Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-01-13

classes of society, but are as apt almost to
appear in the middle as in the lower grade.
And we shall find, moreover, that in the
case of a great many American parents
the utter spelling of their children has
been the direct and perfectly inevitable
outcome of belief in a sham philosophy
which begins with most preposterous
creed as to "the rights of children"
1t is part of this philosophy to Danish all
discipline from the family to treat chill.
dren with the indulgence and the difference
due only to mature intelligences; to pamper
and humor them at every turn to with
hold all punishment from them. Nothing
is commoner than to hear parents declar-
ing, quite boastfully, that they mean
"their children to have a good time. "
Nothing ia stranger than the absolute
blindness of such foolish parents to the de-
testable traits which they have SO care
fully, if unccnsciously, developed in their
offspring.
But as a fact this mode of training, or
rather of not training, children, produces
the very worst and most hopeless cases of
selishness and meanness. The parents
who thus SOW the wind are certain to reap
the whirlwind. They teach their children
that they have nothing to do in life but in.
dulge themselves. They sacrifice them
selves to the children, instead of making
the latter bend their stubborn recks to the
parental yoke. They thus breed up a
generation of brutal, greedy, unlovable,
exacting, egotistic creatures, untitled
for the family or any other relation, sure
to make bad wives and husbands, bad
fathers and mothers, and bad citizens.
This process is going on all over the
country, yet very little attention is paid to
it. Whenever the increase of juvenile de.
pravity is noticed somebody recommends
the institution of Reformatories, and the
public generally seem to think that this
kind of suggestion quite meets the require.
ments of the case. But Reformatories are
only means of alternating an evil which
can never be cured in that way. And the
need of such institutions must increase.
unfortunately, in direct proportion with
the decline of this and all other remedial
influences. For where there has been no
home training where the tendencies which
naturally issue in crime have been care
fully fostered by parents from the dawn of
CONSEQUENCES where there has been no
experience of self-sacrifce, of abnegatioD,
OF obedience, during the whole life; where
self-indulgence has been encouraged, and
every moral leaning has been stiAed at
birth; it is impossible that any reform
school can supply the fatal defects of char.
acter. What is needed under such circum.
stances is literal regeneration.
And this is one reason why our reform
schools have been so unsuccessful, and why
the latest forms of depraved youth are SO
hideously and shockingly vicious and har.
dened. San Francisco can show boys of
sixteen who are as vicious and as com.
pletely depraved as many men of forty.
The reason is that the whole of their brief
existence has been devoted to demoraliza-
ton, and that their parents were the prime
agents in their ruin. It is an awful
thought that this should be possible but
it is CHASTITY truth. The weak minded
fathers and mothers who laugh at the in.
cipient rudeness, selfshness and greed of
their children, and treat these planifesta-
tions as proofs of Esprit, are assuredly
preparing sorrow for themselves and trouble
for their offspring, and they cannot escape
the responsibility of their actions. No
good man or woman can be made without
discipline. That is an axiom which admits
of no modification. Self-indulgence is fatal
to character. Children who have never
been taught to obey never will be able to
cope with the difficulties of life. Bad
children will never make good wives and
husbands and fathers and mothers. Chill.
dren without manners will not learn them
in after life, and the manners of most
modern children are abominably bad.
Their coarseness, rudeness, vulgarity, sci.
fishness and lack of amiability, gentleness
and Difference are positively disgusting,
and it is very ominous that their parents
are totally blind to their most fragrant
faults, and regard with approval behavior
which is really scsndalous.
Il is because children are SO brought up
that so many of them fall by the wayside
early in life. It is here that missionary
work is needed, but our preachers, whose
duty it ought to be to look after such mat
tiers, are wasting their time in thin and
watery sermons upon points of doctrine,
or futile speculations on things which they
understand nothing about, and meantime
modern society is being poisoned and cor
rupted at its very sources, and the In
lection is spreading continually. There is
indeed nothing SO dangerous in the present
age as the tendency to abandon discipline
in the training OF children. This tendency
is the direct cause of Hoodlumism. It is
filling our penitentiaries, our haunts of
vice, our Magdalen asylums, our insane
asylums. 1t is crowding the divorce rec
ords. 1t is breeding crime and misery in
swarms. 1t is blightiDg scores of thou
sands OF lives. 1t is stamping gloom and
cynicism upon many young brows. 1t is
disrupting the family relation. In connec-
ton with the frightful intemperance which
is becoming distinguishing trait of the
times, it is making the poor poorer, pre-
venting all efforts to raise them in the So
clal scale, and continually recruiting that
already formidable element of lawless and
anarchic people who ara oerta;r - -