HQ  769  . S85  1923 
 Stowell,  Jay  S.  1883-1966. 
 The  child  and  America's 
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The  Child 
 
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 DEC  14  1926 
 
 $&GWA  L$E.W^/ 
 
 America’s  Future 
 
 by  Jay  S.  Stowell 
 
 Author  of :  The  Near  Side  of  the  Mexican 
 Question ;  Home  Mission  Trails; 
 
 J.  W.  Thinks  Black;  etc. 
 
 Published  jointly  by 
 
 Council  of  Women  for  Home  Missions 
 
 and 
 
 Missionary  Education  Movement  of  the 
 United  States  and  Canada 
 New  York 
 
Copyright,  1923,  by  the 
 
 COUNCIL  OF  WOMEN  FOR  HOME  MISSIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 MISSIONARY  EDUCATION  MOVEMENT  OF  THE 
 UNITED  STATES  AND  CANADA 
 
 Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
 
TO  THE  MOTHERS  AND  FATHERS, 
 TEACHERS  AND  FRIENDS  OF  THE 
 GIRLS  AND  BOYS  OF  AMERICA 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Foreword 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ix 
 
 Chapter  I.  America’s  Greatest  Asset  .  .  i 
 
 Significance  of  human  infancy.  Illustrations  from 
 other  countries.  Dealing  with  the  liquor  traffic. 
 Experiences  in  the  World  War.  In  times  of  peace. 
 
 Every  present  situation  has  its  roots  in  the  past. 
 
 The  fundamental  position  of  the  home.  Who  are 
 these  young  people  and  where  do  they  live?  Facts 
 revealed  by  the  War.  A  home  mission  responsi¬ 
 bility.  A  summary. 
 
 Chapter  II.  Saving  Young  Bodies  .  .  .  33 
 
 Comparison  with  other  countries.  Enormous  losses. 
 
 Food  and  lack  of  food.  Carrying  out  a  task  begun 
 by  Jesus.  Christian  women  minister  to  the  needy. 
 
 The  White  House  Conference.  Facts  revealed  by 
 the  Children’s  Bureau.  The  care  of  mothers.  Other 
 agencies.  The  public  health  nurse.  Better  trained 
 parents  essential.  A  task  for  the  Church. 
 
 Chapter  III.  Play  and  Work  ....  59 
 
 Opportunities  for  play  needed.  The  playground  and 
 its  importance.  Clubs  for  girls  and  boys.  The 
 story  of  a  home  mission  church.  Play  in  the  rural 
 regions.  The  program  of  a  rural  church.  A  mining 
 camp.  Contributions  of  women’s  agencies.  The 
 place  of  motion  pictures.  The  problem  of  work. 
 Changes  in  industry  and  child  labor.  Education  the 
 business  of  childhood.  Need  for  a  constructive  pro¬ 
 gram  of  work.  Crime  a  result  of  misdirected  leisure. 
 
 A  program  of  leisure-time  activities  essential. 
 
 Chapter  IV.  Education  in  a  Democracy  .  .  91 
 
 Religious  motives  paramount.  Other  motives  enter 
 in.  Idea  of  free  popular  education  grows.  Our 
 schools  not  altogether  successful.  Many  bright 
 spots.  Very  unequal  opportunities,  many  illiterate. 
 
 School  attendance  neglected.  Buildings  inadequate 
 and  teachers  untrained.  A  survey  of  New  York 
 State  schools.  Conditions  can  be  improved.  Urgent 
 need  for  Federal  aid.  Demand  for  more  advanced 
 
 iv 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 v 
 
 PAGE 
 
 training.  Education  a  religious  problem.  Special 
 need  among  Mexicans  and  Spanish  Americans. 
 
 Negro  mission  schools.  A  time  of  crisis. 
 
 Chapter  V.  Christian  Nurture  in  the  Church 
 School . 119 
 
 Urgent  need  of  a  worth-while  religion.  Religious 
 training  the  secret  of  all  religious  success.  The 
 home  and  the  Sunday  School.  Successes  and  fail¬ 
 ures  of  the  Sunday  School.  Millions  of  girls  and 
 boys  unreached.  Sunday  School  program  inade¬ 
 quate.  Untrained  teachers  at  technical  tasks.  The 
 Indiana  Survey.  Expenditure  and  buildings.  The 
 Peak-Load-at-a-Single-Hour.  Extending  the  Sun¬ 
 day  School  period.  Religious  day  schools.  Daily 
 Vacation  Bible  Schools.  The  Week-day  Church 
 School.  Experience  at  Gary,  Indiana.  The  task 
 overwhelmingly  home  missionary  in  character. 
 
 Chapter  VI.  The  Child  and  America’s  Future  153 
 
 Importance  of  a  goal.  A  healthier  America.  A 
 more  intelligent  America.  Better  religious  training 
 for  American  youth.  Better  provisions  for  using 
 leisure  time.  Need  for  a  sense  of  stewardship. 
 Checking  crime  at  its  source.  Learning  to  be 
 friends.  A  world  brotherhood.  Doing  the  task. 
 
 The  plan  of  home  missions.  Success  only  at  the 
 price  of  sacrificial  effort. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Americans  in  the  Making  .  .  .  Frontispiece 
 
 Snap-shots  of  Rural  Life . 22 
 
 By  Way  of  the  Street . 23 
 
 Where  Do  They  Live  ? . 54 
 
 The  Community  Nurse  at  Work . 55 
 
 A  Church  Farm . 70 
 
 Community  Recreation . 71 
 
 Picking  Beans . 86 
 
 The  Tenth  American  Child . 87 
 
 A  Consolidated  School . 102 
 
 Schools  That  Were  Consolidated  ....  103 
 
 A  Seven-day-a-week  Church . 118 
 
 A  Modern  Sunday  School  Room  .  .  .  .119 
 
 “Americans” . 134 
 
 Potential  Citizens  of  Our  United  States  .  .  .  135 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The  biggest  and  most  important  task  confronting 
 America  is  to  care  for  her  girls  and  boys,  to  undergird 
 their  characters  with  the  old-fashioned  virtues,  and  to 
 train  them  to  carry  the  application  of  those  virtues  over 
 into  the  very  complicated  social,  civic,  and  economic 
 life  of  which  they  form  a  part.  No  other  task  com¬ 
 pares  with  this  in  its  fundamental  importance  and  its 
 far-reaching  effects  upon  America’s  future. 
 
 As  a  teacher  in  the  public  schools,  a  worker  in  the 
 church  school,  a  director  of  community  recreation,  a 
 parent,  and  a  traveler  into  the  waste  places  of  the 
 nation,  the  author  has  come  into  intimate  contact  with 
 American  youth  under  many  varied  conditions.  To 
 even  the  most  casual  observer  it  is  evident  that  multi¬ 
 tudes  of  our  young  people  are  not  having  even  half 
 a  chance  at  the  good  things  of  life  for  themselves,  or 
 a  fair  opportunity  to  become  intelligent  and  useful 
 citizens.  To  these  unprivileged  children  our  sympa¬ 
 thies  go  out.  Because  of  them  social  progress  is  re¬ 
 tarded  and  civilization  is  made  to  bear  a  grievous  load. 
 
 The  present  volume  is  an  attempt  to  bring  together 
 in  brief  survey  the  consideration  of  some  major  factors 
 which  are  often  treated  separately  by  specialists,  but 
 rarely  in  relation  to  each  other.  They  should  compel 
 serious  attention  to  a  matter  with  which  we  are  all 
 most  vitally  concerned. 
 
 Jay  S.  Stowell 
 
 New  York  City, 
 
 January,  1923 
 
 ix 
 
CHAPTER  I 
 
 America’s  Greatest  Asset 
 
 Many  centuries  ago  a  wise  man  wrote,  “And  he 
 that  sitteth  on  the  throne  said,  Behold,  I  make  all 
 things  new.”  Today  these  words  are  as  true  as  in 
 the  day  they  were  written.  The  great  Master  of  the 
 universe  is  ever  remaking  his  world,  and  He  is  doing 
 so  through  each  rising  generation.  The  process,  how¬ 
 ever,  demands  our  cooperation,  and  the  reason  the 
 work  seems  to  move  so  slowly  at  times  lies  in  the  fact 
 that  we  cooperate  so  languidly  and  so  ineffectively. 
 
 Up  to  date  we  seem  not  to  have  fully  comprehended 
 God’s  method  of  work.  One  might  read  volume  after 
 volume  of  our  Congressional  Record,  digest  the 
 voluminous  reports  of  that  remarkable  world  congress 
 at  Versailles,  or  follow  the  accounts  of  the  great  con¬ 
 ference  on  disarmament  held  in  the  city  of  Washing¬ 
 ton  without  being  unduly  impressed  by  the  fact  that 
 the  solution  of  great  social,  national,  international, 
 and  interracial  problems  lies  in  the  hands  of  the  girls 
 and  boys  of  the  present.  Possibly  some  day,  in  a 
 clearer  air,  we  shall  look  back  in  amazement  upon  the 
 spectacle  of  great  conferences  of  the  nations  facing 
 some  of  the  profoundest  questions  of  the  centuries 
 and  neglecting  to  consider  the  part  which  the  world’s 
 children  must  of  necessity  play  in  their  solution  if 
 they  are  to  be  solved.  As  yet,  however,  we  have  not 
 developed  the  habit  of  thinking  in  those  terms,  and  so 
 
 our  minds  follow  along  the  accustomed  paths  and  we 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 continue  to  try  the  old  devices  and  to  do  the  habitual 
 things,  little  dreaming  that  God  is  all  the  while  trying 
 to  show  us  a  more  excellent  way. 
 
 The  greatest  asset  of  today,  of  a  world  in  many 
 respects  well-nigh  bankrupt,  is  the  world’s  girls  and 
 boys.  In  them  lies  the  hope  of  the  world’s  future. 
 And  what  is  true  of  the  world  at  large  is  doubly  true 
 of  America.  America’s  greatest  asset  is  her  children. 
 Not  long  ago  a  man  of  national  reputation  wrote  a 
 book  1  addressed  to  the  girls  and  boys  of  America. 
 In  it  he  sounded  forth  this  ringing  challenge,  “Girls 
 and  boys  of  America,  you  are  the  hope  of  the  world.” 
 Over  and  over  he  repeated  these  words,  until  it  seemed 
 as  though  every  young  person  who  came  within  reach 
 of  the  book  must  have  burned  into  his  soul,  “Girls  and 
 boys  of  America,  you  are  the  hope  of  the  world.” 
 
 The  author  proceeded  to  point  out  that,  while  mil¬ 
 lions  of  girls  and  boys  were  dying  for  lack  of  food, 
 American  young  people  were  living  in  a  land  of  plenty. 
 He  showed  how  war  had  placed  millions  of  young  men 
 of  other  lands  under  the  sod — young  men  who  might 
 have  been  great  leaders  of  men,  great  scientists,  great 
 poets,  great  tellers  of  tales,  great  inventors,  great  mer¬ 
 chants,  great  physicians,  great  preachers — while  Amer¬ 
 ican  young  folk  had  escaped  almost  unscathed.  He 
 called  attention  to  America’s  physical  resources,  to  her 
 great  men  of  the  past,  to  her  public  schools,  to  her 
 ideals,  and  to  the  great  uncompleted  tasks  which  must 
 be  carried  through  to  completion,  if  at  all,  by  the  girls 
 and  boys.  And  then  he  closed,  as  he  had  begun,  with 
 
 1  You  are  the  Hope  of  the  World.  Hermann  Hagedorn. 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 3 
 
 the  striking  words,  “You  are  the  hope  of  the  world.” 
 
 Atid  doubtless  all  that  the  writer  said  was  true.  In 
 quite  a  new  sense  today  the  girls  and  boys  of  America 
 are  the  hope  of  the  world,  and  if  so,  how  much  more 
 the  hope  of  the  nation  itself.  There  is  much  at  stake 
 in  the  kind  of  people  our  young  folk  become.  What 
 sort  of  habits  are  they  to  have?  What  sort  of  ideals 
 are  they  to  hold?  What  sort  of  things  are  they  to 
 consider  worth  while?  What  kind  of  tasks  will  they 
 undertake,  and  how  well  equipped  are  they  to  be  for 
 the  fulfilment  of  these  tasks  ?  There  are  no  more  im¬ 
 portant  questions  than  these  before  the  nation  or  be¬ 
 fore  the  Christian  Church  today.  The  nation’s  future 
 and  the  future  of  the  Church  hinge  upon  the  answers 
 which  shall  be  given.  A  whole  world  is,  for  the  first 
 time  in  its  history,  listening  expectantly  for  the  reply. 
 And  the  nature  of  that  reply  will  not  be  determined 
 some  years  hence,  when  the  youth  of  the  present  have 
 grown  to  maturity;  it  is  being  determined  now — yes¬ 
 terday,  today,  and  tomorrow — in  the  home,  at  school, 
 at  church,  on  the  street,  on  the  playground.  And  we, 
 the  parents,  the  teachers,  the  friends  of  the  girls  and 
 boys  of  America,  are  shaping  the  character  of  the 
 future  by  the  materials  which  we  are  at  present  build¬ 
 ing  into  their  lives.  At  this  point,  as  perhaps  at  no 
 other,  it  is  given  to  us  to  be  workers  together  with  God. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE  OF  HUMAN  INFANCY 
 
 There  is  no  more  striking  characteristic  of  humanity 
 itself  than  human  infancy.  Not  only  is  the  human 
 infant  among  the  most  helpless  of  all  infants  at  birth, 
 
4 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 but  his  progress  toward  maturity  is  at  a  snail’s  pace. 
 When  he  at  length  reaches  full  maturity,  most  of  his 
 contemporaries  in  the  animal  world,  from  the  stand¬ 
 point  of  birth,  have  passed  through  all  the  stages  from 
 infancy  to  maturity  and  physical  decline  and  are  al¬ 
 ready  decrepit  or  dead  from  old  age  or  other  cause. 
 It  has  been  pointed  out  frequently  that  this  long 
 extended  period  of  infancy,  holding  parents  together 
 for  the  care  of  the  younger  children  until  the  older 
 ones  have  approached  or  reached  maturity,  has  been 
 one  of  the  determining  factors  in  building  up  the 
 human  family  and  through  it  the  clan  and  the  more 
 highly  developed  social  machinery  of  the  race. 
 
 But  the  full  significance  of  human  infancy  lies 
 deeper  than  that,  for  at  every  step  of  the  way  we  are 
 faced  with  the  rare  privilege  of  building  into  young 
 lives  those  things  which  will  help  to  remake  the  world 
 that  is  to  be,  a  little  more  into  the  likeness  of  the  king¬ 
 dom  of  God,  or — to  quote  a  phrase  of  Professor 
 George  Albert  Coe’s,  which  does  not  alter  the  content 
 of  the  term — “the  democracy  of  God.”  Surely,  if  we 
 are  at  all  justified  in  looking  about  us  for  indications 
 as  to  the  nature  of  the  divine  purpose,  we  must  be 
 forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the  plan  of  God  is  to 
 build  his  kingdom,  in  cooperation  with  us,  through  the 
 rising  generation.  If  there  be  any  other  effective 
 method  for  dethroning  evil  and  establishing  justice  in 
 the  world,  it  has,  as  yet,  not  been  made  manifest. 
 
 The  world  was  shocked  a  few  years  ago  when  a 
 great  psychologist  called  attention  to  the  fact  that,  in 
 the  case  of  most  individuals,  personal  habits  for  the 
 
AMERICA'S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 5 
 
 entire  life  were  fixed  during  adolescence,  permanent 
 business  habits  were  acquired  only  a  little  later,  and 
 the  chance  of  acquiring  a  big  new  idea  was  slight  after 
 thirty  years  of  age.  A  chorus  of  protests  came  back; 
 surely  man  had  more  freedom  than  that.  What  was 
 there  to  stop  an  individual  from  getting  many  new 
 ideas,  and  whenever  he  chose?  Illustrations  of  radical 
 change  in  habits  of  life  and  thought  were  cited.  All 
 of  which  was  pertinent  so  far  as  it  went,  but  none  of 
 which  modified  the  fact  that  for  the  great  mass  of 
 humanity,  that  mass  which  now  is  coming  into  its  own 
 in  this  new  age  of  democracy,  the  habits,  the  ideas, 
 the  ideals,  and  the  motives  which  will  remain  in  con¬ 
 trol  throughout  life  are  permanently  fixed  at  a  sur¬ 
 prisingly  early  age.  Nothing  but  a  great  new  experi¬ 
 ence  is  likely  to  affect  them. 
 
 In  this  connection  it  may  be  noted  that  the  World 
 War  was  just  such  a  great  new  experience.  A  social 
 explosion  on  a  world  scale  did  modify  the  thinking 
 and  the  habits  of  many  who  would  have  been  un¬ 
 touched  by  a  lesser  event.  The  remarkable  thing  is 
 that  its  effects  were  not  more  far  reaching — that  so 
 many  people  went  through  it  and  still  came  out  of  the 
 experience  with  the  same  old  mental  equipment  and 
 social  formulas  with  which  they  entered.  Even 
 though  they  were  effective,  however,  civilization  could 
 not  long  stand  the  cost  of  remaking  society  by  such 
 methods.  Fortunately  we  do  not  have  to.  We  have 
 the  children.  With  them  we  stand,  as  it  were,  at  the 
 great  turntable  of  life.  A  powerful  engine  destined 
 for  a  long  run  is  by  our  side.  Steam  is  up.  The  pres- 
 
6 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 sure  is  high.  The  giant  must  move  in  some  direction. 
 It  is  for  us  to  determine  once  for  all  whether  that 
 shall  be  north,  south,  east,  or  west.  Such,  indeed,  is 
 the  responsibility  which  God  has  placed  upon  the 
 parents  and  the  teachers  of  youth — to  determine  the 
 direction  in  which  the  rising  generation  shall  move. 
 
 Few  have  spoken  more  clearly  to  this  point  than  the 
 late  Benjamin  Kidd  in  The  Science  of  Power.  He 
 says:  “So  far  from  civilization  being  practically  un¬ 
 changeable  or  only  changeable  through  influences 
 operating  slowly  over  long  periods  of  time,  the  world 
 can  be  changed  in  a  brief  space  of  time.  Within  the 
 life  of  a  single  generation  it  can  be  made  to  undergo 
 changes  so  profound,  so  revolutionary,  so  permanent, 
 that  it  would  almost  appear  as  if  human  nature  itself 
 had  been  completely  altered  in  the  interval.” 
 
 He  adds:  “The  mechanism  and  forces,  moreover, 
 capable  of  producing  changes  of  this  nature  already 
 exist  in  the  world.  .  .  .  The  science  of  the  organiza¬ 
 tion  of  this  mechanism  and  of  the  control  of  these 
 forces  is  the  real  science  of  civilization.” 
 
 And  then,  after  an  extended  and  detailed  interpre¬ 
 tation  of  his  meaning,  he  gives  us  this  striking  state¬ 
 ment,  “Oh,  you  blind  leaders  who  seek  to  convert  the 
 world  by  labored  disputations !  Step  out  of  the  way 
 or  the  world  must  fling  you  aside.  Give  us  the  Young. 
 Give  us  the  Young,  and  we  will  create  a  new  mind 
 and  a  new  earth  in  a  single  generation.” 
 
 Fortunately  we  have  more  than  mere  theory  to  back 
 up  Mr.  Kidd’s  amazing  assertions.  The  modern  world 
 has  supplied  us  with  some  striking  illustrations  of  the 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 7 
 
 transformation  of  the  outlook  of  an  entire  nation  by 
 creating  new  ideals  in  the  nation’s  youth. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM  OTHER  COUNTRIES 
 
 Most  frequently  quoted,  and  perhaps  most  impres¬ 
 sive  of  all,  is  the  example  of  Germany.  In  her  case 
 we  have  an  instance  of  a  transformation  on  a  scale 
 perhaps  exceeding  anything  else  which  history  has  to 
 offer.  The  human  mind  could  not  take  it  in  for, 
 despite  its  effectiveness,  the  work  had  been  wrought 
 so  quietly  and  by  such  simple  and  humble  processes 
 that  even  those  who  had  watched  it  take  place  could 
 hardly  believe  it.  The  men  and  women  who  had  left 
 Germany  in  earlier  years  could  not  comprehend  that 
 the  entire  character,  outlook,  and  motive  of  the  Ger¬ 
 man  nation  had  been  fundamentally  altered. 
 
 It  was  the  first  time  that  a  great  nation,  with  an 
 efficient  mechanism  for-  the  purpose  at  hand,  had 
 undertaken  to  impress  a  radically  new  ideal  upon  a 
 rising  generation.  The  fact  that  the  ideal  chanced  to> 
 be  a  selfish  one  and  that  it  was  autocratically  imposed 
 does  not  detract  from  the  significance  of  its  method 
 and  the  amazing  results  achieved  by  its  use.  In  this 
 case,  indeed,  the  children  of  darkness  were  wiser  in 
 their  generation  than  the  children  of  light.  Had  Ger¬ 
 many  chosen  an  unselfish  ideal  and  followed  it  with 
 equal  fidelity,  there  is  no  pinnacle  of  world  leadership 
 to  which  she  might  not  have  aspired  and  attained. 
 
 And  the  method  of  the  transformation  is  not  a 
 hidden  one.  Upon  the  accession  to  power  of  William 
 II,  he  called  together  the  one  group  that  reached  all 
 
8  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 the  girls  and  boys  of  Germany;  namely,  the  elemen¬ 
 tary  school-teachers.  With  them  the  work  began,  and 
 from  them  it  was  extended  to  the  teachers  of  the 
 higher  schools,  and  later  to  the  universities.  It  was 
 only  in  the  latest  stages,  we  are  told,  that  the  adult 
 mind  of  the  nation  was  considered.  In  the  meantime, 
 substantial  and  abiding  foundations  had  been  laid  in 
 the  heart  of  the  nation’s  youth.  In  the  almost  un¬ 
 believably  short  space  of  a  few  decades  the  work  was 
 done.  We  are  told  that  in  the  main  it  was  the  achieve¬ 
 ment  of  but  two  men,  Adalbert  Falk,  Prussian  Minister 
 of  Education  up  to  1879,  and  William  II — two  indi¬ 
 viduals  who  believed  in  the  possibilities  of  girls  and 
 boys  as  the  agents  for  remaking  a  nation’s  life. 
 
 Scarcely  less  striking  is  the  well-nigh  miraculous 
 transformation  of  Japan  within  the  lifetime  and 
 memory  of  multitudes  now  living.  The  rapidity  with 
 which  Japan  has  traveled  the  long  road  from  the  posi¬ 
 tion  of  a  hermit  nation,  entirely  cut  off  from  inter¬ 
 course  with  or  participation  in  the  world’s  affairs,  to 
 that  of  a  world  power  to  be  reckoned  with  and  called 
 into  conference  when  matters  of  importance  are  to  be 
 considered,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  phenomena 
 of  our  age.  Yet,  again,  the  solution  is  not  far  to  seek. 
 Japan  has  taken  this  long  and  rapid  stride  forward 
 because  she  began  with  her  girls  and  boys,  because  she 
 constructed  a  public  school  system  which,  whatever 
 Its  deficiencies  from  the  standpoint  of  supplying  facili¬ 
 ties  for  secondary  education,  did  carry  elementary 
 education  to  the  uttermost  corners  of  the  Empire. 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 9 
 
 The  result  has  been  a  new  Japan  whose  voice  is  heard 
 with  respect  in  the  councils  of  the  nations. 
 
 DEALING  WITH  THE  LIQUOR  TRAFFIC 
 
 Nor  are  we  forced  to  go  beyond  the  limits  of  our 
 own  country  to  discover  illustrations  of  the  success 
 of  similar  methods.  Since  the  beginning  of  history 
 liquor  has  exacted  its  enormous  toll  from  the  sum 
 total  of  human  efficiency  and  social  welfare.  Thor¬ 
 oughly  intrenched  in  individual  habits,  social  custom, 
 and  social  heritage,  it  had  brazenly  defied  all  on¬ 
 slaughts.  And  then,  suddenly,  we  saw  the  legalized 
 liquor  traffic  abolished  in  the  nation.  Those  who 
 profited  by  the  traffic  tell  us  that  it  was  done  in  a 
 moment  of  national  hysteria,  that  it  was  “put  over” 
 surreptitiously  while  “the  boys”  were  in  France.  But 
 that  hardly  states  the  case.  If  it  was  “put  over,”  it 
 was  not  done  while  the  boys  were  in  France,  but  a 
 generation  earlier  when  the  facts  about  the  effects  of 
 alcohol  were  introduced  into  the  regular  curriculum 
 of  our  public  schools  and  into  our  Sunday-schools; 
 and  when  members  of  the  Woman’s  Christian  Tem¬ 
 perance  Union  and  other  consecrated  women  gathered 
 groups  of  children  together  all  over  the  United  States 
 and  by  pictures,  object  lessons,  and  word  of  mouth 
 impressed  upon  their  minds  and  hearts  the  evils  of 
 the  liquor  traffic.  In  those  days  the  Woman’s  Chris¬ 
 tian  Temperance  Union  with  its  white  ribbons  and 
 its  Loyal  Temperance  Legion  bands  was  a  subject  for 
 ridicule  on  the  part  of  the  forces  of  evil. 
 
10 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 But  the  girls  and  the  boys  grew  up.  They  became 
 fathers  and  mothers;  they  became  lawyers  and  doc¬ 
 tors;  they  became  teachers,  farmers,  employers  of 
 labor,  railroad  superintendents,  state  legislators,  gov¬ 
 ernors,  and  congressmen;  and  the  deed  was  done. 
 How  thoroughly,  indeed,  we  may  infer  from  the  fact 
 that  of  the  more  than  twenty-five  hundred  counties  in 
 the  United  States  there  remained  but  three  hundred 
 and  five  which  had  not  declared  themselves  dry  prior 
 to  the  enactment  of  the  prohibition  amendment. 
 Now  that  the  deed  is  done,  we  have  the  outcry  of  a 
 loud-voiced  minority ;  and  when  we  study  that 
 minority,  we  discover  that  it  is  made  up  overwhelm¬ 
 ingly  of  representatives  of  our  foreign-born  groups, 
 persons  who  as  children  lived  in  an  entirely  different 
 environment  and  were  subjected  to  an  entirely  dif¬ 
 ferent  teaching.  One  of  the  best  known  of  our  fed¬ 
 eral  judges  recently  declared  that  ninety  per  cent  of 
 the  liquor  law  violators  who  were  brought  before  him 
 were  foreign  born.  Before  the  blessing  of  prohibi¬ 
 tion  can  be  made  permanent  and  assured,  we  must 
 spend  other  years  training  the  children  of  those  who 
 at  present  are  loudest  in  their  railings.  Nor  will  it  be 
 surprising  if  the  process  involves  considerable  time 
 and  effort,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  much  of  its  effec¬ 
 tiveness  will  be  nullified  by  the  influence  of  the  home 
 with  foreign  ideals.  In  New  York  State,  for  example, 
 the  latest  census  reveals  the  fact  that  sixty-two  per 
 cent  of  the  entire  population  is  made  up  of  immigrants 
 or  children  of  immigrants. 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 II 
 
 EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  WORLD  WAR 
 
 The  World  War,  bad  as  it  was,  provided  us  with 
 an  opportunity  for  some  very  interesting  experiments 
 in  dealing  with  a  large  but  selected  group  of  young 
 men.  Several  million  young  men,  multitudes  of  them 
 having  little  or  no  idea  of  what  the  war  was  all  about, 
 were  gathered  into  camps  and  cantonments.  Then 
 began  the  herculean  task  of  creating  an  ideal  and  gen¬ 
 erating  a  passion  for  it  in  the  hearts  of  these  multi¬ 
 tudes  of  raw  recruits.  Rarely,  if  ever,  has  a  similar 
 task  on  so  large  a  scale  been  undertaken.  Conditions, 
 however,  were  favorable.  The  recruits  were  young, 
 a  large  proportion  were  still  in  the  recognized  period 
 of  susceptibility  to  new  ideas  and  new  passions.  They 
 were  away  from  home,  in  a  new  and  strange  environ¬ 
 ment.  All  the  transpiring  events  were  such  as  to 
 stimulate  their  intellectual  and  emotional  life.  They 
 were  assembled  at  points  where  they  could  be  reached 
 and  their  attention  could  be  commanded.  Surely  the 
 situation  was,  in  truth,  “made  to  order.” 
 
 The  best  talent  which  the  nation  could  afford  was 
 drafted  for  the  task.  Famous  orators  toured  the 
 camps;  skilled  writers  prepared  documents  which  were 
 duplicated  by  the  million  and  distributed ;  talented 
 artists  taxed  their  abilities  to  put  into  pictures  the 
 thing  that  others  were  trying  to  put  into  words.  Time 
 was  precious;  every  moment  counted;  and  processes 
 were  speeded  up  beyond  all  precedent.  And  with  what 
 result?  Such  results  cannot  be  tabulated  even  though 
 they  were  enormous,  but  we  are  told  that  not  a  boy 
 
12 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 in  France,  wearing  the  uniform  of  the  United  States, 
 went  “over  the  top  ”  who  did  not  feel  that,  in  some 
 way,  he  was  fighting  for  the  preservation  and  exten¬ 
 sion  of  democracy  in  the  world,  and  that  he  was  a 
 willing  sacrifice  in  a  great  and  noble  cause. 
 
 With  the  same  group  we  tried  some  other  experi¬ 
 ments,  the  results  of  which  can  be  more  readily  tabu¬ 
 lated.  We  undertook,  for  example,  under  the  leader¬ 
 ship  of  the  tobacco  interests  of  the  country  to  teach 
 our  boys  to  use  cigarettes.  Just  why  it  should  have 
 come  to  be  so  generally  recognized  that  a  cigarette 
 was  an  essential  appendage  of  every  fighting  man  is 
 hard  to  state,  particularly  in  view  of  the  fact  that  one 
 of  the  very  first  pamphlets  issued  by  the  United  States 
 Government  to  enroled  men,  even  before  the  canton¬ 
 ments  were  ready  to  receive  them,  suggested  that,  in 
 preparation  for  coming  to  camp,  any  men  who  were 
 addicted  to  the  habit  of  smoking  should  cut  down  on 
 the  amount  of  tobacco  consumed,  as  it  was  bad  for 
 the  “wind.”  At  any  rate  the  idea  appeared  that  ciga¬ 
 rettes  were  essential  to  the  soldier.  We  gave  our 
 money  for  them;  we  shipped  them  in  unprecedented 
 quantities;  we  distributed  them  free.  We  placed  them 
 in  comfort  kits;  we  secured  the  services  of  beautiful 
 girls  to  pass  them  out  to  the  men.  We  pictured  the 
 cigarette  as  a  well-nigh  indispensable  asset  to  the  sol¬ 
 dier,  and  we  said  openly,  or  implied  unmistakably, 
 that  anyone  who  denied  that  statement  was  either  a 
 mollycoddle  or  a  pro-German  or  both.  And  how  sur¬ 
 prisingly  successful  we  were!  The  use  of  cigarettes 
 increased  by  leaps  and  bounds.  Young  men  who  never 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET  13 
 
 had  dreamed  of  needing  cigarettes  became  habitual 
 users  of  them,  and  three  years  after  the  close  of  the 
 war  the  annual  production  of  cigarettes  in  the  United 
 States  was  reported  at  nearly  sixty-two  billion — 
 enough  to  supply  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the 
 country  with  six  hundred  cigarettes  each.  Seventy- 
 five  per  cent  of  this  product  was  for  home  consump¬ 
 tion.  These  figures  represent  an  increase  of  nearly 
 four  hundred  per  cent  since  1914,  although  they  take 
 no  account  of  the  hundreds  of  millions,  or  billions,  of 
 hand-rolled  cigarettes  which  are  being  used  each  year. 
 
 We  are  not,  at  the  moment,  discussing  the  merits 
 or  demerits  of  the  cigarette,  but  rather  trying  to  indi¬ 
 cate  something  of  the  feasibility  of  radically  modify¬ 
 ing  the  acts  and  habits  of  large  bodies  of  youth  when 
 once  society  undertakes  to  lay  a  new  ideal  upon  them. 
 So  amazing  a  result  would  never  have  been  attained 
 in  this  particular  field  had  it  not  been  for  the  fact 
 that  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  persons  concerned 
 were  still  in  the  plastic  period  of  life.  And  this  in¬ 
 cludes,  of  course,  not  alone  the  young  men  who  were 
 in  the  army,  but  also  those  millions  of  youths  who, 
 too  young  for  military  service,  saw  in  the  soldier  their 
 ideal  of  manhood  and,  in  so  far  as  it  was  possible  to 
 do  so,  copied  his  habits  of  speech  and  action. 
 
 IN  TIMES  OF  PEACE 
 
 Nor  has  the  experience  of  the  government  been 
 limited  to  the  time  of  war.  It  was  the  Agricultural 
 Department  that  first  discovered  the  boy  and  later  the 
 girl.  For  years  it  had  been  trying  to  deal  with  adults, 
 
14  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 but  it  was  uphill  business  trying  to  teach  a  seasoned 
 farmer  anything  new  or  even  to  convince  him  that 
 possibly  he  was  not  doing  everything  exactly  as  it 
 should  be  done.  The  situation  was  clearly,  but  un- 
 premeditatedly  stated  by  one  old  farmer  who,  when 
 asked  to  attend  a  farmers’  institute  where  the  rotation 
 of  crops  and  the  conservation  of  soil  values  were  to 
 be  discussed,  replied:  “Why  should  I  go?  What  can 
 them  white-collared  folks  learn  me  about  farming? 
 I’ve  worn  out  three  farms  in  my  lifetime.” 
 
 What,  indeed,  could  the  Department  of  Agriculture 
 do  for  such  a  man  and  the  millions  of  others  like  him? 
 Then  someone  thought  of  the  farm  boy;  corn  clubs 
 began  to  be  organized;  any  boy  over  ten  years  of  age 
 was  eligible;  and  things  began  to  happen.  One  boy, 
 using  new  methods,  raised  as  much  corn  on  one  acre, 
 because  he  was  still  teachable,  as  his  father  raised  on 
 eight  acres  by  the  old  methods.  The  boy  began  right 
 and  did  not  have  so  much  to  unlearn  as  his  father. 
 Then  Jerry  Moore  raised  228  bushels  of  corn  on  a 
 single  acre  of  land  in  South  Carolina.  Within  three 
 years  after  that  the  corn  crop  in  South  Carolina 
 jumped  from  seventeen  million  to  fifty  million  bushels. 
 Little  wonder  that  Jerry  Moore  became  so  famous  that 
 a  Sunday-school  pupil  when  questioned  about  Jere¬ 
 miah  said  to  his  teacher,  “I  don’t  know  anything  about 
 Jeremiah,  but  I  know  all  about  Jerry  Moore.” 
 
 Jerry  Moore,  a  mere  boy,  increased  the  average 
 corn  yield  per  acre  of  every  one  of  the  fifteen  southern 
 states.  Or  perhaps  we  are  wrong,  possibly  it  was  not 
 Jerry  Moore  at  all,  but  the  man  who  had  the  brilliant, 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 15 
 
 but  simple,  idea  of  getting  at  the  agricultural  problem 
 through  the  teachable  farm  boy  rather  than  through 
 the  unteachable  adult  farmer,  fixed  in  his  habits  of 
 thought  and  action. 
 
 To  multiply  illustrations  is,  perhaps,  of  little  avail. 
 The  point  which  we  are  trying  to  make  clear  is  that, 
 while  the  fixity  of  maturity  is  God’s  way  of  giving 
 stability  to  society  and  of  enabling  us  to  consolidate 
 and  maintain  our  gains,  the  hope  for  a  better  future 
 lies  in  the  plasticity  of  youth, — and  there  is  no  other 
 hope.  By  this  sign  we  must  conquer — or  we  must 
 confess  defeat. 
 
