BOOK XIII

_Children_

Social injustice as it bears upon literature and the producers of literature; pictures of the life of the outcast poet, and of art in conflict with mammon.

The Children of the Poor

BY VICTOR HUGO

(See pages 182, 267)

(_Translated by Algernon Charles Swinburne_)

Take heed of this small child of earth; He is great: he hath in him God most high. Children before their fleshly birth Are lights alive in the blue sky.

In our light bitter world of wrong They come; God gives us them awhile. His speech is in their stammering tongue, And his forgiveness in their smile.

Their sweet light rests upon our eyes. Alas! their right to joy is plain. If they are hungry, Paradise Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.

The want that saps their sinless flower Speaks judgment on sin's ministers. Man holds an angel in his power. Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,

When God seeks out these tender things Whom in the shadow where we sleep He sends us clothed about with wings, And finds them ragged babes that weep!

In a Southern Cotton Mill

BY ELBERT HUBBARD

(American author and lecturer, born 1859; died May 7, 1915)

I thought to lift one of the little toilers to ascertain his weight. Through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bone there ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a broken thread. I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a silver dime. He looked at me dumbly through a face that might have belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn, and full of pain it was. He did not reach for the money--he did not know what it was. There were dozens of such children, in this particular mill. A physician who was with me said that they would all be dead probably in two years, and their places filled by others--there were plenty more. Pneumonia carries off most of them. Their systems are ripe for disease, and when it comes there is no rebound--no response. Medicine simply does not act--nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged, and the child sinks into a stupor and dies.

The Flower Factory

BY FLORENCE WILKINSON EVANS

(Contemporary American poetess)

Lizabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one, Little children who have never learned to play; Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache to-day;

Tiny Fiametta nodding, when the twilight slips in, gray. High above the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong beat, They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one.

Lizabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, They have never seen a rose-bush nor a dew-drop in the sun. They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta, Of a Black Hand and a Face behind a grating; They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating, Never of a wild rose thicket or the singing of a cricket, But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams, And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams.

Lizabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one. Let them have a long, long play-time, Lord of Toil, when toil is done, Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun.

The Beast

BY BEN B. LINDSEY AND HARVEY J. O'HIGGINS

("The Children's Judge," who founded the first children's court in America, tells the story of his long fight with the powers of privilege in Colorado. In the following extract, he narrates what came of a newspaper interview on the subject of the revolting conditions under which children were kept in prison)

The result was an article that took even _my_ breath away when I read it next day on the front page of the newspaper. It was the talk of the town. It was certainly the talk of the Police Board; and Mr. Frank Adams talked to the reporters in a high voice, indiscreetly. He declared that the boys were liars, that I was "crazy," and that conditions in the jails were as good as they could be. This reply was exactly what we wished. I demanded an investigation. The Board professed to be willing, but set no date. We promptly set one _for_ them--the following Thursday at two o'clock in my chambers at the Court House--and I invited to the hearing Governor Peabody, Mayor Wright, fifteen prominent ministers in the city, and the Police Board and some members of the City Council.

On Thursday morning--to my horror--I learned from a friendly Deputy Sheriff that the subpœnas I had ordered sent to a number of boys whom I knew as jail victims had not been served. I had no witnesses. And in three hours the hearing was to begin. I appealed to the Deputy Sheriff to help me. He admitted that he could not get the boys in less than two days. "Well then," I said, "for heaven's sake, get me Mickey."

And Mickey? Well, Mickey was known to fame as "the worst kid in town." As such, his portrait had been printed in the newspapers--posed with his shine-box over his shoulder, a cigarette in the corner of his grin, his thumbs under his suspenders at the shoulders, his feet crossed in an attitude of nonchalant youthful deviltry. He had been brought before me more than once on charges of truancy, and I had been using him in an attempt to organize a newsboys' association under the supervision of the court. Moreover, he had been one of the boys who had been beaten by the jailer, and I knew he would be grateful to me for defending him.

It was midday before the Sheriff brought him to me. "Mickey," I said, "I'm in trouble, and you've got to help me out of it. You know I helped _you_."

"Betcher life yuh did, Judge," he said. "I'm wit' yuh. W'at d' yuh want?"

I told him what I wanted--every boy that he could get, who had been in jail. "And they've got to be in this room by two o'clock. Can you do it?"

Mickey threw out his dirty little hand. "Sure I kin. Don't yuh worry, Judge. Get me a wheel--dhat's all."

