. Only 419 boys or 17.3 per cent of the entire number investigated were sons of widows, and only 185, or 8.7 per cent, were orphans; while 1,318, or more than one-half of the entire number, had both parents living. And again, curiously enough, the tables show that proportionately the great majority of these delinquent boys, employed or unemployed, came from average good homes. Seventy-six and two-tenths per cent of the delinquent working boys are recorded as coming from “fair or good homes,” and 71.6 per cent of the working and non-working boys (that is, of the total number of delinquents) enjoy the same favorable conditions in so far as their homes are concerned. The results seem to prove what has often been emphasized by juvenile officers, that a good home is not as complete a guarantee of a good boy or girl as it would seem we ought to be entitled to expect. The influences of the home—while of course the most important influence and the one that counts most—is by no means the only influence under which a child is placed, especially in that kind of city life that has come to this country only in the past fifty years and which in every particular is to become more terrific in the next fifty years, unless there be some unexpected changes. It is furnishing in many respects a new kind of environment under which most of our children are expected to be reared. It means we have got to make war against the street, the conditions, the environment, the causes, if we are to perform our full measure of duty to our children.

Forty-four and seven-tenths per cent of the delinquent boys are children of native born parents as against fifty-five and three-tenths per cent of foreign born parents. Considering the far greater ratio of native born parents, this clearly indicates that there is less control over their children by foreign than by native parents.

But I do not wish to be misunderstood. I firmly believe in work even in childhood. By this, I mean the right kind of work. It is not so much a question of work as the amount of work, the kind of work and the conditions under which that work is performed. This need not lessen our belief in happiness in childhood. I want to say very candidly, that there are a great number of children in this country from fourteen years of age upward about whom I feel more alarmed at their failure to do or to know how to do any kind of useful work than of any possibility of their being overworked.

THE DANGER OF IDLENESS.

In our zeal for the protection of our boys subjected to extreme or unnatural conditions, we must not lose sight of the dangers and difficulties of idleness. There are thousands of boys in the cities of this country who, if not employed at some useful thing, are generally on the streets or in the alleys in the downtown public pool rooms and bowling alleys, engaged not always in wholesome play, but too often in idling, cigarette smoking and dirty story telling, with absolutely no thought of work or the serious side of life. They are too constantly occupied with thoughts of “having a good time,” and some rather perverted notions of what a good time is. Too many of our boys especially reach the age of moral and legal responsibility without the slightest conception of work. They are too often more concerned as to how much they earn than how well they do their work. In dealing with a certain class of youth in the juvenile court, I say without hesitation that the most hopeless fellow in the world is the boy who will not work—the boy who has not learned how to work, or the value and importance of work. There is always hope for the boy who works, especially the boy who likes to work. I believe in the “strenuous life,” and I think its importance should be taught our boys and girls at an early age. There are too many young people in this country looking for “the life of ignoble ease.” I can say all of this to persons sincerely interested in the protection of the children from degradation or unnatural labor, and yet not be understood as depreciating the importance of wise child labor laws and their rigid enforcement for the protection of the children of the Union. But we must be careful, in doing this, never to underestimate the importance of work—the right kind of work, a certain amount of work—in the life of every child, and especially that teaching which inculcates good impressions in the life of every child as to the necessity and importance of labor. On the other hand, my experience is that most boys will work if given any kind of an encouraging opportunity. The lack of a chance is often responsible for idleness. At least 90 per cent of our boys and girls are forced out of the grammar school to fight the battles of life. They must have a chance to earn a living under such reasonably favorable conditions as not to destroy all chance of happiness or else they must become idlers and loafers. My own experience is that our common school education too often fails to equip them for earning more than the most scanty wages. An opportunity between the sixth and eighth grades in our city schools for children of the toiling masses to learn some kind of useful trade or valuable work with the hands—to learn to do what their fathers do—is a reform in our educational system which the champions of child labor must, in my opinion, espouse if they would round out a systematic and consistent plan of battle in this fight for the salvation of the children.

PLACES FOR THE BOYS.

