The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1911-04-15
Come Along With This Carload of Babies, Travelling
Into the West to Find Their Papas and Mammals
BY w. G. Shepherd.

ERIE, Pa, April Is. - A car
full of founding babies dashingI
on the Empire State express to-
ward the big west, where real
homes and real fathers and moth
ers await them!
They were all so young that in
after years they will forget the
trip. But won't; rode several
hundred miles with them.
There were Sc of them, half of
them boys and half girls, averag-
ing three years in age. The young
est was John, fourteen months,
and the eldest Helen, seven years.
When it was nearly time for the
train to start, Mrs. McMullen, a
nurse, plump, motherly and be-
specialized, walked up and down
the aisle distributing dolls, horns
and mouth organs. Noise began
Immediately. Then, taking a baby
in each arm, she walked up and
down the aisle, singing:
"Goodby, dear old Manhattan isle!
Goodby, dear old Broadway"
You bet 1t was "goodby, dear
old Broadway"-Broadway with
it's sin and shame and foundlings.
And good radiance to Broadway,
too! We were off for the big
west, where folks know what
HOME spells.
We began to settle down into
the dull routine of the trip-only
to discover that there wasn't go
ing to be any dull routine.
| A passenger with a camera, try
ing to snap the children, felt tug
at his machine and discovered
that Alexander No. 33 had found
the cameras rubber bulb dangling
near him and had seized it and
put 1t into his mouth. When Alex
ander bit, the passenger got a
good photograph of the ceiling of
the car.
/ Occasionally a baby would roll
loft onto John In his go-cart and
woke him from a sound sleep. He
had to be wheeled again.
i Charles O'Hara, special agent
for the New York founding hos
Ipital, went through the car with
a big tin pail filled with chopped
meat. He was on his way to the
dining car to heat the meat and
mix it with hot chicken soup for
supper. A general howl arose for
food.
To restore peace the nurse dis
ltributed lollypops. The lollypops
lasted until O'Hara returned with
two big pals filled with soup.
After supper came bedtime.
O'Hara placed boards across
the seats. The nurses made beds
on these. There were no upper
berths-for whoever heard of
anybody who was tall enough to
|say, Now 1 lay me-" beside an
upper BERTH"
l l saw the babies kneel in the
car aisle and pray to the good
God who is the only one, folk
say, that can ever clear up all the
tangles of our queer old world,
with its foundlings and other sad,
strange things.
They slept four in a section,
with their feet toward the aisle.
Mrs. McMullen, in the middle
of the car, hummed a wholesale
lullaby:
Hush, my dears; lie still, and
! slumber.
Holy angels guard thy beds"
| O'Hara and ! went out for a
smoke, and he told me more
about the babies.
Every year." he said, New
York has a big crop of found
lings. We get applications for
babies from all over the country.
Every application is personally in
Investigated by special agent.
The babies in this carload are
going to good homes in the west
and south. Most of them will go
to the farms of childless couples
in Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming
and other western states. Only
a very few of them go to cities.
1--WE don't give the babies
away. The couples who take
them must make monthly reports
to the hospital until the children
are of age, and now and then an
agent will call on them to see
how they are getting along.
Every year we find homes for
at least 500 of New York city's
crop of foundlings. Every baby
in this car was picked up on a
doorstep or in the streets.
| There's something funny
about foundlings, too. I've been
In this business for many years
and I've yet to see a founding
that wasn't an extra fine, bright
baby. brighter than the ordi-