I hurried out with him and got him a bicycle, and he flew off down Sixteenth Street on it, his legs so short that his feet could only follow the pedals half way round. I went back to my chambers to wait....

As two o'clock approached, the ministers began to come into my room, one by one, and take seats in readiness. Mr. Wilson of the Police Board arrived to represent his fellow-commissioners. The Deputy District Attorney came, the president of the upper branch of the City Council came, Mayor Wright came, and even Governor Peabody came--but no boys! I felt like a man who had ordered a big dinner in a strange restaurant for a party of friends, and then found that he had not brought his purse.... I was just about to begin my apologies when I heard an excited patter of small feet on the stairs and the shuffle and crowding of Mickey's cohorts outside in the hall. I threw open the door. "I got 'em, Judge," Mickey cried.

He had them--to the number of about twenty. I shook him by the shoulder, speechless with relief. "I tol' yuh we'd stan' by yuh, Judge," he grinned.

He had the worst lot of little jailbirds that ever saw the inside of a county court, and he pointed out the gem of his collection proudly--"Skinny," a lad in his teens, who had been in jail twenty-two times!" All right, boys," I told them, "I don't know you all, but I'll take Mickey's word for you. You've all been in jail and you know what you do there--all the dirty things you hear and see and do yourselves. I want you to tell some gentlemen in here about it. Don't be scared. They're your friends the same as I am. The cops say you've been lying to me about the way things are down in the jails there, and I want you to tell the truth. Nothing but the truth, now. Mickey, you pick them out and send them in one by one--your best witnesses first."

I went back to my chambers. "Gentlemen," I said, "we're ready."

I sat down at the big table with the Governor at my right, the Mayor at my left and the president of the Board of Supervisors and Police Commissioner Wilson at either end of the table. The ministers seated themselves in the chairs about my room. (We allowed no newspaper reporters in, because I knew what sort of vile and unprintable testimony was coming.) Mickey sent in his first witness.

One by one, as the boys came, I impressed upon them the necessity of telling the truth, encouraged them to talk, and tried to put them at their ease. I started each by asking him how often he had been in jail, what he had seen there, and so forth. Then I sat back and let him tell his story.

And the things they told would raise your hair. I saw the blushes rise to the foreheads of some of the ministers at the first details. As we went on, the perspiration stood on their faces. Some sat pale, staring appalled at these freckled youngsters from whose little lips, in a sort of infantile eagerness to tell all they knew, there came stories of bestiality that were the more horrible because they were so innocently, so boldly given. It was enough to make a man weep; and indeed tears of compassionate shame came to the eyes of more than one father there, as he listened. One boy broke down and cried when he told of the vile indecencies that had been committed upon him by the older criminals; and I saw the muscles working in the clenched jaws of some of our "investigating committee"--saw them swallowing the lump in the throat--saw them looking down at the floor blinkingly, afraid of losing their self-control. The Police Commissioner made the mistake of cross-examining the first boy, but the frank answers he got only exposed worse matters. The boys came and came, till at last, a Catholic priest, Father O'Ryan, cried out: "My God! I have had enough!" Governor Peabody said hoarsely: "I never knew there was such immorality _in the world_!" Some one else put in, "It's awful,--awful!" in a half groan.

"Gentlemen," I said, "there have been over two thousand Denver boys put through those jails and those conditions, in the last five years. Do you think it should go on any longer?"

Governor Peabody arose. "No," he said; "no. Never in my life have I heard of so much rot--corruption--vileness--as I've heard today from the mouths of these babies. I want to tell you that nothing I can do in my administration can be of more importance--nothing I can do will I do more gladly than sign those bills that Judge Lindsey is trying to get through the Legislature to do away with these terrible conditions. And if," he said, turning to the Police Commissioner, "Judge Lindsey is '_crazy_,' I want my name written under his, among the _crazy_ people. And if any one says these boys are 'liars,' that man is a liar himself!"

Phew! The "committee of investigation" dissolved, the boys trooped away noisily, and the ministers went back to their pulpits to voice the horror that had kept them silent in my small chamber of horrors for two hours. Their sermons went into the newspapers under large black headlines; and by the end of the next week our juvenile court bills were passed by the Legislature and made law in Colorado.

The Cry of the Children

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

(See page 644)

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers-- And _that_ cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west-- But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy; "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary, Our young feet," they say, "are very weak; Few paces have we taken, yet are weary-- Our grave-rest is very far to seek. Ask the old why they weep, and not the children, For the outside earth is cold, And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old." ...