I want to see the time come in this country when a boy of fourteen years of age up may be a valuable help to the plumber, the carpenter or the printer at a decent wage, instead of going to the messenger service and the street. I do not believe that juvenile labor should trespass upon the legitimate occupations of men and women, but we must equip these children for some kind of industrial efficiency and usefulness, or enlarge our reformatories and prisons for their care and maintenance. One of the saddest things in my experience as judge of the juvenile court has been the little fellows who have requested me to send them to the reform school in order that they might learn a trade. The principal of a school once said to me: “Judge, why don’t you send that boy to the reform school so that he can learn a trade?” On behalf of the boy, I replied: “In God’s name, why don’t you people on the Board of Education give him an opportunity to learn a trade at home?”

I ask you, is it fair, just or decent that in most of the cities of this country an American boy has no opportunity to learn a trade, to capacitate himself for joyous, useful work with his hands, unless he commits a crime? And yet, I am compelled to say to you, that such is the condition in a very large section of this country.

But there are wonderful changes just ahead of us in our educational system. These changes are bound to come if we are to make progress, and we are making progress.

If the Nation is to do its real duty to its boys—whether they be city boys or country boys, its children, city children or country children—it should pass the bill that has for the last six years been repeatedly offered in Congress providing for the establishment of a children’s bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor.

CHILDREN VERSUS ANIMALS.

It is a kind of protection that is sadly needed in this country, and especially from the government we need a systematic scheme of national investigation of all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life. It would in no manner interfere with the activities and agencies provided by the states but, on the contrary, through the help and assistance that would come from the national government, do much to strengthen all such agencies. Such a bureau would be of equal if not superior importance to those now existing in several of the departments. For instance, the Department of Agriculture, where we have a bureau of animal industry, plant industry, of soils, of chemistry, and the like. The Government spends annually millions of dollars investigating the diseases of animals, the inspection of cattle, hogs, sheep, etc., and the results obtained by the able experts are published and circulated generously to the farmers and stock raisers of the country. The work of these bureaus has more than justified the expenditure of money by the Government. If we have a somewhat analogous bureau dealing with the welfare of the child life of the Nation, it would be doing no more for them than we are now doing for cattle and hogs. We have no right to neglect the child crop of this country. It is scarcely necessary to repeat that it is our most valuable crop, for there are born every year in this country over two million children. What the state is, what the Nation is ten, twenty, or thirty years from now depends not so much on our business, our ranches, our great industries, as upon the kind of men we have directing the great industries, the business, the farms, the ranches of this country, and what these men are then depends upon how well we care for our children now. If there are diseases among the cattle of the Nation, or decrease in some of the staple cereal crops of the Nation, the Government immediately becomes interested and its investigators and experts are busy everywhere to ascertain the causes, to furnish the remedies, to coöperate with the people for the protection of the material wealth of the Nation. Now, the child crop of the Nation is not to be measured in dollars and cents for as important as such a standard may be it is insufficient to furnish a scale for measuring the value of soul stuff. Yet if there is a large increase in infant mortality, of the dependency or delinquency of the childhood of the Nation, there is no bureau under the Federal Government that is even required to become interested in the matter. And, indeed, there are very few states that provide sufficient and adequate agencies to carry on the work that must be done if we are true to our children. It is freely admitted that of the 300,000 little children—out of the 2,000,000 born annually—that die annually, one-half of the deaths are preventable by the knowledge and application of preventive measures. If through the dissemination of proper information about children, such as is disseminated concerning cattle, an appreciable per cent of these children could be saved as they certainly would be saved, such a bureau would more than justify its establishment.

SOME PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS.

I remember recently, when the Children’s bill in England was being considered, receiving a letter, I think, from one of the under secretaries, to get certain facts, and it was simply impossible to provide the information that was needed and expected that this Government could furnish; and I, as a judge of one of the courts of this country dealing with children, felt very much embarrassed that we could not say that our Government was able to furnish such information.

We have found, in our efforts to help these 100,000 children annually that are dependent or delinquent, that nothing is so important as facts. In my humble judgment—I may be wrong, and that is just why we want a bureau of this kind, in order that I may know and you may know whether I am right or wrong—in my judgment there are 100,000 children, dependent and delinquent, coming to the courts of this country every year, and that means 1,600,000 children coming to the courts of this Nation in every generation of childhood. Is this great government of ours, with sufficient facts already gathered in this imperfect way to demonstrate the necessity, going to neglect this opportunity of spreading useful information concerning the children of this country?

