The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-01-21
Subject of a Lecture by a Gifted
Woman.
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson
Lectures I'm st. Louis.
PARENTS INDICTED.
Welfare of the Child Left to
Maternity.
Something About the Person
ality Of Mrs. Stetson.

st. Louis. Jan. 21.-Charlotte Perkins
Stetson lectured at the High School
| auditorium this week on Child Labor"
Her treatment Of 1T was anindictment OF
| fathers and mothers. She held them re-
sponsible for the existence and con-
tlnuance of child labor and a great
many other things harmful to child
hood. She made a plea for the rescue
of childhood from the ignorance and
cruelty of blood parenthood by the en-
lightenment and tenderness of the ag-
gregate parenthood of society. She
spoke substantially as follows:
THE welfare Of the child has been
left to maternity. Maternity Is an es-
sentially narrow thing until the heart
of the mother is moved by the love for
humanity. until the mother loves chill
dren; all children, not her children
alone.
What we know of children is the re-
suit of the love and study of men.
What we call the state, which is all of
us, has been gradually encroaching on
the family. The state, through the
teacher, has been advancing toward the
child. Children are citizens OF the COM
munity. They have rights which the
community is bound to respect. Society
is taking its place between the parent
and the child for the child's good.
1.-THE society for the Prevention OF
is a reproach and a disgrace to Chris
tian civilization, protects the child from
its parents, rescues 1T from its parents.
The chNd's right to protection from its
parents has been recognized by leg1sla-
tive enactmentS in all the states
There is no equality or justice in the
punishment melted out to children by
parents. Imagine a condition of society
where the offended is the judge and ex-
ecutiOner of the offender. That is the
condition of the children.
Child labor is the exact edge Of the
question between the state and the
child. Parents place their children in
the factories. Parents place the most
obstacles in the way of factory inspect
Ors to prevent the rescue OF the child
from such conditions. They lie that they
may keep their children at hard work.
The parent says that child is mine.
will do with it as 1 please The state
saws that child is mine. You shall not
mistreat it
1.-The plea is made that the mother
needs the help of the child. Because
the mother has not meat to eat shall
she eat slices of her boy? If the mother
is reduced to such straits that in order
to live she must destroy her child it is
time for society to interfere. Any child
labor is essentially and absolutely
wrong. The required concentration
takes from the child the vitality which
it will need in after years
1T is the business of woman to take
care of all children, not alone her own.
In any form of existence all inevitably
take care of each other. 1t is the con-
dition of being human. The community
owes to the child the same care and
protection it owes to the adult and a
Thousand times more.
What is most needed is a change of
view toward the child, a sense of re
sponsibiIity for it. The wrong of child
labor must be recognized. We should
be as much Mortified to see tired child
going to sleep over a machine as to see
it publicly whipped.
1.-The things needed first are better
laws, a large force of conscientious in
spectors, mostly women, and physicians
appointed by the state to issue certih-
Gates of health to children"
Mrs. Stetson's lectures lose by reduc-
ton to type. They partake so strongly
of her personality and soul-Qua1ity that
they must be heard.
1t is not the least exaggeration to say
that there has never been a public
speaker in st. Louis, male or female,
who cast as complete a spell over an
audience as did Mrs. Stetson. It was not