 EVERY  PRESENT  SITUATION  HAS  ITS  ROOTS  IN  THE  PAST 
 
 Every  perplexing  situation  which  we  face  today  has 
 its  roots  in  the  past,  and  if  we  follow  them  far 
 enough,  we  come,  sooner  or  later,  to  the  heart  and 
 life  of  a  child.  The  founder  of  Mohammedanism  was 
 once  a  little  child,  and  had  the  Christian  Church  been 
 alert,  he  might  have  become  a  mighty  power  for  the 
 extension  of  Christianity.  Instead,  today  we  have 
 Islam,  a  great  stumbling  block  in  the  way  of  the  gos¬ 
 pel.  Joe  Smith  was  once  a  small  boy,  but  his  family 
 was  one  of  the  marginal  families  living  just  on  the 
 edge  of  the  community  life,  and  so  no  one  thought 
 Joe  Smith  worth  saving.  But  Joe  Smith  was  able  to 
 start  a  movement  which,  under  the  leadership  of  a 
 stronger  man,  was  destined  to  become  a  perplexing 
 factor  to  be  reckoned  with  in  our  national  life.  Such 
 men  do  not  “just  happen.”  They  are  the  normal 
 product  of  environment  and  training — or  lack  of  it. 
 
16 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 Not  long  ago  the  nation  was  shocked  by  the  revela¬ 
 tions  of  the  doings  of  a  certain  star  of  the  “movie” 
 world.  Loud,  indeed,  was  our  condemnation.  Yet, 
 more  fitting  it  might  have  been  for  us  to  have  bowed 
 in  humility  under  the  conviction  of  social  sin,  for  as 
 one  read  the  story  of  that  life  from  childhood  up,  there 
 appeared  written  on  every  page  the  supreme  tragedy 
 of  a  neglected  childhood.  Society  was  the  particeps 
 criminis  here  as  in  the  majority  of  lives  similarly  foul 
 and  unworthy. 
 
 Nor  do  such  men  as  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Lvman 
 Abbott,  Sheldon  Jackson,  and  all  those  others  who 
 have  helped  and  are  helping  to  make  our  country 
 what  it  is,  “just  happen.”  They  too  were  once  boys, 
 and  the  lofty  ideals  dominating  them  had  their  roots 
 far  back  in  that  distant  boyhood.  Little  wonder  that 
 we  have  the  story  of  the  old  man  who,  many  years 
 ago,  when  visiting  a  boys’  school,  removed  his  hat  and 
 bowed  low,  saying,  “I  do  not  know  what  great  man 
 there  may  be  among  them,  and  I  wish  to  honor  him.” 
 
 Far-reaching,  indeed,  are  the  possibilities  bound  up 
 in  the  heart  and  life  of  a  child;  but  whether  the  native 
 endowment  be  small  or  great,  the  sobering  fact  re¬ 
 mains  that  at  a  very  early  age  a  permanent  set  will 
 be  given  to  the  life,  and  we  have  the  determining  vote 
 as  to  what  that  set  will  be.  Such  is  the  responsibility 
 that  is  thrust  upon  us,  and  such  the  rare  privilege  that 
 our  Maker  shares  with  us.  For  both  our  successes 
 and  our  failures,  we  are  held  accountable.  The 
 America  that  is  today,  with  all  its  ideals  and  all  its 
 glory  and  with  all  its  ignorance,  vice,  and  shame,  is 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 17 
 
 but  the  natural  product  of  our  youth  of  yesterday, 
 and  the  America  that  is  to  be  will  not  be  determined 
 at  some  point  ten,  twenty,  thirty  years  distant.  It  is 
 being  determined  here  and  now,  and  we,  the  parents 
 and  teachers  of  the  girls  and  boys  of  America,  are 
 shaping  its  destiny.  By  no  fatalistic  philosophy  of  life 
 can  we  longer  escape  our  responsibility.  The  America 
 of  the  future  is  to  be  determined  by  the  things  which 
 we,  individually  and  socially,  build  into  the  young  life 
 of  the  present. 
 
 Possibly  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  press  home 
 this  point  so  persistently  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that, 
 up  to  date,  the  Christian  Church  has  largely  failed  to 
 acknowledge  its  validity.  It  has,  on  the  one  hand, 
 not  entirely  ignored  its  youth,  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
 it  has  failed  to  take  seriously  the  task  of  building  the 
 kingdom  through  them.  If  one  is  inclined  to  doubt 
 the  accuracy  of  this  statement,  he  has  but  to  study  the 
 architecture  of  a  thousand  churches  picked  at  random 
 from  any  part  or  all  parts  of  the  country;  or  he  may 
 examine  the  budgets  of  those  same  thousand  churches; 
 or  he  may  investigate  the  kind  of  courses  which  the 
 ministers  of  those  churches  took  when  they  were  pre¬ 
 paring  for  their  tasks. 
 
 THE  FUNDAMENTAL  POSITION  OF  THE  HOME 
 
 And  what  is  true  of  the  Church  in  this  regard  is 
 true  of  that  most  fundamental  of  all  social  institutions, 
 the  home.  That  the  home  has  failed  either  to  under¬ 
 stand  or  to  measure  up  to  its  responsibility  is  clear. 
 The  development  of  our  social  machinery  has  fur- 
 
18 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 nished  an  excuse  for  parents  to  throw  off  upon  out¬ 
 side  agencies  responsibilities  which  must,  in  the  very 
 nature  of  the  case,  devolve  upon  the  home.  The  home 
 circle  is,  after  all,  the  place  where  the  child  spends  the 
 greatest  number  of  hours,  and  this  is  particularly  true 
 during  the  first  six  or  seven  years  of  the  child’s  life — 
 years  which  are,  without  doubt,  the  most  important 
 of  all  in  his  training.  If  he  is  not  taught  to  obey  in 
 the  home,  he  is  not  likely  to  learn  that  art  outside  of 
 the  home.  If  parents  are  not  able  to  instil  high  ideals 
 of  conduct  and  attitudes  of  respect  and  reverence,  the 
 chance  of  the  child’s  attaining  these  ideals  or  acquiring 
 these  attitudes  from  other  sources  is  relatively  slight. 
 Nowhere  are  more  ideal  conditions  for  molding  young 
 lives  provided  for  us  than  in  the  home,  and  upon  no 
 social  institution  does  such  heavy  responsibility  rest 
 as  upon  the  home. 
 
 As  our  discussion  proceeds,  we  shall  have  much  to 
 say  about  those  community  agencies  which  deal  with 
 the  life  of  the  child.  Throughout,  however,  we  must 
 bear  in  mind  that  in  matters  of  child  welfare,  play, 
 work,  and  particularly  in  the  field  of  religious  and 
 moral  training,  the  place  of  the  home  is  fundamental, 
 and  the  responsibilities  of  the  parent  in  these  matters 
 can  never  be  satisfactorily  assumed  by  any  community 
 agency,  regardless  of  its  efficiency. 
 
 WHO  ARE  THESE  YOUNG  PEOPLE  AND  WHERE  DO 
 
 THEY  LIVE? 
 
 If,  then,  we  have  made  it  clear  that  America’s  fu¬ 
 ture  is  wrapped  up  in  her  present-day  girls  and  boys, 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 19 
 
 we  may  well  pause  to  consider  who  and  what  and 
 where  these  young  folk  are. 
 
 It  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  determine  just  when  the 
 boy  becomes  the  man  or  the  girl  has  really  become  the 
 woman.  All  sorts  of  artificial  boundaries  have  been 
 set  up,  but  for  the  moment  we  may  consider  that  vast 
 army  of  young  life  up  to  and  including  the  age  of 
 twenty-four  years.  The  census  reveals  to  us  that  more 
 than  half  of  our  population  is  included  in  this  group 
 — fifty-two  and  one  half  million  young  people,  every 
 one  still  in  the  plastic,  formative  period  of  life,  and 
 not  one  over  twenty-four  years  of  age!  Sufficient  in 
 numbers  they  would  be  to  replace  every  man,  woman, 
 and  child  in  our  twenty-two  states  west  of  the  Mis¬ 
 sissippi,  in  Canada,  and  in  most  of  Mexico. 
 
 Even  though  we  were  to  reduce  the  limit  and  in¬ 
 clude  in  our  consideration  only  those  young  people 
 who  are  nineteen  years  of  age  or  under,  we  should 
 still  have  a  larger  number  in  our  group  than  is  rep¬ 
 resented  by  the  entire  present  population  of  France. 
 In  other  words,  we  could  replace  the  entire  population 
 of  a  country  the  size  of  France  with  our  girls  and 
 boys,  not  one  over  nineteen  years  of  age,  not  one  old 
 enough  to  vote.  The  very  thought  of  such  an  army 
 of  youth  in  our  nation  is  enough  to  make  us  pause, 
 and  as  we  pause,  we  reflect  that  this  is  the  America 
 that  is  to  be.  This  group  includes  the  husbands  and 
 wives,  the  fathers  and  mothers,  the  teachers,  the 
 voters,  the  office-holders,  the  doctors,  the  lawyers,  the 
 ministers,  the  business  men,  the  farmers,  the  labor 
 leaders,  the  capitalists,  the  paupers,  the  grafters,  the 
 
20 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 crooks,  the  murderers,  and  all  the  other  adventurers 
 of  the  generation  to  come.  With  the  exception  of  a 
 certain  number  of  individuals  whom  we  shall  import 
 from  other  countries,  they  are  all  here. 
 
 Some  of  them  live  in  homes  of  wealth;  many  more 
 exist  in  dirt  and  squalor  and  poverty.  Some  have 
 parents  of  culture,  education,  and  refinement;  millions 
 have  parents  who  cannot  read  and  write  in  any  lan¬ 
 guage.  Some  of  these  girls  and  boys  have  bed-rooms 
 of  their  own,  with  pictures  on  the  walls,  and  with  their 
 personal  possessions  at  hand,  where  they  may  dress 
 and  undress  in  private,  and  conduct  their  personal 
 devotions  unobserved;  uncounted  numbers  live  in  one- 
 room  cabins  or  in  other  crowded  quarters,  where  every 
 function  of  life  must  be  performed  with  the  other 
 members  of  the  family  at  hand,  and  where  the  develop¬ 
 ment  of  modesty  and  the  virtues  which  go  with  it  is 
 made  most  difficult.  Some  live  in  tenement  houses  in 
 great  cities,  some  in  mining  shacks,  some  in  rough 
 board  cabins,  some  in  log  cabins,  some  in  adobe  huts, 
 some  in  tepees,  some  in  pueblos,  some  in  house-boats, 
 and  some  in  tents  and  box-cars. 
 
 From  the  standpoint  of  race,  as  indicated  by  com¬ 
 plexion,  these  girls  and  boys  range  through  the  entire 
 scale,  from  the  blonde  Anglo-Saxon  to  the  blackest 
 African,  including  many  shades  of  red  and  yellow 
 and  brown — all  potential  citizens,  Americans  in  the 
 making. 
 
 And  what  sort  of  scenes  do  these  boys  and  girls 
 look  out  upon  today  and  every  day?  Some  of  them 
 know  nothing  but  the  noisy  and  dirty  canyon  of  a  city 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 21 
 
 street;  others  have  never  seen  a  city  of  any  sort. 
 Some  look  out  upon  the  great  towering  peaks  of  the 
 Rocky  Mountains;  the  eyes  of  others  have  never 
 known  anything  but  the  vast  rolling  plains.  Some 
 are  accustomed  to  the  green  grass  and  the  green  trees; 
 other  boys  and  girls  gaze  out  each  morning  upon  end¬ 
 less  stretches  of  gray,  dry  sage-brush.  Some  go  to 
 sleep  each  night  with  the  roll  of  the  ocean  waves  in 
 their  ears;  others  have  never  seen  a  body  of  water 
 larger  than  a  mud-hole. 
 
 Thus  we  might  continue  to  suggest  the  infinite 
 variety  of  circumstances  which  surround  these  girls 
 and  boys  of  America  and  in  the  midst  of  which  they 
 live  and  grow.  And  were  we  to  include,  as  we  should, 
 the  nearly  a  million  girls  and  boys  to  be  found  under 
 the  American  flag  in  Alaska,  Hawaii,  and  Porto  Rico, 
 — not  to  mention  our  other  possessions, — we  should 
 but  add  a  multitude  of  details  to  a  picture  already  too 
 varied  and  too  complicated  for  us  quite  to  understand 
 it  all. 
 
 These  girls  and  boys  constitute  America’s  hope. 
 With  all  of  their  limitations,  with  all  of  their  natural 
 endowments,  they  are  the  America  of  the  future  in 
 process  of  formation.  And  we  are  the  ones  who  direct 
 and  control  the  process.  To  build  out  of  this  infinite 
 variety  of  young  life  a  society  which  shall  be  worth 
 the  building,  more  worthy  than  anything  that  the  past 
 has  produced,  that  is  our  task  as  members  of  society, 
 as  Christians. 
 
 We  would  not  for  a  moment  imply  that  as  citizens 
 and  as  Christians  we  have  in  the  past  ignored  our 
 
22 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 young  folk.  Far  from  it.  Our  extended  public  school 
 systems,  our  Sunday-schools,  and  our  great  variety  of 
 young  people’s  organizations  are  a  definite  testimony 
 to  the  contrary.  We  have  done  much,  and  the  reward 
 of  our  achievement  is  a  challenge  to  greater  endeavor. 
 
 FACTS  REVEALED  BY  THE  WAR 
 
 The  War,  which  has  been  held  responsible  for  many 
 things,  did  show  to  us  some  things  about  ourselves 
 which  were  worth  learning.  Indeed,  we  learned  more 
 in  that  short  time  than  perhaps  ever  before  in  our  his¬ 
 tory.  Some  of  the  revelations  distinctly  disturbed  our 
 self-complacency.  We  learned,  for  example,  that  a 
 disgracefully  large  proportion  of  our  young  men  were 
 physically  unfit  for  military  service.  And  we  were  told 
 that  a  very  large  percentage  of  the  physical  defects  re¬ 
 vealed  might  have  been  corrected  if  we  had  cared  for 
 the  bodies  of  our  boys  and  girls  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
 their  growth.  To  be  sure  we  did  not  rear  our  boys 
 to  become  soldiers,  but  when  they  attempted  to  enter 
 military  service,  we  discovered  some  of  the  handicaps 
 under  which  they  had  been  laboring  in  times  of  peace. 
 
 Then,  too,  we  discovered  that  while  we  had  been 
 boasting  about  our  public  school  systems,  we  had  in 
 America  a  proportion  of  illiterates  several  times 
 greater  than  we  had  been  led  to  believe.  We  found 
 an  appalling  number  of  our  young  men  who  could  not 
 read  or  write  in  any  language,  and  many  more  who 
 had  once  had  some  training  in  these  arts,  but  who  had 
 long  since  ceased  to  practise  them. 
 
 Further,  we  had  our  attention  called  to  the  fact  that 
 
Ipllpg 
 
 SNAP-SHOTS  OF  RURAL  LIFE 
 
 Through  schools  and  churches,  the  organizing  of  clubs,  and 
 providing  outlets  for  the  play  instinct,  new  interests  are  being 
 introduced  into  the  lives  of  the  youth  in  our  rural  districts,  and 
 the  barrenness  of  life  in  the  country  is  thereby  relieved.  Rais¬ 
 ing  a  prize  sheep  or  growing  crops  under  expert  supervision 
 has  transformed  the  outlook  of  many  a  country  youth. 
 
BY  WAY  OF  THE  STREET 
 
 These  citizens-in-the-making  are  the  normal  product  of  their 
 environment.  When  a  child  is  forced  to  spend  his  leisure  time 
 on  the  street,  the  community  is  sure  to  suffer  serious  conse¬ 
 quences  as  a  result.  Playgrounds  and  recreation  programs  are 
 cheap  and  effective  forms  of  social  insurance. 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 23 
 
 an  overwhelming  proportion  of  our  young  life  is  re¬ 
 ligiously  illiterate.  Our  young  men  were  not  even  in¬ 
 telligently  informed  as  to  what  Christianity  is,  what 
 its  tenets  are,  or  what  the  church  is  trying  to  do  in 
 the  world.  This,  too,  came  as  somewhat  of  a  sur¬ 
 prise.  For  years  we  had  pointed  to  the  overwhelming 
 proportion  of  our  church  members  who  had  come  into 
 the  church  from  the  Sunday-school.  This  had  en¬ 
 gendered  a  false  feeling  of  satisfaction  with  our 
 efforts  and  had  helped  us  to  forget  that  literally  mil¬ 
 lions  of  our  girls  and  boys  never  get  into  Sunday- 
 school  at  all  and  that,  of  those  who  do  connect  with 
 a  Sunday-school  at  some  time,  we  lose  irrevocably  the 
 larger  proportion  after  a  few  weeks  or  a  few  months 
 or  even  years  of  such  contact. 
 
 The  facts  that  we  have  learned  have,  indeed,  been 
 of  the  sort  to  keep  a  thoughtful  person  awake  at  night. 
 It  has  become  increasingly  evident  that,  unless  we  can 
 get  a  fresh  grip  upon  our  task,  the  future  of  our  na¬ 
 tion  is  in  very  great  danger,  not  at  the  hands  of  mili¬ 
 tary  or  naval  enemies,  but  from  the  more  insidious 
 forces  which  work  from  within.  Professor  Walter  S. 
 A'thearn  has  wisely  said,  “There  are  just  two  influ¬ 
 ences  that  can  effect  the  undoing  of  democracy,  and 
 those  two  influences  are  ignorance  and  Godlessness  ” 
 These  are  our  dangers.  The  rising  generation  is  our 
 hope. 
 
 That  we  are  in  real  danger,  few  who  are  acquainted 
 with  the  facts  will  deny.  Even  our  President  was 
 moved  to  call  for  the  observance  of  “National  Educa¬ 
 tion  Week/’  It  was  well  that  he  did,  for  we  have 
 
24 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 reached  a  critical  moment  in  our  educational  develop¬ 
 ment,  a  moment  when  to  stand  still  is  to  retreat.  And 
 this  we  mean,  not  in  any  metaphorical  sense,  but  liter¬ 
 ally.  Take  a  single  illustration.  We  are  faced  with 
 the  hard  fact  that  a  given  amount  of  money  will, 
 today,  build  a  poorer  schoolhouse,  provide  less  ade¬ 
 quate  equipment,  and  hire  a  poorer  teacher  than  it 
 would  several  years  ago.  What  is  to  be  done  about 
 it?  Shall  we  stick  to  our  former  scale  of  expenditures 
 and  thus  retreat?  Shall  we  increase  our  expenditures 
 enough  to  hold  our  own?  Shall  we  take  hold  of  the 
 job  and  do  it  because  it  needs  to  be  done  and  pay  the 
 bill?  These  are  a  few  of  the  questions  confronting 
 our  communities  today  in  the  field  of  education,  and 
 the  answers  which  are  given  will  determine  whether 
 we  are  to  have  a  literate  or  an  illiterate  America. 
 Fundamentally,  it  is  a  question  of  whether  we  think 
 the  job  is  worth  while  and  whether  we  are  willing  to 
 pay  the  cost  in  terms  of  money  and  consecrated  hu¬ 
 man  energy.  Will  the  American  people  get  the  vision, 
 community  by  community,  and  do  the  job? 
 
 In  the  case  of  the  Church,  the  situation  is  similar 
 in  many  of  its  aspects.  By  our  very  form  of  govern¬ 
 ment  the  teaching  of  religion  is  kept  out  of  our  public 
 schools.  If  religion  is  to  be  taught,  it  must  be  done 
 by  the  home  and  the  Church.  And  religion  must  be 
 taught.  The  very  security  of  our  society  depends 
 upon  it.  In  some  respects,  however,  the  Church  is  in 
 more  serious  embarrassment  than  the  State,  for  the 
 Church,  in  general,  lacks  both  the  buildings  and  the 
 equipment  for  its  work,  and,  up  to  date,  it  has  had 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 25 
 
 small  place  in  its  budget  for  the  workers.  Here,  again, 
 the  question  intrudes  itself,  ‘‘Will  the  Church  get  the 
 vision,  and  will  it  do  the  job?” 
 
 A  HOME  MISSION  RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 In  this  connection  we  may  note  that  the  responsi¬ 
 bility  of  the  Church  rests  both  upon  those  self- 
 supporting  churches  that  have  resources  sufficient  for 
 their  own  needs  and  the  needs  of  the  communities  in 
 which  they  serve  and  also  upon  those  home  mission 
 agencies  through  which  the  Church  has  chosen  to 
 reach  down  in  Christian  ministry  to  those  thousands 
 of  communities  that  are  not  equal  to  the  tasks  which 
 confront  them. 
 
 For  many  years  the  work  of  general  home  mission 
 boards  was  largely  that  of  church  extension.  The 
 rapid  settlement  of  our  country  forced  this  program 
 upon  home  mission  agencies.  The  characteristic 
 worker  of  this  era  was  the  frontier  missionary,  the 
 itinerant  preacher,  and  the  evangelist;  and  the  char¬ 
 acteristic  home  of  the  work  was  a  one-room  building 
 with  four  walls  and  a  roof  and  an  inside  arrangement 
 devised  to  accommodate  an  audience  and  a  preacher. 
 As  time  has  passed,  the  frontier  has  doubled  upon 
 itself  until  it  has  lost  its  geographic  entity.  It  is  no 
 longer  in  the  West,  the  East,  the  North,  or  the  South; 
 — instead,  it  is  everywhere.  No  longer  is  it  the  new 
 community  which  causes  the  chief  anxiety  of  home 
 mission  executives;  instead,  it  is  the  old  community 
 with  its  many  people  and  its  multiplied  complexities. 
 New  York  City,  one  of  our  earliest  settlements,  with 
 
26 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 its  millions  of  people  and  its  billions  of  productive 
 capital,  is,  perhaps,  the  greatest  and  the  most  difficult 
 home  mission  field  which  we  have,  and  what  is  true 
 of  New  York  is  true,  in  proportion,  of  scores  of  our 
 great  cities  in  which  the  Church  has  been  fighting  a 
 losing  battle  and  where,  in  some  cases,  its  continued 
 existence  is  seriously  threatened. 
 
 Face  to  face  with  these  tremendous  difficulties — 
 particularly  that  of  dealing  with  enormous  groups  of 
 people  of  foreign  birth  or  parentage  and  of  foreign 
 language — and  with  an  ever  increasing  field  of  respon¬ 
 sibility,  the  home  mission  boards  of  the  country  have, 
 almost  unconsciously,  worked  out  a  radically  new 
 method  of  handling  their  task.  That  method  is  char¬ 
 acterized  particularly  by  its  special  emphasis  upon 
 work  with  girls  and  boys,  and  it  is  evidenced  by  the 
 building  of  altogether  new  types  of  home  mission 
 churches,  the  employment  of  altogether  new  types  of 
 home  mission  workers,  and  the  adoption  of  altogether 
 new  programs  of  work.  Today  kindergartens,  day 
 nurseries,  children’s  clinics,  girls’  clubs  and  boys’  clubs 
 of  every  character,  mothers’  clubs,  gymnasium  classes, 
 school-day  lunches,  visiting  nurses,  daily  vacation 
 Bible  schools,  week-day  religious  instruction,  evening 
 classes  of  many  sorts,  industrial  classes  for  boys  and 
 girls  after  school  hours,  summer  camps,  and  a  multi¬ 
 tude  of  other  related  activities  having  to  do  with  the 
 welfare  of  girls  and  boys  are  an  accepted  and  daily 
 part  of  the  regular  routine  of  many  home  mission 
 churches,  settlements,  and  other  community  institu¬ 
 tions  directed  by  home  mission  agencies. 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 27 
 
 This  sort  of  work  is  going  on  today  in  all  our  great 
 cities  from  Boston,  New  York,  and  Baltimore  on  the 
 east  to  New  Orleans,  El  Paso,  Los  Angeles,  San 
 Francisco,  Portland,  and  Seattle  on  the  south  and  west. 
 What  may  be  more  surprising  to  the  uninitiated,  how¬ 
 ever,  is  the  fact  that  a  remarkably  similar  program 
 may  be  found  in  communities  forty  or  fifty  miles  from 
 the  railroad  in  the  mountains  of  New  Mexico,  in  our 
 Appalachian  highlands,  and  in  hundreds  of  other  rural 
 home  mission  centers  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  The 
 day  of  a  new  home  missions  has  already  dawned,  but 
 the  amazing  extent  and  effectiveness  of  the  work  is 
 not  always  well  understood. 
 
 The  future  of  America  and  the  future  of  American 
 Christianity  will  ultimately  be  determined  by  what 
 takes  place  in  what  have  been  called  our  marginal  com¬ 
 munities.  These  are  the  communities  which  for  one 
 reason  or  another  are  not  sufficient  unto  themselves 
 to  meet  the  demands  that  the  hour  makes  upon  them. 
 This  inability  may  be  due  to  spiritual  poverty  and 
 want  of  vision  as  well  as  to  economic  lack.  But  what¬ 
 ever  its  cause,  it  immediately  becomes  a  matter  of  vital 
 concern  to  all  of  us.  It  is  in  these  communities  that 
 the  home  mission  boards  of  the  country  find  their  field 
 of  labor. 
 
 And  where  are  they?  Not  in  any  one  state,  but  in 
 all  of  them.  They  are  to  be  found  in  the  congested 
 and  polyglot  areas  of  our  great  cities;  in  the  decadent 
 rural  communities  of  New  England;  in  the  Negro 
 communities  and  mountain  sections  of  the  South;  in 
 the  hundreds  of  mining  and  coke  towns  in  Pennsyl- 
 
28  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 vania  of  from  five  hundred  to  two  thousand  popula¬ 
 tion  each,  some  of  which  have  a  population  of  prac¬ 
 tically  one  hundred  per  cent  of  foreign  birth;  in  the 
 sage  brush  country  of  Montana;  in  the  deserts  of 
 Arizona,  among  the  American  Indians;  among  our 
 enormous  Spanish-speaking  population  of  the  South¬ 
 west;  and  in  Porto  Rico,  Alaska,  and  Hawaii.  These 
 are  a  few  of  the  sections  of  a  broad  front  along  which 
 the  future  of  America  is  being  determined,  and  in 
 every  one  of  these  places  the  line  is  being  held  by 
 home  mission  agencies.  Sometimes  the  line  is  thin 
 indeed,  but  were  it  not  for  these  agencies,  there  would 
 often  be  no  line  at  all.  And  the  hope  of  holding  that 
 line  depends  upon  our  ability  to  deal  effectively  with 
 the  rising  generation. 
 
 Already,  without  ostentation  or  the  waving  of  flags, 
 home  mission  agencies  have  put  into  actual  operation 
 the  most  extensive  program  of  religious  education 
 which  has  ever  been  undertaken  by  any  general  agency 
 or  group  of  agencies  in  the  United  States.  This  is  no 
 disparagement  of  other  general  agencies  whose  names 
 might  seem  to  suggest  a  closer  relationship  to  the  work 
 of  the  Sunday-school  and  religious  education  in  gen¬ 
 eral  than  home  mission  boards  may  be  supposed  to 
 have;  most  of  those  very  worthy  and  greatly  needed 
 organizations  have  been  charged  with  other  duties 
 than  that  of  the  actual  work  of  religious  education, 
 with  boys  and  girls.  The  point  that  we  are  trying 
 to  make  clear  here  is  that  it  is  upon  distinctly  home 
 mission  agencies  that  the  responsibility  has  usually 
 fallen  for  constructing  buildings  suitable  for  purposes 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 29 
 
 of  religious  education  in  the  communities  which  have 
 not  been  able  to  provide  these  facilities  locally,  of 
 employing  workers  who  understand  the  work  of  re¬ 
 ligious  education,  and  then  of  getting  from  the 
 churches  the  funds  for  maintaining  the  work. 
 
 One  can  scarcely  imagine  a  greater  calamity  to  the 
 work  of  religious  education  in  this  country  than  to 
 have  the  distinctly  home  mission  agencies  suddenly 
 deprived  of  support.  Such  an  unthinkable  contin¬ 
 gency  would  mean  the  collapse  of  the  work  of  re¬ 
 ligious  education  in  thousands  of  our  most  needy 
 centers  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other.  We 
 would  not  for  a  moment  infer  that  the  home  mission 
 agencies  are  meeting  the  full  needs  of  our  marginal 
 communities  in  this  respect.  Far  from  it.  It  chances 
 that  the  present  writer  has  just  returned  from  visiting 
 villages  with  populations  totaling  many  thousands  of 
 souls  where  there  is  no  church  or  Sunday-school,  either 
 Catholic  or  Protestant.  There  are  too  many  such 
 places.  We  are  trying  rather  to  emphasize  the  fact 
 that  so  far  as  the  need  is  being  met,  it  is  by  the 
 churches  through  their  home  mission  agencies;  and, 
 for  the  most  part,  the  work  is  of  an  increasingly  high 
 order. 
 
 Not  long  ago  the  pastor  of  an  outstandingly  cul¬ 
 tured  and  prosperous  church  in  a  noted  suburban  com¬ 
 munity  said,  after  inspecting  at  first  hand  the  work  in 
 religious  education  in  an  Italian  mission  in  one  of  our 
 large  cities,  “That  mission  has  a  more  carefully 
 planned  and  executed  program  of  religious  education 
 for  its  Italian  children  than  I  have  for  the  children 
 
30 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 in  my  own  church.”  Unfortunately  the  remark  could 
 not  truthfully  be  made  with  reference  to  all  Italian 
 missions,  but  the  incident  is  significant  as  indicative 
 of  the  ideals  toward  which  home  mission  agencies  are 
 working  and  which  they  are  achieving  as  adequate 
 resources  are  placed  at  their  disposal. 
 
 Space  will  not  permit  us  to  go  further  into  detail 
 at  this  point  or  to  emphasize  the  large  contribution 
 which  the  home  mission  agencies  are  making  in  the 
 field  of  children’s  welfare,  club  work,  recreational 
 work,  and  related  activities,  although  there  is  much 
 that  might  be  said.  We  should,  however,  add  a  spe¬ 
 cial  word  concerning  those  large  and  immensely  effec¬ 
 tive  agencies  for  religious  nurture  and  training  of 
 young  life  commonly  known  as  the  women’s  home 
 mission  boards.  Different  denominations  have  dif¬ 
 ferent  plans  of  operation,  but  in  general  the  work  of 
 the  women’s  home  mission  agencies  falls  into  two 
 categories — school  work  and  community  work  of  one 
 sort  or  another.  These  agencies  are  spending  many 
 millions  of  dollars  each  year  for  work  in  the  United 
 States,  and  practically  all  of  this  immense  sum  goes 
 directly  for  work  with  girls  and  boys  or  indirectly  to 
 them  through  work  with  their  mothers.  The  school 
 work  is,  of  course,  almost  exclusively  work  with 
 youth,  and  in  the  community  houses,  settlements,  in¬ 
 stitutional  churches,  and  similar  institutions  for  which 
 the  women’s  boards  supply  workers,  the  particular 
 assignment  of  those  workers  is  almost  invariably  that 
 of  work  with  girls  and  boys  or  with  mothers.  Among 
 
AMERICA’S  GREATEST  ASSET 
 
 31 
 
 national  agencies  for  children’s  welfare  and  religious 
 education,  the  women’s  boards  of  home  missions  stand 
 either  at  the  top  of  the  list  or  well  toward  it  in  regard 
 to  the  amount  of  money  expended  each  year,  the 
 number  of  workers  employed,  and  the  number  of 
 girls  and  boys  in  needy  communities  reached.  This 
 work  extends  from  Alaska  to  the  Mexican  border  and 
 from  Porto  Rico  to  Hawaii.  There  is  no  outstand¬ 
 ingly  needy  group  in  all  our  more  than  one  hundred 
 million  population  which  is  not  feeling  the  direct  min¬ 
 istry  of  these  exceedingly  effective  agencies  for  deal¬ 
 ing  with  the  rising  generation. 
 
 If  this  book  can  in  any  way  lead  to  a  more  adequate 
 support  of  home  mission  agencies  on  the  part  of  indi¬ 
 viduals  and  of  local  churches,  the  labor  which  it  has 
 involved  will  not  have  been  in  vain.  The  purpose  of 
 the  book,  however,  is  somewhat  broader  than  that.  It 
 is  to  be  hoped  that  many  individuals  in  places  not 
 classed  as  home  mission  communities  will  find  here  a 
 challenge  to  give  more  earnest  heed  to  the  welfare  of 
 the  girls  and  boys  in  their  respective  communities,  and 
 that  parents  will  be  led  to  study  with  far  greater  care 
 the  methods  by  which  they  can  make  the  life  in  the 
 home  render  that  fine  contribution  to  the  youthful 
 members  of  it  which  no  community  agency  can  ever 
 bestow. 
 
 A's  the  discussion  proceeds,  it  may  not  be  feasible 
 at  all  points  to  indicate  just  where  distinct  home  mis¬ 
 sion  responsibility  begins  and  ends.  The  work,  how¬ 
 ever,  is  one,  and  the  task  of  making  America  Christian 
 
32 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 in  the  full  and  best  sense  of  that  term  is,  after  all,  the 
 great  home  mission,  regardless  of  the  particular  agency 
 through  which  it  may  chance  to  be  accomplished. 
 
 A  SUMMARY 
 
 Thus  far  in  this  discussion  we  have  tried  to  empha¬ 
 size  the  supreme  importance  of  plastic  young  life  in 
 God’s  plan  for  making  a  new  and  better  world  with 
 our  cooperation.  We  have  attempted  to  indicate  the 
 responsiveness  of  youth  to  new  ideas  and  new  ideals 
 and  to  contrast  it  with  the  fixity  and  conservatism  of 
 maturity.  We  have  undertaken  to  picture  the  vast 
 army  of  girls  and  boys  who,  with  all  their  abilities  and 
 limitations,  are  America’s  one  hope.  We  have  ven¬ 
 tured  to  suggest  some  of  the  things  which  the  War  has 
 revealed  to  us.  We  have  raised  the  question,  partly 
 for  future  consideration,  as  to  whether  we  have  the 
 vision  of  the  need  and  are  willing  to  pay  the  price  for 
 putting  through  to  completion  the  task  which  is  laid 
 upon  us,  and  we  have  called  attention  to  the  strategic 
 position  occupied  by  home  mission  agencies  in  dealing 
 with  the  critical  situations  to  be  found  in  our  neediest 
 and  most  neglected  communities.  In  other  chapters 
 we  shall  go  more  into  detail  in  connection  with  some 
 of  the  subjects  already  raised,  and  we  shall  undertake 
 to  indicate  some  of  the  points  at  which  we  should 
 attempt  to  make  the  America  that  is  to  be  a  better 
 place  than  the  America  that  is. 
 
CHAPTER  II 
 Saving  Young  Bodies 
 
 On  the  sixth  day  of  April,  1918,  there  was  inau¬ 
 gurated  in  the  United  States  a  movement  known  as 
 the  “Children’s  Year”  campaign.  It  was  started  as 
 a  war  measure,  and  in  a  public  letter  President  Wilson 
 described  it  as  “second  only  in  importance”  to  supply¬ 
 ing  the  immediate  needs  of  the  combatants.  The  aim 
 of  the  movement  was  to  save  the  lives  of  100,000 
 babies  during  the  year. 
 
 Are  the  implications  of  that  campaign  and  its  aim 
 clear?  If  a  bureau  of  the  United  States  Government 
 could,  with  its  special  knowledge  of  the  facts,  delib¬ 
 erately  set  out  to  save  the  lives  of  100,000  babies  in 
 a  single  year,  it  does  not  require  particular  brilliance 
 of  imagination  to  draw  a  terrible  picture  of  the  enor¬ 
 mous,  unnecessary  slaughter  of  the  innocents  which 
 has  been  going  on  and  still  is  going  on  in  this  country. 
 As  a  matter  of  fact,  practically  a  quarter  of  a  million 
 babies  under  one  year  of  age  die  in  the  United  States 
 annually.  Physicians  tell  us  that  at  least  half  of  these 
 might  be  saved  by  the  application  of  known  principles 
 of  hygiene  and  infant  care.  If,  then,  to  put  it  con¬ 
 servatively,  more  than  100,000  infants  die  unneces¬ 
 sarily  in  the  United  States  each  year,  it  is  evident  that 
 these  babies  are  killed.  Certainly  they  do  not  die  of 
 their  own  accord.  Their  lives  are  taken  by  the  things 
 which  are  done  to  them  and  which  ought  not  to  be 
 
 done  or  by  the  things  which  ought  to  be  done  and  are 
 
 33 
 
34 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 not  done.  They  are  very  largely  sacrificed  to  the  twin 
 gods  of  Ignorance  and  Poverty. 
 