I recall a certain city in which I asked the chief of police how many children had been in jail that year. He said 100. When we investigated the records, we found there were 650 boys alone brought to the jail in that city of less than 200,000 people. In another city I asked the jailer how many boys had been in jail, he said five or six hundred. When we investigated the records, we found there were 4,000 arrests in that city among the boys alone under twenty years of age and over 2,000 brought to the jail were under seventeen years of age.

But finally any work for children of the city or country must bring us face to face with many of the social, economic, industrial and political conditions that concern us as a people. There is no real problem of the child that is not also the problem of the parent. We cannot do our duty toward the children of this Nation without attacking the conditions that deform the lives of the children. This must take us so far afield that I do not dare attempt to follow now lest it take me so far beyond the immediate scope of this paper as to find for it no satisfactory ending.

The fight for the childhood of today is the fight for the parenthood of tomorrow, the manhood of tomorrow; it is after all the supreme battle for the country, the city, the state, for justice for all men and women, and that means a day of better things, a happier country, a more perfect civilization; the dawn of a tomorrow, a new day, a new time in which the scriptural promise shall be more than fulfilled, for the little child shall lead, shall teach, shall save the world.

Chairman HADLEY—The audience will remain seated a moment. There are a few more of the states that will be called, and as it is necessary for me to attend to some official duties, President Wallace will now take charge of the meeting.

President WALLACE—The Congress is not yet adjourned, and we have some good things in store. Please come to order as soon as possible. I wish to announce Hon. B. A. Fowler, president of the National Irrigation Congress, of Phoenix, Arizona, as chairman of the committee on resolutions. Now, we want every state that has not appointed a committeeman on resolutions to do so at once, and report to the clerk, and Mr. Fowler will announce when and where that committee will meet.

Another thing. Any of you that have resolutions will please turn them in to that committee at the time and place of meeting. The committee will consider the resolutions and present them and their final report on next Wednesday. It is to be regretted that many of the governors could not be here this afternoon, but some of them have sent representatives.

President WALLACE—I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mr. D. M. Neill, representing the governor of Minnesota.

[Mr. Neill’s paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

President WALLACE—The Honorable George Coupland of Nebraska is here as its representative, and has been asked to speak next. Mr. Coupland.

[Mr. Coupland’s paper is to be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

President WALLACE—When this meeting adjourns, which will be at 5 o’clock sharp, it will adjourn to meet at 8 this evening, and will be presided over by Hon. B. A. Fowler, the president of the National Irrigation Congress. Mr. Condra has an announcement to make.

Professor CONDRA—I wish to announce a meeting of the credential committee as soon as I leave the stage about ten minutes to 5. Another announcement: There are about a hundred state conservation commissioners present, and they will meet in the white room at the Baltimore Hotel tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock for a conference.

President WALLACE—This Congress intended to get Hon. Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey to address us. He was unable to come, but has sent a representative, Mr. Edward A. Stevens, Commissioner of Public Roads, and he will be heard as soon as the secretary makes some announcements, which will close the program for this afternoon.

After announcements by Secretary Gipe, President WALLACE continued: We will now hear from the representative of Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Mr. Stevens. (Applause)

Mr. STEVENS—Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I did not come prepared to represent the Governor of New Jersey, or to make a speech. That had been entrusted, I believe, to somebody better fitted than myself. I find in the West the State of New Jersey is considered and known for its mitigation of corporations which do not meet the approval of the United States Supreme Court. But it is not that industry I wish to interest you in, or in fact any New Jersey industry. All I can do today is to give a slight enumeration of the work being done in one of the smallest and most densely populated states of the Union. We have commissions or officers in charge of the following branches of conservation work: Forestry; the oyster industry; the conservation of flowing water; the geological survey of the state (which is one of the most complete and most accurate yet carried out by any state of the Union); of agriculture; of public roads; of inland waterways; the regulation of public utilities; the watching over health by the State Board of Health, and also special institutions for the care of tuberculosis, of epileptic and feeble-minded children. We have a fish and game commission, because with us the ocean furnishes a vast source of wealth in its fisheries. We have besides that a commission for the regulation of factory labor, and especially for the regulation of child labor, for children in New Jersey cannot enter into work without passing an examination and without special permits. I am sorry that I cannot do much more than merely enumerate the branches of activity which the state is undertaking. I am only familiar with one of them, that is public road building. If I can be of any service in that technical line to this Congress I hope I will be considered at its disposal. (Applause)

President WALLACE—Prof. F. W. Rane, State Forester, will speak for the State of Massachusetts.

