Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1879-06-26


type we may have of heaven Growing out |
of its influence upon individual life will come |
allegiance to government, the recognition of
social obligations and integrity to public duty
and trusts Building on these, law, educa
ton, morality and religion will rise as stable
and beautiful columns in the temple of civil
liberty, from which as from tine temple of
old, treachery, fraud, lying, and coyetons-
ness shall be driven away.
Whether or not these views touching the
relation of home life to civil government may
meet your approval, we cannot differ in the
belief that God has ordained the home TO be
the natural and moral defense of the child
against the evil that is in the world. We must
also concur in the bel eff that when these de
fenses are broken down and the child is ex-
posed to temptation and wrong, that it be-
comes the duty of Christian community to
replace as nearly as possible the care and pro-
lection of the home. 1t is in the recognition of
this duty that this Home is to be organized.
Let us glance for moment at those who
shall be its benifciaries. This Home will find
possibly no higher claim or more frequent de-
mand upon its hospitality and care than in
providing temporary asylum for the chill
dren of poor parents who in times of sickness
or peculiar distress would regard with favor
temporary aid, while unwilling to surrender
their children wholly to the public care. Thus
the chasm of distress over which self>reliance,
flial relations, sometimes family honor, occa-
sionally personal integrity, and the last
hope of the homestead is wrecked, will be
bridged, self-dcpendenne encouraged, virtue
protected, and filial affections fostered, to the
mutual advantage of those who give and those
who receive.
To this Home neglected children will come
cttah how nplu
the abode of wretchedness and want, such as
have dwelt amid scenes of licentiousness and
crime, such as have experienced cruelty as
the only persuasion to obedience, and had
never known the holier incentives inspired by
love. These that otherwise had gone to pris
on may come here and find shelter until the
door of another and better home shall De open
to them.
Hitherto in our State, or at lenst until with
in recent years, many of this class of children
have constituted no small part of our prison
population. During the year 1878 326 chill
dren under 16 years of age were committed
to county jalls. For the most part, these
would have gone to our Reform Schools, had
their been room, and few possibly, would
have been proper subjects for such care as is
designed in these Homes. But it is well
known that fair proportion of the boys, and
HOe lCn SlliS SCut ny Jul L IOiiabC OuuSCc
and other ma gistrates to our State Reform
Schools, are childien OF tender years not gull
ty-many of them scarcely capable-of any
crime, but subjected to criminal record and
consigned to years of reformatory discipline
simply because this was the only alternative
between the neglect and cruelty of vicious
homes Or the vagrancy and crime of The street.
The importance of these Public Homes in re-
speet to exposed and neglected children may
not be overestimated. Ordinarily the outward
manifestations OF ultimate consequences of
this neglect as it develops into vice and crime
are seen chiefly among boys. Strange enongh
society fails to consider that in the ratio of
population this neglect must reach girls pro-
portionately 1t is true that statistics of crime,
and of juvenile delinquency, show large
prepondt rance of men and boys rs compared
with women and girls. At this writing there
are fifteen hundred and twenty-five men in
our State prison and only thirty-One women.
In our State Reform School for boys during
the past year we had a daily average of 1877,
while in the Industrial Home for girls the
daily average was but 226. Possibly these
''annals of crime" are only read in what they
disclose, seldom if ever considered in what
they suggest. We conceive it fair to assume
that there are many girls neglected and ex-
posed to temptation and sin as there are boys
And in face of all the statistics we do not hes
itate to declare the conviction that as many
fall, and further that the entail of personal
suffering and the nature and extent of public
wrong experienced frCm one girl, misled and
fallen, is to be deplored beyond the crimes of
many boys From the threshold Of neglect,
as the boys and girls enter upon maturer years,
their paths diverge, the boy to the highways
of vagrancy and crime which bring him
speedily and prominently into view; the girl
into the hidden ways of licentiousness of
no;some presence which becomes like the
open gutter, gathering the sweepings of the
street-at once poison and pestilence.
But l mnst not detan you. This Home is to
stand for this community at the foul ia n head,
tobea source of purifying, sending forth health,
full influences to counteract and control evil
tendencies AMI to check at leaat one great
tributary to crime.
One other class of children and | conclude
the list. These are the children now provi-
ded for in County Infirmaries. Hitherto our
view has been confined to those exposed or
outcast. AS we look into our County Infir-
maries we find these conditions intensified.
The exposure of the street is less fatal. To
be outcast upon the world is a hopeful condi-
tion compared with the child cast upon the
care of the poor house. The care of the chill
dren in the Belmont County Inirmary has
been for several years. exceptionally good, 80
that no local or personal reflection is intended
when we express the opinion that TO the alb
solute failure in this case to meet the demands
of these children, more than to anything be-
sides, you are indebted tor the better care
which this Home is intended to supply.
So far as children are concerned, what is
true of one is true of every infirmary in the
State. Think as we may of the child in the
home of the dissipated and abandoned, or of
such as are forced into the vicissitudes of
street life-there may be hope, but little |
ween-still some hope; but for one doomed to
the pauperism of poor house no hope may
be reasonably entertained.
Think for a moment There are over two
thousand children annually thrown upon the
care of County Infirmaries in the State of
Ohio.
These children are for the most part in dali
ly contact with the insane, the epileptic, the
idiotic and other classes whose moral and so
cial characters constitute the counterpart to
the physical conditions of the classes named.
These children are not blind; if they we're the
State provides for their education and care.
They are not deaf and dumb; the State has
provided also for these. They are not imbe-
cie in mind; the State still interposes its care.
No, these are bright, quick witted children;
many of them beautiful, all more or less at
tractive. They have eyes to see and ears to
hear. Now think again. An ordinarily in
telligent little child, at the period of life
when the mind is simply receptive, and im-l
pressions that are to be indellible, not only to
last, but to exert upon all the future life of
that child controlling influence. You and
value these early impressions. For our own
children we seek to make our homes attrac- |
tive, not simply for the pleasure of the pass
ing hour, but because these impressions en-
dure and constitute the very foundation of
all the higher virtues of human character
Now conceive if you can of convictions of
life evoked from early impressions formed
amid the rawlings of the maniac, the frightful
of epilepsy, the revolving condi-
tions of idiocy and the association with phys
ical decrepitude, social degradation and moral
If you can conceive of this, an