 Compared  to  the  total  number  of  unnecessary 
 infant  deaths  in  the  United  States  for  a  single  year, 
 our  entire  military  losses  in  the  World  War  seem 
 small,  and  when  a  series  of  years  is  taken  into  ac¬ 
 count,  these  war  losses  sink  into  insignificance.  In 
 ten  years  the  number  of  babies  who  die  unnecessarily 
 in  the  United  States  would  repopulate  five  of  our 
 present  states  with  enough  left  over  to  create  a  good- 
 sized  city  in  addition.  At  present  the  most  dangerous 
 occupation  in  this  country  is  that  of  being  a  baby. 
 
 COMPARISON  WITH  OTHER  COUNTRIES 
 
 The  fact  is  that  for  a  people  supposed  to  be  among 
 the  leading  nations  of  the  world  in  matters  of  enlight¬ 
 enment,  our  record  is  far  from  satisfactory.  In 
 Russia,  we  are  told,  one  baby  out  of  every  four  dies 
 before  completing  its  first  year  of  life.  Russian 
 mothers  love  their  babies,  but  the  “mother  instinct” 
 does  not  keep  them  from  making  mistakes  in  diet  that 
 cause  their  children’s  deaths.  In  the  United  States  one 
 baby  out  of  every  ten  dies  before  reaching  its  first 
 birthday.  Yes,  that  is  better  than  the  Russian  record; 
 but  in  New  Zealand  only  one  baby  in  twenty  dies  in 
 the  first  year  of  life. 
 
 The  reason  for  this  situation  in  New  Zealand  is 
 worthy  of  note.  In  1872  the  infant  death-rate  in  that 
 country  was  approximately  the  same  as  the  present 
 rate  in  the  United  States.  Since  that  year  the  death- 
 rate  has  steadily  declined.  Since  1900  the  decline  has 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 35 
 
 been  particularly  rapid.  Attention  has  been  called  to 
 the  fact  that  the  decline  during  the  last  decade  is  spe¬ 
 cially  noteworthy  inasmuch  as  a  marked  decline  in  the 
 death-rate  during  the  early  stages  of  the  effort  to  re¬ 
 duce  it  is  more  easily  attained  than  after  the  rate  has 
 been  materially  reduced.  New  Zealand  mothers  are 
 no  more  devoted  to  their  offspring  than  are  American 
 mothers,  and,  in  many  respects,  they  are  no  better  in¬ 
 formed  than  women  in  the  United  States.  They  have, 
 however,  learned  much  more  about  the  care  and  feed¬ 
 ing  of  infants  than  have  mothers  in  the  United  States, 
 and,  by  the  application  of  this  knowledge,  they  have 
 succeeded  in  reducing  the  infant  mortality  rate  to  48.4 
 per  1,000,  or  less  than  half  the  infant  death-rate  in 
 the  United  States. 
 
 ENORMOUS  LOSSES 
 
 The  figures  for  the  United  States  also  show  some 
 important  variations  in  the  rate  in  various  sections 
 of  the  country  and  among  different  race  groups  in  the 
 same  section.  Thus,  in  1920  the  infant  death-rate 
 varied  from  61.2  in  the  state  of  Washington  to  141 
 in  North  Carolina.  The  rate  for  New  York  State 
 was  92.2.  In  Maryland  the  rate  for  white  babies  was 
 90  and  the  rate  for  colored  babies  143.  In  Virginia 
 the  rate  for  white  babies  was  81  and  the  rate  for 
 colored  babies  was  157,  while  in  North  Carolina  the 
 rate  for  white  babies  was  93  and  for  colored  babies 
 187.  Among  cities,  Pittsburg  lost  more  babies  in 
 proportion  to  its  births  than  any  other  of  the  large 
 American  cities  for  which  reliable  records  are  avail- 
 
36  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 able.  One  baby  in  every  nine  born  in  Pittsburg  failed 
 to  survive  throughout  the  year ;  in  Boston  the  rate  was 
 one  in  ten;  in  Philadelphia  one  in  eleven;  in  New 
 York  one  in  twelve;  and  in  Seattle  one  in  eighteen. 
 
 But  we  must  not  imagine  that  we  have  got  to  the 
 bottom  of  the  matter  when  we  have  tabulated  the 
 number  of  lives  lost  in  infancy.  Far  from  it,  for  in¬ 
 fant  mortality  is  perhaps  the  most  sensitive  index  we 
 possess  of  social  welfare  and  of  sanitary  organization 
 and  administration.  To  quote  a  well-known  English 
 authority:  “Excessive  mortality  in  infancy  implies 
 excessive  mortality  in  later  life.  The  environment 
 which,  because  of  bad  housing,  bad  sanitation, — 
 domestic  or  municipal, — a  low  degree  of  social  prog¬ 
 ress  in  general,  reacts  unfavorably  on  infant  life,  is 
 the  environment  responsible  for  a  low  state  of  health 
 and  vitality  in  all  classes  of  the  population.  More¬ 
 over,  those  children  who,  because  of  superior  resist¬ 
 ance,  do  live  to  maturity,  are  often  seriously  impaired 
 in  health.  The  infants  who  are  injured  by  the  un¬ 
 favorable  environment  into  which  they  are  born 
 number  two  or  three  times  as  many  as  those  who  die. 
 The  survivors  of  infant  mortality,  it  has  been  de¬ 
 clared,  bear  in  their  bodies  the  marks  of  its  causes 
 and  conditions/’ 
 
 Of  this  secondary  toll  exacted  from  society,  we  had 
 been  more  or  less  blissfully  unconscious  until  the  reg¬ 
 istration  and  examination  of  our  young  men  in  con¬ 
 nection  with  the  carrying  out  of  the  war  plans  re¬ 
 vealed  the  fact  that  one  third  of  them  were  so  mark¬ 
 edly  physically  defective  as  to  disqualify  them  for 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 37 
 
 military  service.  What  the  results  would  have  been 
 had  an  equal  number  of  girls  been  examined  it  is  im¬ 
 possible  to  say.  We  wakened,  however,  to  a  sense 
 of  our  physical  deficiencies.  The  fact  that  we  were 
 told  by  reputable  physicians  that  a  very  large  propor¬ 
 tion  of  the  defects  could  have  been  remedied  or  avoided 
 altogether  by  proper  attention  during  childhood  only 
 added  to  our  humiliation.  How  serious  is  the  handi¬ 
 cap  under  which  we  labor  is  perhaps  suggested  by  the 
 statement  issued  by  the  National  Child  Welfare  Asso¬ 
 ciation  that:  “Of  the  20,000,000  American  school 
 children  between  six  and  fifteen  years  of  age,  one  mil¬ 
 lion  have  defective  hearing,  five  million  have  defective 
 eyes,  five  million  are  mal-nourished,  six  million  have 
 enlarged  tonsils  or  adenoids,  and  over  ten  million  have 
 defective  teeth.  In  short,  three  quarters  of  them  suf¬ 
 fer  from  preventable  or  curable  defects.” 
 
 FOOD  AND  LACK  OF  FOOD 
 
 Perhaps  there  is  no  more  insidious  foe  to  the  child’s 
 physical  well-being  than  that  of  malnutrition,  and  none 
 less  thoroughly  understood  by  parents.  Until  some¬ 
 what  recently,  it  was  generally  supposed  that  mal¬ 
 nutrition  was  a  condition  limited  to  those  children 
 whose  parents  lacked  the  means  to  buy  them  a  suffi¬ 
 cient  quantity  of  food.  But  we  have  been  forced  to 
 abandon  so  naive  a  theory.  Malnutrition  may  result 
 from  a  variety  of  causes,  and  hundreds  of  children 
 whose  parents  are  able  to  buy  food  are  continually 
 undernourished  because  of  ignorance  or  neglect.  For 
 the  reason  that  malnutrition  causes  little  or  no  pain,  we 
 
38 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 are  likely  to  ignore  or  to  be  unaware  of  its  presence, 
 while  it  goes  steadily  on  exacting  its  terrible  toll. 
 That  undernourishment  has  become  one  of  our  serious 
 national  problems  is  generally  conceded. 
 
 It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  that  when  a  child 
 three  weeks  old  is  fed  on  cabbage ;  another  seven  weeks 
 old  is  kept  for  days  in  succession  on  sausage,  bread, 
 and  pickles;  and  a  third  six  weeks  old  is  fed  on  sar¬ 
 dines  and  vinegar,  something  is  radically  wrong.  Be¬ 
 tween  these  real,  though  absurd,  practises  and  the 
 ideal  diet  for  a  well-nourished  child  there  are  many 
 gradations  of  folly. 
 
 The  Children’s  Bureau  of  the  United  States  Gov¬ 
 ernment  says:  “Insufficient  or  unsuitable  food  and 
 drink,  such  as  tea  and  coffee  instead  of  milk,  is  gen¬ 
 erally  conceded  to  be  the  chief  cause  of  undernutri¬ 
 tion.  The  first  requirement  of  a  growing  child  is 
 food.  Every  movement  his  body  makes,  every  bit  of 
 work  it  does,  requires  energy,  and  loss  of  weight  re¬ 
 sults.  It  is  essential,  therefore,  that  the  diet  of  a 
 growing  child  should  be,  first  of  all,  generous  in 
 amount.  An  insufficient  and  inadequate  breakfast  of 
 bread  and  coffee  practically  always  means  too  little 
 food,  whether  or  not  the  midday  meal  is  adequate,  or 
 even  though  a  hearty  supper  may  be  eaten.  Indul¬ 
 gence  in  sweets  and  highly  seasoned  foods,  habitual 
 eating  between  meals,  late  hours,  unventilated  sleeping- 
 rooms,  and  lack  of  exercise  may  all  result  in  a 
 ffinicky’  appetite,  and  thus  in  taking  too  little  food.” 
 
 There  are  other  perils,  however,  besides  that  of 
 taking  too  small  a  quantity  of  nourishment.  One  is 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 39 
 
 the  improper  selection  of  foods.  We  know  today,  as 
 we  have  not  known  before,  that  certain  foods  are  well- 
 nigh  indispensable  to  the  nourishment  and  proper 
 growth  of  children.  Eggs,  leafy  vegetables,  and  milk 
 contain  elements  which  are  essential,  and  other  foods 
 will  not  supply  the  lack  regardless  of  the  quantities 
 in  which  they  are  taken.  For  practical  purposes  the 
 entire  question  of  the  adequate  nourishment  of  chil¬ 
 dren  often  comes  down  to  the  simple  problem  of  se¬ 
 curing  a  sufficient  supply  of  fresh  milk.  Thus  the 
 cow  is  often  the  solution  of  the  perplexing  problem, 
 and  workers  in  certain  sections  of  the  country  are  try¬ 
 ing  to  meet  the  situation  by  encouraging  the  keeping 
 of  the  “family  cow.” 
 
 Of  course  this  solution  can  be  applied  only  in  the 
 rural  districts;  but,  curiously  enough,  it  is  in  the  rural 
 regions — particularly  in  the  “single-crop”  sections — 
 that  malnutrition  works  its  most  diabolic  havoc.  It  is 
 one  of  the  ironies  of  fate  that  it  is  much  easier  to  get 
 an  abundant  supply  of  fresh  milk  in  many  cities  than  it 
 is  in  vast  areas  of  our  rural  regions. 
 
 However,  the  problem  of  undernourishment  is  not 
 limited  to  the  country.  An  examination  of  171,661 
 school  children  in  New  York  City  led  recently  to  the 
 following  estimates:  that  of  the  1,000,000  school  chil¬ 
 dren  in  the  city,  173,000  were  normally  nourished; 
 611,000  were  passable;  and  216,000  were  seriously 
 undernourished.  No  one  knows  just  how  many  chil¬ 
 dren  throughout  the  country  are  in  this  last-named 
 class,  but  competent  medical  authorities  place  the  fig¬ 
 ure  at  between  three  and  five  million. 
 
40 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 Possibly  we  can  best  understand  what  is  involved 
 in  this  problem  of  malnutrition  if  we  think  for  a 
 moment  of  the  characteristics  of  the  well-nourished 
 child.  We  are  told  that  a  properly  nourished  child 
 measures  up  to  racial  and  family  standards  in  height 
 and  weight;  he  has  good  color;  his  step  is  elastic;  his 
 flesh  is  Ann;  he  is  usually  happy  and  good-natured; 
 he  is  full  of  life  and  constantly  active  both  physically 
 and  mentally;  his  sleep  is  sound;  his  appetite  and  di¬ 
 gestion  are  good;  he  is  what  nature  intended  him  to 
 be,  a  happy,  healthy  young  animal. 
 
 To  something  like  this  every  child  born  into  the 
 United  States  has  a  right.  The  tragedy  is  that  in  this 
 land  of  bumper  crops  multitudes  of  children  are  con¬ 
 tinually  in  a  state  of  malnutrition;  that  in  a  country 
 that  boasts  of  its  enlightenment,  so  many  innocent 
 victims  are  sacrificed  each  year  upon  the  altar  of 
 ignorance;  that  in  a  land  where  justice  is  supposed 
 to  rule,  we  systematically  condemn,  unheard,  so  large 
 a  proportion  of  our  helpless  children  to  lives  of  weak¬ 
 ness,  disease,  and  inefficiency;  that,  in  the  face  of  this 
 wrong,  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  said,  “Of 
 such  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,”  should  be  so  little 
 concerned  about  it  all. 
 
 The  old  Mosaic  law  made  bold  to  declare,  “Thou 
 shalt  not  kill.”  Jesus  said,  speaking  of  the  little  child 
 who  had  been  called  to  stand  in  the  midst  of  the  as¬ 
 sembled  crowd,  “Whoso  shall  cause  one  of  these  little 
 ones  that  believe  on  me  to  stumble,  it  is  profitable  for 
 him  that  a  great  millstone  should  be  hanged  about  his 
 neck,  and  that  he  should  be  sunk  in  the  depth  of  the 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 41 
 
 sea.”  With  such  words  from  the  great  head  of  the 
 Church  ringing  in  their  ears,  the  followers  of  Him 
 who  went  about  doing  good,  cleansing  the  lepers,  heal¬ 
 ing  the  sick,  restoring  sight  to  the  blind,  giving  hear¬ 
 ing  to  the  deaf,  and  raising  the  dead,  must  be  dull 
 indeed  if  they  do  not  find  in  every  undernourished, 
 thin,  flabby,  delicate,  listless  child,  and  in  every  child 
 suffering  from  decayed  teeth,  adenoids,  enlarged  ton¬ 
 sils,  or  other  physical  handicap,  a  challenge  to  service. 
 
 CARRYING  OUT  A  TASK  BEGUN  BY  JESUS 
 
 Jesus  believed  in  saving  people’s  bodies — not  as  a 
 sort  of  advertising  demonstration  to  attract  public  at¬ 
 tention,  but  because  bodies  were  worth  saving  in  them¬ 
 selves.  It  was  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world 
 for  Him  who  came  “that  they  might  have  life  and 
 that  they  might  have  it  more  abundantly”  to  be  tre¬ 
 mendously  concerned  about  matters  of  physical  well¬ 
 being.  It  was  not  surprising  that  when  such  a  leader 
 drew  his  one  picture  of  the  last  judgment,  He  raised 
 the  question  of  the  attitude  of  his  followers  toward 
 the  sick  and  helpless,  and  then  added,  “Inasmuch  as 
 ye  did  it  not  to  one  of  the  least  of  these,  ye  did  it  not 
 to  me.”  Surely  the  heart  of  Jesus  would  be  touched 
 by  the  children  who  never  have  enough  to  eat ;  by  those 
 who  have  the  wrong  kinds  of  food;  by  those  who  are 
 killed  by  unclean  milk;  by  those  who,  because  of  the 
 congestion  in  our  great  cities,  suffer  for  want  of  light 
 and  air  and  a  chance  to  play;  by  the  Negro  babies 
 who,  in  some  sections,  die  at  a  rate  twice  as  fast  as 
 that  of  the  white  children  in  the  same  sections;  by  the 
 
42 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 multitude  of  Mexican  babies  in  our  great  Southwest 
 who  are  murdered  by  improper  food  and  unsanitary 
 surroundings;  by  the  crowds  of  boys  and  girls  whose 
 lives  are  blighted  by  adenoids;  by  the  many  who  suffer 
 from  poor  vision;  by  the  children  in  industries  who 
 are  physically  deformed  or  otherwise  injured  by  their 
 long-continued  and  arduous  labors;  in  fact,  by  the  piti¬ 
 able  condition  of  any  child  who  is  forced  to  assume 
 the  responsibilities  of  life  under  any  one  of  the  count¬ 
 less  limitations  from  which  he  might  have  been  saved 
 had  the  followers  of  the  Man  of  Galilee  taken  seriously 
 the  task  which  He  began  so  long  ago. 
 
 One  can  scarcely  conceive  of  a  more  important, 
 more  fundamental,  and  more  thoroughly  Christian 
 task  for  a  Christian  Church  than  that  of  insuring  an 
 abundant  life  to  the  children  who,  at  its  very  doors, 
 are  today  deprived  of  that  boon.  Fortunately  we  have 
 many  churches  which  have  already  caught  the  vision 
 and  are  working  earnestly  and  effectively  at  the  task. 
 
 One  church  in  a  home  mission  field  in  a  great  city 
 has  ready  on  each  school  day  a  nourishing  lunch  which 
 may  be  purchased  at  a  nominal  price  by  definitely 
 selected  pupils  whose  homes  have  been  visited  and 
 who  are  thus  known  to  be  suffering  from  malnutri¬ 
 tion.  The  children  come  eagerly,  and  this  single 
 nourishing  meal  is  meaning  for  them  the  difference 
 between  adequate  and  inadequate  nourishment,  be¬ 
 tween  strength  and  weakness,  and  between  physical 
 efficiency  and  inefficiency.  Another  home  mission 
 church  with  the  cooperation  of  a  friend,  distributes 
 eighty  pints  of  milk  to  needy  families.  A'  mission 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 43 
 
 at  work  among  the  Mexicans  in  the  Southwest 
 gathers  the  little  children  each  day  and  supplies  them 
 with  clean,  wholesome  milk.  This  simple  ministry 
 saves  from  disease  and  death  children  who  would 
 otherwise  fall  an  easy  prey  to  contagious  maladies. 
 Every  day  thousands  of  children  in  home  mission  day 
 nurseries  and  kindergartens  are  receiving  milk  and 
 ether  nourishing  food.  Thus  is  the  Church  carrying 
 out  literally  the  words  of  Him  who  said,  “Feed  my 
 lambs.” 
 
 Many  churches  conduct  clinics  where  children  suf¬ 
 fering  from  all  manner  of  disease  and  abnormality 
 are  received  for  examination,  advice,  and  treatment. 
 Some  carry  on  parents’  classes  where  definite  train¬ 
 ing  in  the  care  and  feeding  of  children  is  presented. 
 Others  are  giving  much  needed  instruction  in  sexual 
 hygiene.  An  increasing  number  of  home  mission 
 churches  provides  gymnasium  classes  with  trained 
 teachers,  playgrounds  with  trained  supervisors,  and 
 other  sorts  of  health-giving  recreation.  Some  main¬ 
 tain  milk  stations,  and  some  employ  visiting  nurses 
 or  other  workers,  who  assist  in  establishing  sanitary 
 conditions  and  in  promoting  correct  health  habits  in 
 the  homes  of  the  children. 
 
 Many  churches  maintain  mothers’  clubs,  where  much 
 wholesome  and  healthful  information  concerning  the 
 care  of  children  is  disseminated.  A  number  of  home 
 mission  boards  support  doctors  and  nurses  in  the  more 
 neglected  sections  of  the  country  where  the  emphasis 
 is,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  upon  the  care  of 
 mothers  and  children  and  the  maintaining  of  proper 
 
44 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 conditions  in  the  home.  Fortunately,  too,  thousands 
 of  ministers  both  in  the  country  regions  and  in  the 
 cities  have  come  to  feel  that  one  of  their  first  con¬ 
 cerns  is  to  help  in  the  creating  of  such  community 
 habits  and  ideals  as  will  make  it  possible  for  children 
 to  have  a  fair  chance  at  life.  Without  extra  staff 
 helpers,  they  are  doing  a  vast  amount  of  educational 
 work  which  is  producing  results  in  terms  of  lives  saved. 
 
 In  addition  to  the  enormous  amount  of  work  that  is 
 being  done  through  home  mission  churches,  we  must 
 take  into  account  the  hundreds  of  church  hospitals  and 
 homes  scattered  in  all  parts  of  the  country  which  are 
 ministering  to  the  sick,  the  orphaned,  and  the  neglected. 
 
 Then,  too,  there  is  an  important  and  constructive 
 piece  of  work  that  is  being  done  in  scores  of  home 
 mission  schools  where  girls  are  being  trained  in  the 
 selection  and  preparation  of  foods,  in  the  arranging 
 of  menus,  and  in  many  other  activities  which  make 
 for  the  building  of  home  life  and  for  the  conservation 
 of  the  lives  of  helpless  children  in  the  home.  In  this 
 way  thousands  of  homes  are  being  reached  in  which 
 firm  foundations  are  laid  for  the  future.  The  work 
 includes  many  groups — Negroes,  Indians,  Mexicans  in 
 the  United  States,  Spanish-Americans,  and  others. 
 How  many  lives  have  been  saved  both  directly  and  in¬ 
 directly  by  this  constructive  ministry,  no  one  can  say, 
 but  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  number  is 
 large.  Surely  a  ministry  that  trains  the  mothers  of 
 the  children  who  are  to  be  is  fully  as  Christian  in 
 spirit  and  even  more  statesmanlike  in  policy  than  that 
 which  confines  its  attention  to  the  undernourished, 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 45 
 
 sick,  and  handicapped  offspring  of  the  ignorant  moth¬ 
 ers  that  now  are. 
 
 CHRISTIAN  WOMEN  MINISTER  TO  THE  NEEDY 
 
 A'  special  type  of  ministry  to  neglected  children  grew 
 directly  out  of  the  surveys  of  the  Interchurch  World 
 Movement.  Those  surveys  revealed  the  fact  that  the 
 groups  of  migrant  laborers  in  the  country  were  not 
 made  up  entirely  of  men;  that  thousands  of  women 
 and  children  were  continually  shifting  from  one  sea¬ 
 sonal  industry  to  another.  Sometimes  it  was  the  berry 
 fields  which  demanded  help,  sometimes  the  canneries, 
 then  again  the  oyster  fields,  and  so-  on  through  a  con¬ 
 siderable  list.  And  following  these  varied  industries 
 were  many  families  that  included  in  their  membership 
 little  children  who  never  knew  an  established  home, 
 and  who  lived  under  the  most  unsanitary  conditions. 
 These  children  were  unclean,  they  were  inadequately 
 fed,  and  upon  the  most  unsatisfactory  food,  and  they 
 were  neglected  from  early  morning  till  night  during 
 the  years  when  they  most  needed  attention.  The  fol¬ 
 lowing  picture  drawn  by  Mrs.  DeWitt  Wallace  gives 
 some  idea  of  the  conditions  revealed : 
 
 The  berry  season  is  in  full  swing,  and  the  crowded  little 
 shacks  are  all  a  bustle  of  life  by  five  in  the  morning.  The 
 family  have  a  scanty,  hurried  breakfast,  and  the  older  members 
 are  off  to  the  hot  fields  to  fill  the  crates  that  we  look  for  in 
 the  markets  the  following  morning.  As  the  sun  climbs  higher 
 in  the  heavens,  the  heat  seems  almost  unbearable,  and  the  chil¬ 
 dren,  who  have  followed  the  parents  up  and  down  the  monot¬ 
 onous  rows  of  berries,  seek  the  shade  of  the  surrounding  build¬ 
 ings  and  often  fall  asleep  there.  The  noon  hour  comes,  and 
 there  is  neither  time  nor  energy  to  cook  a  substantial  meal,  so 
 a  loaf  of  bread  and  some  coarse  molasses  is  the  substitute. 
 The  afternoon  wears  on,  and  the  little  children — boys  and  girls 
 
46 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 from  the  age  of  a  few  months  to  ten  or  twelve  years,  with  no 
 supervision  and  no  one  even  knowing  where  they  are — amuse 
 themselves  as  best  they  know  how  until  dark. 
 
 If  this  condition  only  lasted  for  the  few  weeks  of  the  berry 
 season,  it  could  possibly  be  counteracted  by  the  influences  of  the 
 rest  of  the  year.  But  this  is  just  one  round  in  the  cycle  of  the 
 year,  for  when  the  berry  season  closes,  vegetables  are  ready; 
 then  the  general  migration  for  these  foreign  people  is  to  the 
 oyster  beds  and  canneries,  where  a  similar  or,  in  many  cases, 
 a  worse  condition  arises.  No  schooling,  no  constructive  play, 
 no  ideals  for  future  citizenship,  and  no  standards  of  law  and 
 order.  The  influences  of  the  home,  the  church,  the  school,  and  a 
 normal  community  life  are  absolutely  lacking. 
 
 It  was  not  surprising  that  this  situation  touched 
 the  hearts  of  the  home  missionary  women  of  Amer¬ 
 ica  and  that  they  began  to  minister  to  some  of  these 
 needy  and  neglected  children.  Unwashed  babies  tor¬ 
 mented  by  countless  flies  were  washed  and  protected. 
 Supervised  games  took  the  place  of  demoralizing 
 activities  for  the  older  children,  and  nourishing  hot 
 soup,  real  bread  and  butter,  and  big  pitchers  of  genu¬ 
 ine  cow’s  milk  took  the  place  of  bread  and  molasses. 
 Again  the  results  of  the  work  in  terms  of  the  fuller, 
 richer  life  which  Jesus  came  to  give  cannot  be  set 
 down  in  tables,  but  they  are  none  the  less  real  and 
 abiding. 
 
 The  amount  of  work  which  home  missions  and 
 self-supporting  churches  have  done  to  save  the  bodies 
 of  helpless  children  is  so  large  in  the  aggregate  that  we 
 could  very  easily  hypnotize  ourselves  with  our  achieve¬ 
 ments.  We  would  hardly  be  fair  to  ourselves,  how¬ 
 ever,  if  we  did  not  recognize  the  fact  that  the  things 
 which  have  been  done  have  been  small  in  comparison 
 to  the  things  which  have  been  left  undone.  In  Chris¬ 
 tian  America  we  have  by  our  efforts  saved  the  lives 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 47 
 
 of  little  children  by  hundreds  and  by  thousands,  while 
 by  our  neglect  we  have  slaughtered  them  by  millions. 
 Hundreds  of  churches  have  done  nobly,  but  thousands 
 of  other  churches  have  done  nothing  at  all.  Hun¬ 
 dreds  of  Christians  have  worked  sacrificially  at  the 
 task  of  saving  the  bodies  of  our  children,  while  thou¬ 
 sands  of  others  have  never  once  seriously  thought  of 
 the  need  or  their  obligation  to  meet  it.  It  is  unques¬ 
 tionably  true  that  the  Christian  churches  of  America 
 could,  during  the  present  year, — and  without  disturb¬ 
 ing  their  current  program, — save,  by  educational 
 methods  without  direct  philanthropy,  the  lives  of  scores 
 of  thousands  of  children.  The  information  and  mate¬ 
 rials  needed  for  such  a  task  are  available,  and  the 
 methods  necessary  have  been  tested  by  use. 
 
 So  long  as  human  lives  are  being  needlessly  sacri¬ 
 ficed,  the  responsibility  for  correcting  the  situation 
 must  rest  upon  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ.  So  long 
 as  there  is  one  undernourished,  diseased,  or  handi¬ 
 capped  child  in  the  community,  the  responsibility  for 
 that  condition  must  rest  upon  the  Church  until  the 
 Church  has  done  all  within  its  power  to  remedy  the 
 matter.  Every  ignorant  mother,  every  unwashed 
 child,  every  bottle  of  dirty  milk,  every  condition  of 
 every  sort  which  threatens  the  life  or  well-being  of 
 little  children  is  a  challenge  to  the  followers  of  Him 
 who  said,  “Lovest  thou  me?  .  .  .  Feed  my  lambs.” 
 
 THE  WHITE  HOUSE  CONFERENCE 
 
 Fortunately  other  agencies  are  at  work  at  the  task, 
 and  much  has  already  been  accomplished.  President 
 
48 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 Roosevelt  gave  perhaps  the  first  great  impulse  to  the 
 work  when  he  called  the  famous  White  House  Con¬ 
 ference  on  Child  Welfare.  That  conference  met  in 
 Washington  in  January,  1909.  About  two  hundred 
 delegates  were  invited.  They  represented  every  state 
 in  the  Union.  President  Roosevelt  himself  presided. 
 The  report  of  the  committee  on  resolutions  that  was 
 adopted  at  this  gathering  contained  fourteen  articles, 
 and  out  of  the  work  of  this  conference  have  grown 
 many  important  results.  One  of  these  was  the  crea¬ 
 tion  of  the  Federal  Children’s  Bureau  which,  through 
 intensive  and  extensive  studies,  has  sought  to  ascer¬ 
 tain  the  facts  concerning  the  wastage  of  infant  life. 
 The  Bureau  has  charted  a  hitherto  unknown  land  and 
 has  placed  some  very  startling  facts  before  the  Amer¬ 
 ican  people.  It  has  also  created  a  literature  for  the 
 guidance  of  parents  and  others  concerned  with  mat¬ 
 ters  of  child  welfare  that  is  at  once  so  scientific  and 
 so  simple  of  content  that  we  can  never  again  excuse 
 the  distressing  conditions  which  we  have  permitted  to 
 exist  on  the  plea  that  we  lack  information  as  to  proper 
 methods  of  procedure. 
 
 FACTS  REVEALED  BY  THE  CHILDREN’S  BUREAU 
 
 One  of  the  striking  facts  revealed  by  the  studies 
 of  the  Children’s  Bureau  was  that  of  the  close  rela¬ 
 tion  between  infant  wastage  and  poverty.  Thus  it 
 was  discovered  that  in  families  where  the  father’s 
 earnings  were  ten  dollars  or  less  a  week,  the  infant 
 death-rate  was  twice  as  great  as  in  families  whose  in¬ 
 come  approached,  in  the  days  before  the  War,  one 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 49 
 
 hundred  dollars  per  month.  In  community  after 
 community  the  facts  revealed  were  so  similar  that  a 
 social  principle  came  to  be  established  with  something 
 of  mathematical  certainty;  namely,  that  of  the  rela¬ 
 tion  of  the  wastage  of  infant  life  to  conditions  of  pov¬ 
 erty  in  the  home. 
 
 In  some  cases  the  facts  discovered  were  far  more 
 startling  than  the  figures  just  quoted  would  seem  to 
 indicate.  In  one  place  it  was  found  that  the  death- 
 rate  for  artificially  fed  babies  was  eleven  times  greater 
 where  the  father’s  earnings  were  under  $550  per  year 
 than  they  were  when  the  father  received  $1,850  per 
 year  or  more.  In  other  words,  the  babies  born  into 
 the  poorer  homes  in  that  city  and  fed  artificially  had 
 only  one  eleventh  the  chance  to  survive  as  had  those 
 babies  born  into  the  more  comfortable  homes  and  also 
 fed  artificially.  In  the  same  city,  the  breast-fed  babies 
 in  the  poorer  homes  had  one  third  the  chance  to  live 
 that  babies  similarly  fed  in  the  better  homes  had. 
 These  and  other  facts  brought  clearly  into  relief  the 
 dangers  of  improper  feeding  of  infants. 
 
 In  New  York  City  the  establishment  of  infant  wel¬ 
 fare  stations  reduced  the  infant  death-rate  two  thirds, 
 resulting  in  the  saving  of  multiplied  thousands  of  lives 
 each  year.  From  another  source  comes  the  informa¬ 
 tion  that  the  introduction  of  pasteurized  milk  into  a 
 certain  foundling  asylum  reduced  the  number  of  in¬ 
 fant  deaths  from  524  one  year  to  255  the  next,  and 
 that,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  number  of  babies  in 
 the  institution  had  been  materially  increased  in  the 
 meantime.  Both  our  babies  and  our  boys  and  girls 
 
50 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 of  tender  years  are  starved  for  pure  milk  and  the  leafy 
 vegetables  which  have  been  found  to  be  indispensable 
 to  their  welfare.  We  are  told  that  we  have  five  times 
 as  many  undernourished  children  today  as  we  had  a 
 few  years  ago.  Whether  this  is  true  or  not,  it  is  cer¬ 
 tain  that  the  situation  is  serious  enough  to  demand 
 radical  treatment. 
 
 THE  CARE  OF  MOTHERS 
 
 Another  result  which  has  grown  out  of  the  White 
 House  Conference  is  a  renewed  appreciation  of  the 
 importance  of  caring  for  the  mother  both  before  and 
 after  the  birth  of  the  child.  That  the  mother  needs 
 such  care  both  before  and  after  childbirth,  not  alone 
 for  her  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  her  children,  is 
 apparent.  While  but  six  countries  have  a  more  favor¬ 
 able  infant  death-rate  than  has  the  United  States,  in 
 the  mortality  rate  for  mothers  from  conditions  caused 
 by  childbirth  the  United  States  stands  seventeenth  in 
 the  list.  Italy,  the  Netherlands,  Sweden,  Norway, 
 Russia,  Finland,  Japan,  England  and  Wales,  Hungary, 
 France,  Ireland,  Spain,  Switzerland,  Australia,  Scot¬ 
 land,  and  New  Zealand  all  stand  ahead  of  our  own 
 country. 
 
 What  is  even  more  alarming  is  the  fact  that  while 
 conditions  in  this  particular  have  been  improving  in 
 other  countries,  they  have  grown  steadily  worse  in  the 
 United  States.  In  1915  the  death-rate  of  mothers 
 from  conditions  connected  with  childbirth  was  6. 1 ; 
 in  1916  it  was  6.2;  in  1917  it  was  6.6;  in  1919  it  was 
 7.4.  In  1918  the  rate  was  9.2.  This  exceptionally 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 51 
 
 high  rate  was  partly  accounted  for  by  the  prevalence 
 of  influenza.  In  1917  childbirth  caused  more  deaths 
 among  women  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  forty- 
 four  than  did  any  other  disease  except  tuberculosis. 
 In  that  year  it  caused  more  than  five  times  as  many 
 deaths  as  did  typhoid  fever.  And  the  great  majority 
 of  these  deaths  were  entirely  preventable.  We  have 
 made  gains  along  other  lines,  but  not  here. 
 
 Not  only  is  this  loss  appalling  in  itself,  but  it  has 
 a  very  important  bearing  upon  the  saving  of  the  babies. 
 The  death-rate  among  motherless  babies  is  enormous, 
 in  one  city  amounting  to  five  times  that  of  the  rate 
 for  babies  with  mothers.  How  easily  large  and  im¬ 
 portant  results  can  be  secured  in  this  field  is  demon¬ 
 strated  by  the  work  of  the  New  York  Maternity  Cen¬ 
 ter  Association.  Among  4,496  women  who  were 
 given  intelligent  supervision  both  before  and  for  a 
 month  after  the  baby  arrived,  the  proportion  of  babies 
 dying  during  the  first  month  was  reduced  to  consid¬ 
 erably  less  than  one  half  of  that  for  the  city  as  a  whole. 
 And  this  result  was  secured  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
 these  mothers  and  children  lived  under  the  usual  low- 
 income  handicap.  At  the  same  time,  the  number  of 
 mothers  who  died  was  reduced  to  less  than  one  third 
 of  the  general  rate  for  the  entire  United  States. 
 
 Another  benefit  which  has  grown  out  of  the  White 
 House  Conference  is  a  recognition  of  the  importance 
 of  making  it  possible  for  the  mother  to  care  for  her 
 children  at  home  wherever  this  is  practicable,  instead 
 of  committing  them  to  institutions.  To  this  end 
 forty-one  states  have  already  enacted  child  welfare 
 
52 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 laws,  or,  as  they  are  perhaps  more  commonly  called, 
 widows’  pension  or  compensation  legislation. 
 