"For oh," say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, We fall upon our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. For, all day, we drag our burden tiring Through the coal-dark, underground, Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round.

"For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning; Their wind comes in our faces, Till our hearts turn, our head, with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places: Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, All are turning, all the day, and we with all. And all day, the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could pray, 'O ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning) 'Stop! be silent for to-day!'" ...

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of the angels in their places, With eyes turned on Deity. "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,-- Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path! But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath."

Child Labor in England

(_From "An Industrial History of England"_)

BY HENRY DE B. GIBBINS

Sometimes regular traffickers would take the place of the manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory district, and there keep them, generally in some dark cellar, till they could hand them over to a mill owner in want of hands, who would come and examine their height, strength, and bodily capacities, exactly as did the slave owners in the American markets. After that the children were simply at the mercy of their owners, nominally as apprentices, but in reality as mere slaves, who got no wages, and whom it was not worth while even to feed and clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that one idiot should be taken by the mill owner with every twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was even worse than that of the others. The secret of their final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships of the other victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. The hours of their labor were only limited by exhaustion, after many modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force continued work. Children were often worked sixteen hours a day, by day and by night.

Mill Children

(_From "Processionals"_)

BY JOHN CURTIS UNDERWOOD

(American poet, born 1874)

We have forgotten how to sing: our laughter is a godless thing: listless and loud and shrill and sly. We have forgotten how to smile. Our lips, our voices too are vile. We are all dead before we die.

Our mothers' mothers made us so: the father that we never know in blindness and in wantonness Caused us to come to question you. What is it that you others do, that profit so by our distress?

You and your children softly sleep. We and our mothers vigil keep. You cheated us of all delight, Ere our sick spirits came to birth: you made our fair and fruitful earth a nest of pestilence and blight.

Your black machines are never still, and hard, relentless as your will, they card us like the cotton waste. And flesh and blood more cheap than they, they seize and eat and shred away, to feed the fever of your haste.

For we are waste and shoddy here, who know no God, no faith but fear, no happiness, no hope but sleep. Half imbecile and half obscene we sit and tend each tense machine, too sick to sigh, too tired to weep, Until the tortured end of day, when fevered faces turn away, to see the stars from blackness leap.

In the Slums of London

(_From "The People of the Abyss"_)

BY JACK LONDON

(See pages 62, 125, 139, 519, 609)

There is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and it is the children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder goes his round. It is fascinating to watch them, the new-born, the next generation, swaying and stepping, with pretty little mimicries and graceful inventions all their own, with muscles that move swiftly and easily, and bodies that leap airily, weaving rhythms never taught in dancing school.

I have talked with these children, here, there, and everywhere, and they struck me as being bright as other children, and in many ways even brighter. They have most active little imaginations. Their capacity for projecting themselves into the realm of romance and fantasy is remarkable. A joyous life is romping in their blood. They delight in music, and motion, and color, and very often they betray a startling beauty of face and form under their filth and rags.

But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who steals them all away. They disappear. One never sees them again, or anything that suggests them. You may look for them in vain among the generation of grown-ups. Here you will find stunted forms, ugly faces, and blunt and stolid minds. Grace, beauty, imagination, all the resiliency of mind and muscle, are gone. Sometimes, however, you may see a woman, not necessarily old, but twisted and deformed out of all womanhood, bloated and drunken, lift her draggled skirts and execute a few grotesque and lumbering steps upon the pavement. It is a hint that she was once one of those children who danced to the organ-grinder. Those grotesque and lumbering steps are all that is left of the promise of childhood. In the befogged recesses of her brain has arisen a fleeting memory that she was once a girl. The crowd closes in. Little girls are dancing beside her, about her, with all the pretty graces she dimly recollects, but can no more than parody with her body. Then she pants for breath, exhausted, and stumbles out through the circle. But the little girls dance on.

The children of the Ghetto possess all the qualities which make for noble manhood and womanhood; but the Ghetto itself, like an infuriated tigress turning on its young, turns upon and destroys all these qualities, blots out the light and laughter, and moulds those it does not kill into sodden and forlorn creatures, uncouth, degraded, and wretched below the beasts of the field.

Slum Children

(_From "Songs of Joy"_)

BY WILLIAM H. DAVIES

(See page 577)

Your songs at night a drunkard sings, Stones, sticks and rags your daily flowers; Like fishes' lips, a bluey white, Such lips, poor mites, are yours.

