The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1890-09-05

want of funds. The months work cost SAG
more than the cash on hand. Surely there
are enough benevolent men and women IN
the city to supply the deficit.
Whenever a case of peculiarly atrocious
cruelty to child appears in the papers the
blood of readers boil, and every one feels
like interposing. But after while Other
topics come up, the outrage is forgotten and
the tyTaut of the nursery escapes To crush
out cruelty to children certain number OF
persons should make it their business to
assist the officers of the society in prosecu-
ting offenders, ard, if necessary, should prod
them to vigorous discharge of their duty
There is far more abuse Of children going on
than most people imagine. Almost every
issue of daily paper contains some story
of the kind; and the bulk of the cases never
get into the papers. Here is case OF girl
10 years old, who is chained up by her
parents and beaten like a dog; there it is
boy, whose father and mother apply hot
stove lids to his legs by way Of Furnishing
him for his faults. As to the cases OF chill
dren who are brutally whipped by drunken
parents, or left without food because the
family income has been spent in dissipa-
ton, they are countless.
A given proportion of manki have never
lost the primitive appetite for inflicting pain
on the helpless The school-boy whose chief
delight is to beat a child smaller than HIM
self is TO be found in almost every school;
when he grows up he will satiate his in
stinct by pounding his wife or whipping his
children till they howl with agony. He is o!
kin to the Indian squaws who used to chew
off the finger-nails of their prisoners, and to
the Apache who sets a live coal on the naked
body of lis fettered captive and watches it
slowly eat its way into his vitals. There is
only one thing to be done with him., and
that is TO teach him by severe and inevitable
punishment that he must curb his propen-
Sity. Pity, in such case, is encouragement
TO cruelty.
The class of persons who are cruel to
children are of course cruel to animals. 1t
is members of that class whom we see beat
ing overloaded horses and stoping inoffen-
sive dogs. Once in a way, the society gets
hold of them, and if they have no pull,
coptrives to teach them a lesson. But the
great bulk of them escape. The socety's
officers cannot be everywhere, and few cit-
zens care to engage in a row with brute
" ho would as soon use his snaRe-whip on
gentleman as on his horse, and who at any
rate viii curse with vigor and emphasis.
Nor are the drivers who overload their horses
and batter them when their strength gives
way the only offenders against mercy to the
beast. That cruel instrument of torture,
the check-reip, is in use in the most refined
families. Ladies of tender instincts. when
out calling, will leave their horses at door
with their heads pried up to an unnatural
angle by this strap, enduring untold ago
lies. What the poor beasts suffer in this
attitude of torment can be ascertained by any
one " no will brace his own head back by a
strap passing through the mouth. 1t is
enough TO say that a keeper of peniten-
tiary who inflicted such torture on the most
hardened prisoner in lis charge would be
removed as too brutal for his post.