 Through  the  aid  provided  by  the  widows’  pension 
 or  compensation  funds,  thousands  of  mothers  have 
 been  enabled  to  keep  the  home  together  and  to  give 
 to  their  offspring  the  motherly  attention  which,  with¬ 
 out  this  state  aid,  would  have  been  delegated  to  an 
 institution.  For  a  large  number  of  other  children  in¬ 
 stitutional  life  has  been  avoided  by  finding  foster 
 homes  for  them.  This  is  one  of  the  most  radical  de¬ 
 partures  in  the  care  of  dependent  children  which  this 
 country  has  Known,  and  it  has  already  meant  much  in 
 the  lives  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  children  who 
 would  otherwise  have  been  consigned  to  institutions. 
 Through  the  formation  of  child  welfare  organizations 
 all  over  the  country,  the  administration  of  the  funds 
 devoted  to  this  sort  of  work  has  been  made  most  eco¬ 
 nomical,  while  at  the  same  time  a  local  community 
 conscience  for  and  interest  in  existing  conditions  of 
 need  has  been  developed. 
 
 OTHER  AGENCIES 
 
 An  agency  which  is  doing  much  for  the  children 
 of  America  through  its  educational  work  and  its  varied 
 publications  is  the  National  Child  Welfare  Associa¬ 
 tion.1  This  Association  directs  public  interest  to  the 
 physical,  mental,  and  moral  welfare  of  children,  keeps 
 in  touch  with  legislation  and  social  progress  in  child 
 welfare,  and  cooperates  with  and  strengthens  the  work 
 of  all  organizations  having  child  welfare  for  their 
 
 1  Headquarters  are  at  70  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York  City. 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 53 
 
 object.  It  prepares  and  issues  for  sale  excellent 
 posters,  picture  panels,  and  other  graphic  material 
 dealing  with  prenatal  care,  infant  and  child  care,  the 
 growth  of  the  child  through  play,  study,  work,  read¬ 
 ing,  and  training  in  morals,  civics,  and  religion,  and 
 kindred  topics.  It  furnishes  speakers,  lecturers,  and 
 organizers.  It  also  publishes  many  helpful  books 
 (see  Bibliography).  For  sets  of  posters  to  be  used 
 in  exhibits  for  the  purpose  of  arousing  community 
 interest  in  matters  of  child  welfare,  those  available 
 from  this  Association  are  probably  unexcelled.  At¬ 
 tention  should  also  be  called  to  the  fact  that  a  wealth 
 of  pamphlet  literature  dealing  with  many  aspects  of 
 child  welfare  can  be  secured  from  the  Children’s 
 Bureau  in  Washington,  D.  C. 
 
 Another  agency  which  has  made  an  important  con¬ 
 tribution  in  this  field  is  the  Child  Health  Organization 
 of  America.1  Its  aim  is  to  establish  correct  health 
 and  food  habits  in  the  lives  of  boys  and  girls,  and  it 
 works  through  public  schools  and  also  church  schools 
 and  Sunday-schools  for  the  accomplishment  of  its 
 aims.  It  utilizes  the  play  instinct,  and  makes  a  game  of 
 the  matter  of  establishing  health  habits.  It  publishes 
 attractive  graded  material  for  boys  and  girls  of  all 
 ages  from  five  years  upwards.  This  material  includes 
 “Watch  Your  Weight  Tags,”  “Child  Health  Alpha¬ 
 bets,”  “Rules  of  the  Game,”  posters,  simple  health 
 plays,  and  various  other  excellent  and  inexpensive  pub¬ 
 lications  for  use  with  the  children  themselves. 
 
 1  Headquarters  are  at  370  Seventh  Avenue,  New  York  City. 
 
54 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 THE  PUBLIC  HEALTH  NURSE 
 
 The  public-health  nurse  is,  according  to  the  Chil¬ 
 dren’s  Bureau,  the  keystone  of  child  welfare  work. 
 She  is  the  one  who  follows  the  case  into  the  home,  and 
 there  on  the  spot,  with  the  utensils  which  the  mother 
 has  available  for  use,  she  teaches  the  principles  of  the 
 care  of  the  baby  in  the  most  effective  way. 
 
 How  rapidly  the  public  health  nurse  movement  has 
 extended  is  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that  the  number 
 of  public  health  nurses  employed  has  increased  from 
 130  in  1890  to  more  than  11,000  in  1922.  Although 
 there  are  still  large  areas  untouched  by  the  ministry 
 of  these  nurses,  they  are,  nevertheless,  at  work  today 
 in  states  extending  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
 and  from  New  England  to  the  Gulf.  They  are  em¬ 
 ployed  by  boards  of  health,  boards  of  education,  county 
 boards  of  supervisors,  industrial  companies,  anti- 
 tuberculosis  associations,  women’s  clubs,  home  mis¬ 
 sion  boards,  and  by  various  other  groups.  They  are 
 at  work  in  communities  ranging  from  a  few  hundred 
 people  upwards.  The  value  of  the  ministry  which 
 they  are  rendering  is  beyond  calculation. 
 
 By  way  of  illustration :  A  few  years  ago,  when  New 
 York  City  schools  had  no  school  nurses,  only  six  per 
 cent  of  the  instructions  of  the  school  doctor  were  car¬ 
 ried  out.  With  the  introduction  of  school  nurses, 
 who  could  follow  the  child  into  the  home  and  there 
 persuade  the  parents  to  secure  proper  treatment  for 
 it,  reports  showed  that  84  per  cent  of  the  physicians’ 
 instructions  were  carried  out. 
 
WHERE  DO  THEY  LIVE  f 
 
 Millions  of  American  girls  and  boys  live  in  cabins,  box-cars,  and  shacks  of  various 
 sorts.  In  general,  the  poverty  of  the  home  environment  is  but  a  reflection  of  the  social, 
 religious,  and  educational  poverty  which  dwarfs  life  at  its  very  beginning. 
 
Some  home  mission  churches  employ  visiting  nurses  who  visit  the  hum¬ 
 blest  homes  and  there  translate  scientific  knowledge  into  simple  and  concrete 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 55 
 
 The  public  health  nurse  not  only  cures  “backward” 
 pupils  by  removing  the  cause  of  backwardness  in  the 
 home,  but  she  also  strikes  at  the  very  source  of  dis¬ 
 ease  through  fly  campaigns,  clean-up  weeks,  and  agi¬ 
 tation  for  better  housing,  sewage  disposal,  and  milk 
 inspection.  All  this  requires  a  nurse  who  has  had 
 much  more  than  an  ordinary  nurse’s  training,  and  at 
 least  fifteen  universities  are  now  offering  approved 
 courses  for  the  post-graduate  training  of  graduate 
 nurses  who  wish  to  take  up  public  health  work.  In 
 this  connection  the  National  Organization  for  Public 
 Health  Nursing 1  has  rendered  a  most  important  ser¬ 
 vice  by  holding  up  a  high  standard  of  training  for  the 
 public  health  nurse  and  by  maintaining  both  a  con¬ 
 sultation  and  vocational  service  for  nurses  and  com¬ 
 munities  and  also  by  acting  as  a  national  clearing 
 house  for  information  relating  to  all  phases  of  public 
 health  nursing. 
 
 BETTER  TRAINED  PARENTS  ESSENTIAL 
 
 It  would  be  difficult  to  over-emphasize  the  impor¬ 
 tance  of  the  public-health  nurse.  She  can  do  much 
 to  minimize  the  effects  of  poverty  in  the  homes  and 
 ignorance  on  the  part  of  parents,  but  such  a  ministry 
 alone  can  never  fully  satisfy  the  Christian  conscience. 
 We  must  get  back  of  the  conditions  that  are,  and  find 
 out  why  parents  are  allowed  to  remain  so  ignorant  in 
 a  land  where  simple  scientific  facts  are  already  estab¬ 
 lished  and  available,  and  why  such  distressing  poverty 
 is  allowed  to  continue  in  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and 
 
 1  Headquarters  are  at  370  Seventh  Avenue,  New  York  City. 
 
56 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 honey.  The  question  of  the  needless  sacrifice  of  the 
 lives  of  little  children,  when  followed  to  its  logical 
 conclusion,  leads  us  very  close  to  the  heart  of  some 
 of  the  evils  in  our  present  social  organization.  Surely 
 there  must  be  something  at  fault  both  with  our  edu¬ 
 cational  systems  and  with  our  economic  organization 
 when  such  conditions  are  allowed  to  exist.  It  is  the 
 business  of  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ  to  find  out 
 the  things  that  are  wrong  and  to  set  them  right  or  die 
 in  the  attempt. 
 
 We  cannot  forget  that  many  of  these  ignorant 
 parents  who  do  not  understand  the  simple  principles 
 which  have  to  do  with  the  care  of  mothers  and  chil¬ 
 dren  are  the  products  of  our  public  and  church  schools. 
 In  those  schools  we  consider  certain  things  so  impor¬ 
 tant  that  we  endeavor  to  teach  them  to  every  child. 
 These  include  the  alphabet,  the  multiplication  table, 
 and  other  similarly  basic  facts.  We  drill  on  these 
 more  or  less  diverting  matters  until  they  are  supposed 
 to  be  fixed  permanently  in  the  child’s  mind.  No  doubt 
 these  things  are  important,  yet  we  have  in  the  United 
 States  multitudes  of  parents  who  rarely  ever  use  the 
 multiplication  table  and  whose  reading  is  so  slight  that 
 it  is  practically  negligible,  but  who  never,  in  church  or 
 school,  received  any  instruction  in  sex  hygiene  or  in 
 the  most  important  task  in  life,  that  of  being  an  in¬ 
 telligent  father  or  mother.  Yet  the  essential  facts 
 concerning  the  feeding  and  care  of  infants  could  be 
 presented  in  our  public  schools,  or  even  in  our  church 
 schools,  and  mastered  in  far  less  time  than  is  now  con¬ 
 sumed  in  conquering  the  multiplication  table.  We  are 
 
SAVING  YOUNG  BODIES 
 
 57 
 
 not  particularly  desirious  of  having  the  multiplication 
 table  thrown  out  of  our  schools,  but  we  are  convinced 
 that  this  matter  of  an  enlightened  parenthood  is  at 
 least  of  as  much  importance,  and  should  receive  its 
 due  amount  of  attention. 
 
 A  TASK  FOR  THE  CHURCH 
 
 It  would  seem  to  be  the  business  of  the  Church  to 
 make  sure  that  this  knowledge  is  carried  to  all.  It  is 
 a  part  of  the  good  news  which  Jesus  came  to  proclaim. 
 Was  it  not  He  who  opened  his  ministry  in  his  home 
 town  of  Nazareth  with  the  words :  “The  Spirit  of  the 
 Lord  is  upon  me,  because  he  anointed  me  to  preach 
 good  tidings  to  the  poor:  He  hath  sent  me  to  pro¬ 
 claim  release  to  the  captives,  and  recovering  of  sight 
 to  the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to 
 proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord.” 
 
 We  are  told  that  the  race  moves  forward  on  the 
 feet  of  little  children.  We  believe  this  to  be  a  fact. 
 It  is  the  premise  on  which  this  chapter  is  written. 
 We  have  tried  to  show  that  there  is  an  enormous  loss 
 of  infant  life  and  well-being  in  America;  that  much 
 of  this  appalling  loss  is  entirely  unnecessary;  that  the 
 Christian  Church  could  change  these  conditions  if  it 
 desired  to  do  so;  that  because  Christianity  is  what  it 
 is,  we  can  never  discharge  our  responsibilities  in  this 
 particular  until  we  have  done  all  within  our  power  to 
 set  the  wrong  things  right.  We  have  suggested  that 
 the  Church  is  already  rendering  a  large  service  in  this 
 field,  but  that  it  is  falling  far  below  its  possibilities. 
 
 There  are  certain  very  definite  things  which  local 
 
58 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 churches  and  individual  Christians  can  do  to  help. 
 They  can  support  more  generously  the  work  which 
 denominational  missionary  agencies  are  doing  among 
 specialized  and  neglected  groups  in  this  country  and 
 its  possessions.  They  can  assist  in  the  establishment 
 of  local  child  welfare  stations  and  in  the  support  of 
 public-health  nurses  for  local  communities.  They  can 
 organize  or  cooperate  with  the  local  child  welfare  or¬ 
 ganization.  They  can  provide  and  teach  mothers’ 
 classes  in  the  local  church.  They  can  arrange  clinics 
 for  the  examination  of  children.  They  can  help  to 
 provide  ice  for  those  who  need  it.  They  can  insist 
 on  regular  and  adequate  physical  examination  of 
 pupils  in  the  public  school.  They  can  make  sure  that 
 a  wholesome  and  abundant  milk  supply  is  available 
 for  the  community.  They  can  cooperate  with  the  pub¬ 
 lic  school  authorities  and  insist  that  adequate  instruc¬ 
 tion  on  matters  of  child  welfare  be  introduced  at  the 
 proper  place  in  the  school  curriculum.  They  can 
 organize  classes  for  the  study  of  similar  subjects  in 
 the  church  school.  In  short,  there  are  countless  ways 
 through  which  the  work  can  be  carried  on. 
 
 Our  task  will  be  complete  when  we  have  all  learned 
 all  that  we  can’  learn  about  the  care  of  children,  and 
 when  all  that  knowledge  is  being  utilized  in  caring  for 
 every  child  born  under  the  Stars  and  Stripes  and  every 
 other  flag  in  all  the  world. 
 
CHAPTER  III 
 Play  and  Work 
 
 Did  you  ever  watch  a  group  of  boys  in  a  narrow, 
 crowded  street  sit  down  on  a  much-used  sidewalk  to 
 shoot  marbles,  quite  oblivious  to  the  fact  that  steady 
 streams  of  traffic  were  crowding  them  from  either 
 side  ?  Did  you  ever  see  an  Italian  girl  seize  the  fleet¬ 
 ing  seconds  between  constantly  passing  pedestrians  to 
 bounce  a  rubber  ball  against  a  narrow  space  of  brick 
 between  two  windows  ?  Did  you  ever  observe  a  gang 
 of  boys  on  a  crowded  thoroughfare  “shoot  craps”  for 
 rusty  safety-pins,  bits  of  chalk,  useless  pieces  of  tin, 
 or  broken  pencil  stubs  or,  for  that  matter,  for  real 
 money  ?  Did  you  ever  visit  a  crude,  dark,  and  damp 
 rendezvous  of  a  gang  of  boys,  built  in  an  impossible 
 spot,  of  rotten  material  taken  from  some  building  in 
 process  of  wrecking?  If  you  have  had  any  one  or 
 all  of  these  experiences,  or  others  similar  to  them,  you 
 have  some  idea  of  the  insistence  of  the  play  instinct  in 
 life  and  the  necessity  for  its  guidance. 
 
 We  have  sometimes  thought  of  play  either  as  a 
 necessary  evil  to  be  tolerated  or  as  a  more  or  less 
 harmless  pastime  for  children  too  young  to  work. 
 We  have  been  slow  in  discovering  that  play  is  a  most 
 essential  factor  in  God’s  plan  of  making  men  and 
 women  out  of  boys  and  girls.  Play,  properly  directed, 
 builds  strong  muscles,  fortifies  the  body  against  dis¬ 
 ease,  quickens  the  intellect,  strengthens  the  moral  fiber, 
 teaches  the  fine  art  of  cooperation  and  team -play, 
 
 59 
 
60  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 lessens  immorality,  crime,  and  delinquency,  and,  in 
 general,  serves  as  the  child’s  great  university  in  the 
 complicated  art  of  living.  Someone  once  said,  “Man 
 is  most  truly  man  when  he  plays.”  We  may  para¬ 
 phrase  that  statement  and  say,  “The  child  is  most 
 truly  the  child  he  ought  to  be  when  he  is  engaged  in 
 wholesome,  invigorating  play.”  It  is  on  the  play¬ 
 ground  that  the  child  lives  the  full  and  abounding  life 
 which  is  so  necessary  to  his  present  well-being  and  his 
 future  development. 
 
 Speaking  of  the  value  of  play,  Charles  W.  Waddle 
 says :  “There  is  scarcely  a  virtue  that  is  not  born  and 
 reared  to  sturdy  strength  through  suitable  and  timely 
 play.  Self-control,  self-direction,  capacity  to  lead, 
 and  willingness  to  follow  are  necessary  virtues  learned 
 nowhere  else  so  readily  and  so  surely.  Justice,  hon¬ 
 esty,  respect  for  the  rights  of  others,  the  necessity  for 
 and  the  binding  nature  of  law,  and  all  those  principles, 
 recognition  of  which  complex  social  and  industrial  life 
 demands,  come  as  by-products  of  rightly  developed 
 play.”  Play  is  a  spiritual  tonic.  It  gives  zest  to  all 
 of  life.  The  child  who  has  not  learned  the  secret  of 
 play  has  missed  something  of  very  great  importance 
 from  his  life. 
 
 OPPORTUNITIES  FOR  PLAY  NEEDED 
 
 The  impulse  to  play  is  universal,  but  knowledge  of 
 how  to  play  must  be  acquired,  and,  unfortunately, 
 opportunities  for  wholesome  play  are  often  narrowly 
 limited.  This  is  particularly  true  in  our  great  cities 
 which  steadily  grow  larger  and  more  numerous  as 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 61 
 
 the  years  pass.  A  few  years  ago  we  were  distinctly 
 a  rural  people;  today  more  than  half  of  our  boys 
 and  girls  live  in  cities,  and  a  large  proportion  in 
 large  cities.  So  far  as  the  rising  generation  is  con¬ 
 cerned,  this  drift  toward  the  city  means  that  a  large 
 and  steadily  increasing  proportion  of  our  children  are 
 growing  up  largely  separated  from  the  green  fields, 
 the  brooks,  the  trees,  and  even  the  domestic  animals 
 with  which  children  were  once  so  familiar.  One  is 
 reminded,  by  way  of  contrast,  of  the  last  will  and 
 testament  of  Charles  Lounsbury,  who  died  some  time 
 ago  in  the  Cook  County  Asylum  in  Illinois.  He  said : 
 
 That  part  of  my  interests  which  is  known  in  law  and  rec¬ 
 ognized  in  the  sheep-bound  volumes  as  my  property,  being  in¬ 
 considerable  and  of  no  account,  I  make  no  disposal  of  in  this, 
 my  last  will. 
 
 •  •••••• 
 
 I  leave  to  children  exclusively,  but  only  for  the  term  of  their 
 childhood,  all  and  every  flower  of  the  field  and  the  blossoms  of 
 the  woods,  with  the  right  to  play  among  them  freely  according 
 to  the  custom  of  children,  warning  them  at  the  same  time  against 
 thistles  and  thorns.  And  I  devise  to  children  the  banks  of  the 
 brooks  and  the  golden  sands  beneath  the  waters  thereof,  and 
 the  odor  of  the  willows  that  dip  therein ;  and  the  white  clouds 
 that  float  high  over  the  giant  trees.  And  I  leave  the  children 
 the  long,  long  days  in  which  to  be  merry  in  a  thousand  ways; 
 and  the  night  and  the  moon ;  and  the  train  of  the  milky  way 
 to  wonder  at. 
 
 I  devise  to  boys  jointly  the  use  of  the  idle  fields  and  commons 
 where  ball  may  be  played ;  all  pleasant  waters  where  one  may 
 swim ;  all  snow-clad  hills  where  one  may  coast ;  and  all  streams 
 and  ponds,  where  one  may  fish,  or  where,  when  grim  winter 
 comes,  one  may  skate ;  to  have  and  to  hold  the  same  for  the 
 period  of  their  boyhood.  And  all  the  meadows,  with  the  clover 
 blossoms  and  the  butterflies  thereof ;  the  woods  with  their  appur¬ 
 tenances,  the  squirrels  and  the  birds,  the  echoes  of  strange 
 noises ;  and  all  the  distant  places  which  may  be  visited,  together 
 with  all  the  adventures  there  found.  And  I  give  to  the  boys 
 each  his  own  place  at  the  fireside  at  night,  with  all  pictures  that 
 may  be  seen  in  the  burning  wood,  to  enjoy  without  let  or  hin¬ 
 drance  and  without  incumbrance  or  care. 
 
62  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 These  extracts  from  this  remarkable  document, 
 written  by  a  penniless  man,  dying  in  a  public  institu¬ 
 tion,  are  significant  in  the  present  connection  because 
 they  picture  so  vividly  and  beautifully  the  environment 
 of  childhood  which  once  was  characteristically  Amer¬ 
 ican.  To  many  fathers  today  every  word  of  the  pic¬ 
 ture  drawn  builds  visions  of  past  experiences  in  their 
 own  lives,  while  to  many  sons  of  these  same  fathers 
 the  words  are  meaningless. 
 
 As  soon  as  people  insist  on  living  together  in  great 
 cities,  the  problem  of  play  takes  on  greater  seriousness. 
 Fortunately,  the  child’s  play  life  must  and  should  begin 
 in  the  home,  but  unfortunately,  many  parents  are  un¬ 
 skilled  in  the  matter  of  directing  their  children’s  play. 
 There  was  a  time  when  almost  the  entire  play  life  of 
 the  child  centered  about  the  home;  when,  in  addition 
 to  the  outdoor  games,  dominoes,  checkers,  tiddledy 
 winks,  parcheesi,  jack  straws,  and  a  host  of  other  fire¬ 
 side  games  and  activities  made  the  home  the  center 
 of  ever-fascinating  interest.  The  very  fact  that  many 
 of  these  games  were  home-made  added  unmistakably 
 to  their  value.  As  time  has  passed,  the  number  of 
 available  home  games  has  steadily  increased,  but  in  the 
 meantime  other  social  changes  have  been  taking  place. 
 Public  amusement  has  increased  and  become  commer¬ 
 cialized,  and  means  of  communication  and  transporta¬ 
 tion  have  developed  until  the  home  has  many  competi¬ 
 tors  in  the  field  of  play.  It  is  of  very  great  importance 
 that  the  home,  which  we  have  allowed  perhaps  too 
 easily  to  be  superseded  by  other  institutions,  shall  re¬ 
 cover  something  of  its  lost  prestige  as  a  place  for  play. 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 63 
 
 A  swing  in  the  back-yard,  a  trapeze  in  the  attic,  and 
 the  best  room  in  the  house  set  aside  as  a  children’s 
 play-room  will  help  to  some  extent  to  restore  that  pres¬ 
 tige. 
 
 It  is,  perhaps,  of  equal  importance  that  parents  shall 
 endeavor  to  develop  some  definite  skill  in  directing 
 and  sharing  in  home  play.  Mr.  Joseph  Lee,  a  student 
 in  this  field,  has  suggested  certain  minimum  require¬ 
 ments  as  essential  to  the  play  life  of  children: 
 
 I.  The  first  requirement  of  the  play  life  of  a  child  is  a 
 mother.  To  him  his  mother  is  at  once  instigator,  audience,  play¬ 
 mate,  playground,  and  apparatus.  ...  A  mother  is,  of  course, 
 of  no  use  to  a  child  when  he  is  locked  up  in  a  room  and  she  is 
 working  in  a  factory.  By  having  a  mother,  I  mean  one  who  is 
 able  to  play  a  mother’s  part. 
 
 II.  The  next  requirement  of  a  child’s  play  is  a  home  where 
 he  can  have  his  own  things  to  play  with,  his  own  place  to  keep 
 them,  and  some  one  to  share  them  with  and  to  be  interested  in 
 what  he  does.  More  than  half  of  our  child  wreckage  is  due  to 
 broken  homes,  and  the  disaster  to  their  play  life  is  in  a  great 
 part  to  blame. 
 
 III.  Another  essential  to  the  child  from  a  very  early  age  is 
 a  child  community  with  established  play  traditions.  .  .  . 
 
 IV.  Every  child  should  have  the  equivalent  of  a  tool  house, 
 a  woodshed,  and  an  attic  in  his  life,  whether  provided  by  the 
 home,  the  school,  or  some  near  neighborhood  institution.  He 
 must,  apart  from  any  systematic  teaching,  have  things  to  hammer 
 and  cut  and  melt  and  put  together,  to  burn,  color,  and  otherwise 
 deal  with  as  his  soul  leads  him.  .  .  . 
 
 V.  Every  child  should  be  encouraged  to  make  collections  of 
 stones  or  bones  or  leaves  or  some  such  objects,  and  should  be 
 shielded  from  the  kind  of  nature  study  which  is  to  the  love  of 
 beasts  and  flowers  what  the  study  of  anatomy  is  to  social  life. 
 
 VI.  Every  child  should  go  through  a  period  of  having  pets — 
 anything  from  white  mice  to  horses  will  do. 
 
 VII.  Every  child  must  grow  up  in  the  presence  of  the  arts. 
 
 VIII.  For  children  under  six  there  must  be  a  back-yard  with 
 a  sand  box  and  other  things  to  play  with  and  a  little  general 
 playground  in  the  block.  For  those  from  six  to  ten  there  must 
 be  a  sufficient  playground,  properly  equipped  and  with  right 
 leadership,  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile.  .  .  . 
 
 IX.  Every  child  must  have  a  garden  in  his  home,  or  two 
 months  a  year  of  life  in  the  country.  In  fact  he  ought  to  have 
 the  latter  anyway,  and  will  have  to  arrange  it  with  his  mother 
 
64  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 or  his  aunt  or  partner  to  look  after  his  home  garden  while  he 
 is  away. 
 
 These  are  some  of  the  things  we  shall  provide  when  we  learn 
 to  take  either  democracy  or  education  seriously. 
 
 The  foregoing  are  but  suggestions  which  a  little 
 ingenuity  and  imagination  on  the  part  of  the  parent 
 will  enlarge  and  adapt  to  individual  circumstances. 
 
 THE  PLAYGROUND  AND  ITS  IMPORTANCE 
 
 The  play  life  of  the  child  begins  in  the  home,  but 
 it  very  soon  begins  to  reach  outside  of  the  home  en¬ 
 vironment.  This  is  as  it  should  be,  for  it  is  only  in 
 these  broader  relationships  that  the  child  can  find  those 
 varied  experiences  which  will  round  out  his  develop¬ 
 ment  and  training.  When,  however,  the  child  lacks 
 proper  home  care,  he  is  often  thrust  out  almost  as  soon 
 as  he  can  walk,  or  even  before,  to  find  his  play  life 
 and  his  play  world  outside  of  the  home.  Once  out¬ 
 side  the  home  circle,  he  becomes  a  community  respon¬ 
 sibility,  and  the  community  must  find  an  opportunity 
 for  the  expression  of  the  child’s  play  instincts  or  suffer 
 the  consequences.  For  a  long  time  it  was  the  habit 
 of  communities  to  “suffer  the  consequences.”  Many 
 a  group  of  lively  lads  with  endless  possibilities  for 
 good  has  become  a  “gang”  of  toughs,  many  of  whom 
 later  have  found  themselves  behind  prison  bars,  be¬ 
 cause  society  has  been  so  slow  in  providing  opportu¬ 
 nity  for  and  guidance  in  play.  It  has  been  truly  said 
 that,  “In  retracing  the  tortuous  path  of  the  youthful 
 criminal  it  is  seldom  found  that  the  trail  leads  back 
 to  the  playground,  the  diamond,  the  athletic  field,  or 
 the  community  center.”  Already  the  movement  for 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 65 
 
 supplying  these  needs  has  progressed  far  enough  for 
 us  to  see  the  relation  of  them  to  the  prevention  of  de¬ 
 linquency  and  crime. 
 
 The  first  organized  and  supervised  outdoor  play¬ 
 ground  in  the  United  States  was  established  under 
 private  auspices  in  Boston  in  1886.  Soon  the  move¬ 
 ment  spread.  City  governments  began  to  waken  to  the 
 need;  state  legislation  was  passed;  school  buildings 
 were  opened  as  community  centers;  playgrounds  mul¬ 
 tiplied;  the  need  for  recreation  among  adults  as  well 
 as  children  appeared;  and  the  entire  movement  as¬ 
 sumed  national  proportions.  In  1906  the  Playground 
 and  Recreation  Association  of  America  was  organized, 
 with  headquarters  in  New  York  City.1  A  recent  re¬ 
 port  of  that  organization  indicates  that  for  the  year 
 1921  there  were  502  cities  in  the  United  States  in 
 which  there  were  playgrounds  under  paid  leadership. 
 In  367  of  these  cities  the  work  was  supported  entirely 
 or  in  part  from  municipal  funds.  Play  centers  to  the 
 number  of  4,584  were  conducted,  and  5,181  men  and 
 5,898  women,  a  total  of  11,079  paid  workers,  were 
 employed.  The  total  average  daily  attendance  re¬ 
 ported  at  summer  centers  by  407  cities  was  1,154,983. 
 In  addition  to  the  502  cities  noted  above,  169  cities 
 reported  school  playgrounds  or  centers  under  volun¬ 
 tary  supervision.  Thirty-eight  cities  also  report  streets 
 closed  for  play,  while  ninety-eight  cities  report  that 
 they  have  safeguarded  streets  for  coasting. 
 
 A  study  of  juvenile  delinquency  among  boys  be¬ 
 tween  seven  and  seventeen  years  of  age  in  the  city  of 
 
 1  Headquarters  are  at  315  Fourth  Avenue. 
 
66 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 Chicago  has  revealed  many  interesting  facts.  There 
 was  in  one  year  a  decrease  in  juvenile  delinquency  of 
 24  per  cent  within  the  radius  of  one  mile  of  small  play¬ 
 grounds  opened  by  the  Special  Park  Commission.  In 
 a  certain  restricted  area  in  the  vicinity  of  the  stock- 
 yards,  a  portion  of  Chicago  most  difficult  to  improve, 
 juvenile  delinquency  showed  a  decrease  of  44  per  cent 
 during  the  period  in  which  the  small  parks  had  been 
 open.  In  a  still  more  restricted  area  within  a  quarter 
 mile  radius  of  three  playgrounds  there  appeared  a  de¬ 
 crease  in  juvenile  delinquency  of  fifty  per  cent  from 
 the  year  1900  to  1907,  and  within  a  radius  of  one  half 
 a  mile  the  decrease  was  thirty-nine  per  cent.  It  was 
 clearly  demonstrated  by  this  study  that  to  provide  a 
 probation  district  with  adequate  play  facilities  is  coin¬ 
 cident  with  a  reduction  in  juvenile  delinquency  of  from 
 twenty-eight  to  seventy  per  cent.  In  St.  Paul  the 
 establishment  of  a  single  recreation  center  in  a  partic¬ 
 ularly  difficult  congested  area  resulted  in  a  fifty  per 
 cent  reduction  in  juvenile  delinquency  for  the  entire 
 city.  Results  of  a  like  nature  have  been  secured  in 
 many  other  places. 
 
 The  playground  as  such  has  been  found  to  serve 
 most  effectively  those  children  under  fifteen  years  of 
 age,  but  its  usefulness  cannot  be  limited  to  any  age 
 group.  Young  employed  men  and  women  often  make 
 heavy  demands  upon  these  play  centers,  particularly 
 when  daylight  saving  extends  the  period  of  evening 
 recreation.  Twilight  baseball  leagues  are  popular 
 with  this  older  group,  as  are  volley-ball,  tennis,  hand¬ 
 ball,  medicine  ball,  and  similar  games. 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 67 
 
 For  the  babies  there  should  be  baskets  or  hammocks, 
 and  objects  for  them  to  handle;  sand  piles,  swings, 
 carts,  and  playthings  of  various  sorts  for  the  children 
 who  are  beginning  to  run  about.  For  children  from 
 three  to  six  years  there  should  be  singing,  games, 
 stories,  and  constructive  play.  From  six  to  eleven  or 
 twelve  years  there  is  a  demand  for  competitive  games, 
 simple  dramatics,  and  a  multitude  of  other  activities. 
 For  those  above  twelve  years  of  age  the  more  strenu¬ 
 ous  individual  sports  and  competitive  games  are  de¬ 
 sirable,  including  hikes,  nature  study,  trips  of  explora¬ 
 tion,  and  the  like. 
 
 CLUBS  FOR  GIRLS  AND  BOYS 
 
 Important  as  is  the  playground,  it,  alone,  can  never 
 solve  the  play  and  recreation  problem  of  boys  and  girls. 
 By  twelve  years  of  age  at  least,  the  group  instinct  of 
 youth  begins  to  demand  smaller  and  more  compact 
 group  organization  than  is  possible  on  the  ordinary 
 playground.  That  useful  institution  must  then  be  sup¬ 
 plemented  by  Boy  Scouts,  Girl  Scouts,  Campfire  Girls’ 
 organizations,  and  a  multitude  of  similar  clubs  for 
 boys  and  girls.  It  would  be  hard  to  over-emphasize 
 the  good  which  the  Boy  Scout  organization  has  done 
 by  taking  hundreds  of  thousands  of  boys  at  an  age 
 when  they  specially  need  help  and  guidance  and  sup¬ 
 plying  to  them  wholesome  and  educative  activities  of 
 many  and  varied  forms.  Similar  clubs  for  girls  have 
 also  made  their  enormous  contributions  to  individual 
 and  national  welfare. 
 
 The  sad  fact  is  that  while  we  have  reached  many 
 
68  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 with  these  helpful  group  organizations,  we  have,  for 
 lack  of  paid  and  volunteer  leadership,  been  obliged  to 
 neglect  many  more  than  we  have  been  able  to  care  for. 
 A  study  recently  made  by  the  Rotary  Club  of  Chicago 
 of  what  was  being  done  for  boys  in  that  city  revealed 
 the  fact  that  the  figures  of  all  agencies,  taken  at  their 
 face  value  and  making  no  allowances  for  duplications, 
 made  a  total  of  about  one  sixth  of  the  boy  population 
 of  Chicago  between  the  ages  of  ten  and  twenty  years, 
 that  was  being  reached  by  any  agency  attempting  to 
 supply  some  sort  of  supervision  for  the  leisure  time  of 
 the  boy.  In  other  words,  there  were  270,000  boys  in 
 the  city  between  the  ages  of  ten  and  twenty  years  who 
 were  not  being  touched  by  boys’  clubs,  boys’  work  in 
 settlements,  Boy  Scouts,  Y.  M.  C.  A.  boys’  depart¬ 
 ments,  public  schools  and  community  center  groups, 
 and  clubs  or  church  clubs  of  any  sort.  We  do  not 
 need  a  more  vivid  illustration  of  how  far  we  have 
 fallen  short  of  doing  our  task.  We  already  know  the 
 method  of  its  doing,  but  we  have  not  been  able  to 
 muster  our  resources  to  do  it.  That  the  job  is  worth 
 doing,  another  illustration  from  Chicago  indicates. 
 The  records  of  the  Juvenile  Court  in  Chicago  show 
 that  the  organization  of  a  single  boys’  club  with  ade¬ 
 quate  equipment  in  building  and  apparatus,  and  under 
 trained  direction,  assisted  in  reducing  juvenile  delin¬ 
 quency  in  an  entire  police  precinct  51  per  cent  in  a 
 single  year,  and  in  the  particular  ward  in  which  the 
 club  is  situated  the  reduction  in  juvenile  delinquency 
 was  73  per  cent  in  the  same  period  of  time. 
 
 Surely  the  churches,  the  schools,  and  the  associa- 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 69 
 
 tions  which  are  interested  in  saving  our  boys  and 
 girls  can  make  no  finer  investment  than  in  securing 
 both  the  facilities  and  the  leadership  which  will  enable 
 us  to  provide  for  the  leisure  time  of  our  boys  and 
 girls  in  a  far  more  adequate  way  in  the  future  than 
 we  have  in  the  past.  Already  many  churches  and 
 other  agencies  have  taken  their  tasks  seriously  and, 
 through  clubs,  Boy  Scouts,  Campfire  Girls,  gymnasium 
 classes,  ball  teams,  and  many  other  organizations,  have 
 succeeded  in  dominating  the  young  life  of  their  com¬ 
 munities.  They  have  blazed  the  trail  which  many 
 others  must  follow  before  the  task  will  be  done. 
 