Poor little things, so sad and solemn, Whose lives are passed in human crowds-- When in the water I can see Heaven with a flock of clouds.

Poor little mites that breathe foul air, Where garbage chokes the sink and drain-- Now when the hawthorn smells so sweet, Wet with the summer rain.

But few of ye will live for long; Ye are but small new islands seen, To disappear before your lives Can grow and be made green.

No. 5 John Street

BY RICHARD WHITEING

(See page 137)

Some are locked in all day, "to keep 'em quiet," while their owners go forth to work or to booze. The infant faces, lined with their own dirt, and distorted by the smeared impurities of the window-panes, seem like the faces of actors made up for effects of old age. The poor little hands finger the panes without ceasing, as they might finger prison bars. The captives crawl over one another like caged insects, and all their gestures show the irritation of contact. But the clearest transmission through that foul medium is to the ear rather than to the eye, in the querulous whimper, at times rising to a wail, which betokens the agitation of their shattered nerves. The children playing below look up at them, and beckon them into the yard, or make faces at them, with the charitable intent of provoking them to a smile.

Locksley Hall Fifty Years After

BY ALFRED TENNYSON

(See pages 77, 486)

Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime? There among the gloomy alleys Progress halts on palsied feet; Crime and hunger cast out maidens by the thousand on the street;

There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread; There the single sordid attic holds the living and the dead; There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor.

Past and Present

BY THOMAS CARLYLE

(See pages 31, 74, 133, 488, 553)

Descend where you will into the lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue you will, by Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by Mining-Laborer Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful result discloses itself: you have to admit that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any parallel. At Stockport Assizes, a Mother and a Father are arraigned and found guilty of poisoning three of their children, to defraud a "burial-society" of some £3 8s. due on the death of each child: they are arraigned, found guilty; and the official authorities, it is whispered, hint that perhaps the case is not solitary, that perhaps you had better not probe farther into that department of things.... In the British land, a human Mother and Father, of white skin and professing the Christian religion, had done this thing; they, with their Irishism and necessity and savagery, had been driven to do it. Such instances are like the highest mountain apex emerged into view; under which lies a whole mountain region and land, not yet emerged. A human Mother and Father had said to themselves, what shall we do to escape starvation? We are deep sunk here, in our dark cellar; and help is far.--Yes, in the Ugolino Hunger-tower stern things happen; best-loved little Gaddo fallen dead on his father's knees!--The Stockport Mother and Father think and hint: Our poor little starveling Tom, who cries all day for victuals, who will see only evil and not good in this world: if he were out of misery at once; he well dead, and the rest of us perhaps kept alive? It is thought, and hinted; at last it is done. And now Tom being killed, and all spent and eaten, Is it poor little starveling Jack that must go, or poor little starveling Will?--What a committee of ways and means!

Waifs and Strays

BY ARTHUR RIMBAUD

(French poet, 1854-1891)

Black in the fog and in the snow, Where the great air-hole windows glow, With rounded rumps,

Upon their knees five urchins squat, Looking down where the baker, hot, The thick dough thumps.

They watch his white arm turn the bread, Ere through an opening flaming red The loaf he flings.

They smell the good bread baking, while The chubby baker with a smile An old tune sings.

Breathing the warmth into their soul, They squat around the red air-hole, As a breast warm;

And when, for feasters' midnight bout, The ready bread is taken out, In a cake's form--

Sigh with low voices like a prayer, Bending toward the light, down there Where heaven gleams

--So eager that they burst their breeches, And in the winter wind that screeches Their linen streams!

Oliver Twist

BY CHARLES DICKENS

(See page 88)

The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone hall, with a copper at one end; out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at meal times. Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and no more--except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as long as the bowls) they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months; at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel _per diem_, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next to him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.

This evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered to each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbors nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

"Please, sir, I want some more."

The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear.

"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said:

"Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!"

There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.

"For _more_!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?"

"He did, sir," replied Bumble.

"That boy will be hung," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. "I know that boy will be hung."

Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman's opinion. An animated discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into instant confinement; and a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the hands of the parish. In other words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade, business, or calling.

"I never was more convinced of anything in my life," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and read the bill the next morning: "I never was more convinced of anything in my life, than I am that that boy will come to be hung."

