San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-06-06
THE BABIES OF THE POOR.

THE BABIES OF THE POOR.
Picnics are ripe. The outdoor ex-
cursion is in the market The rail-
ways are advertising excu, sions to the
sea soast, to the mountains, to the nor
thern watering places. Home parties,
and club parties, and school parties,
and church parties, are going here
there and everywhere. These are not
grown peoples parties exclusively nor
even generally. The young people
and the kids" as they are called, are
numerous part of the cutters. Even
the babies, those bundles of home
sweetness that make swwet the cup of
domestic life, the babies, God bless
them. The babies are net neglected
in these summer outings, and while
theiF~pfesence is an added care, it is
9lsS an added pleasure.
n What stir there is in the family
on these picnic days, on the mornings
of these outings. The baby is strictly
( in it. There is more fuss over the pre-
z parations for baby than for all the
rest of the family. Other things may
go. but the things that make for the
comfort and pleasures of that baby are
sure to be thought of. All those little
things that belong exclusively to him
are carefully put aside, and when
packing time comes are carefully put
up so that there may be no mistake
about the little ones pleasure. Per-
haps there is nothing in the whole life
of the home in which this care for the
little man or little woman of the house
shows SO clearly as in one of these
outings.
1t is largely the same in another
sense and with the changed conditions
that environ 1t, in the school picnic.
1t. vs. the infant class in the Sunday
school and the kindergarten class in the
Public school that is the center of care
and attraction. The smaller the little
men and women who compose these
classes the more interest centers in
them. Everyone seems to have a spe-
cial commission to take care of the
babies. The rough strong boys are as
careful of them as though they were
made of china and would break
Whatever they want is hustled for and
at the table they come first. The day
seems to have been made for them
ask for is furnished on sight.
Who ever heard of little tot at a
picnic that was not the king or queen
of the occasion, and the smaller they
are the more important they become.
Who ever heard of a boy so selfish or
unmannerly as to refuse his place in
the swing to the little baby girl who
lisps out her wish for "a thwing." The
far
for her. If the she is a che" it is all
the same. 1t is baby's day and as
such the babies are strictly in it, and
the big boys and girls are all the hap
pier themselves because for the once
they have set themselves aside and de-
voted the hours to the pleasures of the
little ones, who so seldom have an OPP
portunity to take an outing with all
the trimmings.
These are the babies of the well to
do classes, or at least of those in mod
crate circumstances. Boys and girls
and babies who live in comfortable
houses, and do not suffer for some
thing to eat at home, who are not
driven shivering to their ragged excuse
for a bed with curse in the winter,
or cooped UP in the sweltering attic
in summer. These cutters of whom
we have been speaking are not the OFF,
spring of want and the children of des-
titution and the victims of cruel priva-
tions and needs. These little buds of
promise and pleasure on the picnic
grounds are not the overflow of the
tenement house and the street and the
purlieus of poverty and crime as well,
where affection has so little to feed up
on.
= But these Babies of the Poor are
babies no less than those who, dress
ed in their white attractlveness, dot
the lawns of the outing grounds, or are
Graded in the lap Of nourishing friends
on the picnic greensward. To us in
blessed San Antonio, without the
I squalor that is seen in the larger and
= less favored cities. there is perhaps
not that urgent call to look out for the
babies of the poor and see that they
l are occasionally afforded the fresh all
outing that is so much enjoyed by
their little cousins of more fortunate
parentage but even here there is need
that they be looked after That q
Aetter view may be Afforded of what
being done in larger cities is one OF
be reasons why this subject is presen-
Ed today, also that out Of 1t some les
Son may come TO us.
For some years the Chicago Daily
Il News has conducted a sanitarium for
+. the sick babies" Of that city. It Is