Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1913-12-09
Delinquent Children Result of Robbing
Them of Almost Everything
They Should Have.
NO CHANCE FOR HIM TO
PLAY IN DECENT PLACE
Old Garbage Cans, Evil Smelling Stair
ways and Cellars are Lot of
Unhappy Youngster.
BY cARLToN TEN EYcK
written for the United Press)

\ NWIlbbCI 1OI blkO Olnt6u I65Sl
New York, Dec. S.--Father Knicker-
booker is wholly to blame for his de-
linquent children and the youngsters
are not at fault for their sins, in the
opinion of Ernest X. Coulter, founder
Of the Big Brother movement in New
York, and who had great deal to do
with the establishment of the children's
court.
"It is the sins Of the city against
the children that stand out most start
ingly in the children's courts" Coulter
said. "The community robs the child
in the congested district of everything
a growing human being needs for health
of mind and body-and then it would
punish him with his efforts to win these
chances for himself bring him in sharp
contact with the law of the grown-up
world. Were there anything like a
rational distribution of population,
were the dwellers in the tenements not
deprived of light and space, were the
tenement children not desperately put
to it for anything like normal play,
there would be small work indeed, for
children courts, charitable and re-
formatory institutions.
"It is indulging the God.given play
instinct that the child, under proper
supervision, best develops his physical,
mental and moral side. When we force
him to dodge about the garbage cans for
his game of tag and push him into dark
and evil-smelling stairways and cellars
for his hide-and-seek, how can the COM
munity complain when he does not de.
velop into good citizen7
"Arraigned in the children s court
recently for the heinous crime Of play.
ing ball on the street, half clad little
fellow was asked by the magistrate;
what are the streets for7' The cul-
prit, whose head barely reached the
bench, thought hard and earnestly, his
face white from starvation and fear.
Automobiles, sir, he finally faltered,
ard the magistrate sent him home.
"Tn one Of the most crowded dis.
tricts last summer I saw a little girl
cry and flee in terror from q flutter.
ing butterfly that by some strange
chance had been blown across the Hud-
son from the Jersey meadows. The
only fields she had ever known were
asphalt and cobbles; the only insects
within her knowledge had been reaches
and spiders, and worse and her only
brooks were the gutter floods when the
sweepers occasionally turned on the fire
hydrant to flush the dirty pavement
in her block.
"It is small wonder that when some
occasional charity takes a handful OF
tenement children into the country for
week-those who have always lived
in the city's din and cry--that it is
so still it makes their ears hurt, and
they beg to be taken back to the city. y
Where They Cure Cancers.
Down by the East river as it turns
around the park at Corlears Hook, there
stands the new ST.. Rose 8 Free Home
for Incurable Cancer, where the servants
Of relief take care Of about 65 destitute
men and women, and near which Il
years ago the first members Of tn,
Sisterhood began to nurse the victimi
of this disease. Hero the invalids have
crept safely into peaceful security
they are pronounced by physicians +,
be the hostages of death, and therefor,
out Of the grasp Of operations or exper
iments. They take constant notices o
the activities Of the park across th
street from their sun parlor window
and they listen TO their caparies and T.
their musical instruments,
The river Is a never ending source o
interest, for IL changes color and aspec
like n human being and the ahippin