[Prof. Rane’s paper is to be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

President WALLACE—The Congress now stands adjourned until 8 o’clock, when the conference of the states will be resumed. We will meet tomorrow morning at 9:30 promptly.

_THIRD SESSION._

In the absence of President Wallace, who was attending the dinner given to the President of the United States, Prof. Condra acted as chairman of the meeting.

Professor CONDRA—Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention: We will continue the program this evening from 8 o’clock until the arrival of the President and his party. We will have reports from a number of the states. The states which are represented should send their representatives to the platform. If I understand it, we are now to hear from Michigan, Montana, New York and a number of other states, and in addition to that we will have a short talk which will please you I am sure. The first thing on the program is a flashlight picture.

After the flashlight picture was taken, the Congress continued as follows:

Professor CONDRA—Are there any announcements to be made by the members of the different committees? Has the chairman of the committee on resolutions an announcement to make?

I wish to announce that there are a good many scientific men present who are representing various bodies and they are going to hold a number of important meetings. One of these will be held in the Coates House, room 244, at 8:30 tomorrow morning. The question is, “What should be the relation of Conservation to Science, to the Discovery of Truth?” We must not divorce the two departments. They are identical when we understand the two. All chemists, geologists, agriculturists, and others who are ready to assist in this work and wish to meet with the scientists are invited to do so tomorrow morning. I understand Dr. Shinnick of Iowa is to preside at that meeting. He represents the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Another announcement: We have gathered here about one hundred state conservation commissioners. The conservation commissions of the various states are not political bodies, neither are they partisan, but they are men and women who are studying the truth underlying conservation. The conservation commissioners, together with the various scientists, namely, geologists, agriculturists, chemists and others, will hold meetings tomorrow. I ask you to take notice. And representing these various scientific bodies, the meeting of the conservation commissioners and the friends of that kind of work; those who want to get at the details of state conserving, including what we should investigate and give to the people as the basis of conservation activity, how we shall do soil survey, geological survey, what kind of maps must be prepared, what is the truth of dry farming, what is true drainage, how shall we make up the various inventories, what kind of forest study should be made in the state—in other words, in what manner are we to coöperate in the various states, and in what manner are we to coöperate with the Federal Government in getting at the conservation facts? We ask all of you interested in these subjects to join us in the white room at the Baltimore Hotel tomorrow. We will have talks by such men as Prof. Holden, Dr. Hawarth, W. J. Spillman, of the Department of Agriculture, and I might name a number of others, men practically engaged in this line of work. I would like to know whether there is anyone to speak for Michigan?

At the meeting of last year there was not full opportunity to hear from the men representing the states. We want these men to come forward and tell us what they are doing. Michigan has not responded. Is Montana represented? Is New York? New Mexico? We ask that you will come here to the platform. Will the representative of Pennsylvania please come to the platform? I ask those of you who are scattered here and there in this great building to be as quiet as you can, because there may be some who are not used to speaking before so many persons and it is rather difficult to speak from this position. Mr. Emil Gunther, representing Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia in particular.

Mr. GUNTHER—The chairman has just announced I may have five minutes. Realizing the importance of time, I wrote out my remarks so that I could not speak more than five minutes if I wanted to.

[Mr. Gunther’s paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

Chairman CONDRA—It is quite possible that the people throughout this Middle Western country and all of the western part of the United States may fail to realize the different phases of activity that are maintained in the great empire state of New York. That state has recently established a conservation commission, with three scientists as members, paying those men $10,000 a year for the difficult task of organizing the various lines of conservation activity in the state. I have the pleasure of introducing one of the state commissioners of New York, Mr. John D. Moore.

[Mr. Moore’s address is in Supplementary Proceedings.]

Chairman CONDRA—Is the representative of South Carolina, Dr. M. W. Twitchell, present?

A DELEGATE from Kansas—We have tried to hear two speakers from the East, but in Kansas City, half way across the continent, we have been unable to hear them. If you have any more Eastern speakers, California, perhaps, in the rear end of the hall, would like to hear something they say.