New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-03-25
SUICIDES OF CHILDREN.

Nlln1D JIlc ilSJ TWO WcthS I'LL cpiuOHiN Va
suicide among children has passed over the
country. One child steals small sum from
his stepfather, and in an agony OF shame Kills
himself rather than meet the eye or MS
mother. Another boy who had committed
like fault in the shop where nc was employed,
puts pistol to his head and blows
his brains out, after writing childish
pathetic letter, in which no bids everybody
goodbye, and tells his father he sis not going
"to mako trouble in the house any more"
These arc but few of many instances where
some assignable cause could be given; but the
last is that of boy who, without any reason,
o cheerful, merry little fellow, in happy
home, puts an end to his life; very probably
because he had heard the others did it.
There is, as all Psychologists know. q con-
tagion of crime; governed by rules and
referable to them, as any contagious physical
disorder. Suicidal manias have, Mt different
times, passed over certain towns and districts
until the aid of the law was needed to arrest
them. The women of Lyons, during certain
period, drowned themselves in such numbers
that Government interfered, and, by the pubic
exposure of the bodies, put summary stop
to the practice. In Versailles, this mania,
without any cause other than that Of the
contagion Of example reached such hight
that the number of suicides during one
year was 1900. Other epidemics of crime,
such as incendiarism, poisoning, the tarantula
fever, which in the sixteenth century drove
thousands of the Neapolitans dancing into the
sea- have all ragged principally among children,
historical girls and excitablc boys. The causes
of such mental diseases arc not hard to find.
The unhealthy condition of public thought
from religious or political action, tho morbid
state of mind produced by lack of any educa-
ton, or over-forcing, and, moro than all, the
perpetual suggestion of any certain crime
by tho press, to brains already thus
diseased - everyi ono Of these causes
opcrates in the case OF our children.
They are born, to begin with, OF nervous
race. half of whom are debilltated by over
work, or the use Of tobacco or liquor The
climate is exbausting, as no other; the Ordi-
nary pace of life that Of race-cOurse. The
child of q middle-class family land it is in the
middle class these abnormal cases have oc-
cu1rciD knows nothing of the seclusion of the
nursery; the frequent holidays, in which no
thinks all tho world joins; the blessed igno-
RANGES that make the English and German
child's life an Eden, where his soul and body
nav grow strong and healthy together. The
American boy eats his share of his fathers
knowledge from the time he can sit at table.
Tammany Rings, murders, social evils, are no
mysteries to him; they ell his ears at every
meal and his eyes whenever he looks into
paper. There is usually no attempt to hide
from him any depth of human degradation or
H., thn ftntt nf
the family--debts struggles, disagreements-
are laid upon his little shoulders with cruel
carelcssness, at an age when he should not
know there was such thing as trouble in
the world. American homes are sad and
mrtiless beyond any others. The American
child is born, in nine cases out OF
ten, to an inheritance of utterly causeless
gloom; his Woodworking father and head
aching mother are so occupied in striving
for money or position for him that they for
get the careless sunshiny happiness (which is
his birthright, and which their selfish troubles
have no right to cloud. His own brain, espe-
cially if he be boy of any promise, is forced
and overweight; he is taught to read as soon
as he is weaned; parents, teachers, public
opinion, spur and goad him thenceforth with
out ceasing; il he is to go into trade his
chance for education usually stops at fifteen
at twenty, if he is to enter the professions;
into these years be must crowd smatterng
of all sciences, knowledges, and arts.
Nothing but q sound body and the tonic of
perpetually happy, mirthful homelife could
support him through this, and produce o
rational. strong, helpful man to take his part
in the world, at the end. When so many of
our children have neither, there is littlo reason
for wonder that they are wiling, for the
slightest cause, to turn aside and shirk tho
road which from the beginning has been
made too hard for them.
The question Of Beer or No Beer continues 10 ag-
tatn the LeoslatnIe of Massachusetts, or did at