 The  number  of  such  clubs  to  be  found  in  churches 
 supported  by  home  mission  money  is  very  large,  run¬ 
 ning  into  the  thousands — how  many,  one  could  scarcely 
 attempt  to  estimate  even  approximately.  A'  single 
 Italian  mission  housed  in  a  building  so  inconspicuous 
 as  scarcely  to  attract  attention  carries  on  sixteen  clubs 
 for  girls  and  boys  as  a  regular  part  of  its  current  pro¬ 
 gram  (1922-1923).  These  clubs  are  directed  by 
 young  men  and  women,  practically  all  of  whom  have 
 had  college  training  and  most  of  whom  have,  in  addi¬ 
 tion,  had  special  training  for  their  respective  tasks. 
 Another  Italian  mission  provides  a  program  of  indus¬ 
 trial  training,  entertainment,  and  religious  instruction 
 which  takes  nearly  twelve  hundred  American  children 
 of  Italian  parentage  from  the  crowded  streets  for  cer¬ 
 tain  periods  each  week. 
 
 In  connection  with  the  Daily  Vacation  Bible  Schools 
 which  now  total  into  the  thousands  each  summer,  home 
 mission  agencies  are  making  large  provision  both  for 
 
70 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 indoor  and  outdoor  play,  and,  each  summer,  in  con¬ 
 nection  with  camps  of  various  sorts,  many  thousands 
 of  children  are  given  an  annual  outing  in  God’s  out- 
 of-doors.  One  playground  provided  during  the  sum¬ 
 mer  of  1922  in  connection  with  a  mission  in  the  an¬ 
 thracite  region  of  Pennsylvania  was  used  regularly 
 by  girls  and  boys  during  the  day  and  by  young  men 
 and  women  during  the  evening,  the  evening  attendance, 
 on  occasion,  running  well  over  one  hundred.  The 
 moral  breakdown  of  many  a  youth  has  grown  out  of 
 the  fact  that  no  one  cared  how  he  spent  his  leisure. 
 
 THE  STORY  OF  A  HOME  MISSION  CHURCH 
 
 What  can  be  done  by  way  of  providing  a  program 
 for  the  leisure  time  of  girls  and  boys  when  funds  and 
 workers  are  available  is  well  illustrated  by  the  experi¬ 
 ence  of  a  home  mission  church  in  a  mid-western  city. 
 The  church  is  located  in  the  heart  of  a  foreign  section 
 of  the  city.  There  are  perhaps  fifty  thousand  people 
 of  many  nationalities  in  the  community  served  by  it. 
 The  Sunday-school  has  a  membership  of  over  a  thou¬ 
 sand,  made  up  largely  of  boys  and  girls  from  foreign¬ 
 speaking  homes.  The  work,  however,  does  not  stop 
 with  the  Sunday-school.  On  Monday  evening  there 
 are  pictures,  and  750  children  are  on  hand  to  see  them. 
 Bible  stories,  prayers,  and  gospel  songs  form  a  part 
 of  the  program  for  this  occasion.  A  physical  director 
 is  employed,  and  many  gymnasium  classes  scattered 
 throughout  the  week  give  fun  and  training  to  a  large 
 number  of  girls  and  boys.  The  girls  are  taught  to 
 bake,  to  cook,  and  to  sew.  The  younger  girls  come 
 
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COMMUNITY  RECREATION 
 
 The  trail  of  the  youthful  criminal  seldoms  leads  back  to  the 
 playground  or  the  swimming  pool.  Girl  and  Boy  Scout  activities 
 are  doing  an  invaluable  work  in  training  future  citizens.  Fac¬ 
 tories  that  provide  recreation  for  their  employees  are  making 
 investments  that  yield  large  physical  and  moral  returns  in  the 
 lives  of  young  people. 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 71 
 
 for  these  cooking  clubs  immediately  after  school,  and 
 the  older  girls  come  in  the  evening.  Instruction  con¬ 
 cerning  food  values  is  given,  and  the  preparation  of 
 meals,  the  care  of  the  dining-room  and  kitchen,  and 
 similar  activities  are  demonstrated  by  the  girls  in  the 
 clubs.  For  the  boys  a  regular  industrial  school  is 
 maintained.  It  has  sessions  on  Saturday  and  on  two 
 evenings  each  week.  The  sessions  are  preceded  by  a 
 devotional  service  of  song,  prayer,  and  Bible  stories. 
 There  are  classes  in  printing,  cooking,  basketry,  book¬ 
 binding,  pyrography,  brass  piercing,  and  art  crafts. 
 During  the  summer  a  Daily  Vacation  Bible  School 
 is  held.  The  enrolment  during  a  recent  summer  was 
 over  four  hundred,  representing  eleven  different  na¬ 
 tionalities.  The  work  consists  of  religious  instruction, 
 industrial  training  of  various  sorts,  and  recreation. 
 For  the  small  children  a  playroom  is  maintained.  A 
 free  medical  dispensary  is  kept  open  six  days  each 
 week.  A  summer  camp  is  also  supported  at  a  distance 
 from  the  city,  and  this  is  kept  filled  throughout  the 
 summer  with  boys  and  girls  from  the  parish.  A 
 cafeteria  and  many  other  features  not  mentioned  here 
 add  to  the  effectiveness  of  the  work.  This  particular 
 case  is  cited,  not  because  it  is  unique,  or  because  it  is 
 fully  meeting  the  needs  of  its  community,  but  rather 
 to  suggest  the  variety  of  demands  which  are  made 
 upon  a  church  in  a  congested  city  center,  when  it  stays 
 by  its  task  and  attempts  to  minister  to  the  lives  of  the 
 boys  and  girls  in  its  community  and  to  supply  some¬ 
 thing  in  the  way  of  a  varied  program  for  the  leisure 
 time  of  the  youth. 
 
72 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 A  program  of  the  sort  described  cannot  be  carried 
 on  in  the  old-fashioned  one-room  church,  and  the 
 work  of  such  an  institution  cannot  be  done  with  a  staff 
 of  two  or  three  individuals.  If  the  church  is  to  min¬ 
 ister  in  a  broad  way  to  the  lives  of  its  boys  and  girls, 
 especially  in  a  congested  city  center,  it  must  provide 
 both  adequate  buildings  and  adequate  staff. 
 
 When,  however,  the  work  is  undertaken  seriously, 
 very  definite  results  are  secured.  Thus  a  single  church 
 supported  by  a  home  mission  board,  with  a  broad 
 program  of  athletics,  clubs,  orchestra,  reading-rooms, 
 classes,  community  gardens,  and  varied  social  features 
 succeeded  in  five  years  in  reducing  juvenile  delinquency 
 in  its  neighborhood  seventy-five  per  cent.  From  be¬ 
 ing  one  of  the  worst  sections  of  the  city,  the  neighbor¬ 
 hood  became  one  of  the  very  best.  The  finest  results, 
 however,  are  not  limited  to  the  mere  prevention  of  de¬ 
 linquency,  but  are  to  be  traced  in  the  lives  of  thousands 
 of  individuals  whose  characters  have  been  built  strong 
 and  clean  and  who  have  gone  out  to  lead  lives  of  ser¬ 
 vice  in  a  world  in  which  otherwise  they  might  have 
 been  mere  hangers-on. 
 
 PLAY  IN  THE  RURAL  REGIONS 
 
 Thus  far  we  have  said  many  things  about  the  need 
 of  play  opportunities  for  the  half  of  our  boys  and 
 girls  who  live  under  city  conditions.  What  of  the 
 other  half  whom  we  may  assume  live  under  rural  con¬ 
 ditions?  Do  the  problems  of  play  naturally  solve 
 themselves  in  the  country,  in  the  quiet  of  God’s  out-of- 
 doors?  Far  from  it! 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 73 
 
 The  problem  of  play  is  far  more  than  a  mere  matter 
 cf  space.  The  city  child  may  lack  room  in  which  to 
 play,  but  he  rarely  lacks  playmates.  The  rural  child 
 often  lacks  both  playmates  and  leadership.  From  cer¬ 
 tain  grosser  evils  he  may  be  largely  shut  off  by  his 
 very  isolation,  but  the  positive  values  of  play  are  often 
 more  conspicuously  absent  in  the  country  than  in  the 
 town.  The  games  of  the  country  child  have  always 
 tended  to  be  individualistic  and  to  lack  the  organization 
 which  might  make  of  them  a  real  school  for  democ¬ 
 racy.  Very  often  the  responsibility  for  organized  play 
 in  the  country  rests  upon  an  untrained  schoolteacher 
 or  parent.  A  recent  investigation  revealed  the  fact  that 
 in  many  country  schools  the  boys  stood  around  push¬ 
 ing  each  other  and  scuffling,  while  the  girls  walked 
 singly  or  in  pairs  or  engaged  in  some  other  unor¬ 
 ganized  pastime.  There  seemed  to  be  lacking,  both 
 on  the  part  of  pupils  and  teachers,  the  initiative  neces¬ 
 sary  to  start  a  ball  game  or  other  organized  sport. 
 The  play  instinct  was  there,  but  it  found  expression 
 only  in  the  crudest  ways  because  it  was  unnurtured. 
 
 The  individualistic  plays  of  the  countryside  during 
 generations  past  developed  some  sides  of  the  child’s 
 life,  but  they  do  not  provide  adequate  training  for  the 
 complex  cooperative  life  of  the  present  day.  It  is 
 often  said  that  the  reason  farmers  find  it  so  difficult 
 and  at  times  almost  impossible  to  cooperate  as  adults, 
 grows  out  of  the  fact  that  they  never  learned  the  give 
 and  take  of  cooperative  team-play  while  they  were 
 children. 
 
 The  rural  child  greatly  needs  wise  and  stimulating 
 
74  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 leadership,  and  for  this  we  must  look  very  largely  to 
 an  awakened  and  enlightened  parenthood,  to  public 
 schoolteachers  in  our  rural  schools,  who  know  both 
 the  value  and  the  technique  of  play,  and  to  the  rural 
 pastor  who  recognizes  play  both  as  religion  and  a 
 training  in  religion,  rather  than  as  an  evil  or  a  doubt¬ 
 ful  good  to  be  tolerated  out  of  necessity. 
 
 THE  PROGRAM  OF  A  RURAL  CHURCH 
 
 Again  we  may  congratulate  ourselves  that  rural 
 pastors  are  recognizing  the  value  of  play  and  giving  a 
 prominent  place  to  it  in  planning  their  activities  for 
 young  people.  From  the  program  of  one  rural  church 
 during  a  recent  season,  we  pick  the  following  special 
 events  which  have  particular  interest  for  youth : 
 Harvest  Home  Festival;  Rally  Day  Service;  Play  by 
 the  Boy  Scout  Troops;  Hallowe’en  Social;  Rainbow 
 Social;  Thanksgiving  Service,  with  Scripture  reading 
 by  two  boys;  Annual  Bazaar;  Readings  from  Job; 
 Boy  Scouts’  Hike  and  Banquet;  Christmas  Exercises; 
 Last  Chance  Party;  Hard  Times  Party;  Father  and 
 Son  Banquet;  Lincoln  Memorial  Day;  Valentine  So¬ 
 cial;  Mother  and  Daughter  Banquet;  St.  Patrick  So¬ 
 cial;  Special  Passion  Week  Services;  Egg  Roll;  All 
 Fools’  Day  Frolic;  Boy  Scout  Sunday:  Morning 
 Watch  (6  a.m.),  Afternoon  Service,  and  Supper  in 
 the  Woods;  Missionary  Evening;  May  Day  Festival; 
 Mothers’  Day  Pageant;  Children’s  Day  Program; 
 Afternoon  Lawn  Party;  Automobile  Excursion  and 
 Dinner;  Boy  Scouts’  Camp  Week. 
 
 From  such  a  program  as  this  it  is  evident  that 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 75 
 
 the  boys  and  girls  have  a  place  in  the  thinking  of  the 
 pastor  in  that  community  and  an  important  part  in 
 the  life  of  the  church.  It  is  also  apparent  that  the 
 providing  of  wholesome  recreation  is  looked  upon  as 
 one  of  the  religious  duties  of  the  church.  One  can 
 hardly  imagine  a  young  person  being  indifferent  to  the 
 church  in  such  a  community.  There  is  too  much  that 
 is  worth  while  taking  place.  He  could  not  afford  to 
 miss  it.  And  what  is  being  done  here  is  being  dupli¬ 
 cated  in  multitudes  of  other  places  where  ministers 
 have  been  trained  in  summer  schools  or  elsewhere  in 
 the  art  of  play  and  have  been  impressed  with  its  im¬ 
 portance. 
 
 A  MINING  CAMP 
 
 A  home  mission  pastor  in  a  mining  camp  in  a 
 crack  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  found  that  a  hole  in 
 the  side  of  the  mountain  which  had  formerly  served 
 as  the  mouth  of  a  mine  was  being  used  by  a  band 
 of  youthful  criminals  as  a  rendezvous  for  telling 
 smutty  stories  and  planning  mischief  and  as  a  place 
 for  secreting  plunder  stolen  from  stores  and  homes 
 in  the  community.  Instead  of  ranting  against  the 
 evil  in  the  community,  he  organized  a  Boy  Scout 
 Troop.  Very  soon  every  member  of  the  gang  was 
 a  Boy  Scout.  The  Scout  work  was  taken  up  and 
 the  Scout  Law  taught.  Hikes  were  conducted  and 
 outings  of  many  sorts  arranged.  A  Father  and 
 Son  Banquet  was  given,  and  a  Mother  and  Son 
 Banquet  followed.  Gymnasium  classes,  knot  tying, 
 signal  practise,  and  other  activities  filled  the  leisure 
 
76 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 time  of  the  boys,  until  they  began  to  qualify  as 
 First  Class  Scouts.  It  is  perhaps  needless  to  add  that 
 the  cave  in  the  side  of  the  mountain  was  deserted, 
 new  habits  formed,  and  twenty-four  boys  became 
 avowed  followers  of  Jesus  Christ.  One  boy,  as  his 
 “good  turn,,,  cared  for  the  chores  of  an  old  woman 
 every  day  for  a  year  and  a  half,  and  he  would  not  so 
 much  as  allow  her  to  get  a  bucket  of  coal  for  herself. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  WOMEN’S  AGENCIES 
 
 Nor  have  the  women’s  home  mission  boards  been 
 slow  in  recognizing  the  moral  and  religious  values  of 
 play  in  the  life  of  the  child.  They  have  taken  definite 
 steps  to  minister  to  the  need.  The  writer  has  seen 
 many  happy  children  using  swings,  slides,  giant  strides 
 and  similar  apparatus  in  adobe  villages  twenty,  thirty, 
 and  forty  miles  from  the  railroad  in  our  great  West, 
 and  this  apparatus,  which  came  like  a  benediction  from 
 heaven,  to  the  delight  of  both  parents  and  children,  was 
 provided  by  women’s  home  mission  agencies.  The 
 moral  life  of  many  of  our  secluded  communities — 
 among  the  Indians,  in  Negro  communities,  in  Spanish 
 American  villages,  in  the  coke  regions  of  Pennsyl¬ 
 vania,  in  polyglot  centers  of  many  sorts  and  elsewhere 
 — is  sweeter  and  purer  for  what  the  Christian  women 
 of  America  have  done  to  teach  girls  and  boys  to  play 
 and  to  provide  the  means  for  such  play. 
 
 THE  PLACE  OF  MOTION  PICTURES 
 
 Thus  far  in  our  discussion  of  play  we  have  said 
 nothing  of  motion  pictures.  As  an  educational 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 77 
 
 medium  the  motion  picture  has  already  come  to  occupy 
 an  extremely  important  place,  and  many  of  its  possi¬ 
 bilities  are  still  unexplored  or  undeveloped.  As  an 
 amusement  it  is  one  of  the  cheapest  and  most  readily 
 available  that  we  have,  but  as  play  or  a  substitute 
 for  play,  it  has  large  and  inherent  limitations.  It 
 is  a  passive  amusement  rather  than  an  active  recrea¬ 
 tion.  It  provides  exercise  for  few  or  no  muscles. 
 It  does  not  build  red  corpuscles  or  strong  bodies. 
 It  does  not  develop  social  cooperation;  often  it  in¬ 
 volves  sitting  in  darkness  in  improperly  ventilated 
 rooms  for  extended  periods,  which  are  needed  for  real 
 recreation,  and  it  possesses  other  characteristics  which 
 automatically  limit  its  beneficial  effects  for  young  peo¬ 
 ple  whose  bodies  demand  much  active  exercise  in  play. 
 
 At  present  the  usefulness  of  the  motion  picture  is 
 further  limited  by  a  certain  percentage  of  films  scat¬ 
 tered  throughout  motion  picture  programs  in  a  more 
 or  less  miscellaneous  manner,  that  do  violence  to  the 
 moral  and  spiritual  natures  of  children.  Fortunately 
 this  menace  of  improper  films  can  and  probably  will 
 be  controlled  at  its  source.  Even  when  that  is  not 
 done,  however,  the  fathers  and  mothers  in  the  local 
 community  have,  in  the  pressure  of  public  opinion,  a 
 remedy  which  will  quickly  cure  the  evil  when  once 
 they  become  enough  concerned  about  it  seriously  to 
 desire  to  have  it  cured. 
 
 Many  churches  and  other  community  agencies  are 
 making  a  still  further  contribution  at  this  point  by 
 showing  selected  films  under  their  own  auspices.  As 
 yet  the  motion  picture  is  so  new  a  factor  in  our  na- 
 
78 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 tional  life  that  we  have  not  had  a  chance  to  study  its 
 total  effect  upon  a  rising  generation.  That  it  is  bound 
 to  have  a  large  and  important  bearing  upon  the  sort 
 of  men  and  women  who  are  to  dominate  the  future  is 
 evident.  Although  so  new  an  attraction,  the  testi¬ 
 mony  before  a  Senate  committee  revealed  the  fact 
 recently  that  the  American  people  are  spending  three 
 quarters  of  a  billion  dollars  a  year  for  admission  to 
 motion  picture  theaters.  A  considerable  part  of  this 
 is  spent  by  boys  and  girls.  A  study  recently  made  in 
 six  high  schools  in  Chicago  revealed  the  fact  that  the 
 pupils  in  those  six  schools  were  spending  $920  each 
 week  upon  the  movies,  or  $46,000  per  year.  It  was 
 found  that  of  the  3,000  children  included  in  the  six 
 schools,  eighty-seven  per  cent  attended  the  movies 
 from  one  to  seven  times  each  week.  One  boy,  in  fact, 
 reported  that  he  went  regularly  nine  times  a  week, 
 every  night  and  Saturday  and  Sunday  afternoon.  In 
 a  recently-made  study  by  Raymond  G.  Fuller  in  Ken¬ 
 tucky  it  was  found  that  children  formed  a  large  part 
 of  the  average  movie  audience.  In  some  cases  it  was 
 discovered  that  twenty-five  per  cent  of  all  tickets  sold 
 were  for  boys  and  girls  under  fourteen  years  of  age. 
 The  superintendent  of  schools  in  one  city  reported 
 that  90  per  cent  of  the  2,000  pupils  above  the  fourth 
 grade  attended  the  movies  at  least  once  a  week,  that 
 50  per  cent  attended  at  least  twice  a  week,  and  that 
 some  went  as  often  as  five  times  a  week.  In  some 
 cases  children  formed  75  per  cent  of  the  movie  audi¬ 
 ences. 
 
 One  proprietor  of  a  motion  picture  house  said  that, 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 7  9 
 
 while  most  of  his  patrons  were  adults,  on  Saturday 
 nights  when  he  gave  a  program  of  the  worst  stuff  he 
 could  get  for  the  “rough-necks,”  the  audience  was 
 made  up  of  from  one  third  to  one  half  children.  These 
 occasions  are  well  described  as  “emotional  orgies.”  It 
 was  the  unanimous  testimony  of  juvenile  court  judges 
 in  connection  with  this  study  that  the  majority  of  de¬ 
 linquent  boys  with  whom  they  had  to  deal  were 
 “movie  fiends.”  In  one  case  seven  out  of  eight  boys 
 who  were  brought  into  court  on  a  given  day  had  stolen 
 money  in  order  to  be  able  to  attend  the  movies.  It  is 
 small  wonder  that  the  term  “movie  fiend”  has  come 
 into  use,  for  as  an  over-stimulating,  emotional  orgy 
 and  as  a  substitute  for  play,  the  movie  can  easily  be¬ 
 come  a  menace  to  community  welfare. 
 
 On  the  other  hand,  the  movie  has  many  things  to  its 
 credit.  It  has  occupied  the  time  of  thousands  of  girls 
 and  boys  in  communities  which  have  had  no  adequate 
 play  program.  It  has  led  some  of  them  into  mischief, 
 but  it  has  doubtless  kept  many  more  out  of  mischief. 
 The  movie  must  be  made  safe  for  girls  and  boys. 
 That  is  a  task  of  great  importance,  but  when  it  is  com¬ 
 pleted,  we  have  dealt  with  only  one  factor  and  that 
 largely  a  negative  one  so  far  as  a  thoroughgoing  and 
 constructive  play  program  for  the  community  is  con¬ 
 cerned. 
 
 THE  PROBLEM  OF  WORK 
 
 Very  closely  associated  with  this  entire  question  of 
 play  is  work.  In  fact  the  connection  is  so  close  that 
 it  is  hard  to  tell  where  play  leaves  off  and  work  be- 
 
80  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 gins.  The  four-year-old  child  who  toils  to  build  his 
 house  of  blocks  is  at  play,  but  when  evening  comes, 
 and  he  must  pile  those  same  blocks  away  in  order  that 
 the  rest  of  the  family  may  move  about  the  room  in 
 safety,  he  suddenly  discovers  that  the  zest  of  activity 
 is  gone,  and  he  is  engaged  in  work.  The  difference 
 between  play  and  work  often  lies  in  the  attitude  of 
 mind  rather  than  in  the  type  of  activity.  To  the  man 
 who  plays  ball  for  wages,  the  game  becomes  work, 
 while  to  the  child  who  helps  his  mother  shell  peas  be¬ 
 cause  he  likes  to  hear  the  pods  crack  open,  work  be¬ 
 comes  play. 
 
 It  was  particularly  true  in  the  homes  of  the  genera¬ 
 tion  just  passed  that  there  was  no  sharply  drawn  line 
 between  work  and  those  endlessly  varied  activities 
 which,  because  they  challenged  the  enthusiasm  and 
 spontaneous  interest  of  boys  and  girls  partook  largely 
 of  the  nature  of  play.  In  the  year  1800  four  per  cent 
 of  America’s  population  lived  in  cities;  96  per  cent  in 
 the  country.  The  problem  of  training  girls  and  boys 
 centered  about  agriculture.  Children  were  much  with 
 their  parents.  Home  life  and  home  training  were  ex¬ 
 alted.  About  the  home  there  gathered  a  group  of 
 industries  which  provided  an  endless  round  of  inter¬ 
 esting  activities  for  the  children  to  watch  and  for  them 
 to  be  trained  in.  The  felling  of  great  trees  in  the 
 forest,  the  cutting  of  wood  for  the  fireplace,  the  plow¬ 
 ing  and  planting,  the  harvesting  and  storing  away  of 
 produce  for  the  winter  months,  the  making  of  maple 
 sugar,  the  shearing  of  the  sheep,  the  carding  of  the 
 wool,  the  spinning  and  weaving,  the  making  of  gar- 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 81 
 
 merits,  the  knitting  of  stockings  and  mittens,  quilting, 
 making  soap,  butchering,  the  smoking  of  hams,  the 
 threshing  or  winnowing  of  grains,  the  gathering  of 
 wild  fruits,  the  catching  of  fish,  the  trapping  of  fur¬ 
 bearing  animals  and  pests,  the  hunting  of  black  bear 
 and  wild  deer,  the  husking  of  corn,  the  raising  of  new 
 buildings,  the  molding  of  tallow  candles,  the  making 
 of  butter  and  cheese,  preserving  of  fruit,  the  milking 
 of  cows,  the  feeding  of  pigs,  the  gathering  of  eggs, 
 the  building  of  fences, — these  were  but  a  few  of  the 
 multitude  of  activities  which  for  generations  centered 
 about  the  American  home,  the  home  where  most  of 
 the  boys  and  girls  of  America  lived. 
 
 Such  a  home  was  a  university  in  itself.  From  the 
 time  the  sap  began  to  stir  in  the  maple  trees  and  the 
 cowslips  began  to  appear  in  the  swamps  until  the  snow 
 was  again  piled  high  on  the  door-sill,  there  was  a 
 never  ending  round  of  fascinating  activity,  most  of 
 which  the  children  shared  with  the  parents.  Even 
 today  there  are  homes  where  a  large  part  of  these 
 various  industries  and  activities  are  carried  on,  but 
 they  are  the  exception  rather  than  the  rule.  Even  as 
 late  as  1850  there  were  in  the  United  States  seven 
 children  living  in  a  rural  environment  to  every  one 
 child  living  under  city  conditions.  Now  the  census 
 reveals  the  bald  fact  that  more  than  half  of  our  chil¬ 
 dren  are  born  and  brought  up  under  city  conditions. 
 
 As  our  social,  industrial,  and  economic  life  has  be¬ 
 come  more  thoroughly  organized,  many  important 
 changes  have  taken  place  in  our  manner  of  living. 
 Industries  which  once  thrived  in  the  home  have  long 
 
82  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 since  disappeared  from  it;  comforts  and  conveniences 
 have  increased,  and  not  only  the  need,  but  even  the 
 opportunity  for  work  about  the  home  has  tended  to 
 disappear.  The  son  of  the  father  who  spent  many 
 hours  carrying  water  from  an  outside  well  to  fill  the 
 tank,  the  water-pail,  the  wash-tub  and  boiler,  finds 
 hot  and  cold  water  responding  to  the  turn  of  a  spigot. 
 That  same  son  is  kept  warm  by  coal  shoveled  by  a 
 janitor,  and  thus  he  escapes  the  tasks  of  splitting  the 
 kindling  wood,  filling  the  woodbox,  starting  the  fires 
 on  a  cold  morning,  and  taking  out  the  ashes.  He  is 
 not  troubled  to  feed  the  pig,  milk  the  cow,  or  grow 
 vegetables  for  family  use,  for  the  wealth  of  the  world 
 can  be  ordered  by  telephone  from  the  corner  market. 
 
 CHANGES  IN  INDUSTRY  AND  CHILD  LABOR 
 
 As  industry  has  gone  from  it,  the  home,  too,  has 
 undergone  many  changes.  Instead  of  a  thousand 
 varying  tasks  for  the  same  individual,  industry  has 
 tended  to  become  a  series  of  specialized  tasks  which 
 make  it  necessary  for  one  person  to  go  through  the 
 same  motions  moment  after  moment,  hour  after  hour, 
 day  after  day,  week  after  week,  month  after  month, 
 and  year  after  year.  In  contrast  to  the  work  of  the 
 past,  the  work  of  the  present  lacks  both  play  value  and 
 educative  value.  There  soon  ceases  to  be  any  inspira¬ 
 tion  in  the  task  of  sticking  uncounted  thousands  of 
 identical  labels  on  other  uncounted  thousands  of  ex¬ 
 actly  identical  articles,  and  yet  that  sort  of  a  job  is 
 typical  of  the  processes  of  industry  today,  and  it  mat¬ 
 ters  little  whether  the  particular  task  be  sticking  labels, 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 83 
 
 feeding  blocks  of  wood  into  a  machine,  throwing 
 sprags  into  car  wheels,  or  placing  a  certain  sized  nut 
 on  a  certain  sized  bolt.  The  monotony  of  the  task, 
 the  long  hours,  and  the  often  unwholesome  conditions 
 of  labor  make  participation  in  much  of  modern  in¬ 
 dustry  a  physical,  mental,  and  moral  menace  to  grow¬ 
 ing  youth. 
 
 We  have  had  the  courage  to  fight  “child  labor” 
 which  was  grinding  out  the  spirits  and  lives  of  boys 
 and  girls  at  tasks  entirely  unsuited  to  them  and  which 
 was  physically,  intellectually,  and  morally  dwarfing 
 those  who  survived.  In  this  struggle  we  have  made 
 great  gains  both  in  legislation  and  in  the  creation  of 
 a  public  conscience  in  the  matter.  The  poorly-devel¬ 
 oped,  under-nourished,  over-worked  factory  child  is 
 not  so  common  as  in  the  days  which  have  passed. 
 State  laws  and  federal  legislation  have  done  much  to 
 check  the  evils  of  child  labor.  The  fact  that  the  Fed¬ 
 eral  Child  Labor  Law  has  been  found  unconstitutional 
 by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  marks  but 
 a  brief  set-back  in  a  struggle  which  is  bound  to  be 
 ultimately  successful.  The  most  generally  accepted 
 proposal  at  present  is  that  of  an  amendment  to  the 
 Constitution  covering  this  matter. 
 
 Child  Labor  has  been  defined  by  Mr.  Edward  N. 
 Clopper  as  “the  employment  of  a  child  under  eighteen 
 years  of  age  at  any  task,  with  or  without  pay,  under 
 direction  or  independently  of  others,  which  deprives 
 him  of  his  proper  measure  of  schooling,  training, 
 recreation,  and  healthy  development.”  That  sort  of 
 child  labor  must  go,  whether  it  be  in  the  country  or  in 
 
84  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 the  city.  In  spite  of  progress  we  still  have  multi¬ 
 tudes  of  boys  and  girls  who  are  unjustly  deprived  of 
 a  fair  chance  at  life  because  they  are  forced  to  labor 
 under  conditions  which  tend  to  break  down  bodies, 
 crush  spirits,  and  dwarf  intellects.  As  a  national  pol¬ 
 icy  this  is  needless,  wasteful,  and  foolish.  To  follow¬ 
 ers  of  Jesus  Christ  it  should  be  intolerable. 
 
 When  the  Federal  Child  Labor  Tax  Law  was  passed 
 in  1919  it  was  made  to  apply  only  to  children  working 
 in  mines,  quarries,  factories,  canneries,  mills,  and  man¬ 
 ufacturing  establishments.  The  child  in  agriculture 
 was  not  affected.  So  far  as  legislation  is  concerned 
 the  farm  child  has  been  protected  chiefly  by  compul¬ 
 sory  school  attendance  laws,  the  enforcement  of  which 
 has  been  particularly  lax  in  rural  regions.  The 
 studies  of  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee  show 
 that  rural  child  labor  causes  as  much  absence  from 
 school  as  illness,  bad  weather,  bad  roads,  distance  from 
 home  to  school,  and  indifference  combined.  A  detailed 
 study  made  in  the  State  of  Oklahoma  revealed  the 
 fact  that  of  the  children  enroled  in  the  rural  schools 
 of  the  state  only  57.2  per  cent  on  the  average  attended 
 daily.  The  demands  of  cotton-picking,  cattle-herding, 
 asparagus-cultivating,  and  the  multitudinous  other 
 tasks  which  present  themselves  in  an  agricultural  com¬ 
 munity  explained  the  large  proportion  of  absences. 
 Here  children  from  five  years  old  and  upward  were 
 found  working  all  day  in  the  cotton  field.  One  public 
 school  visited  a  month  after  the  opening  of  the  term 
 had  eighteen  pupils  in  attendance  and  fifteen  absentees, 
 who  were  out  still  picking  cotton.  It  is  a  common 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 85 
 
 saying  in  this  state  as  in  many  others  that  “cotton  and 
 ignorance  go  together,”  and  it  goes,  perhaps  without 
 saying,  that  a  child  who  is  engaged  long  hours  in  the 
 cotton  field  has  little  energy  left  for  the  development 
 of  a  normal  play  life. 
 
 In  Kentucky  boys  of  nine,  ten,  twelve,  thirteen,  and 
 fifteen  years  of  age  were  found  hoeing,  topping,  and 
 working  tobacco  while  the  schools  which  they  were 
 supposed  to  attend  went  on  with  their  work  without 
 them.  In  Colorado  it  was  estimated  after  careful 
 investigation  that  5,000  children  between  the  ages  of 
 six  and  fifteen  were  engaged  in  beet  raising. 
 
 Altogether  it  is  estimated  that  there  are  two  million 
 boys  and  girls  in  the  United  States  who  are  child 
 laborers  to  their  own  detriment,  either  physically  or 
 educationally.  Three  quarters  of  these  children  are 
 in  our  rural  regions.  It  is  not  surprising  that  exami¬ 
 nation  shows  that  country  boys  and  girls  tend  to  be 
 round  shouldered  and  flat-chested,  and  that  they  are 
 particularly  deficient  in  lung  capacity  and  heart  de¬ 
 velopment,  although  their  digestion  is  usually  good. 
 Hard  and  monotonous  work  cannot  take  the  place  of 
 play  and  schools  in  the  life  of  children  if  strong  bodies 
 and  alert  minds  are  to  be  developed. 
 
 It  must  not  be  imagined  that  all  undesirable  child 
 labor  has  been  eliminated  in  our  cities.  There  is  still 
 much  tenement  homework;  there  are  children  engaged 
 in  all  sorts  of  street  trades;  and  there  are  many  other 
 sorts  of  employment  which  are  permitted  to  children 
 to  the  danger  of  their  moral  and  physical  well-being. 
 Thus  in  twenty-one  states  there  are  laws  covering  the 
 
86  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 employment  of  children  in  street  trades,  yet  so  low  is 
 the  age  limit  fixed  in  some  cases  that  a  ten-year-old 
 boy  is  not  prohibited  from  such  employment. 
 
 EDUCATION  THE  BUSINESS  OF  CHILDHOOD 
 
 We  must  assume  that  the  getting  of  an  education 
 with  all  that  this  involves  of  study,  recreation,  and 
 suitable  work  shall  be  the  chief  and  only  occupation 
 of  all  children  up  to  the  age  of  sixteen  years,  and 
 that  those  individuals  who  have  not  finished  high 
 school  and  are  at  work  between  the  ages  of  sixteen 
 and  twenty-one  shall  be  required  to  go  on  with  their 
 school  training  in  continuation  schools  adapted  to 
 their  needs.  If  ever  there  was  the  need  for  the  em¬ 
 ployment  of  children  in  industry,  that  need  has  long 
 since  passed.  In  general  our  productive  power  has 
 become  so  great  that  one  of  our  national  problems  is 
 the  finding  of  an  outlet  for  our  surplus  products. 
 Even  the  Wall  Street  Journal  recently  gave  space  to 
 an  article  entitled,  “What  shall  we  do  with  our  one- 
 third  surplus  manufacturing  capacity?”  We  can  no 
 longer  plead  that  industry  needs  the  labor  of  little 
 children,  and  we  must  in  some  way  construct  a  social 
 order  in  which  the  economic  pressure  upon  individual 
 homes  shall  not  be  so  great  as  to  demand  the  labor 
 of  girls  and  boys  at  monotonous,  soul-destroying 
 tasks. 
 
 In  the  country  the  most  immediately  effective 
 weapon  for  dealing  with  child  labor  is  the  compulsory 
 school-attendance  laws.  The  adequate  enforcement  of 
 these  laws  would  do  away  with  some  of  the  most 
 
Great  strides  have  been  made  in  laws  protecting  child  labor,  but  there  is  still  much  to  be 
 done.  Not  only  are  the  sanitary  and  moral  conditions  in  migrant  camps  unwholesome,  but 
 the.  child  laborers  are  deprived  of  home,  school,  and  church  privileges,  those  influences 
 which  tend  to  develop  true  manhood  and  womanhood. 
 
THE  TENTH  AMERICAN  CHILD 
 
 One  tenth  of  America’s  children  are  Negroes.  At  present  the 
 great  city  centers  of  Negro  life  are  in  the  North.  With  each 
 passing  year  the  demands  upon  the  church  to  supplement  the 
 inadequacies  of  the  home  become  heavier.  Classes  for  Negro 
 girls  and  boys  will  soon  make  it  impossible  for  shacks  like  those 
 above  to  find  tenants. 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 87 
 
 flagrant  abuses  of  child  labor  in  our  rural  regions. 
 Even  more  fundamental,  however,  is  the  creation  of 
 such  ideals  among  parents  that  they  will  recognize 
 the  supreme  importance  of  childhood  and  the  value  of 
 abundant  play  and  adequate  education  in  the  life  of 
 the  child. 
 
 NEED  FOR  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  PROGRAM  OF  WORK 
 
 When,  however,  we  have  succeeded  in  eliminating 
 all  of  the  evils  of  “child  labor,”  we  have  dealt  only 
 with  the  negative  side  of  a  matter  which  must  have 
 positive  and  constructive  treatment.  Just  as  boys  and 
 girls  need  a  positive  play  program,  so  they  need  a  posi¬ 
 tive  work  program — a  program  which  avoids  the  dan¬ 
 gers  of  monotony,  long  hours,  undue  strain,  and  inter¬ 
 ference  with  education  and  a  normal  play  life.  In  the 
 cities  the  problem  is,  indeed,  a  perplexing  one.  Larger 
 opportunities  for  work  under  wholesome  conditions 
 must  in  some  way  be  provided,  but  in  the  meantime 
 a  better  play  program  may  be  used  to  develop  very 
 much  the  same  moral  virtues  and  the  same  mechanical 
 skill  as  does  a  program  of  work.  The  difference  be¬ 
 tween  a  well-directed  program  of  work  and  play  for 
 girls  and  boys  is  so  slight  that,  under  proper  condi¬ 
 tions,  the  one  may  be  substituted  for  the  other  with¬ 
 out  any  real  danger  that  a  child  will  grow  up  either 
 unskilled  in  achievement  or  indolent  in  his  habits. 
 
 In  the  rural  regions  it  is  easier  to  provide  a  pro¬ 
 gram  of  work  for  children  and  it  is  far  easier  to  cor¬ 
 relate  that  program  with  the  normal  home  and  school 
 life  of  the  individual  child.  This  fact  has  already 
 
88  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 been  discovered,  and  corn  clubs,  garden  clubs,  canning 
 clubs,  poultry  clubs,  and  many  other  similar  organi¬ 
 zations  are  already  making  enormous  contributions  to 
 the  life  of  our  rural  children.  The  county  agent,  the 
 farm  demonstrator,  the  trained  teacher,  the  wise 
 parent,  and  the  rural  pastor  work  hand  in  hand  to 
 make  such  enterprises  effective.  Where  they  have 
 been  undertaken,  these  projects  have  borne  large 
 fruitage  both  in  the  lives  of  individuals  and  in  the  life 
 of  the  community.  They  provide  wholesome  leisure 
 time  activities,  they  add  immeasurably  to  the  interest 
 of  the  child  in  his  home  and  community,  and  they 
 furnish  training  in  work  without  the  evils  which  are 
 characteristic  of  so  many  other  activities. 
 
 Our  big  problem,  then,  is  to  discover  and  make 
 available  for  girls  and  boys  such  projects  of  work  and 
 play  as  will  draw  out  their  enthusiastic  cooperation 
 and  furnish  for  them  a  training  in  the  practise  of 
 those  social  virtues  which  are  so  much  needed  in  a 
 democracy.  At  the  same  time,  they  will  develop  skill 
 and  avoid  those  gross  evils  which  leave  the  child 
 crippled  mentally,  physically,  or  morally  as  he  assumes 
 the  full  duties  of  adult  membership  in  the  community. 
 Leisure  time  will  no  longer  care  for  itself.  Provision 
 for  its  proper  use  must  be  made,  and  we  must  under¬ 
 take  seriously  the  task  of  making  that  provision. 
 
 CRIME  A  RESULT  OF  MISDIRECTED  LEISURE 
 
 Our  country  is  flooded  with  youthful  criminals. 
 They  did  not  learn  to  be  criminals  in  our  public 
 schools  or  in  our  Sunday-schools,  but  they  did  learn 
 
PLAY  AND  WORK 
 
 89 
 
 during  their  leisure  hours.  Their  home  influences 
 failed  to  be  sufficient  to  restrain  their  impulses  to  evil, 
 and  the  community  failed  to  come  to  the  rescue.  As 
 a  part  of  his  regular  work  in  one  day,  a  judge  of  a 
 county  court  recently  sentenced  twenty  criminals  to 
 prison,  their  sentences  totaling  two  hundred  and  six 
 years.  The  oldest  man  sentenced  that  day  was  twenty- 
 three  years  of  age;  most  of  the  unhappy  victims  were 
 mere  boys  of  eighteen  or  nineteen.  Any  one  of  these 
 boys  might  well  have  had  the  genius  to  make  large 
 contributions  to  our  common  progress,  but  society  did 
 not  give  them  a  fair  chance.  They  may  live  many 
 years,  but  the  chances  are  that  each  is  now  irrevocably 
 committed  to  a  life  of  crime.  We  hardly  need  a  more 
 striking  illustration  than  this  one,  picked  at  random, 
 of  the  importance  of  directing  the  leisure  time  of  our 
 boys  and  girls. 
 
 A  PROGRAM  OF  LEISURE-TIME  ACTIVITIES  ESSENTIAL 
 
 The  glory  of  man  lies  in  his  long-extended  period 
 of  youth.  The  business  of  youth  is  preparation  for 
 maturity.  In  the  divine  plan  the  home  makes  its  large 
 contribution  to  that  preparation,  and  so  do  the  schools, 
 but  the  play  life  and  the  work  life  of  the  child,  whether 
 it  be  directed  from  within  or  without  the  home,  are 
 also  most  important  factors  in  it.  To  neglect  to  pro¬ 
 vide  opportunities  for  wholesome  play  and  work  is  to 
 be  derelict  with  respect  to  a  portion  of  the  child’s  train¬ 
 ing  which  may  nullify  the  work  of  both  the  home  and 
 the  school.  In  spite  of  modern  conditions  of  life,  we 
 can  still,  to  a  measurable  extent,  control  the  leisure 
 
90 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 time  of  our  boys  and  girls  when  once  we  feel  deeply 
 enough  concerning  its  importance  to  do  so.  That  the 
 Church  has  made  large  advances  in  this  field,  the  hun¬ 
 dreds  of  thousands  of  girls  and  boys  who  each  day 
 of  the  week  spend  pleasant  and  profitable  hours  out¬ 
 side  of  school,  in  the  clubs,  industrial  classes,  and 
 gymnasium  groups  of  home  mission  churches  and 
 community  houses,  stand  as  a  silent  witness.  Home 
 mission  agencies  are  committed  to  a  program  of 
 caring  for  the  leisure  time  of  the  youth  in  our  neediest 
 communities.  Their  efforts  are  limited  only  by  the 
 resources  made  available  for  them. 
 
 Within  recent  years,  particularly  the  last  three  or 
 four,  marked  progress  has  been  made  in  training  min¬ 
 isters  already  in  service  in  matters  pertaining  to  child 
 welfare  and  child  training.  Thousands  of  ministers 
 have  been  gathered  in  summer  schools  for  such  train¬ 
 ing,  and  recently  an  interdenominational  committee  of 
 the  Home  Missions  Council  officially  adopted  a  four- 
 year  summer  training  program  with  emphasis  upon 
 religious  education,  club  work  with  boys  and  girls, 
 child  hygiene,  community  sanitation,  games  and  recrea¬ 
 tion,  and  related  topics.  Already  hundreds  of  ministers 
 have  gone  back  from  such  training  with  an  entirely 
 new  conception  of  the  place  of  the  child  in  the  program 
 of  the  Church  and  with  definite  plans  for  putting  the 
 newly  acquired  ideas  into  practice.  Indeed,  many  rural 
 parishes  have  been  entirely  remade  as  a  result  of  this 
 work. 
 
CHAPTER  IV 
 Education  in  a  Democracy 
 
 In  1642,  twenty-two  years  after  the  landing  of  the 
 Mayflower,  Massachusetts  enacted  the  first  law  relat¬ 
 ing  to  public  education.  This  law  declared  that  it  was, 
 not  only  the  right,  but  the  duty  of  the  State  to  see 
 that  every  child  received  an  education.  The  selectmen 
 were  given  power  to  investigate  concerning  the  train¬ 
 ing  of  children,  and  a  parent  was  made  liable  to  a  fine 
 for  neglecting  to  educate  his  child.  Curiously  enough, 
 however,  this  law  which  made  education  compulsory 
 made  no  provision  for  schools  or  teachers.  The  reason 
 lay  in  the  fact  that  education  at  the  time  was  essen¬ 
 tially  a  household  industry.  Each  parent  was  expected 
 to  do  his  own  teaching  under  his  own  roof,  or  to  make 
 provision  for  it.  The  law  has  been  likened  to  modern 
 sanitary  laws  which  compel  a  householder  to  keep  his 
 premises  in  sanitary  condition  for  the  sake  of  the  com¬ 
 munity  welfare,  and  then  leave  to  him  the  job  of  dis¬ 
 covering  a  method  of  achieving  the  result  demanded. 
 Within  five  years  after  the  passage  of  this  first  law, 
 however,  legislation  looking  toward  the  actual  estab¬ 
 lishment  of  schools  was  enacted. 
 
 RELIGIOUS  MOTIVES  PARAMOUNT 
 
 It  is  of  interest  to  note  that  the  reason  given  in  this 
 legislation  of  1647  for  the  establishment  of  schools 
 was  that  these,  schools  should  be  maintained  in  order 
 
 to  thwart  “the  chief  project  of  the  old  deluaer,  Satan, 
 
 91 
 
92  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 to  keep  men  from  the  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures/’ 
 Without  such  provision  for  public  schools  it  was  feared 
 that  “the  true  sense  and  meaning”  of  the  Scriptures 
 might  ultimately  become  clouded.  It  may  also  be  per¬ 
 tinent  in  this  connection  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
 that,  as  the  office  of  the  schoolmaster  developed,  his 
 duties  came,  in  a  general  way,  to  be  these:  to  act  as 
 court  messenger,  to  serve  summonses,  to  conduct  cer¬ 
 tain  ceremonial  services  of  the  church,  to  lead  the 
 Sunday  choir,  to  ring  the  bell  for  public  worship,  to 
 dig  the  graves,  to  take  charge  of  the  school,  and  to 
 perform  other  occasional  duties. 
 
 In  the  vicinity  of  New  York  the  contract  further 
 provided  that  the  schoolmaster  should  every  day  read 
 to  his  class  four  prayers  from  the  prayer  book,  that  he 
 should  teach  the  common  prayers  and  the  catechism 
 on  Wednesday  and  Saturday,  so  as  to  have  all  the 
 pupils  well  prepared  for  Sunday  lessons,  and  that  he 
 should  regularly  catechize  the  children  upon  the  ser¬ 
 mon  of  the  previous  Sunday. 
 
 Another  indication  of  the  religious  motive  which 
 lay  back  of  this  zeal  for  education  is  to  be  found  in 
 the  contents  of  the  books  used.  Many  illustrations 
 might  be  cited,  but  the  case  of  the  New  England 
 primer  which  was  published  through  many  editions 
 for  two  centuries,  and  even  up  until  1886,  will  suffice. 
 The  dissertation  here  on  the  alphabet  began  with  the 
 theological  observation  that: 
 
 “In  Adam’s  fall 
 We  sinned  all.” 
 
 It  passed  quickly  to  such  bits  of  Biblical  lore  as: 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 93 
 
 “Zaccheus  he 
 Did  climb  a  tree 
 Our  Lord  to  see.” 
 
 And  it  included  such  teachings  on  the  subject  of 
 morality  as: 
 
 “A  dog  will  bite 
 A  thief  at  night.” 
 
 OTHER  MOTIVES  ENTER  IN 
 
 With  the  development  of  colonial  life  and  particu¬ 
 larly  with  the  successful  completion  of  the  struggle 
 for  political  freedom,  the  religious  motive  for  educa¬ 
 tion  was  supplemented  by  many  other  motives  of  vary¬ 
 ing  sorts.  So  long  as  the  affairs  of  men  were  con¬ 
 trolled  by  monarchs,  the  need  for  popular  education 
 as  a  political  and  national  safeguard  was  less  insistent. 
 Helpless  indeed  is  the  man  who  undertakes  seriously 
 to  share  in  the  government  if  the  very  channels  of 
 information  are  closed  to  him.  In  a  democracy,  the 
 ability  to  read  becomes  of  paramount  importance.  No 
 system  of  democratic  control  can  long  continue  if 
 education  is  neglected.  To  a  government  of  the  peo¬ 
 ple,  ignorance  is  always  and  of  necessity  intolerable. 
 H.  G.  Wells  puts  the  matter  on  an  even  broader  basis 
 when  he  says,  “It  has  always  been  a  race  between  edu¬ 
 cation  and  catastrophe.” 
 
 George  Washington  fully  appreciated  how  much  the 
 success  of  our  own  government  was  dependent  upon 
 education,  and  again  and  again  in  his  letters  and  public 
 addresses  he  pressed  home  his  conviction  in  this 
 matter.  On  January  8,  1790,  in  addressing  both 
 
94 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 houses  of  Congress  he  said,  “Knowledge  is  in  every 
 country  the  surest  basis  of  public  happiness.  In  one 
 in  which  the  measures  of  government  receive  their 
 impressions  so  immediately  from  the  sense  of  the 
 community  as  in  ours,  it  is  proportionately  essential.” 
 In  his  farewell  address,  September  17,  1796,  he  said, 
 “Promote,  then,  as  an  object  of  primary  importance, 
 institutions  for  the  general  diffusion  of  knowledge. 
 In  proportion  as  the  structure  of  government  gives 
 force  to  public  opinion,  it  is  essential  that  public 
 opinion  be  enlightened.” 
 
 IDEA  OF  FREE  POPULAR  EDUCATION  GROWS 
 
 Following  the  Revolutionary  War,  the  idea  of 
 popular  education  at  public  expense  began  to  take 
 shape  as  a  national  policy.  By  1850  the  New  England 
 doctrine  of  tax-supported  free  schools  was  accepted  in 
 all  the  Northern  states.  The  survey  of  the  educa¬ 
 tional  situation  in  this  country  made  by  the  United 
 States  Commissioner  of  Education  as  late  as  1870 
 contains  some  rather  illuminating  statements.  Speak¬ 
 ing  of  South  Carolina  and  of  the  failure  of  the  general 
 assembly  to  pass  a  school  bill,  he  says,  “The  children 
 of  the  State  are  daily  growing  up  in  ignorance/’  Of 
 Texas  he  says,  “In  Texas  no  school  legislation  has,  so 
 far,  succeeded,  and  no  public  officers  are  at  work  for 
 the  organization  of  schools,  her  entire  population 
 being  left  to  grow  up  in  ignorance  save  as  here  and 
 there  a  private  enterprise  throws  a  little  light  upon  the 
 prevailing  darkness.”  For  Arizona  he  reports  that  she 
 has  “never  had  any  schools  worth  mentioning”;  for 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 95 
 
 Colorado  that  “repeated  efforts  have  failed  to  uncover 
 any  information  about  public  schools”;  for  New 
 Mexico  that  she  “has  not  a  single  public  school  or 
 schoolhouse” ;  and  for  Arkansas  that  “in  some  sec¬ 
 tions  there  is  apathy  toward  and  in  other  sections 
 direct  hostility  to  the  public  school  idea.”  In  the  half 
 century  which  has  followed  that  report  much  progress 
 has  been  made  in  supplying  some  of  the  deficiences 
 revealed  by  it,  but  that  progress  has  been  far  from 
 uniform,  and  today  the  fact  is  that  “half  the  United 
 States  doesn’t  know  how  the  other  half  goes  to 
 school.”  When  the  first  public  schools  were  estab¬ 
 lished  in  New  England,  they  were  town  schools  serv¬ 
 ing  the  entire  settlement  in  which  they  were  located. 
 As  settlers  began  to  spread  out,  these  centrally  located 
 schools  were  less  effective  in  reaching  the  entire  popu¬ 
 lation  of  the  township,  and  so  “traveling  schools”  were 
 held;  that  is,  a  school  would  be  held  in  one  part  of 
 the  township  during  a  certain  portion  of  the  year 
 and  in  other  parts  during  other  portions. 
 
 Gradually  these  sections  served  by  the  “traveling 
 schools”  became  the  school  “districts,”  the  “traveling 
 school”  gave  way  to  the  “district  school,”  and  the  dis¬ 
 trict  became  the  unit  for  school  administration.  This 
 plan  was  essentially  one  of  decentralization,  localism, 
 and  democratic  control  carried  about  as  far  as  it  could 
 well  be  carried.  The  size  of  the  school  district  itself 
 was  determined  by  the  ability  of  the  smallest  child  of 
 school  age  in  the  district  to  attend  school,  or,  as  some¬ 
 one  has  aptly  said,  it  was  measured  by  the  length  of 
 the  legs  of  a  six-year-old  child.  As  the  years  passed 
 
96 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 the  limitations  of  the  district  plan  of  administration 
 became  more  and  more  apparent,  and  the  state  of  Mas¬ 
 sachusetts,  which  had  given  the  district  idea  to  the  na¬ 
 tion,  was  the  first  to  abandon  it  (in  1882). 
 
 Today  there  is  a  very  decided  drift  toward  the 
 establishment  of  larger  units — particularly  the  county 
 unit — of  school  administration  and  toward  the  pro¬ 
 viding  of  fewer  and  more  centrally  located  or  “con¬ 
 solidated”  schools.  It  has  already  been  demonstrated 
 that  this  plan  insures  better  attendance,  far  more  ade¬ 
 quate  educational  facilities,  and  much  better  teaching. 
 The  present  rapid  progress  toward  the  consolidation 
 of  schools  is  one  of  the  most  hopeful  signs  on  the 
 educational  horizon. 
 
 OUR  SCHOOLS  NOT  ALTOGETHER  SUCCESSFUL 
 
 That  our  schools  have  not  been  an  unqualified 
 success  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  seven  other  countries 
 have  a  higher  percentage  of  literacy  than  has  the 
 United  States.  Americans  do  not  like  to  admit  facts 
 like  this.  And  it  is  not  an  altogether  easy  thing  to 
 convince  a  man  who  lives  in  a  community  where  rea¬ 
 sonably  good  educational  advantages  exist  that  in  far 
 too  large  a  number  of  other  communities  the  situation 
 is  quite  the  reverse,  and  that  many  American  girls 
 and  boys  are  growing  up  in  ignorance. 
 
 A  composite  picture  of  the  rural  schools  of  America 
 would  include  many  unlovely  features.  There  would 
 be  thousands  of  rough,  one-room  buildings  which 
 have  never  had  any  paint  or  have  long  since  lost  all 
 traces  of  it.  There  would  be  buildings  with  desks  and 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 97 
 
 without  desks.  In  some  cases  there  would  be  “patent” 
 seats;  in  others,  the  children  would  be  found  sitting 
 on  rough  benches.  There  would  be  thousands  of 
 buildings  with  no  provision  for  ventilation,  where  the 
 air  would  be  found  too  foul  for  description.  There 
 would  be  teachers  teaching  with  overcoats  and  other 
 wraps  on,  and  there  would  be  children  shaking  with  the 
 cold  as  they  try  to  write  or  study  their  lessons.  There 
 would  be  unpalatable  cold  lunches  and  thirsty  children 
 and  children  drinking  out  of  unwashed  common  tin 
 dippers  or  directly  from  the  water  pail  itself.  There 
 would  be  toilet  arrangements  too  bad  for  description. 
 Contagious  diseases  would  be  running  riot,  and  in¬ 
 numerable  other  unsavory  details  would  be  added  to 
 complete  the  picture. 
 
 MANY  BRIGHT  SPOTS 
 
 Of  course  it  would  have  its  bright  side  too  for  there 
 would  be  real  school  buildings,  properly  lighted, 
 heated,  and  ventilated.  There  would  be  trained  and 
 experienced  teachers  with  high  ideals.  In  some  cases 
 there  would  be  charts,  maps,  books,  globes,  simple 
 scientific  apparatus,  and  other  helps ;  and  warm 
 lunches  served  at  noon,  sanitary  drinking  arrange¬ 
 ments,  clean  toilets,  supervised  playgrounds,  and  other 
 features  designed  to  make  life,  even  in  a  rural  school, 
 a  really  worth-while  experience.  There  would  be  an 
 increasing  number  of  consolidated  schools  with  numer¬ 
 ous  teachers  making  possible  a  type  of  training  which 
 can  never  be  realized  in  the  small  one-room  school 
 with  its  single  teacher  responsible  for  all  the  grades. 
 
98 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 VERY  UNEQUAL  OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 The  fact  that  there  are  these  bright  spots  does  not, 
 however,  at  all  improve  the  condition  of  the  many 
 American  boys  and  girls  who  are  not  having  a  decent 
 chance  in  the  schools  of  their  own  communities,  and 
 it  should  not  blind  us  to  the  further  fact  that,  as  a 
 whole,  our  public  school  system  is  very  sick.  In  gen¬ 
 eral  the  boy  or  girl  who  lives  in  our  rural  regions 
 today  has  about  half  as  good  a  chance  to  get  an  edu¬ 
 cation  as  has  the  child  who  lives  in  town,  but  in  some 
 rural  regions  the  schools  are  not  even  half  as  good 
 as  they  are  in  others.  Thus  the  disparity  of  oppor¬ 
 tunity  becomes  even  greater  until,  in  some  cases,  the 
 opportunity  itself  reaches  the  vanishing  point.  This 
 may  result  from  the  placing  of  too  much  work  upon 
 a  good  teacher  as  well  as  from  the  employment  of 
 entirely  inadequate  teachers  or  the  lack  of  community 
 standards.  Thus  a  study  of  the  situation  revealed  that 
 in  the  average  one-room  school  the  teacher  often  has 
 from  thirty  to  forty  classes  in  six  hours,  with  the  re¬ 
 sult  that  the  class  periods  are  but  ten  minutes  each  and 
 these  are  often  reduced  to  from  three  to  five  or  eight 
 minutes  each.  This  almost  impossible  situation  has 
 done  much  to  emphasize  the  importance  of  the  con¬ 
 solidated  school  where,  experience  has  demonstrated, 
 attendance  is  more  regular,  behavior  is  better,  the 
 social  influence  is  more  wholesome,  good  teachers  are 
 far  easier  to  secure,  and  the  rate  of  progress  of  the 
 pupils  is  twice  as  fast  as  in  the  one-room  school. 
 
 The  unwholesome  situation  in  many  of  our  rural 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 99 
 
 schools  is  vividly  pictured  by  J.  D.  Eggleston  and 
 Robert  W.  Bruere  in  The  Work  of  the  Rural 
 School.  Speaking  of  the  sanitary  conditions  in  most 
 of  our  rural  schools,  they  say,  “It  is  not  merely  bad 
 — it  is  too  vile  for  description.  Tens  of  thousands 
 of  schools  have  no  outhouse  for  either  sex,  and  thou¬ 
 sands  of  others  have  one  insanitary  outhouse  for  the 
 girls  and  none  for  the  boys.”  They  also  call  atten¬ 
 tion  to  the  fact  that  where  outhouses  exist  there  is  no 
 need  to  have  them  so  located  that  girls  and  boys  must 
 pass  each  other  to  reach  them  or  so  close  that  conver¬ 
 sation  can  be  heard  from  one  to  the  other.  We  are 
 also  reminded  of  the  fact  that  there  is  no  law  against 
 building  trellises  and  planting  flowers  to  guard  the 
 approaches  to  otherwise  unsightly  outhouses. 
 
 While  conditions  are  distressing  in  the  poorer 
 schools,  we  must  remember  that  there  are  other  places 
 where  for  various  reasons  there  are  no  schools  at  all. 
 The  June,  1922,  issue  of  The  Journal  of  The  Na¬ 
 tional  Education  Association  says:  “Three  years  ago 
 many  schools  were  closed  because  of  a  shortage  of 
 teachers.  During  the  coming  year  many  schools  may 
 not  open  because  of  the  shortage  of  funds  due  to  poor 
 crops,  the  havoc  of  floods,  and  depression  in  industry.” 
 
 There  are  many  forces  operating  to  render  schools 
 ineffective  in  particular  communities.  This  was  re¬ 
 vealed  by  a  recent  study  made  by  the  National  Child 
 Labor  Committee  in  West  Virginia.  In  one  district 
 with  a  school  population  of  forty-five,  the  regular  at¬ 
 tendance  was  three  pupils,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
 district  was  split  into  factions  over  the  question  of  the 
 
100 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 location  of  a  new  state  road.  In  one  county  several 
 schools  had  been  closed  for  seven  years  and  others 
 for  two  years,  yet  the  same  county  voted  $70,000 
 for  the  erection  of  a  soldiers’  memorial.  Three 
 schoolhouses  in  one  county  were  burned  down  in  a 
 single  year.  In  one  case  the  reason  assigned  was  an 
 attempt  made  to  enforce  the  compulsory  education 
 law;  in  the  second  case  the  reason  given  was  the  loca¬ 
 tion  of  the  school  building;  in  the  third  instance  the 
 building  was  burned  because  the  teacher  of  the  school 
 was  the  daughter  of  a  revenue  officer.  Years  ago 
 Horace  Mann  said,  “I  would  much  sooner  surrender 
 a  portion  of  the  territory  of  the  commonwealth  to  an 
 ambitious  neighbor  than  I  would  surrender  the  minds 
 of  its  children  to  the  dominion  of  ignorance.”  Doubt¬ 
 less  Horace  Mann  was  wise  in  his  judgment  on  this 
 matter,  yet  we  who  would  valiantly  refuse  to  surrender 
 a  foot  of  territory  are  unconcernedly  allowing  many 
 American  girls  and  boys  to  grow  up  with  little  or  no 
 education.  The  success  of  our  experiment  in  popular 
 government  is  not  yet  assured  in  America,  and  the 
 effectiveness  of  our  public  school  system  is  an  impor¬ 
 tant  factor  in  determining  what  the  future  shall  bring 
 forth. 
 
 MANY  ILLITERATE 
 
 When,  in  1917,  we  called  our  men  to  the  colors, 
 we  found  that  twenty-five  per  cent  of  them  were  illit¬ 
 erate.  They  could  not  sign  their  own  names.  They 
 could  not  read  the  manual  of  arms.  They  could  not 
 read  the  orders  posted  on  bulletin  boards.  They  could 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 101 
 
 not  understand  the  signals  or  follow  the  signal  corps 
 in  time  of  battle.  We  asked  these  men  to  sacrifice 
 their  occupations,  their  homes,  their  friends,  and  their 
 associations  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy, 
 when  democracy  had  never  so  much  as  taught  them 
 to  read  and  write. 
 
 We  discovered  that  there  were  multitudes  of  people 
 who  had  once  had  a  little  schooling,  but  who  had  long 
 since  ceased  to  practise  the  arts  of  reading  and  writ¬ 
 ing.  They  were  reported  “literate,”  although  for  all 
 practical  purposes  they  were  illiterate.  We  discov¬ 
 ered  also  that  the  progress  of  compulsory  education 
 could  not  be  judged  solely  by  the  laws  written  on  the 
 statute  books.  The  final  test  is  the  actual  number  of 
 pupils  who  attend  school  and  not  the  laws  which  are 
 supposed  to  control  such  attendance.  In  the  death 
 house  at  Sing  Sing  in  the  state  of  New  York,  “Bull” 
 Cassidy,  a  murderer,  on  the  day  of  his  execution 
 turned  to  the  warden  and  said,  “Ain’t  it  awful  (only 
 he  used  a  stronger  word),  Warden,  that  a  fellow’s  got 
 to  die  just  when  he’s  learned  to  write  his  name!” 
 “Bull”  Cassidy  was  an  American  citizen,  but  his  own 
 country  never  sent  him  to  school  until  he  landed  in 
 Sing  Sing  Prison.  His  schooling  there  was  compul¬ 
 sory,  and  before  he  graduated  to  the  electric  chair, 
 society  saw  to  it  that  he  could  write. 
 
 SCHOOL  ATTENDANCE  NEGLECTED 
 
 In  the  matter  of  school  attendance  conditions  were 
 found  to  be  particularly  distressing  in  rural  regions. 
 It  was  discovered  that  in  ten  states  the  period  of  at- 
 
102 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 tendance  required  by  law  was  less  than  five  months, 
 and  that,  in  addition,  in  many  regions,  because  of  the 
 pressure  of  work  on  the  farm,  the  children  attended 
 only  a  little  more  than  half  the  time  that  the  schools 
 were  in  session.  Many  of  these  pupils  were  so  ir¬ 
 regular  in  attendance  that  they  entirely  failed  to 
 “make  their  grade.”  Thus  they  were  started  on 
 the  toboggan  slide  which  almost  inevitably  ends  in  an 
 educational  fiasco  for  the  individual  concerned.  In 
 one  state  alone  it  was  found  that  nearly  11,000  chil¬ 
 dren  failed  to  enrol  in  any  school  during  the  year.  In 
 another  state  a  rural  inspector  reported  1,700  chil¬ 
 dren  in  his  district  who  did  not  attend  a  day  of  school 
 during  the  year.  “So  many  of  them  stay  out  in  the 
 fall  and  spring  to  help  in  the  beet  fields,”  he  said.  In 
 some  cases  the  school  officials  are  authorized  by  law 
 to  consider  need  for  agricultural  labor  in  excusing  chil¬ 
 dren  from  attending  school. 
 
 It  is  little  wonder  that  on  the  average  the  American 
 child  leaves  school  at  the  sixth  grade  or  that  in  a 
 number  of  counties  in  Alabama  it  was  discovered  that 
 thirty  per  cent  of  the  working  children  had  completed 
 no  grade  in  school;  twenty-five  per  cent  had  reached 
 the  fifth  grade,  fifteen  per  cent  the  sixth,  and  eleven 
 per  cent  the  eighth.  The  National  Child  Labor  Com¬ 
 mittee  recently  reported  that  a  million  school  children 
 between  the  ages  of  ten  and  fifteen  years  were  pre¬ 
 maturely  leaving  school  each  year  and  going  to  work 
 because  there  is  not  adequate  legislation  or  enforce¬ 
 ment  of  legislation  to  prevent  it. 
 
Nine  motor  busses  bring  in  country  children  to  this  school  from  a  community  extending 
 over  160  square  miles.  Special  provision  is  made  for  vocational,  agricultural  and  home¬ 
 making  training  for  the  260  pupils  enrolled.  A  fine  gymnasium  and  a  well-equipped  kitchen 
 minister  to  physical  and,  therefore,  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  needs  of  the  girls  and  boys. 
 
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EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 103 
 
 BUILDINGS  INADEQUATE  AND  TEACHERS  UNTRAINED 
 
 When  we  begin  to  talk  about  actually  sending  chil¬ 
 dren  to  school,  we  are  faced  with  the  fact  that  our 
 school  equipment  is  entirely  inadequate  for  them.  In 
 one  state  it  was  discovered  that  if  all  the  children  in 
 the  state  who  ought  to  attend  school  should  under¬ 
 take  to  attend  at  one  time,  seating  space  for  forty  out 
 of  every  one  hundred  would  be  lacking. 
 
 It  is  not,  however,  at  the  point  of  seating  space 
 alone  that  we  have  been  starving  our  schools.  The 
 low  salaries  paid  to  teachers  have  made  it  necessary 
 in  many  instances  to  employ  individuals  wofully 
 lacking  in  preparation  for  their  work,  and  in  other 
 cases  to  dispense  with  school  altogether  because  no 
 teachers  could  be  found.  When  the  “Back-to-School” 
 drive  was  in  progress  a  short  time  ago,  it  was  discov¬ 
 ered  that,  in  a  considerable  number  of  communities, 
 the  campaign  could  not  be  put  on  because  the  schools 
 were  closed  for  want  of  teachers.  There  are  in  the 
 United  States  approximately  600,000  public-school 
 teachers.  One  half  of  these  have  had  no  professional 
 training  for  their  work  whatsoever.  Thirty  thousand 
 have  never  gone  beyond  the  eighth  grade,  and  some 
 have  only  the  equivalent  of  a  fourth  or  fifth  grade 
 training.  The  relation  of  this  situation  to  the  matter 
 of  salary  is  clear.  It  is  little  wonder  that  more  than 
 one  hundred  thousand  teachers  leave  the  profession 
 annually  and  that  their  places  are  largely  filled  by  un¬ 
 trained  and  inexperienced  recruits. 
 
 Eight  million  of  our  school  children  are  being 
 
104  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 trained  in  what  is  commonly  known  as  the  “box  car” 
 type  of  schoolhouse  with  one  or,  at  most,  two  teachers. 
 Such  a  school  may  once  have  been  relatively  adequate 
 to  the  needs,  but  if  so,  it  can  no  longer  be  so  classed. 
 It  is  estimated  that  170,000  of  the  210,000  one-teacher 
 schools  can  and  should  be  consolidated  with  other 
 schools.  There  are  at  present  10,500  consolidated 
 schools  in  the  country  with  the  states  of  Ohio,  In¬ 
 diana,  Iowa,  Minnesota,  Washington,  and  Louisiana 
 leading.  The  needs  of  the  present  can  never  be  met 
 by  the  plans  and  equipment  which  were  evolved 
 chiefly  for  meeting  the  needs  of  pioneer  communities. 
 Consolidated  schools,  higher  standards  for  teachers, 
 more  thorough  supervision,  and  rigid  application  of 
 the  laws  of  sanitation  are  some  of  the  steps  in  the  path 
 of  progress. 
 
 A  SURVEY  OF  NEW  YORK  STATE  SCHOOLS 
 
 A  recent  study  of  the  eleven  thousand  schools  in 
 New  York  State  made  by  the  New  York  State  League 
 of  Women  Voters  with  the  cooperation  of  the  State 
 Department  of  Education,  revealed  some  interesting 
 facts.  It  was  discovered  that  15  schools  in  the  state 
 were  in  operation  with  only  one  pupil  each ;  52  schools 
 had  two  pupils  each;  167  had  three  pupils  each;  259 
 had  four  pupils  each;  392  had  five  pupils  each;  and 
 3,015  schools  had  fewer  than  ten  pupils  each.  Many 
 schools  were  found  to  have  no  water  supply  of 
 their  own.  They  were  dependent  upon  the  wells  of 
 neighbors,  and,  in  some  cases  the  nearest  well  was 
 half  a  mile  away.  In  winter  some  of  the  schools 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 105 
 
 are  entirely  without  water  either  for  washing  or 
 drinking.  All  of  the  children  from  one  school 
 were  reported  ill  as  the  result  of  drinking  con¬ 
 taminated  water  from  a  neighbor’s  well.  In  one  case, 
 a  high  school  of  300  pupils  had  no  drinking  fountains 
 or  individual  cups,  and,  in  the  same  district,  the  inves¬ 
 tigator  reported,  “The  condition  of  many  children  in 
 the  first,  second,  and  third  grades  is  a  menace  to  the 
 clean  ones.  Many  are  covered  with  vermin  and  un¬ 
 sightly  sores.”  Another  high  school  in  the  same  county 
 had  no  lavatories  or  individual  towels,  drinking  cups, 
 or  fountains.  In  some  cases  where  indoor  toilets  were 
 provided,  they  were  frozen  and  entirely  out  of  use 
 several  months  each  year.  Schools  were  found  which 
 had  not  been  cleaned  for  two  years.  One  investigator 
 described  several  schools  as  “hardly  better  than  hog¬ 
 pens.”  One  school  did  not  even  own  a  broom.  Many 
 teachers  complained  of  the  great  amount  of  dust,  and 
 said  that  their  requests  for  oil  for  floors  had  not  been 
 granted.  Some  of  the  school  buildings  in  use  are 
 over  one  hundred  years  old,  and  half  of  them  are  said 
 to  be  more  than  fifty  years  old.  The  unwholesome 
 surroundings  in  many  of  the  schools  tended,  not  only 
 to  indifference  and  indolence  on  the  part  of  the  teach¬ 
 ers,  but  also  to  retardation  on  the  part  of  the  pupils. 
 
 When  these  appalling,  almost  incredible  facts  were 
 revealed,  the  question  was  at  once  raised:  “If  this  can 
 be  true  of  one  state,  what  is  the  situation  in  the  other 
 forty-seven?  If  children  are  being  cheated  in  ‘typical 
 American  communities’  in  New  York  State,  what  is 
 happening  in  ‘typical  American  communities’  in  other 
 
106  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 states?”  The  fact  is  that  while  New  York  State  may 
 not  be  at  the  head  of  the  list,  she  is  far  from  being 
 the  chief  of  sinners  in  this  matter,  as  the  present 
 writer  can  testify  from  rather  extended  observation. 
 
 Some  of  the  conditions  which  might  be  described 
 would  sound  like  a  chapter  out  of  the  dark  ages. 
 The  romance  which  is  supposed  to  surround  the  little 
 red  schoolhouse  can  never  compensate  for  the  evils 
 wrought  by  ignorant  teachers,  unsanitary  conditions, 
 and  unstimulating  associations.  A  study  made  by 
 Dr.  Thomas  D.  Wood  of  Teachers  College,  and  which 
 included  the  health  records  of  half  a  million  children, 
 revealed  the  fact  that  in  every  particular,  even  to  that 
 of  proper  nourishment,  the  city  child  was  ahead  of 
 the  country  child.  And  the  fact  that  the  percentage 
 of  city  pupils  who  finish  high  school  is  six  times  as 
 great  as  the  percentage  of  rural  pupils  is  a  silent  tes¬ 
 timony  to  the  handicap  under  which  our  rural  girls 
 and  boys  are  living  at  present.  We  have  come  to  a 
 new  day  and  one  in  which  the  glory  of  the  past  is  in 
 danger  of  becoming  the  disgrace  of  the  present.  We 
 do  not  mean  to  infer  that  conditions  are  ideal  in  the 
 schools  of  our  great  cities, — the  great  menace  here 
 being  inadequate  facilities  and  consequent  over-crowd¬ 
 ing, — but  they  are,  as  a  rule,  so  much  better  than  the 
 average  rural  school  that  between  them  is  a  great  gulf. 
 
 CONDITIONS  CAN  BE  IMPROVED 
 
 In  very  many  cases  conditions  in  our  rural  schools 
 can  be  greatly  improved  without  the  expenditure  of 
 money,  or  at  little  expense  when  a  few  leaders  in  the 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 107 
 
 community  take  the  matter  in  hand.  Schoolhouses 
 can  be  cleaned;  floors  can  be  oiled;  pure,  clean  water 
 can  be  provided,  and,  if  sanitary  cups  and  towels  can¬ 
 not  be  furnished  by  the  community,  each  pupil  may 
 provide  his  own;  lighting  arrangements  can  be  modi¬ 
 fied  when  necessary,  and  proper  window  ventilators 
 can  be  secured  at  slight  expense.  The  room  in  which 
 a  child  is  expected  to  spend  five  or  more  hours  five 
 days  of  the  week  should  at  least  be  made  safe,  decent, 
 and  wholesome.  It  should  no  longer  be  possible  for 
 anyone  to  say,  as  a  representative  committee  did  re¬ 
 cently,  after  studying  the  matter,  that  “the  country 
 schoolhouse  is  the  worst,  the  most  unsanitary  and  in¬ 
 adequate  type  of  building  in  the  whole  country,  in¬ 
 cluding,  not  only  those  used  for  human  beings,  but 
 also  those  used  for  domestic  animals/’ 
 
 We  would  not  blind  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  we 
 have  many  thousands  of  well-trained,  consecrated 
 teachers  and  many  schools  in  comfortable  buildings, 
 with  sanitary  surroundings  and  with  more  or  less  ade¬ 
 quate  equipment  in  which  thousands  of  boys  and  girls 
 are  receiving  excellent  training.  The  fact  remains, 
 however,  that  there  are  so  many  unlovely  conditions 
 in  our  school  systems  today  that  the  situation  has  be¬ 
 come  a  national  menace.  It  is  significant  that  Presi¬ 
 dent  Harding  was  moved  recently  to  designate  by 
 proclamation  a  special  period  to  be  known  as  Ameri¬ 
 can  Education  Week,  during  which  the  citizens  were 
 urged  to  give  particular  attention  to  means  of  reduc¬ 
 ing  illiteracy  and  remedying  the  defects  in  our  school 
 systems. 
 
108 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 URGENT  NEED  FOR  FEDERAL  AID 
 
 It  is  not  surprising  that  the  National  Education 
 Association  has  become  sponsor  for  a  bill  which  pro¬ 
 vides  for  the  creation  of  a  national  department  of 
 education  and  for  the  appropriation  of  funds  from  the 
 national  treasury  for  the  promotion  of  education  in 
 the  several  states.  It  has  been  strongly  felt  that,  in¬ 
 asmuch  as  the  matter  of  education  is  of  vital  concern 
 to  the  nation  as  well  as  to  the  local  community,  the 
 nation  must,  for  its  own  sake,  see  to  it  that  educa¬ 
 tional  opportunity  for  its  girls  and  boys  is  more  evenly 
 distributed  than  it  is  today.  The  idea  is,  not  to  have 
 education  nationally  controlled,  but  to  have  it  nation¬ 
 ally  assisted  where  it  is  today  weakest.  The  Knights 
 of  Columbus  have,  perhaps,  been  the  most  bitter  op¬ 
 ponents  of  the  proposed  measure.  A's  a  matter  of 
 fact,  it  is  not  a  new  policy  for  the  Federal  Govern¬ 
 ment  to  grant  aid  to  public  education.  From  the 
 earliest  days  of  our  history  down  to  the  present  time, 
 it  has  aided  education  both  through  grants  of  public 
 land  and  of  money.  Now  that  the  per  capita  resources 
 of  the  country  are  so  unequal,  it  would  seem  to  be 
 both  fair  and  proper  that  the  Federal  Government 
 should  undertake  more  nearly  to  equalize  educational 
 opportunities  by  granting  aid  where  it  is  most  needed. 
 
 DEMAND  FOR  MORE  ADVANCED  TRAINING 
 
 While  our  attention  thus  far  has  been  chiefly  upon 
 the  deficiencies  and  needs  of  our  public  elementary 
 schools  and  upon  problems  of  illiteracy,  we  must  re- 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY  109 
 
 mind  ourselves  that  this  is  but  the  beginning  of  edu¬ 
 cation.  Much  of  the  time  in  the  elementary  grades  is 
 spent  upon  acquiring  the  tools  for  getting  an  educa¬ 
 tion.  It  was  very  soon  realized  that  elementary 
 schools  alone  would  never  make  democracy  safe  or 
 efficient,  and  so  the  American  high  school  came  into 
 existence.  Its  growth  has  been  phenomenal.  During 
 the  last  twenty  years  the  high  school  enrolment  of  the 
 country  has  increased  six  times  as  fast  as  the  popula¬ 
 tion.  In  California  the  high  school  enrolment  has 
 increased  from  10,000  in  1909  to  196,000  in  1921. 
 New  York  City  has  nearly  a  hundred  thousand  pupils 
 enroled  in  its  high  schools.  There  seems  to  be  a 
 common  agreement  among  many  educators  that  the 
 general  level  of  American  intelligence  must  be  placed 
 at  the  point  of  graduation  from  a  standardized  high 
 school.  The  complexities  of  the  new  day  in  which  we 
 live  demand  more  than  an  elementary  training,  and 
 our  American  high  school  is  the  answer  to  that  need. 
 Fortunate  is  that  boy  or  girl  who  has  access  to  a  well- 
 ordered  public  school  and  a  modern  public  high  school, 
 for  millions  of  boys  and  girls  are,  for  one  reason  or 
 another,  deprived  of  such  advantages.  The  time  must 
 come  when  “no  child  shall  be  damned  to  illiteracy  be¬ 
 cause  he  chances  to  be  born  in  one  of  the  waste  places 
 of  the  nation.” 
 
 EDUCATION  A  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEM 
 
 We  have  emphasized  the  fact  that  public  education 
 is  a  matter  of  national  concern  and  therefore  a  matter 
 which  affects  the  welfare  .of  every  citizen  in  the  na- 
 
110 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 tion.  Our  safety  and  continued  existence  as  a  democ¬ 
 racy  are  dependent  upon  it.  As  citizens  of  a  great 
 free  country  the  situation  which  exists  challenges  us 
 to  attention  and  to  vigorous  action,  but  as  citizens  of 
 the  democracy  of  God  on  earth  our  obligations  are 
 even  more  insistent.  How,  indeed,  can  the  good  and 
 worth-while  things  of  life  be  more  evenly  distributed 
 while  we  permit  the  very  channels  through  which  they 
 are  to  be  received  to  be  blocked?  We  are  told  that  in 
 India  today  one  of  the  problems  of  the  Christian 
 Church  is  the  large  illiterate  constituency  pleading  for 
 Christian  baptism.  The  perils  of  an  illiterate  Church 
 in  India  and  in  other  foreign  fields  are  real  and 
 threatening.  Yet  in  the  United  States  we  have  thou¬ 
 sands  of  Christians  who  cannot  read  their  Bibles,  and 
 we  have  churches,  not  a  few,  where  the  percentage  of 
 illiteracy  in  the  membership  ranges  from  twenty-five 
 per  cent  upward.  The  hope  in  such  a  situation  is  that 
 we  can  readily  see  its  dangers.  These  perils  can  be 
 •  remedied  when  those  who  profess  the  name  of  Jesus 
 Christ  stand  ready  and  eager  to  do  their  part  in  mak¬ 
 ing  the  schools  in  their  own  communities  what  they 
 ought  to  be. 
 
 The  path  to  such  an  achievement  is  not  hidden  or 
 mysterious.  Suppose,  for  example,  that  all  the  Chris¬ 
 tians  in  the  country  were  to  insist  in  their  respective 
 communities  that  decent  and  adequate  schoolhouses 
 should  be  provided;  that  they  should  be  kept  clean; 
 that  dusty  floors  should  be  made  dustless;  that  desks 
 and  seats  should  fit  the  pupils;  that  toilet  arrange¬ 
 ments  should  be  decent  and  sanitary;  that  pure  water 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 111 
 
 should  be  made  available;  that,  where  needed,  the  cold 
 unsatisfactory  lunch  should  be  supplemented  by  some¬ 
 thing  hot  and  nourishing;  that  real  teaching  equip¬ 
 ment  should  be  provided;  that,  where  proper,  schools 
 should  be  consolidated;  that  trained  teachers  should  be 
 secured;  that  the  school  term  should  be  made,  not  as 
 short  as  possible,  but  as  long  as  possible;  that  child 
 labor  should  be  eliminated;  that  infection  and  con¬ 
 tagion  should  be  checked;  that,  in  short,  the  boys  and 
 girls  of  our  communities  should  be  treated,  not  only 
 as  human  beings,  but  as  the  most  precious  human 
 beings  in  all  the  world,  those  upon  whom  the  future 
 must  depend  and  out  of  whom  it  must  be  built.  Sup¬ 
 pose,  then,  that  Christians,  the  Christians  right  here 
 and  now  in  America  should  undertake  to  set  some  of 
 these  wrong  things  right.  In  a  week  they  could  do  a 
 great  deal,  in  a  month  much  more.  Within  a  year  the 
 total  would  be  incalculable,  and  within  a  few  years  a 
 national  disgrace  could  be  transformed  into  a  national 
 glory.  By  the  simple  process  of  doing  their  duty  in 
 the  communities  in  which  they  live,  the  followers  of 
 Jesus  Christ  have  it  within  their  power  to  do  these 
 things.  Is  not  the  responsibility  upon  their  heads  if 
 they  do  them  not? 
 
 There  have  always  been  certain  aspects  of  the  edu¬ 
 cational  situation  which  were  too  aggravated  for  indi¬ 
 vidual  communities  to  handle.  In  such  cases  it  has 
 often  been  the  Christian  Church  that  has  been  the  first 
 agency  to  grapple  with  the  conditions  of  educational 
 need.  The  Church  has  never  sought  to  do  what  the 
 community  could  do  for  itself,  but  to  meet  cases  of 
 
112  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 urgent  need.  Instinctively  the  Church  has  felt  that  its 
 mission  was  to  drive  out  the  darkness  of  ignorance  by 
 bringing  in  the  light  of  education.  There  has  not  been 
 an  undue  amount  of  theorizing  about  it,  but  the 
 Church  has  gone  at  the  job  and  done  it  as  well  as  she 
 could  with  the  resources  which  were  placed  at  her  dis¬ 
 posal.  We  may  perhaps  note  to  advantage  some  of 
 these  tasks  which  the  Church  has  bravely  undertaken. 
 
 SPECIAL  NEED  AMONG  MEXICANS  AND  SPANISH 
 
 AMERICANS 
 
 It  was  in  1848  that  by  the  treaty  of  Guadalupe 
 Hidalgo  made  with  Mexico  we  acquired  a  vast  terri¬ 
 tory  which  included  most  of  what  we  now  refer  to  as 
 our  great  Southwest.  It  was  indeed  a  sparsely  settled 
 country,  but,  such  as  it  was,  it  had  been  for  more  than 
 three  centuries  under  Spanish  and  Mexican  control. 
 Schools  were  almost  unknown,  the  population  was  illit¬ 
 erate,  and  the  language  was  Spanish,  not  English. 
 Even  as  late  as  1857  we  are  t°ld  there  were  in  the 
 entire  territory  of  New  Mexico  only  460  pupils  attend¬ 
 ing  school,  or  one  to  every  125  of  the  population.  The 
 population  of  New  Mexico  at  the  time  was  61,547. 
 
 The  federal  government  did  little  to  promote  educa¬ 
 tion.  In  1855-56  the  territorial  legislature  approved 
 a  bill  establishing  a  common  school  system  for  the 
 territory  to  be  supported  by  public  taxation.  The 
 measure  was  submitted  to  the  people  for  approval. 
 Instead  of  being  approved  it  was  rejected  by  a  vote 
 of  37  to  5,016.  It  is  perhaps  worthy  of  mention  that 
 about  the  same  time  the  United  States  government, 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 113 
 
 acting  from  a  desire  to  encourage  education  in  the 
 territory,  purchased  a  number  of  books  and  sent  them 
 to  New  Mexico.  The  territorial  legislature,  however, 
 refused  to  pay  the  freight  charges  on  the  books  and 
 left  them  to  be  sold  for  the  freight  or  to  be  destroyed 
 at  the  discretion  of  the  freight  agent.  As  late  as  1870, 
 a  home  missionary  says  that  in  New  Mexico  there 
 was  not  a  public  schoolhouse  to  be  found,  hardly  a 
 Bible  in  one  family  in  a  thousand,  and  only  a  few 
 other  books.  In  fact,  New  Mexico  did  not  have  a 
 public  school  law  until  1891.  It  is  not  surprising  that 
 the  1910  Census  reported  an  illiterate  group  in  New 
 Mexico  amounting  to  20.2  per  cent  of  the  population 
 over  ten  years  of  age  or  that  the  1920  census  reported 
 a  larger  percentage  of  native-born  white  illiteracy  for 
 New  Mexico  than  for  any  other  state  in  the  Union. 
 
 In  the  face  of  such  need,  the  Church  could  do 
 naught  but  respond.  Home  missionaries  entered  the 
 region  almost  as  soon  as  the  Stars  and  Stripes  were 
 hoisted  over  it.  Their  best  efforts  were,  however,  of 
 little  avail  in  the  face  of  the  ignorance  which  pre¬ 
 vailed,  and  they  were  very  soon  driven  to  do  educa¬ 
 tional  work.  Even  a  Sunday-school  could  not  be  con¬ 
 ducted  effectively  until  pupils  had  been  taught  to  read. 
 Informal  schools  sometimes  taught  by  the  wives  of  the 
 missionaries  were  organized.  Then  the  need  for  regu¬ 
 larly  designated  teachers  was  felt.  Plaza  schools  were 
 started  and,  on  the  whole,  a  large  amount  of  educa¬ 
 tional  work  was  done. 
 
 A’s  time  went  on,  still  other  needs  appeared  and 
 boarding-schools  were  organized  where  more  advanced 
 
114  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 training  and  training  under  more  auspicious  circum¬ 
 stances  than  were  provided  by  the  ordinary  day  school 
 arrangement  in  the  plazas  could  be  provided.  These 
 schools  proved  to  be,  not  only  the  simplest  and  most 
 effective  means  for  Christian  evangelization,  but  they 
 also  furnished  the  means  for  training  Christian  lead¬ 
 ers.  A  little  later,  particularly  in  more  recent  years, 
 large  numbers  of  Mexicans  migrated  to  the  United 
 States  and  settled  in  Texas,  Arizona,  California,  New 
 Mexico,  Colorado,  and  other  states.  These  Mexicans 
 often  brought  or  raised  large  families  of  children  who 
 were  being  wofully  neglected  in  multitudes  of  ways. 
 This  situation  presented  a  fresh  challenge  to  extend 
 the  educational  work  already  begun.  Today  in  our 
 border  states  there  are  approximately  forty  schools 
 supported  by  churches  through  their  missionary 
 agencies,  which  are  devoted  to  the  training  of  boys 
 and  girls  from  Spanish-American  and  Mexican  homes 
 in  our  Southwest.  These  schools  are  teaching  the 
 English  language  to  many  pupils  who  otherwise  would 
 grow  up  with  a  working  knowledge  of  Spanish  only. 
 They  are  giving  a  helping  and  encouraging  hand  to 
 multitudes  who  would  never  have  the  courage  to  stay 
 on  in  the  public  school  and  they  are  bringing  under 
 genuine  Christian  influences  many  who  would,  under 
 other  conditions,  never  have  a  chance  at  the  best  things 
 in  life. 
 
 How  difficult  the  problem  of  Americanization  and 
 Christianization  is  among  our  Spanish-speaking  Amer¬ 
 icans,  it  is  hard  for  some  more  favored  to  appreciate. 
 They  cannot  understand  quite  why  it  is  that  girls  and 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 115 
 
 boys  born  in  America  grow  to  maturity  without  learn¬ 
 ing  the  English  language  or  how  young  men  called 
 under  the  draft  during  the  War  honestly  declared  that 
 they  did  not  know  that  they  were  American  citizens. 
 One  has  only  to  go  back  into  the  highlands  of  New 
 Mexico,  however,  twenty-five,  forty,  fifty,  or  even 
 more  miles  from  the  railroad  and  visit  the  little  com¬ 
 munities  hidden  away  in  the  mountains  to  have  the 
 matter  made  quite  clear.  How,  indeed,  could  a  child 
 learn  English  if  in  all  his  life  he  had  never  heard  any¬ 
 thing  but  Spanish  spoken?  Even  if  he  knew  English, 
 what  good  would  it  do  him  so  long  as  his  father  and 
 mother  and  his  brothers  and  sisters  and  his  playmates 
 and  neighbors  spoke  and  understood  only  Spanish? 
 What  difference  does  it  make  that  his  father  is  an 
 American  citizen  or  that  he  is  a  potential  president  of 
 the  republic?  Such  facts  do  not  bring  with  them  the 
 knowledge  of  the  English  language  or  any  introduc¬ 
 tion  to  Christian  ideals  or  American  traditions. 
 
 These  are  a  few  of  the  difficult  spots  in  our  national 
 life.  They  have  also  served  to  call  attention  to  the 
 essential  perseverance  and  heroism  of  the  Christian 
 Church  in  staying  by  a  hard  job  even  when  there  were 
 discouragements  in  the  way  and  when  it  would  have 
 been  easy  to  say  that  the  job  belonged  to  someone  else 
 and  not  to  the  Church.  There  is  much  yet  to  be  done, 
 but  our  great  Southwest  is  a  finer  and  a  more  whole¬ 
 some  place  in  which  to  live  and  thousands  of  indi¬ 
 viduals  are  living  richer,  freer,  fuller,  and  more  Chris¬ 
 tian  lives  because  the  Christian  churches  all  over 
 America  have,  for  nearly  three  quarters  of  a  century, 
 
116  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 stood  back  of  their  missionary  organizations  in  their 
 attempts  to  carry  the  gospel  of  enlightenment  to  the 
 Spanish-speaking  boys  and  girls  of  a  vast  section  of 
 our  country  through  the  agency  of  mission  schools. 
 
 NEGRO  MISSION  SCHOOLS 
 
 Once  more  the  Church  faced  a  tremendous  educa¬ 
 tional  need  in  the  person  of  the  American  Negro.  A 
 little  more  than  half  a  century  ago  four  million  un¬ 
 educated  American  Negroes  faced  the  nation.  The 
 communities  in  which  they  lived,  weakened  by  a  long 
 and  unsuccessful  struggle,  were  entirely  unprepared  to 
 cope  with  the  situation.  Again  the  Church  stepped 
 forward  and,  without  asking  to  be  excused  from  an 
 obligation  which  it  might  have  avoided,  undertook  to 
 do  its  bit  in  teaching  the  American  Negro.  At  first 
 the  aim  was  avowedly  to  teach  the  Negro  to  read  and 
 write.  Schools  were  many  in  number,  but  crude  in 
 form.  Fathers  and  mothers  and  grandfathers  and 
 grandmothers  were  grouped  with  their  children  and 
 their  children’s  children  around  the  open  primer  to 
 master  the  intricacies  of  the  a  b  c’s. 
 
 A  visitor  to  one  of  these  early  schools  gives  his 
 impression  of  it  as  follows : 
 
 “On  rough  benches  sat  rougher  people — youth,  chil¬ 
 dren,  men,  and  women — in  rags  of  linsey-woolsey  and 
 jeans,  patched  like  Joseph’s  coat,  not  through  pride 
 and  plenty,  but  through  poverty,  bootless  and  shoeless 
 and  stockingless,  knowledgeless  certainly,  most  would 
 have  said  brainless.  .  .  .  There  they  sat,  crouching 
 over  their  primers,  spelling  with  difficulty  the  easiest 
 
EDUCATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
 
 117 
 
 words,  answering  stammeringly  the  simplest  questions, 
 strong  only  in  the  gift  of  song  and  in  the  faith  of 
 their  teachers.” 
 
 Such  schools  marked  the  beginning,  but  out  of  them 
 grew  the  graded  school,  the  boarding-school,  the 
 normal  school,  the  academy,  and  the  college  and  pro¬ 
 fessional  school,  until  the  schools  for  Negroes  sup¬ 
 ported  by  the  Christian  people  of  America  and  by  the 
 churches  of  America  total  into  the  hundreds,  and  the 
 number  of  pupils  who  have  been  taught  by  their  gradu¬ 
 ates  run  into  the  millions.  Enormous  is  the  impress 
 which  the  mission  schools  for  Negroes  have  made 
 upon  our  national  life  and  upon  the  Negro  constitu¬ 
 ency  of  the  Christian  churches.  It  is  true  that  in  spite 
 of  all  that  has  been  done,  the  education  of  the  Negro 
 in  America  is  only  well  under  way,  but  any  story  of 
 the  American  Negro,  or,  in  fact,  any  story  of  America 
 herself  which  leaves  out  of  account  the  achievements 
 of  the  schools  which  have  been  supported  for  our 
 neglected  populations  by  our  churches  through  the  mis¬ 
 sion  boards,  is  a  story  which  is  incomplete  and  unsat¬ 
 isfactory.  In  the  building  of  America  and  in  the 
 maintaining  of  Christian  American  ideals  in  our  coun¬ 
 try,  the  mission  school  has  made  an  imperishable 
 place  for  itself  in  our  national  history. 
 
 Into  these  mission  schools  have  come  the  uncouth, 
 the  untutored,  the  neglected  youth  of  our  country — 
 the  Mexican,  the  Spanish-American,  the  Negro,  the 
 American  Indian,  the  Mountaineer  and  many  others. 
 And  out  of  the  mission  school  has  gone  a  steady 
 stream  of  clean,  trained,  Christian  homemakers,  car- 
 
118 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 penters,  blacksmiths,  plumbers,  tailors,  teachers,  busi¬ 
 ness  men,  stenographers,  lawyers,  dentists,  pharma¬ 
 cists,  nurses,  doctors,  ministers,  and  others  who  have 
 gone  back  to  carry  to  many  in  their  respective  groups 
 something  of  the  spirit  and  something  of  the  content 
 of  the  things  which  they  have  gained  in  the  mission 
 school.  Sometimes  equipment  has  been  poor;  some¬ 
 times  teachers  have  been  less  effective  than  they  ought 
 to  have  been;  sometimes  serious  mistakes  have  been 
 made,  and  always  much  of  the  work  that  was  pressing 
 and  urgent  has,  of  necessity,  been  left  undone.  But 
 none  of  these  things  can  spoil  the  glory  of  an  achieve¬ 
 ment  which  must  always  rank  high  in  Christian 
 annals. 
 
 A  TIME  OF  CRISIS 
 
 Education  is  at  a  moment  of  crisis  in  America.  To 
 
 / 
 
 stand  still  is  to  retreat.  The  day  can  still  be  saved, 
 and  saved  by  the  Christians  in  our  local  communities, 
 from  one  end  of  our  country  to  the  other.  The  situa¬ 
 tion  comes  to  a  focus  in  the  simple  question:  Do  we 
 as  people,  community  by  community,  state  by  state, 
 and  in  our  united  capacity  as  a  nation,  think  highly 
 enough  of  our  children,  our  nation,  and  the  coming 
 of  the  kingdom  of  Jesus  Christ  on  earth  to  be  willing 
 to  pay  the  price  demanded  for  placing  a  clean,  ade¬ 
 quate,  well-equipped,  well-taught  school  within  reach 
 of  every  boy  and  girl  in  America;  and  then  to  exer¬ 
 cise  our  common  prerogative  in  seeing  that  every  child 
 in  America  takes  advantage  of  the  educational  oppor¬ 
 tunities  which  are  placed  in  his  way? 
 
GLIMPSES  OF  A  SEVEN-DAY-A-WEEK  CHURCH  PROGRAM 
 
 The  demands  made  upon  a  modern  home  mission  plant  are 
 many  and  varied.  To  supply  a  continuous  program  of  training 
 and  recreation  for  all  ages  of  both  sexes  during  the  extra-school 
 hours  and  the  long  vacation  periods  demands  buildings,  equip¬ 
 ment,  and  an  adequate  and  thoroughly  trained  staff. 
 
A  large,  well  ventilated  room,  the  children  comfortably  seated,  without  coats  and 
 hats,  and  a  staff  of  teachers  trained  to  lead  properly  graded  classes  will  go  far 
 toward  making  Sunday  School  a  place,  not  to  be  endured  once  a  week,  but  genuinely 
 
CHAPTER  V 
 
 Christian  Nurture  in  the  Church  School 
 
 One  fact  stands  out  with  ever  increasing  clearness 
 as  the  days  pass ;  namely,  that  the  most  important  task 
 facing  the  Christian  Church  in  America  is  the  religious 
 education  of  American  youth. 
 
 The  number  of  those  who  are  committed  whole¬ 
 heartedly  to  this  proposition  is  increasing  rapidly,  and 
 there  are  many  reasons  for  believing  that  the  idea 
 which  underlies  it  is  destined  to  work  a  more  radical 
 transformation  in  the  aims  and  methods  of  the  Church 
 than  has  any  other  idea  for  many  decades. 
 
 URGENT  NEED  FOR  A  WORTH-WHILE  RELIGION 
 
 It  is  perhaps  not  extravagant  to  say  that  never  be¬ 
 fore  in  the  world’s  history  has  there  been  such  a  des¬ 
 perate  need  for  a  worth-while  religion  as  exists  today 
 — an  enlightened  religion;  an  ethical  religion;  a  re¬ 
 ligion  which  really  ministers  to  human  need ;  a  religion 
 which  is  adequate  to  solve  the  great  social  questions 
 of  national  and  international  scope  which  are  pressing 
 for  solution;  a  religion  which  is  capable  of  under¬ 
 girding  a  powerful  nation  with  righteousness  and 
 building  into  it  the  moral  fiber  which  alone  will  give 
 it  stability  and  make  it  a  power  for  human  betterment ; 
 a  religion  which  can  make  God  and  duty  a  reality  in 
 the  hearts  of  men.  Dr.  Henry  F.  Cope  stated  the  situ¬ 
 ation  forcefully  when  he  said : 
 
 “Life  is  unthinkable,  in  imagination  it  is  intolerable 
 
 119 
 
120 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 in  the  future,  unless  it  be  the  life  of  a  society  con¬ 
 trolled  by  religious  motives.  There  is  no  hope  for 
 peace  in  our  world — either  between  nations,  classes, 
 or  interests — until  we  have  substituted  for  the  motives 
 of  self-interest  that  threw  the  world  into  war  the  mo¬ 
 tives  of  social  living  which  Jesus  taught;  until  we 
 move  the  center  of  lives  from  self  to  society,  from 
 avarice  to  service,  from  lust  to  love.  The  religious 
 way  is  the  only  way  under  which  the  world  of  to¬ 
 morrow  can  even  exist.” 
 
 If,  however,  it  was  a  mere  matter  of  “religion” — 
 any  kind  of  religion — we  should  have  small  occasion 
 for  worry.  It  was  a  wise  man  who,  after  careful 
 study,  arrived  at  the  amazingly  simple  conclusion, 
 “Man  is  incurably  religious.”  The  chief  mission  of 
 Christianity  in  the  world  is,  not  to  supply  a  religion 
 to  those  who  have  none,  but  to  provide  a  better  re¬ 
 ligion  for  those  who  have  a  worse  one.  So  we  send 
 missionaries  to  India,  said  to  be  the  most  religious 
 country  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  to  Africa,  where 
 the  native  savages  are  already  spending  more  time  in 
 religious  ceremonies  than  are  many  respectable  Chris¬ 
 tians  elsewhere.  Indeed,  in  America  some  of  our  most 
 unlovely  conditions  are  to  be  found  in  places  and 
 among  groups  where  religion  is  far  from  a  discarded 
 art. 
 
 The  question  at  issue  is,  whether  we  are  to  have  a 
 .  worthy  religion  and  one  adequate  to  meet  the  demands 
 which  are  made  upon  it.  Such  a  religion  does  not 
 “just  happen”;  neither  is  it  the  product  of  a  single 
 religious  experience.  Instead,  it  is,  like  the  religion 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  121 
 
 of  Him  who  “increased  in  wisdom  and  stature  and  in 
 favor  with  God  and  man/’  a  matter  of  gradual  growth 
 plus  religious  nurture.  The  only  way  that  we  can  have 
 a  nation  that  is  dominated  by  intelligent  and  ethical  re¬ 
 ligious  motives  is  to  train  a  generation  of  young  people 
 in  exactly  that  sort  of  religion.  If  there  is  any  other 
 way  of  producing  such  a  result,  some  thousands  of 
 years  of  religious  experience  of  the  race  has  failed  to 
 reveal  it. 
 
 RELIGIOUS  TRAINING  THE  SECRET  OF  ALL  RELIGIOUS 
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 Religious  training  of  one  sort  or  another  has  been 
 the  secret  of  success  of  every  religion  which  has  won 
 a  large  and  stable  following.  This  has  been  as  true 
 of  the  more  primitive  religions  of  Africa  with  their 
 elaborate  initiations  as  of  the  more  highly  developed 
 religions  of  Judaism  and  Christianity.  It  has  always 
 been  feasible  to  forecast  the  religion  of  the  next  gen¬ 
 eration  by  examining  the  sort  of  religious  training  to 
 which  the  boys  and  girls  of  the  preceding  generation 
 were  being  subjected.  No  religion  which  neglects  to 
 train  its  youth  ever  has  or  ever  can  maintain  itself  on 
 any  important  scale.  In  general,  the  Protestant 
 churches  have  not  seen  that  fact  as  clearly  as  has  the 
 Roman  Catholic  Church,  but  they  have  not  altogether 
 ignored  the  need,  and  their  measure  of  success  up  to 
 the  present  has  been  conditioned  largely  by  the  extent 
 and  effectiveness  of  the  religious  training  which  they 
 have  been  able  to  provide  their  youth. 
 
 Theoretically,  the  Protestant  churches  have  some- 
 
122 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 times  placed  the  chief  emphasis  in  the  making  of  re¬ 
 ligious  individuals  upon  a  single  spiritual  experience, 
 but  fortunately,  they  have  often  been  wiser  in  prac¬ 
 tise  than  in  theory.  Multiplied  experience  has,  how¬ 
 ever,  modified  even  the  theory.  One  thing  which  has 
 hastened  the  process  has  been  the  experience  of  mis¬ 
 sionaries  upon  the  foreign  field.  To  those  who  have 
 grown  up  in  a  Christian  or  semi-Christian  atmosphere, 
 it  came  as  a  great  shock  to  learn  that  earnest,  con¬ 
 secrated,  and  enthusiastic  missionaries  were  refusing 
 baptism  to  tens  of  thousands  who  were  pleading  for 
 it,  and  doing  so  on  the  ground  that  they  had  no  one 
 to  “teach”  the  converts.  Even  the  most  ardent  mis¬ 
 sionary  has  been  forced  to  admit,  when  face  to  face 
 with  actual  conditions,  that  the  making  of  a  Christian 
 is  not  a  matter  of  a  single  experience,  but  of  a  long- 
 extended  educational  process.  In  the  homeland  some 
 had  not  been  so  quick  to  discover  this  fact  because 
 almost  all  of  our  “converts”  had  some  sort  of  a  back¬ 
 ground  provided  through  direct  or  indirect  education 
 for  their  experience. 
 
 In  America,  as  perhaps  nowhere  else  on  earth,  adult 
 evangelism  has  been  made  a  science  and  organized  on 
 a  scale  never  before  dreamed  of.  In  its  latest  stages 
 the  revival  in  America  has  reached  the  nth  degree  of 
 mechanical  efficiency.  In  spite  of  that  fact,  the  great 
 stream  of  recruits  for  church  membership  has  been 
 made  up  steadily  of  the  boys  and  girls  who  have  had 
 religious  training.  These  boys  and  girls  became  Chris¬ 
 tians  because  of  the  long-continued  work  of  faithful 
 parents,  ministers,  and  teachers;  although  in  millions 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  123 
 
 of  such  cases  an  itinerant  evangelist  has  modestly 
 taken  the  credit  for  himself.  Even  the  older  indi¬ 
 viduals  reached  by  the  evangelist  have  been  those  who 
 have  been  made  susceptible  to  the  Christian  message 
 by  some  sort  of  religious  training  in  youth.  Among 
 rescue  workers  it  has  become  almost  axiomatic  that 
 their  best  efforts  are  foredoomed  to  failure  unless  the 
 individual  concerned  has  had  some  religious  training 
 in  youth.  In  view  of  the  facts  revealed,  it  is  surpris¬ 
 ing  that  we  have  often  had  so  little  theoretical  respect 
 for  the  educational  method  while  in  practise  we  have 
 placed  so  much  reliance  upon  it. 
 
 THE  HOME  AND  THE  SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 In  the  early  years  of  America  the  chief  agency  for 
 religious  training  was  the  home,  the  work  of  which 
 was  supplemented  by  the  church  services  which  the 
 boys  and  girls  were  expected  to  attend,  by  catechetical 
 instruction,  and  by  the  public  schools  in  which  the 
 Bible  occupied  a  prominent  place.  With  the  coming 
 of  the  Sunday-school,  however,  and  with  steadily 
 changing  conditions  in  home  and  school,  there  gradu¬ 
 ally  developed  a  tendency  to  load  upon  the  Sunday- 
 school  more  of  the  responsibility  for  the  religious 
 training  of  the  youth  of  the  Church  and  community. 
 
 This  did  not  happen  at  once  or  quickly.  In  fact, 
 the  first  Sunday-schools  were  not  essentially  schools 
 of  religion  at  all,  but  rather  schools  for  the  teaching 
 of  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic.  As  early  as  1784 
 John  Wesley  wrote  of  them:  “Perhaps  God  may  have 
 a  deeper  end  than  men  are  aware  of.  Who  knows 
 
124 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 but  that  some  of  these  schools  may  become  nurseries 
 for  Christians  ?”  As  late  as  1816,  however,  a  Boston 
 journal  in  discussing  the  Sunday-school  in  the  United 
 States  said  that  while  such  schools  might  be  suitable 
 for  conditions  in  the  South  and  West,  “in  New  Eng¬ 
 land,  where  schools  are  brought  to  every  man’s  door, 
 and  where  the  children  of  the  poor  may  be  educated 
 without  expense  during  the  week,  there  are  few  cases 
 where  Sunday-schools  would  be  attended  with  any 
 solid  advantage.  They  might  even  prove  injurious, 
 by  inducing  a  neglect  of  common  schools.”  It  is 
 indeed  a  well-known  fact  that  the  Church  was  either 
 indifferent  to  or  strongly  opposed  to  the  Sunday- 
 school  in  the  early  days  of  its  history. 
 