The Children's Auction

BY CHARLES MACKAY

(English Chartist poet, 1814-1889)

Who bids for the little children-- Body, and soul and brain? Who bids for the little children-- Young and without a stain? "Will no one bid," said England, "For their souls so pure and white, And fit for all good or evil The world on their page may write?"

"We bid," said Pest and Famine; "We bid for life and limb; Fever and pain and squalor, Their bright young eyes shall dim. When the children grow too many, We'll nurse them as our own, And hide them in secret places Where none may hear their moan."

"I bid," said Beggary, howling; "I bid for them one and all! I'll teach them a thousand lessons-- To lie, to skulk, to crawl! They shall sleep in my lair like maggots, They shall rot in the fair sunshine; And if they serve my purpose I hope they'll answer thine."

"I'll bid you higher and higher," Said Crime, with a wolfish grin; "For I love to lead the children Through the pleasant paths of sin. They shall swarm in the streets to pilfer, They shall plague the broad highway, They shall grow too old for pity And ripe for the law to slay.

"Give me the little children, Ye good, ye rich, ye wise, And let the busy world spin round While ye shut your idle eyes; And your judges shall have work, And your lawyers wag the tongue, And the jailers and policemen Shall be fathers to the young!"

A Modest Proposal

BY JONATHAN SWIFT

(English man of letters, 1667-1745; dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. Master of the bitterest satiric pen in English)

(_From "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents or Country, and for making them Beneficial to the Public"_)

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four or six children, _all in rags_, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling, to beg sustenance for their helpless infants, who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear Native Country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children, in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars, it is of much greater extent, and shall take in the whole numbers of infants at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets....

There is another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense, than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast....

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males, which is more than we allow to sheep, black-cattle, or swine; and my reason is that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages; therefore only one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may at a year old be offered in sale to the persons of quality, and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table....

I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to reject any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author, or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure, throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock, would leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling, adding those, who are beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottagers and laborers with their wives and children, who are beggars in effect. I desire those politicians, who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like, or greater miseries upon their breed for ever.

I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the _public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich_. I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

Child Labor

BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

(See pages 200, 209, 421)

No fledgling feeds the father bird! No chicken feeds the hen! No kitten mouses for the cat-- This glory is for men:

We are the Wisest, Strongest Race-- Loud may our praise be sung! The only animal alive That lives upon its young!

Mother Wept

BY JOSEPH SKIPSEY

(Contemporary English poet, whose work possesses a quaint simplicity, often suggesting Blake)

Mother wept, and father sighed; With delight a-glow Cried the lad, "Tomorrow," cried, "To the pit I go."

Up and down the place he sped,-- Greeted old and young; Far and wide the tidings spread; Clapped his hands and sung.

Came his cronies; some to gaze Rapt in wonder; some Free with counsel; some with praise; Some with envy dumb.

"May he," many a gossip cried, "Be from peril kept;" Father hid his face and sighed, Mother turned and wept.

A Workingman's Home-Life

(_From "The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists"_)

BY ROBERT TRESSALL

(The life-story of an English house-painter who died of consumption, leaving behind him a manuscript portraying the pitiful lives of the half-starved English artisans. Published in book form, it proved to be one of the literary events of the year 1914)

"Hark!" said the mother, holding up her finger.

"Dad!" cried Frankie, rushing to the door and flinging it open.

He ran along the passage and opened the staircase door before Owen reached the top of the last flight of stairs.

"Why ever do you come up at such a rate?" exclaimed Owen's wife reproachfully, as he came into the room exhausted from the climb upstairs and sank panting into the nearest chair.

"I al--ways--for--get," he replied, when he had in some degree recovered.

As he lay back in the chair, his face haggard and of a ghastly whiteness, and with the water dripping from his saturated clothing, Owen presented a terrible appearance.

Frankie noticed with childish terror the extreme alarm with which his mother looked at his father.

"You're always doing it," he said with a whimper. "How many more times will mother have to tell you about it before you take any notice?"

"It's all right, old chap," said Owen, drawing the child nearer to him and kissing the curly head. "Listen, and see if you can guess what I've got for you under my coat."

"A kitten!" cried the boy, taking it out of its hiding place. "All black, and I believe it's half a Persian. Just the very thing I wanted."

While Frankie amused himself playing with the kitten, which had been provided with another saucer of bread and milk, Owen went into the bedroom to put on the dry clothes....

After the child was in bed, Owen sat alone by the table in the draughty sitting-room, thinking.

