The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-02-18
that we owe to these two fundamental institu-


Among our lowest animals children do not
have to be taught because they are born almost
mature. But where the baby in the human
family, comes into the world tiny and helpless, it
is the parents duty to care for it and train it
through many years of growth. 1t is this care
and training thus made necessary that has
brought into existence the school and the home.
What greater debt, therefore, do owe to
anybody than to the child?
But it took US long while to discover this in
debtedness. Jesus of Nazareth was the first
prophet of child welfare and he as time in this
world goes lived but a comparatively short
time ago.
It was common custom in his day to destroy
babies if they did not happen to come at con-
venient time and place. Thousands of parents in
Rome did not hesitate to carry their children out
to the desert or the wilderness and there expose
them. flourishing slave trade arose through
slave dealers rescuing these babies and bringing
them up as future slaves. This terrible system
of infanticide was sternly rebuked by him who
said that it were better that mill stone be
hanged around mans neck and he be cast into
the sea than that he should harm one of these
! little ones 1t was Jesus who discovered the
child.
But in spite of twenty centuries of Christian
ity in spite of all our schools and churches and
means of culture and refinement, the old custom
of trafficking in Children of feeding babies into
the mills of slavery, is not yet by any means ex-
tinct. Of course do not throw them out
the desert. We do worse than that. We leave
them helpless among the hyenas in the slums and
tenements of cities.
We do worse than that! We harness them up
with steel bride and make them grind out prof
it's for in mills and factories. Instead of
exposing the babies to the mercy of the slave
driver in the wilderness, we sell them on the in
stallment plan, two million of them every year.
to the slave driver in the cotton mill and the can
ming factory All of which entices us to smile
when our twentieth century people speak of the
old Romans as barbarians!
Another interesting custom of our times is
that of boycottng babies AS everybody knows,
it is almost impossible in the larger cities to rent
q flat in an apartment house in the better sec
tions of town if one happens to be cursed with
children. The very that need the most ad-
vantages the pleasantest surroundings and best
| treatment are in all modern cities driven to the
least desirable quarters.
The institution of child labor cannot any
longer be justified even on the crassest economic
basis. The most brutal dot in the Tennessee
Mountains knows better than to break in colt
too soon. He has discovered that horse broken
too early means a horse dying too soon. Our
modern slave driver has not even yet learned that
he is killing the goose that lays the golden egg
when he grinds the life out of the little ones
1t is against all this that child welfare day is
directed This function surely will meet the ap-
proval of every Christian man. But may it not
be true that there is another province in which
child welfare work is needed for which the best
of us may be somewhat responsible? Is it not
possible that child welfare work is needed in the
average respectable home?
! Consider how many parents there still
who make use of the old savage doctrine of cor
poral punishment. Every doctor will tell you that
many tender little tot is wrecked and ruined by
the jerkings about and the cuttings and the saps
and beatings and vicious threats to which some
parents bad temper leads them.
| study of vital statistics will suggest
still another phase of the question. 1t is surpris-
ing how many child deaths are described in the
register as due to wrong feeding and lack of
care" The farmer studies carefully how best to
feed and house his stock and yet there many
mothers who give not an hours thought to
how their babies should be fed and cared for.
After ALL child welfare is not going to be real
lied until we have mother welfare and father
welfare It is bad enough to have two million
children ground down in the mines and factor
les, but it is Just as bad to have children every
where growing up in the better class of homes
the victims of ignorance on the part of their par
ents We need another Mrs. Birney who will
turn her attention and attract to this larger
' problem of child welfare in the home.
IL "THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN'