"Waif," as herein employed, applies to all neglected or abused children, and not especially to those who have lost their parents, or have been abandoned.
While the evidence of the kindergartners may seem extreme as to the possibility of making useful citizens of all children, the unanimity of their enthusiasm must be taken as very strong evidence.
The plea for a social quarantine which shall establish protection for helpless infancy during the period of present neglect, and when the cost is insignificant, is made in the belief that, once attracted to the idea of the possibility of social quarantine, which is nothing if not complete, popular sentiment will demand a continuance of organized protection for each member of society as long as he may be helpless or weak, without reference to an age limit.
Immediate special attention, however, should be given to the victims of the "sweaters," to unsanitary work-rooms and other environing conditions provided by conscienceless (usually alien) employers, and to the prevention of children being employed in occupations where temptation is so strong as to be a menace to unformed character.
When first published, five years ago, this appeal for better care of children born into unfortunate environment met with very favorable reception, especially from practical child educators and child economists; and the author received numerous requests to address gatherings of altruists in various parts of the country. He responded to some forty of these invitations, and met with warmest encouragement and the assurance that the sentiment of this book was shared pretty generally, when the facts in the case were understood. In meeting men of all kinds in the outside world, as well as women from whom a generous sympathy might be expected, he found that any scheme offering care and protection for neglected children excited the sympathy and enlisted the assistance of all classes, and most readily the aid of people in the more lowly walks of life, who came nearer to the need and realized the want. The wealthy Christian mother of the Avenue would respond to the suggestion of a more efficient care for the helpless ones with "We should certainly do all that we can for these poor little unfortunates, for Christ's sake;" while the ruddy barkeeper, who unwillingly pushed out the bottle to a parent of neglected kids in the slums, when talked to about an effective quarantine to protect the neglected ones, would say, "Certainly; yes, indeed! for Christ's sake give the babies a chance."
In both cases the sympathy and sentiment were the same, and the author believes it to be universal. All that is needed to guard against helplessness is concentration of interest, for a little time, on this one elementary need, and the full measure of reform will soon be in effective operation.
While the conferences above referred to were being held, the author had opportunity to learn the existing conditions, relative to the greatest and most fundamental needs in approaching and perfecting a reform of the kind recommended, and learned that uncertain, irregular, or otherwise faulty nourishment is the cause of much perversion among the poor, and is especially harmful to the young among them. The author had just completed his initial experiments, and had published the booklet "What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition," and by them saw a way to provide teachers, mothers, and other child protectors with a teachable theory of nutrition that seemed to him to be scientific but simple, and which had been most gratifyingly effective wherever it had been intelligently tried.
But in the course of these lecture conferences it developed that more than the unsupported word of a layman was necessary in order to even command attention in a matter that everybody thought they knew all about themselves, and in whose general opinion the whole world joined. It did not seem credible, although quite logical, that health, morals, temperament, physical efficiency, and all the requirements of virtue and good citizenship could be mended or modified by mere attention to the ingestion of food and more careful eating.
As time went on it seemed evident to the author that not only was a right intelligence, relative to the initial act of nutrition, helpful in conserving health, but that it was fundamentally necessary to physical efficiency, mental clearness, and moral tone, and that all work, which was done by educators without this basic knowledge as an underlying necessity of teaching or training, could but be simply ameliorative and not curative in its effect; and, failing to be able to say the convincing word himself, it seemed necessary for the author to interest the highest physiological authority in the subject and make demonstration a means of convincing them. This, in order that they might speak to deaf ears with the effectiveness of the megaphone, while poor lay I, the author, could not raise my voice above a whisper.
In transferring this book to the "A.B.C. Series," and linking it up with the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," and other books of the "Series," the megaphonic connection has been established, and now the attorney for the waifs is ready to turn on a renewed current of sympathy and see what will happen.
The work, as it originally shaped itself, was dropped by the author, for the time being, as being built on sand, if presented without a good theory of scientific feeding as one of the foundation principles, and hence these intervening five years have been employed in getting authority for the economic theory required.
These five years also have added time-proof to the personal experience of the author, and have added many confirmatory experiences to his own. Continued pursuit of the subject has also developed possibilities of endurance, efficiency, and happiness that were not known to exist in former times, so that we begin to doubt if the normal man or woman has been seen in the world since history has given us a record.
During these five years of study of the question, left incomplete in the present volume as first issued, only confirmatory evidence of the hopes expressed herein has been deduced. The author has had abundant opportunity to add experiences in England, Italy, and, in fact, all over Europe, and in this country, that strengthen the faith and call for action or guilt of infamous indifference. The work of Dr. Bernardo in England has progressed steadily, and each annual showing is better than the last, while the public demonstrations at Albert Hall, London, are becoming more intrinsically interesting than any other exhibitions or entertainments that are held in that great auditorium.
The Salvation Army work, too, has been closely inspected and followed, and, while its aims are more curative than preventive, and give promises in the future rather than in the immediate present, it cannot but meet with highest approval for what it does in a practical way among the degenerate. Quite recently General Booth has added a Department of Hygiene to his staff outfit, and the whole tendency of the work is improving and is already splendid. It is not yet broad enough, however, and does not deal with the basic necessities of complete nutrition reform applied to children.
The whole course of reform on charitable principles has been steadily progressive, but the most conclusive and convincing demonstration of possibilities, all the way from waif-saving to the last ultimate refinement of physical and mental reform, has been given us by two of the most modest and self-unconscious persons possible to imagine. To Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more than any of us can ever pay for a demonstration of humane possibilities, which proves the full contentions of this book most conclusively. Twenty-four of the most unfortunate of waifs, rescued and endowed with all the opportunity of respectable manhood and womanhood and good citizenship, is the record of this one little married but childless couple; and after that who shall ever dare to say that there should ever be any "Have-to-be-bad" persons to fill an altogether unnecessary "ten-per-cent-of-submerged-stratum" of society?
Some account of this family of true and practical salvation is given in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure," and need not be repeated here, for without full appreciation of the contents of each of the books of the "A.B.C. Series" the argument of either is incomplete.
H. F.
It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture as advised in the author's book, "Menticulture," to jump at once to an investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the body and then over to the department of infant and child care and education as pursued in the crèche and in the kindergarten; but as a matter of fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities and misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into all the departments of human interest, and first into these primary departments.
The object of this statement is to link up the different publications of the writer into a chain of consistent suggestions intended to make life a more simple and agreeable problem than many of us too indifferent or otherwise inefficient and bad fellow-citizens make of it.
It is not an altogether unselfish effort on the part of the author of the A.B.C. Life Series to publish his findings. In the consideration of his own mental and physical happiness it is impossible to leave out environment, and all the units of humanity who inhabit the world are part of his and of each other's environment.
It would be rank presumption for any person, even though gifted with the means to circulate his suggestions as widely as possible, and armed with the power to compel the reading of his publications, to think that any suggestions of his could influence any considerable number of his fellow-citizens of the world, or even of his own immediate neighbourhood, to accept or follow his advice relative to the management of their lives and of their communal and national affairs; but while the general and complete good of humanity should be aimed at in all publications, one's immediate neighbours and friends come first, and the wave of influence spreads according to the effectiveness of the ideas suggested in doing good; that is, in altering the point of view and conduct of people so as to make them a better sympathetic environment.
For instance, the children of your neighbours are likely to be the playmates of your own children, and the children of degenerate parents in the slum district of your city will possibly be the fellow-citizen partners of your own family. Again, when it is known that right or wrong nutrition of the body is the most important agent in forming character, in establishing predisposition to temperance or intemperance of living, including the desire for intoxicating stimulants, it is revealed to one that right nutrition of the community as a whole is an important factor in his own environment, as is self-care in the case of his own nourishment.
The moment a student of every-day philosophy starts the study of problems from the A.B.C. beginning of things, and to shape his study according to an A.B.C. sequence, each cause of inharmony is at once traced back to its first expression in himself and then to causes influenced by his environments.
If we find that the largest influences for good or bad originate with the right or wrong instruction of children during the home training or kindergarten period of their development, and that a dollar expended for education at that time is worth more for good than whole bancs of courts and whole armies of police to correct the effect of bad training and bad character later in life, it is quite logical to help promote the spread of the kindergarten or the kindergarten idea to include all of the children born into the world, and to furnish mothers and kindergarten teachers with knowledge relative to the right nutrition of their wards which they can themselves understand and can teach effectively to children.
If we also find that the influence of the kindergarten upon the parents of the infants is more potent than any other which can be brought to bear upon them, we see clearly that the way to secure the widest reform in the most thorough manner is to concentrate attention upon the kindergarten phase of education, advocate its extension to include even the last one of the children, beginning with the most needy first, and extending the care outward from the centre of worst neglect to finally reach the whole.
Experience in child saving so-called, and in child education on the kindergarten principle, has taught the cheapest and the most profitable way to insure an environment of good neighbours and profit-earning citizens; and investigation into the problem of human alimentation shows that a knowledge of the elements of an economic nutrition is the first essential of a family or school training; and also that this is most impressive when taught during the first ten years of life.
One cannot completely succeed in the study of menticulture from its A.B.C. beginning and in A.B.C. sequence without appreciation of the interrelation of the physical and the mental, the personal and the social, in attaining a complete mastery of the subject.
The author of the A.B.C. Life Series has pursued his study of the philosophy of life in experiences which have covered a great variety of occupations in many different parts of the world and among peoples of many different nations and races. His first book, "Menticulture," dealt with purging the mind and habits of sundry weaknesses and deterrents which have possession of people in general in some degree. He recognised the depressing effect of anger and worry and other phases of fearthought. In the book "Happiness," which followed next in order, fearthought was shown to be the unprofitable element of forethought. The influence of environment on each individual was revealed as an important factor of happiness, or the reverse, by means of an accidental encounter with a neglected waif in the busy streets of Chicago during a period of intense national excitement incident to the war with Spain, and this led to the publication of "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine." During the time that this last book was being written, attention to the importance of right nutrition was invited by personal disabilities, and the experiments described in "Glutton or Epicure; or, Economic Nutrition" were begun and have continued until now.
In the study of the latter, but most important factor in profitable living, circumstances have greatly favoured the author, as related in his latest book, "The A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition."
The almost phenomenal circulation of "Menticulture" for a book of its kind, and a somewhat smaller interest in the books on nutrition and the appeal for better care of the waifs of society, showed that most persons wished, like the author, to find a short cut to happiness by means of indifference to environment, both internal and external, while habitually sinning against the physiological dietetic requirements of Nature. In smothering worry and guarding against anger the psychic assistance of digestion was stimulated and some better results were thereby obtained, but not the best attainable results.
Living is easy and life may be made constantly happy by beginning right; and the right beginning is none other than the careful feeding of the body. This done there is an enormous reserve of energy, a naturally optimistic train of thought, a charitable attitude towards everybody, and a loving appreciation of everything that God has made. Morbidity of temperament will disappear from an organism that is economically and rightly nourished, and death will cease to have any terrors for such; and as fear of death is the worst depressant known, many of the worries of existence take their everlasting flight from the atmosphere of the rightly nourished.
The wide interest now prevalent in the subjects treated in The A.B.C. Life Series is evidenced by the scientific, military, and lay activity, in connection with the experiments at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and elsewhere, as related in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure" of the series.
The general application is more fully shown, however, by the indorsement of the great Battle Creek Sanitarium, which practically studies all phases of the subject, from health conservation and child saving to general missionary work in social reform.
HORACE FLETCHER.
The text of this appeal was furnished by the accidental observation of a waif of not more than four years of age, who was gathered into the meshes of the law, and then pushed back into a stifling atmosphere of criminal neglect under ban of the official sentence, "Now get! you little bastard, and to hell with you!"
This waif disappeared into the slums without leaving any clue to his identity, and without any certainty of rescue, except by means of a quickened public conscience that shall organize to mend the existing defects arising from our careless lack of system in child protection, so as to rescue all waifs in need, in order to include the lost waif of our story.
The development of the day-nursery and kindergarten methods of child care and character-building has proven that ninety-eight per cent., at least, of the formerly-considered "hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum of society" can be saved and added to the mass of good citizenship by these means, and that the insignificant few, abnormally weak or perverse, are better subjects for industrial schools before criminal tendencies develop into habit, than for street schools of aimlessness and resultant crime.
Hope of success in exciting pity and justice for the victims of neglect and persecution within our gates is nourished by the evidence of that strong national sympathy for persecuted and neglected humanity which caused the sacrifice of war for the relief of our suffering neighbors in the island of Cuba. The same strength of purpose and thoroughness of aim—at one-twentieth of the cost, applied to a profitable investment instead—would free our fair land of the last vestige of the neglect which now breeds ceaseless crime.
The spirit of reform is awake to the demands of present civilized ideals. What we are willing to do for the reconcentrados of Cuba, let us do for our own defenseless ones!