Although there was a bright fire, the room was very cold, being so close to the roof. The wind roared loudly round the gables, shaking the house in a way that threatened every moment to hurl it to the ground.

Staring abstractedly at the lamp, he thought of the future.

A few years ago the future had seemed a region of wonderful and mysterious possibilities of good, but to-night the thought brought no such illusions, for he knew that the story of the future was to be much the same as the story of the past. He would continue to work, and they would all three have to go without most of the necessaries of life. When there was no work they would starve.

For himself he did not care much, because he knew that, at the best--or worst--it would be only a very few years. Even if he were able to have proper food and clothing, and take reasonable care of himself, he could not live much longer; but, when that time came, what was to become of _them_?

There would be some hope for the boy if he were more robust and if his character were less gentle and more selfish. In order to succeed in the world it was necessary to be brutal, selfish, and unfeeling; to push others aside and to take advantage of their misfortunes.

Owen stood up and began walking about the room, oppressed with a kind of terror. Presently he returned to the fire and began rearranging his clothes that were drying. He found that the boots, having been placed too near the fire, had dried too quickly, and, consequently the sole of one of them had begun to split away from the upper. He remedied this as well as he was able, and, while turning the wetter parts of the clothing to the fire, he noticed the newspaper in the coat pocket. He drew it out with an exclamation of pleasure. Here was something to distract his thoughts. But, as soon as he opened the paper, his attention was riveted by the staring headlines of one of the principal columns: TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY. _Wife and Two Children Killed. Suicide of the Murderer._

It was one of the ordinary crimes of poverty. The man had been without employment for many weeks and they had pawned or sold their furniture and other possessions. But even this resource must have failed at last, and one day the neighbors noticed that the blinds remained down and that there was a strange silence about the house. When the police entered they found, in one of the upper rooms, the dead bodies of the woman and the two children, with their throats cut, laid out side by side upon the bed, which was saturated with their blood.

There was no bedstead, and no furniture in the room except the straw mattress and the ragged clothes and blankets upon the floor.

The man's body was found in the kitchen, lying with outstretched arms face downward on the floor, surrounded by the blood from the terrible wound in his throat, which had evidently been inflicted by the razor that was grasped in his right hand.

No particle of food was found, but, attached to a nail in the kitchen wall, was a piece of blood-smeared paper, on which was written in pencil:

"This is not _my_ crime, but Society's."

The report went on to explain that the deed must have been perpetrated during a fit of temporary insanity brought on by the sufferings the man had endured.

"Insanity!" muttered Owen, as he read this glib theory. "Insanity! It seems to me that he would have been insane if he had _not_ killed them."

Surely it was wiser and better and kinder to send them all to sleep than to let them continue to suffer.

At the same time it seemed strange that the man should have chosen to do it in that way, when there were so many other cleaner, easier, and less painful ways of accomplishing his object.

One could take poison. Of course, there was a certain amount of difficulty in procuring it, and one would have to be very careful not to select a poison that would cause a lot of pain.

Owen went over to his bookshelf, and took down "The Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine," an old, rather out-of-date book, which he thought might contain the required information. He was astonished to find what a number of poisons there were within easy reach of whoever wished to make use of them: poisons which could be relied upon to do their work certainly, quickly, and without pain. Why, it was not even necessary to buy them; one could gather them from the hedges by the roadside and in the fields.

The more he thought of it the stranger it seemed that such a clumsy method as a razor should be so popular. Strangulation, or even hanging would be better than that, though the latter method could scarcely be adopted in their flat, because there were no beams or rafters or anything from which it would be possible to suspend a cord. Still, he could drive some large nails or hooks into one of the walls. For that matter, there were already some clothes hooks on some of the doors. He began to think that this would be a more excellent way than poison: he could pretend to Frankie that he was going to show him some new kind of play. The boy would offer no resistance, and in a few minutes it would all be over.

He threw down the book and pressed his hands over his ears. He fancied he could hear the boy's hands and feet beating against the panels of the door as he struggled in his death agony.

Then, as his arms fell nervelessly by his side again, he thought he heard Frankie's voice calling:

"Dad! Dad!"

Owen hastily opened the door.

"Are you calling, Frankie?"

"Yes. I've been calling you quite a long time."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to come here. I want to tell you something."

"Well, what is it, dear? I thought you were asleep a long time ago," said Owen, as he came into the room.

