The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1892-05-05

mist with the comfortable income
would fain have us believe. And even
the work on the streets is not always
available, for the contractor naturally
prefers good, stout negro or a Next
can. who is accustomed to the work,
to a white man who has spent years
at a desk. The sad truth is that a
great many people who want work, in
this country as in every other, cannot
get it. There are far more applicants
than there are vacancies. Because
YOU happen to have found a good
place on the sunny side OF fortune,
why should you criticise your neigh
| Dor who is deepin the shadows Does
it make the shadows any less to say
that there are none? TO learn to be-
lieve in them very thoroughly one has
only to transfer his income over to the
deficit side of the account book.
Nv
Orphan .asylums are beautiful insti-
buttons. 1t is impossible to walk
through one of them, and see the
throngs of children we'll clad, well fed
and tenderly cared for, without feel
ing ones heart swell with thankful
ness that there are in the world such
places of refuge for the children who
are left without father or mother.
When you begin to inquire you find
that "full orphans" are admitted, also
children who have one parent living,
if it can be shown that this
parent is not able to support the little
ones. This is as it should be. 1t takes
in very large class of children who
would certainly suffer without such
Intervention. But one is moved to
wonder, sometimes, why the line was
drawn Just there, when by setting it
a little further out it would have in
cluded the very most helpless and
miserable of all Gods creatures-the
children of depraved parents. When
the orphan asylums are opened, it
does seem that these should be gath
cred up first of all, and placed beyond
the reach of contamination. While
public and private charityis diligent-
ly looking after the orphans who have
not enough to eat and wear, it wholly
neglects these other orphans who
have enough to eat and wear, but
whose condition is pitiable in the eX-
IRENE. Though a child may have a
degraded father, it still has hope for
the future if it's mother is good
woman, and stands between 1t
and harm with love
and watchfulness made more
intense because of her Misunderstanding
burden Of care. But what hope is
there for the child whose mother is
depraved being; for the child in whose
babyhood oaths took the place of lul-
labies, and drunken songs for the old
time hymns with which mother
should sooth her babe? Every body
knows that in every city in Texas
children are growing up in houses of
prostitution. No effort is made to
rescue them. The orphan asylums
are not for such as they, because, for
sooth, their mothers are able to sup
port them. But one future can lie be-
fore such children, They are given
over to it from the time they sleep in
their cradles first. The dark road
they travel is marked out before them
as distinctly as though relentless
fate had had the making of their for
tunes. The world says to them: "Stay
where you are. You have enough to
eat and drink. What more do you re-
quire?"
~
But at last comes a time, in the his
tory of these children, when the world
takes cognizance of them, and the
country, which had no room for them
in its orphan asylums, finds album
dance of room in its prisons. The
police courts learn to know them well
and they find their way into peniten-
tiaries, where the country finds it
some slight trouble to take care of
them at last. Knowing their ante
cedents, everybody cries out piously,
"Oh, didn't we all know they would
come to this? 1t is in the blood" But
the truth is, the fault is in the public
that closes every avenue to decent life
against these children and left them
no choice but to walk straight into
life of crime. What wonder that they
took that road? Is there no public
sentiment in this country that would
move people to rescue the children
from the dens of depravity
and give them a chance to be
anu WOLlOh! IL WC COulu
make such change, and neglect to
do it, then the criminals that grow up
in such places are criminals of our
making, and we are responsible. tits
useless to take refuge behind that old
question, Gam 1 my brothers. keep
err" The first man who asked that
was his brothers. murderer; and it
has been asked by long success
sion of people who try to use
it as an excuse for the neglect
of duty. Verify, to a certain extent,
we are our brothers. keeper, and will
be called to account some day for leav-
ing him where we knew he would be-
come criminal, and giving him no
attention until he had crossed the line
and was criminal indeed.
JULIA TRUITT BISHOP.