"That's just what I want to speak to you about. The kitten's gone to sleep all right, but I can't go. I've tried all different ways, counting and all, but it's no use, so I thought I'd ask you if you'd mind coming and staying with me, and letting me hold your hand for a little while, and then p'raps I could go."

The boy twined his arms round Owen's neck and hugged him very tightly.

"Oh, dad, I love you so much!" he said. "I love you so much I could squeeze you to death."

"I'm afraid you will, if you squeeze me so tightly as that."

The boy laughed softly as he relaxed his hold.

"That _would_ be a funny way of showing you how much I loved you, wouldn't it, dad? Squeezing you to death!"

"Yes, I suppose it would," replied Owen, huskily, as he tucked the bedclothes round the child's shoulders. "But don't talk any more, dear, just hold my hand and try to sleep."

Lying there very quietly, holding his father's hand and occasionally kissing it, the child presently fell asleep....

Owen lay listening to the howling of the wind and the noise of the rain as it poured heavily on the roof. But it was not the storm only that kept him awake. Through the dark hours of the night his thoughts were still haunted by the words on that piece of blood-stained paper on a kitchen wall: "This is not my crime, but Society's."

Behold the Future

(_From "The Red Wave"_)

BY JOSEPH-HENRY ROSNY, THE ELDER

(A glimpse of the home-life of a Syndicalist leader, an interesting contrast with the passage from the English book preceding)

François raised the little chap in his arms. "Well, my young rebel, are you happy to be alive? Tomorrow I will teach you a new game: the dance of the bourgeois."

He seated himself in an arm-chair and gazed at the child with the grave and persuasive eyes of a leader of men. "You will be a good Socialist, eh, little Antoine? You will love men; you will not separate your life from that of others, like a Robinson Crusoe of egoism. _Vive la revolution!_"

"_Vive la revolution!_" cried the child.

"Behold the future!" said François Rougemont, rocking the little one upon his knees. "It will see the shining of the great dawn, the dawn of a humanity as different from our own as ours is different from the humanity of the pyramids. Ah, my little man, you will know things beside which steam, electricity, and radium are as nothing. You will see man in his beauty, because he will no longer be hungry--and for a hundred thousand years he has been hungry. He will no longer be hungry, he will have all his force! He will no longer be hungry, he will be able to unfold all his genius! He will no longer be hungry, he will construct beneath the sea tunnels that will go from one continent to another, and his aeroplanes will fill the firmament; he will no longer be hungry, and he will build cities out of fairy tales, with fields and forests upon the roofs, with bridges of glass over the streets, with elevators at every corner; he will no longer be hungry, he will draw enormous energies from the ocean and from the warm bosom of the earth. Ah! my little boy, in what gardens of enchantment you are going to live!"

The little one listened hypnotized; the grandmother was quivering with happiness. A shining glory passed over their souls.

The Factories

BY MARGARET WIDDEMER

(See pages 256, 307)

I have shut my little sister in from life and light (For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair), I have made her restless feet still until the night, Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air; I who ranged the meadow lands, free from sun to sun, Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly, I have bound my sister till her playing-time is done-- Oh, my little sister, was it I?--was it I?

I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood (For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket's restless spark), Shut from Love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good, How shall she pass scatheless through the sinlit dark? I who could be innocent, I who could be gay, I who could have love and mirth before the light went by, I have put my sister in her mating-time away-- Sister, my young sister,--was it I?--was it I?

I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast (For a coin, for the weaving of my children's lace and lawn), Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest, How can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone? I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn, I against whose placid heart my sleepy gold heads lie, Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn, _God of Life--Creator! It was I! It was I!_

God and the Flowers

(_From "My Lady of the Chimney-Corner"_)

BY ALEXANDER IRVINE

(A tender and loving picture of the author's mother, an Irish peasant-woman. See page 385)

That night there was an unusual atmosphere in her corner. She had a newly tallied cap on her head and her little Sunday shawl over her shoulders. Her candle was burning and the hearth stones had an extra coat of whitewash. She drew me up close beside her and told me a story.

"Once, a long, long time ago, God, feelin' tired, went to sleep an' had a nice wee nap on His throne. His head was in His han's an' a wee white cloud came down an' covered him up. Purty soon He wakes up an' says He:

"'Where's Michael?'

"'Here I am, Father!' said Michael.

"'Michael, me boy,' says God, 'I want a chariot and a charioteer!'

"'Right ye are!' says he. Up comes the purtiest chariot in the city of Heaven an' the finest charioteer.

"'Me boy,' says God, 'take a million tons of th' choicest seeds of th' flowers of Heaven an' take a trip around th' world wi' them. Scatter them,' says He, 'be th' roadsides an' th' wild places of th' earth where my poor live.'

"'Aye,' says the charioteer, 'that's jist like ye, Father. It's th' purtiest job of m' afther-life an' I'll do it finely.'

"'It's jist come t' Me in a dream,' says th' Father, 'that th' rich have all the flowers down there an' th' poor haave nown at all."

At this point I got in some questions about God's language and the kind of flowers.

"Well, dear," she said, "He spakes Irish t' Irish people, an' the charioteer was an Irishman."

"Maybe it was a woman!" I ventured.

"Aye, but there's no difference up there."

"Th' flowers," she said, "were primroses, buttercups, an' daisies, an' th' flowers that be handy t' th' poor, an' from that day to this there's been flowers a-plenty for all of us everywhere!"

The Leaden-Eyed

(_From "The Congo"_)

BY VACHEL LINDSAY

(See pages 335, 599)

Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

Children and Economics

(_From "What Is It To Be Educated?"_)

BY C. HANFORD HENDERSON

(American educator; born 1861)

One will not talk economics in any formal way to children. It is not necessary. But one cannot avoid the economic implications upon which our current daily life and all history and literature quite obviously rest.

Children are very explicit in their interest. They want to know what the hero feeds upon, how he is dressed, where he sleeps. If great deeds are in prospect, wars to be waged, palaces to be built, pleasure parks to be laid out, princesses to be won, tourneys to be run off, the little reader has a keen eye for the sinews of war. In every tale worth the telling, the hero sets out with the express purpose of seeking his fortune. Parents and teachers do not have to drag in economics by the heels. They may, of course, ignore the question, and allow the children to grow up with confused and mediæval ideas; but if they do so, they fail quite miserably to educate the children in the fundamentals of a moral individual and social life. The bread-and-butter question must be met by each parent and teacher in his own personal life; and in dealing with the children, it must be met constantly and in the most unexpected quarters.

What to Do

BY LEO TOLSTOY

(See pages 88, 110, 148, 276, 374, 416, 555)

It is very easy to take a child away from a prostitute, or from a beggar. It is very easy, when one has money, to have him washed, cleaned and dressed in good clothes, fed up, and even taught various sciences; but for us who do not earn our own bread, it is not only difficult to teach him to earn his bread, it is impossible; because by our example, and even by those material improvements of his life which cost us nothing, we teach the opposite.

True Education

(_From "Zadig"_)

BY VOLTAIRE

(French philosopher and poet, 1694-1778; a skeptic and bitter satirist, imprisoned and exiled to England. One of the great intellectual forces which prepared the French Revolution)

A widow, having a young son, and being possessed of a handsome fortune, had given a promise of marriage to two magi, who were both desirous of marrying her.

"I will take for my husband," said she, "the man who can give the best education to my beloved son."

The two magi contended who should bring him up, and the cause was carried before Zadig. Zadig summoned the two magi to attend him.

"What will you teach your pupil?" he said to the first.

"I will teach him," said the doctor, "the eight parts of speech, logic, astrology, pneumatics, what is meant by substance and accident, abstract and concrete, the doctrine of the monades, and the pre-established harmony."

"For my part," said the second, "I will endeavor to give him a sense of justice, and to make him worthy the friendship of good men."

Zadig then cried: "Whether thou art the child's favorite or not, thou shalt have his mother."

New Worlds for Old

BY H. G. WELLS

(See page 519)

The Socialist holds that the community as a whole should be responsible, and every individual in the community, married or single, parent or childless, should be responsible, for the welfare and upbringing of every child born into that community. This responsibility may be delegated in whole or in part to parent, teacher, or other guardian--but it is not simply the right but the duty of the state--that is to say, of the organized power and intelligence of the community--to direct, to inquire, and to intervene in any default for the child's welfare.

The Way to Freedom

BY FRANCISCO FERRER

(See page 336)

We must destroy all which in the present school answers to the organization of constraint, the artificial surroundings by which children are separated from nature and life, the intellectual and moral discipline made use of to impose ready-made ideas upon them, beliefs which deprave and annihilate natural bent. Without fear of deceiving ourselves, we can restore the child to the environment which entices it, the environment of nature in which he will be in contact with all that he loves, and in which impressions of life will replace fastidious book-learning. If we did no more than that, we should already have prepared in great part the deliverance of the child.