 Gradually,  however,  the  Church  adopted  the 
 Sunday-school  as  its  own,  and  today  it  is  shocked 
 when  anyone  suggests  that  it  ever  attempted  to  dis¬ 
 own  it.  Also,  the  idea  of  the  Sunday-school  as  an 
 institution  solely  for  poor  and  neglected  children 
 changed  only  by  degrees.  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  is  said 
 to  have  been  one  of  the  first  in  America  to  break  away 
 from  the  idea  that  Sunday-schools  were  essentially 
 “ragged  schools.”  As  early  as  1830  he  took  his  own 
 children  to  Sunday-school  and  urged  his  neighbors  to 
 follow  his  example. 
 
 Until  1826  the  religious  training  in  the  Sunday- 
 schools  consisted  chiefly  in  the  memorizing  of  verses 
 of  Scripture.  At  that  time  a  strong  protest  arose 
 against  this  method,  and  the  idea  of  limiting  the 
 Scripture  lesson  and  allotting  the  same  lesson  to  all 
 the  members  of  the  class  or  groups  of  classes  appeared. 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  125 
 
 A  quarter  of  a  century  later  a  crude  idea  of  grouping 
 according  to  ability  or  age  developed. 
 
 In  1872  the  first  “lesson  committee”  outlined  its 
 lesson  plans.  In  brief,  the  proposal  was  to  have  the 
 lessons  alternate  each  year  between  the  Old  and  New 
 Testaments;  to  begin  with  Genesis  in  the  Old  Testa¬ 
 ment  and  select  the  material  in  chronological  order, 
 and  to  follow  a  somewhat  similar  plan  with  the  New 
 Testament  lessons.  For  an  entire  generation  and,  in 
 fact,  down  to  the  present,  this  plan,  with  slight  modi¬ 
 fications,  has  dominated  much  of  our  Sunday-school 
 thinking  and  work.  Side  by  side  with  this,  however, 
 there  has  been  developing  rapidly,  especially  during 
 the  last  twenty  years,  an  entirely  new  conception  of 
 the  aims  and  methods  of  Sunday-school  work.  The 
 center  of  attention  has  been  shifted  from  a  body  of 
 material  to  be  taught  to  the  molding  and  training  of 
 a  developing  religious  consciousness  in  the  life  of  the 
 child.  This  new  conception  has  manifested  itself  in 
 graded  lessons  adapted  to  the  growing  needs  of  the 
 child  and  selected  from  a  broader  field  than  before; 
 in  a  study  of  child  psychology  and  child  life  with  a 
 view  to  applying  the  results  of  the  study  to  the  im¬ 
 provement  of  Sunday-school  methods;  in  emphasis 
 upon  teacher  training;  in  an  effort  to  make  the 
 Sunday-school  a  genuine  laboratory  for  Christian 
 living  rather  than  a  mere  place  for  giving  instruction; 
 and  in  many  other  ways.  The  best  Sunday-schools 
 of  today  are  so  unlike  those  of  a  generation  ago  that 
 they  would  hardly  be  identified  as  the  same  institu¬ 
 tions. 
 
126 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 SUCCESSES  AND  FAILURES  OF  THE  SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 Without  doubt  the  Sunday-school  is  one  of  the 
 most  interesting  and  unique  systems  of  religious 
 training  which  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Other  sys¬ 
 tems  may  have  surpassed  it  in  effectiveness,  but  pos¬ 
 sibly  none  has  been  more  democratic  than  it,  and  none 
 has  ever  enlisted  so  large  a  number  of  volunteer 
 workers  for  such  extended  periods  of  service.  The 
 devotion  of  this  army  of  Sunday-school  workers  has 
 been  one  of  the  most  marvelous  demonstrations  of  the 
 vitality  of  the  Christian  religion  in  the  hearts  and  lives 
 of  its  devotees.  Their  consecration  has  made  of  the 
 Sunday-school  a  power  possibly  second  to  none  in  the 
 life  of  the  Church,  and  the  story  of  their  heroism  and 
 devotion  forms  a  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  Church 
 which  will  be  told  with  justifiable  pride  for  genera¬ 
 tions  to  come. 
 
 When,  however,  we  have  given  the  Sunday-school 
 credit  for  all  that  it  has  accomplished  in  the  past,  we 
 must,  in  justice  to  the  boys  and  girls  committed  to  our 
 care,  face  squarely  its  shortcomings.  It  is  a  remark¬ 
 ably  fine  thing  that  the  Sunday-school  has  been  able 
 to  turn  a  steady  stream  of  new  recruits  toward  the 
 Church,  but  it  is  a  depressing  fact  that  it  has  lost  per¬ 
 manently  to  the  Church  many  more  young  people  than 
 it  has  been  able  to  gather  into  its  membership.  It  is 
 a  glorious  thing  that  the  Sunday-school  has  been  able 
 to  do  so  much  in  the  past,  but  the  task  of  religious 
 education  is  a  perennial  one.  Every  generation  must, 
 in  this  particular,  stand  or  fall  by  itself.  The  stream 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  127 
 
 of  youth  is  ceaseless  and  endless.  To  miss  one  rising 
 group  is  to  break  the  spell  permanently.  The  char¬ 
 acter  of  a  single  community,  or,  in  fact,  of  an  entire 
 nation,  may  be  completely  altered  in  a  single  genera¬ 
 tion  by  attention  to  or  neglect  of  religious  education. 
 In  one  generation  the  entire  Protestant  Church  could 
 be  made  to  disappear  from  America  by  the  simple  de¬ 
 vice  of  turning  our  young  people  over  to  the  Catholic 
 Church  or  some  similar  organization  for  their  reli¬ 
 gious  training,  or  by  reversing  the  process  an  opposite 
 result  might  be  brought  about.  In  view  of  these  con¬ 
 siderations  we  must  face  the  bald  fact  that  whatever 
 the  Sunday-school  may  have  done  in  the  past,  it  is  not 
 at  present  reaching  the  boys  and  girls  who  ought  to 
 be  reached  by  it.  The  army  of  youth  in  nominally 
 Protestant  homes  in  the  United  States  which  is  receiv¬ 
 ing  no  formal  religious  instruction  at  all  is  numbered 
 literally  by  millions. 
 
 MILLIONS  OF  GIRLS  AND  BOYS  UNREACHED 
 
 These  young  people  are  to  be  found  everywhere — 
 in  our  congested  city  centers;  in  sparsely  settled  rural 
 regions  and  in  thickly  settled  rural  regions;  in  com¬ 
 munities  where  the  houses  are  painted  and  in  those 
 where  they  are  not  painted ;  on  the  great  plains  and  in 
 the  recesses  of  the  mountains;  in  white  communities, 
 in  Negro  communities,  in  Indian  communities,  in 
 Spanish-speaking  communities,  and  many  others;  in 
 the  North,  the  South,  the  East,  the  West.  In  these 
 communities  we  have  girls  and  boys  who  never  have 
 been  taught  to  pray;  who  never  have  handled  a  Bible; 
 
128  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 who  cannot  recite  the  Lord’s  Prayer;  who  never  have 
 heard  the  Twenty-third  Psalm  or  heard  of  it;  who  do 
 not  know  the  story  of  Jesus  Christ;  who  have  never 
 attended  a  church  or  been  in  a  Sunday-school;  who 
 have  had  no  instruction  concerning  the  Christian  vir¬ 
 tues  and  no  training  in  the  exercise  of  them.  And 
 these  children  are  not  in  South  America,  or  Africa, 
 or  Asia,  or  the  islands  of  the  sea,  but  in  “Christian” 
 America. 
 
 The  Interchurch  Survey  which  was  based  upon  a 
 very  careful  study  of  the  situation  placed  the  number 
 of  Protestant  children  and  young  people  under  twenty- 
 five  years  of  age  in  the  United  States  who  are  not 
 enroled  in  Sunday-school  at  twenty-seven  millions. 
 Taking  Catholic,  Jewish,  and  Protestant  figures  to¬ 
 gether  we  discover  that  69.3  per  cent  of  all  our  boys 
 and  girls  and  young  people  under  twenty-five  years  of 
 age  in  the  United  States  are  not  so  much  as  enroled 
 in  any  church  school  of  any  sort.  In  other  words,  two 
 out  of  three  of  our  young  people  have  not  even  a  re¬ 
 mote  relation  with  any  church  school  whatsoever. 
 When,  however,  we  make  deductions  for  those  whose 
 relationship  is  nominal  and  not  vital,  we  are  forced 
 to  the  conclusion  that,  taking  the  country  as  a  whole, 
 only  one  out  of  four  of  our  boys  and  girls  are  receiv¬ 
 ing  any  regular  religious  instruction.  Local  surveys 
 of  many  sorts  have  verified  the  substantial  accuracy 
 of  these  general  results.  The  Cook  County  Sunday 
 School  Association,  after  careful  investigation,  re¬ 
 cently  announced  that  considerably  more  than  a  half 
 a  million  of  the  boys  and  girls  of  Chicago  were  not 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  129 
 
 enroled  in  any  organization  for  religious  instruction. 
 The  New  York  Sunday  School  Association  reports  a 
 similar  figure  for  New  York  City  and  numerous  rural 
 surveys  show  the  most  distressing  conditions  in  this 
 particular  in  the  various  areas  covered  by  them. 
 
 It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Interchurch  Survey 
 says :  “The  one  question  which  arises  most  clearly 
 from  these  studies  is  this,  How  long  can  a  nation  en¬ 
 dure,  69.3  per  cent  of  whose  children  and  youth  are 
 receiving  no  systematic  instruction  in  the  religious  and 
 moral  sanctions  upon  which  our  democratic  institu¬ 
 tions  rest?”  It  then  adds:  “If  you  would  point  to 
 the  weakest  spot  in  the  Protestant  Church  you  would 
 put  your  finger  on  the  army  of  twenty-seven  million 
 children  and  youth  who  are  growing  up  in  spiritual 
 illiteracy  and  the  sixteen  million  other  American 
 Protestant  children  whose  religious  instruction  is  lim¬ 
 ited  to  a  brief  half  hour  once  a  week,  often  sandwiched 
 in  between  a  delayed  preaching  service  and  the  Ameri¬ 
 can  Sunday  dinner.  Let  it  be  burned  into  the  minds 
 of  our  Church  leaders  that  a  Church  which  cannot 
 save  its  own  children  can  never  save  the  world.  A 
 religious  education  should  be  the  heritage  of  every 
 child.  Spiritual  illiteracy  is  the  greatest  peril  of 
 organized  society.” 
 
 SUNDAY-SCHOOL  PROGRAM  INADEQUATE 
 
 Distressing  as  is  the  fact  that  the  Sunday-school  is 
 reaching  in  any  vital  way  only  a  small  proportion  of 
 those  who  should  be  reached,  it  pictures  only  one 
 aspect  of  the  situation.  We  are  still  concerned  about 
 
130 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 what  happens  to  those  who  do  share  in  what  the 
 Sunday-school  has  to  offer.  And  here  we  are  forced 
 to  confess  that  the  Sunday-school  has  largely  failed 
 in  its  own  specialty.  For  decades  the  Sunday-school 
 has  thought  of  its  task  primarily  in  terms  of  Bible 
 teaching,  so  much  so  indeed  that  the  terms  “Sunday- 
 school”  and  “Bible  School”  have  been  largely  inter¬ 
 changeable.  In  spite  of  this  fact  an  overwhelming 
 proportion  of  former  Sunday-school  pupils  are  not 
 intelligently  informed  about  the  Bible  and  could 
 by  no  means  pass  even  a  reasonably  simple  examina¬ 
 tion  upon  it.  Many  of  them  know  a  limited 
 number  of  Bible  stories  and  some  Bible  precepts  but 
 have  no  intelligent  conception  of  the  Bible  story  as  a 
 whole  or  of  the  nature  of  the  book  from  which  they 
 have  been  studying  or  of  the  various  parts  of  it.  One 
 illustration  may  suggest  what  we  mean.  Among  216 
 Freshmen  taking  entrance  examinations  in  a  certain 
 denominational  college  in  1922,  forty  per  cent  did  not 
 know  whether  or  not  Joshua  was  a  book  of  the  Bible. 
 A  detailed  study  made  by  W.  E.  Uphouse  of  Yale 
 University  of  the  Uniform  Lessons  for  the  forty-six 
 years  from  1872  to  1917  has  revealed  that  in  all  that 
 time  only  one  third  of  the  Bible  was  ever  used  in  any 
 way  in  connection  with  the  lessons.  The  study  in¬ 
 cluded  every  verse  assigned  for  study,  for  reference, 
 or  for  devotional  use  during  the  week.  In  those 
 forty-six  years  nine  entire  books  of  the  Bible  were 
 never  referred  to  in  any  way  in  the  Uniform  Lessons, 
 and  taking  the  Bible  as  a  whole,  64.9  per  cent  of  the 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  131 
 
 verses  were  never  used  in  any  way.  It  is  evident  that 
 had  an  individual  studied  every  Uniform  Lesson  for 
 forty-six  years  and  read  every  reference,  he  would  still 
 be  entirely  ignorant  of  approximately  two  thirds  of 
 the  Bible,  and  had  he  been  connected  with  the  Sunday- 
 school  but  a  few  weeks  or  months  or  years,  as  multi¬ 
 tudes  of  Sunday-school  pupils  are,  his  knowledge  of 
 the  Bible  would  under  the  very  best  of  conditions  be 
 proportionately  slight. 
 
 Fortunately,  perhaps,  one  does  not  have  to  under¬ 
 stand  the  Bible  thoroughly  in  order  to  be  a  Christian, 
 but  the  Christian  who  does  not  understand  it  is  in  a 
 peculiarly  helpless  situation,  and  some  of  the  most 
 serious  problems  which  the  Church  faces  within  itself 
 today  are  the  result  of  this  ignorance.  Even  our  mul¬ 
 tiplication  of  religious  sects  finds  its  roots  in  this  same 
 cause.  A  devout  individual  with  but  a  smattering  of 
 Bible  knowledge  is  at  the  mercy  of  every  wind  of 
 doctrine  which  chances  to  pass  over  his  head.  Rus- 
 sellism,  Dowieism,  Mormonism,  Christian  Science,  and 
 a  hundred  and  one  other  “isms”  are  all  founded  on 
 the  Bible — an  unenlightened  interpretation  of  it,  we 
 believe,  but  one  which  no  person  uninformed  concern¬ 
 ing  the  Bible  can  refute.  There  is  no  religious  doc¬ 
 trine  too  absurd  to  lack  its  proof  text  in  the  Bible 
 when  that  book  falls  into  the  hands  of  some  pseudo¬ 
 student  of  it.  Even  Bahaism  accepts  all  of  the  scrip¬ 
 tures  of  both  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  Every 
 year  thousands  of  earnest  Christians  are  drawn  off 
 into  all  sorts  of  “isms.”  Some  of  them  drift  away 
 
132  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 from  the  Church  altogether  and  join  their  own  little 
 group  of  hair-splitting  enthusiasts,  while  others  remain 
 in  the  Church  and  Sunday-school,  there  to  propagate 
 further  their  pet  ideas  and  doctrines.  Voliva  proves 
 from  the  Bible  that  the  earth  is  flat  and  from  the  story 
 of  creation  that  the  sun  can  by  no  possibility  be 
 92,000,000  miles  away  from  the  earth.  He  says,  “I 
 will  take  the  Word  of  God  and  down  any  modern 
 astronomer  on  the  face  of  the  earth  and  dispose  of 
 him  in  less  than  thirty  minutes.”  And  yet  Voliva  is 
 but  a  slightly  accentuated  illustration  of  the  folly 
 which  can  grow  out  of  an  unenlightened  interpretation 
 of  the  Bible. 
 
 The  fact  is  that  our  Sunday-schools  have  not  been 
 able  to  keep  pace  with  the  progress  which  has  been 
 made  in  religious  and  Biblical  knowledge  and  inter¬ 
 pretation.  Once  men  believed  that  the  world  was  flat, 
 but  now  we  can  afford  to  laugh  at  Voliva  for  we  have 
 our  entire  public  school  system  which  is  thoroughly 
 committed  to  the  generally  accepted  theory  that  the 
 earth  is  round.  In  the  field  of  religion,  however,  we 
 are  not  quite  so  fortunate.  There  has  been  progress 
 in  religious  thinking  and  in  Biblical  interpretation  just 
 as  there  has  been  progress  in  other  fields.  This  prog¬ 
 ress  is  not  the  exclusive  prerogative  of  any  one  group 
 or  of  any  one  denomination.  It  is  the  common  pos¬ 
 session  of  the  best  trained  leadership  of  all  the  de¬ 
 nominations.  Yet  we  have  failed  wofully  in  making 
 our  Sunday-school  teaching  respond  to  the  progress 
 made. 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  133 
 
 UNTRAINED  TEACHERS  AT  TECHNICAL  TASKS 
 
 The  reason  for  this  failure  is,  of  course,  not  far  to 
 seek.  It  lies  to  a  considerable  extent  in  the  fact  that 
 we  have  placed  upon  untrained  shoulders  a  burden  too 
 heavy  for  them  to  bear.  It  is  as  if  we  had  said  in  our 
 public  schools,  “Yes,  we  know  that  every  scientist  is 
 agreed  now  that  the  earth  is  round,  but  since  it  is 
 easier  to  get  teachers  to  teach  that  it  is  flat,  we  will 
 just  let  them  go  on  that  way.”  It  is  not  surprising 
 that  we  have  sent  our  young  people  from  our  Sunday- 
 schools  up  to  our  Christian  colleges  there  to  watch 
 them  “lose  their  religion.”  Without  insisting  that  the 
 colleges  have  been  entirely  blameless  in  this  matter, 
 it  is  perhaps  fair  to  say  that  in  at  least  nineteen  cases 
 out  of  twenty  the  primary  blame  does  not  rest  upon 
 students  or  the  college,  but  upon  an  unenlightened 
 Sunday-school  teaching  which  has  founded  the  reli¬ 
 gious  life  of  our  young  people  upon  sand  instead  of 
 rock. 
 
 We  have  tacitly  assumed  that  the  Bible  and  religion 
 were  matters  easily  to  be  understood  and  taught.  Ap¬ 
 parently  we  have  had  the  idea  that  when  Isaiah  spoke 
 about  the  way  which  was  so  plain  that  “wayfaring 
 men,  yea,  fools,  should  not  err  therein,”  he  was  talking 
 about  the  Bible.  Unfortunately  for  the  idea,  he  was 
 not.  The  Bible  contains  such  a  variety  of  literature 
 written  by  so  many  different  individuals,  for  so  many 
 different  purposes,  and  during  so  many  centuries  of 
 human  history  that  one  may  not  casually  come  into  an 
 understanding  of  it.  Only  years  of  specialized  study 
 
134  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 can  make  one  competent  to  teach  the  Bible.  It  is  not 
 surprising  that  someone  has  been  forced  to  charac¬ 
 terize  a  considerable  part  of  our  Biblical  teaching  as 
 false  exegesis  of  misunderstood  metaphors,  or  that  the 
 Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook  in 
 making  its  report  upon  the  condition  of  religion  among 
 American  men  was  forced  to  say,  “The  average  young 
 American  knows  very  little  about  God,  Christ,  prayer, 
 faith.” 
 
 Ultimately  every  school  system  stands  or  falls  upon 
 the  quality  of  its  teaching  staff.  The  Sunday-school 
 is  perhaps  unique  among  important  educational  sys¬ 
 tems  in  that,  for  the  most  part,  it  has  had  no  profes¬ 
 sional  standard  for  judging  the  fitness  of  its  teachers. 
 Willingness  to  serve,  rather  than  fitness  for  the  task 
 has  usually  been  the  chief  consideration.  Even  in  the 
 poorest  of  our  public  schools  we  have  had  some  stand¬ 
 ards,  and  we  have  subjected  prospective  teachers  to 
 tests  to  ascertain  something  of  their  fitness  for  their 
 work.  Not  so  in  the  Sunday-school.  This  fact  has 
 placed  many  a  parent  in  a  most  embarrassing  situa¬ 
 tion.  On  a  week  day  a  child  is  ill,  and  the  parent 
 rushes  for  the  most  highly  skilled  physician  which  the 
 entire  region  affords.  He  insists  on  a  man  who  has 
 come  up  through  all  the  schools,  who  has  served  his 
 period  as  an  intern,  and  who  has  then,  by  passing  spe¬ 
 cial  examinations,  satisfied  the  state  authorities  that 
 he  is  qualified  to  practise  his  chosen  profession.  On 
 Sunday,  however,  the  same  parent  often  has  little 
 choice  but  to  send  his  child  to  Sunday-school  to  be 
 instructed  and  guided  in  his  religious  life  at  the  hands 
 
“AMERICANS” 
 
 From  Mexico  and  the  continent  of  Europe  they  come  to  us  to 
 be  built  into  the  warp  and  woof  of  our  national  life. 
 
POTENTIAL  CITIZENS  OF  OUR  UNITED  STATES 
 
 To  guide  and  develop  the  finest  qualities  in  our  Eskimo  and 
 American  Indian  girls  and  boys  and  to  make  of  them  leaders 
 
 among  their  own  race  groups  is  an  important  part  of  the  home 
 mission  task. 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  135 
 
 of  a  teacher  who  has  had  no  training  for  his  task  and 
 who  has  never  been  subjected  to  any  tests  as  to  his 
 knowledge  of  the  history,  nature,  or  functions  of  re¬ 
 ligion  or  as  to  his  skill  in  directing  the  religious  train¬ 
 ing  of  a  developing  child.  Yet  the  science  of  religion 
 is  fully  as  complicated  as  the  science  of  medicine,  and, 
 to  put  it  mildly,  the  training  of  the  religious  nature 
 of  a  child  is  altogether  as  complex  as  the  treatment 
 of  a  case  of  tonsilitis  and,  by  all  the  canons  of  meas¬ 
 urement,  far  more  important. 
 
 THE  INDIANA  SURVEY 
 
 Possibly  the  most  accurate  picture  of  the  average 
 Sunday-school  teacher  is  given  us  by  the  recent  In¬ 
 diana  Sunday-school  Survey.  This  survey  revealed 
 the  fact  that  counting  50  per  cent  for  general  educa¬ 
 tion,  35  per  cent  for  professional  training,  and  15 
 per  cent  for  teaching  experience,  the  typical  Indiana 
 Sunday-school  teacher  would  grade  39.9  per  cent,  and 
 the  largest  single  group  would  grade  25  per  cent. 
 Compared  with  the  rural  public  school  teachers  of  In¬ 
 diana,  87.7  per  cent  of  all  the  Sunday-school  teachers, 
 of  the  state  fall  below  the  lowest  standards  which  are 
 accepted  for  rural  public-school  teachers  in  the  state.. 
 The  survey  report  then  says,  “The  Indiana  Sunday- 
 school  teacher  is  a  sincere,  devoted  Christian  of  mature 
 years  who  has  entered  the  teaching  service  through 
 the  highest  possible  motives.  The  Indiana  Sunday- 
 school  teacher  is  untrained.  The  Indiana  Sunday- 
 school  teacher  is  unsupervised.”  And  there  are  many 
 reasons  for  believing  that  this  situation  in  Indiana  is 
 
136  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 more  or  less  typical  of  the  situation  in  the  entire 
 country. 
 
 EXPENDITURE  AND  BUILDINGS 
 
 The  plain  fact  is  that  up  to  date  the  Church,  while 
 it  has  used  the  Sunday-school  for  a  variety  of  pur¬ 
 poses,  has  not  taken  it  seriously  as  an  educational  in¬ 
 stitution.  It  has  failed  to  provide  trained  teachers, 
 it  has  failed  to  furnish  a  building  adapted  to  educa¬ 
 tional  purposes,  and  it  has  neglected  to  make  any  ade¬ 
 quate  provision  for  the  work  in  its  budget.  A  recent 
 study  in  a  typical  small  city  revealed  the  fact  that 
 nineteen  churches  expended  annually  a  total  of 
 $202,608  while  the  total  budget  of  Sunday-school 
 expenditures  in  the  same  city  was  $7,215.23.  An 
 analysis  of  the  expenditures  of  a  group  of  churches 
 revealed  the  fact  that  seventy-one  cents  out  of  each 
 dollar  were  expended  for  pastors’  salaries  and  general 
 church  expense;  seventeen  cents  were  used  for  church 
 benevolences  of  one  sort  or  another;  five  cents  were 
 devoted  to  expenditures  for  music;  four  cents  to  re¬ 
 munerate  the  janitor,  and  two  cents  for  Sunday-school 
 upkeep.  In  other  words,  these  typical  churches  spent 
 twice  as  much  for  janitor  service  and  two  and  one- 
 half  times  as  much  to  supply  music  for  the  congrega¬ 
 tion  as  they  spent  upon  the  work  of  religious  educa¬ 
 tion  for  their  young  people.  A  comparison  of  expen¬ 
 ditures  for  religious  education  and  public  education  is 
 equally  illuminating.  In  one  city  it  was  discovered 
 that  the  per  capita  expenditure  for  the  teaching  of 
 mathematics  in  the  public  schools  was  thirteen  times 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  137 
 
 greater  than  the  expenditure  for  religious  education 
 in  the  same  community  and  that  twelve  times  as  much 
 was  spent  upon  the  teaching  of  foreign  languages  as 
 upon  the  training  of  children  in  religion.  The  cost  of 
 other  subjects  was  much  in  the  same  ratio.  Possibly 
 the  worst  feature  of  the  situation  is  that  we  have  be¬ 
 come  so  accustomed  to  securing  religious  training  for 
 our  boys  and  girls  without  money  and  without  price 
 that  we  are  not  even  shocked  by  the  discrepancy. 
 
 Nor  has  the  Sunday-school  fared  particularly  better 
 in  the  matter  of  housing.  When  it  was  received  into 
 the  church,  it  found  itself  in  a  building  constructed 
 for  one  purpose  and  one  purpose  only,  the  holding  of 
 common  worship.  Into  this  one  room  the  Sunday- 
 school  was  forced  to  crowd  all  of  its  people  and  all 
 of  its  activities.  Here,  in  seats  unsuited  to  educational 
 purposes,  with  no  equipment  for  the  task,  and  amid 
 the  interruptions  and  confusion  of  many  groups  at 
 work  in  small  and  unfit  space,  the  work  of  religious 
 training  was  carried  on  for  a  pitifully  few  minutes 
 each  week.  The  need  for  some  sort  of  privacy  for 
 the  work  of  the  class  group  was  soon  felt,  and,  little 
 by  little,  curtains  and  then  sliding  partitions  began  to 
 make  their  appearance.  At  length  these  flimsy  and 
 temporary  protections  began,  in  some  cases,  to  take 
 on  more  permanent  form,  and  buildings  with  class¬ 
 rooms  which  can  be  used  seven  days  each  week  instead 
 of  one,  and  equipped  with  desks,  tables,  chairs,  maps, 
 charts,  books,  and  many  other  items  of  educational 
 equipment  have  begun  to  make  their  appearance.  As 
 yet,  however,  these  are  the  exceptional  instances. 
 
138 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 THE  “PEAK-LOAD-AT-A-SINGLE-HOUR” 
 
 During  recent  years  Sunday-school  methods  have 
 been  steadily  refined  and  improved.  Uniform  lessons 
 are  disappearing  before  the  more  carefully  prepared 
 graded  lessons;  trained  teachers  are  being  demanded 
 and  secured;  paid  teachers  and  full-time  workers  are 
 appearing  on  every  hand;  buildings  are  steadily  im¬ 
 proving;  teachers  are  organizing  their  classes  into 
 clubs  and  meeting  them  during  the  week;  and  many 
 other  changes  looking  toward  the  increased  efficiency 
 of  the  work  have  taken  place.  In  spite  of  these  en¬ 
 couraging  facts,  the  conviction  has  been  steadily  and, 
 recently,  very  rapidly  growing  that  no  refinement  of 
 Sunday-school  methods  will  ever  provide  the  needed 
 religious  training  for  our  youth.  Among  the  most 
 obvious  difficulties  in  the  situation  is  what  Dr.  Henry 
 F.  Cope  has  aptly  termed  the  “peak-load-at-a-single- 
 hour”  difficulty.  In  other  words,  by  limiting  all  our 
 religious  instruction  to  a  single  hour  once  a  week  we 
 make  it  well-nigh  impossible  to  provide  adequate  facili¬ 
 ties  or  a  sufficient  number  of  trained  teachers  to  care 
 for  the  work.  Under  such  a  system  of  instruction  even 
 a  trained  teacher  can  be  used  but  a  few  minutes  each 
 week.  Further  than  that,  it  is  beyond  the  bounds  of 
 possibility  that  any  adequate  plan  of  religious  instruc¬ 
 tion  and  training  could  be  carried  out  by  single,  brief, 
 weekly  periods  devoted  to  the  purpose.  The  brief 
 period  devoted  to  religious  instruction  has  not  only 
 made  it  impossible  for  us  to  do  our  task,  but  our  entire 
 method  of  handling  the  matter  has  tended  to  convey 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  139 
 
 the  impression  to  our  young  people  that  education  in 
 religion  is  an  unimportant  or  even  an  optional  matter. 
 
 Such  facts  as  the  foregoing  have  for  some  time  been 
 challenging  the  Church  to  action,  and  various  attempts 
 have  been  made  to  supplement  the  work  of  the 
 Sunday-school.  These  have  taken  two  general  forms, 
 that  of  extending  the  Sunday-school  session  itself  to 
 two  or  three  periods,  and  that  of  providing  week-day 
 religious  instruction  through  the  organization  of  spe¬ 
 cial  groups  for  study,  the  providing  of  Daily  Vacation 
 Bible  Schools  and  other  summer  schools  of  religion 
 for  children,  and  the  establishment  of  regular  and 
 systematic  week-day  religious  instruction  with  paid 
 teachers  and  with  work  paralleling  that  of  the  public 
 school.  In  this  connection  the  growth  of  the  plan  for 
 giving  high  school  credit  for  Bible  study  should  be 
 noted.  The  Indiana  Survey  showed  that  in  five  years 
 6,933  Indiana  high  school  students  had  taken  Bible 
 examinations  for  high  school  credit.  The  plan  also 
 has  been  in  wide  use  in  other  states. 
 
 EXTENDING  THE  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  PERIOD 
 
 It  would  not  be  feasible  here  to  give  even  a  sum¬ 
 mary  of  the  plans  of  the  Sunday-schools  which  have 
 undertaken  to  extend  their  sessions,  either  by  increas¬ 
 ing  the  length  of  the  present  period  or  by  increasing 
 the  number  of  periods  to  two  or  three.  By  way  of 
 illustration,  however,  we  may  call  attention  to  the  plan 
 which  is  in  operation  in  the  Lake  View  Avenue  Bap¬ 
 tist  Church  of  Rochester,  New  York.  Here  the 
 Sunday-school  session  is  extended  to  three  periods  : 
 
140  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 io :  30  to  11:15;  11  :i5  to  12;  12  to  12:  10  intermis¬ 
 sion;  12  :  10  to  1 :  00. 
 
 The  first  period  is  devoted  to  worship  and  training 
 in  worship.  The  work  is  carried  on  as  a  regular  part 
 of  the  morning  church  service,  the  pastor,  the  choir 
 leader,  and  others  cooperating  at  every  point.  The 
 children  come  with  and  sit  with  their  parents.  Every 
 part  of  the  service  is  planned  with  them  in  mind. 
 Scripture  selections  which  they  have  memorized  in  the 
 Sunday-school  are  used  here  in  the  service  of  worship, 
 and  hymns  which  they  have  committed  to  memory  are 
 often  sung.  The  prayer  led  by  the  pastor  does  not 
 forget  the  children,  and  the  pastor’s  talk  of  about 
 seven  minutes  in  length  is  designed  for  their  benefit. 
 Sometimes  there  is  definite  instruction  in  the  meaning 
 and  method  of  worship,  the  use  of  the  hymn-book, 
 the  attitude  of  prayer,  and  similar  topics.  Occasion¬ 
 ally  Bible  stories  are  told  with  the  names  of  the  char¬ 
 acters  omitted.  These  the  children  are  expected  to 
 supply  from  their  home  study  during  the  previous 
 week.  It  should  be  noted  that  this  plan  makes  avail¬ 
 able  for  the  use  of  the  children  the  one  room  of  which 
 every  detail  has  been  planned  to  create  an  atmosphere 
 of  worship.  It  also  gives  them  a  real  part  in  the 
 common  service  of  worship,  and  it  helps  very  much 
 in  interesting  parents  in  the  work  of  the  church  school. 
 
 At  11:15  a  recessional  is  sung,  usually  one  of  the 
 pupils’  memory  hymns,  and  the  children  pass  to  their 
 class  and  department  rooms.  This  forms  a  very  im¬ 
 pressive  part  of  the  service.  The  following  period  is 
 devoted  to  instruction.  There  is  then  a  brief  inter- 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  141 
 
 mission  which  is  followed  by  the  third  period,  devoted 
 to  expressional  and  service  activities.  Theoretically 
 this  forms  a  well-rounded  program  of  worship,  reli¬ 
 gious  instruction,  and  expression.  The  possibilities 
 of  such  a  plan  are,  of  course,  far  greater  than  under 
 the  limitations  of  the  usual  Sunday-school  session. 
 Both  parents  and  pupils  are  impressed  with  the  im¬ 
 portance  of  the  work. 
 
 It  is  interesting  to  note  that  under  the  plan  the 
 average  weekly  attendance  of  the  school  for  a  given 
 month  has  increased  from  696  to  962,  and  the  attend¬ 
 ance  of  children  at  the  morning  church  service  has 
 grown  from  90  to  340  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact 
 that  a  longer  session,  home  study,  punctual  attendance, 
 note-book  work,  memory  work,  and  written  and  oral 
 examinations  are  insisted  upon.  It  is  an  interesting 
 testimony  to  the  fact  that  it  is  far  easier  to  secure  the 
 cooperation  of  both  pupils  and  parents  in  a  program 
 which  is  taken  seriously  and  offers  something  substan¬ 
 tial,  even  though  it  may  make  large  demands,  than  it 
 is  in  a  haphazard  program  which  demands  little. 
 
 In  this  school,  public-school  terminology  has  been 
 adopted  throughout — “grade”  instead  of  “year,” 
 “Grammar  School”  instead  of  “Junior  Department,” 
 “Junior  High  School”  instead  of  “Intermediate  De¬ 
 partment,”  etc.  The  school  is  equipped  with  chairs 
 to  fit  the  pupils,  tables,  blackboards,  pictures,  cup¬ 
 boards,  coat  racks,  clocks  in  every  room,  and  similar 
 items.  The  plan  calls  for  three  terms  of  thirteen 
 weeks  each  and  for  a  summer  session.  Careful  rec¬ 
 ords  are  kept,  and  report  cards  are  sent  to  parents 
 
142 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 regularly  for  their  signature.  These  reports  are  based 
 upon  many  factors  rather  than  the  mere  acquisition  of 
 knowledge.  Weekly  teachers’  meetings  are  held  for 
 the  study  of  the  lesson. 
 
 The  weakness  of  this  and  similar  plans  lies  in  the 
 fact  that  there  is  always  a  temptation  to  rely  upon 
 untrained  volunteer  workers.  This,  under  all  ordinary 
 conditions  renders  it  impossible  to  make  the  work  most 
 effective  and  to  place  it  upon  the  level  which  will  com¬ 
 mand  the  highest  respect  of  all  concerned.  That  the 
 plan  is  in  many  respects  far  superior  to  that  of  the 
 average  Sunday-school  is  apparent,  and  its  possibilities 
 are  very  large. 
 
 RELIGIOUS  DAY  SCHOOLS 
 
 Plans  for  extending  the  opportunities  for  the  reli¬ 
 gious  education  of  our  youth  have  not  been  limited  to 
 the  suggestion  of  a  more  intensive  use  of  an  already 
 over-crowded  Sunday.  It  was  nearly  twenty-five 
 years  ago  that  the  Rev.  Howard  R.  Vaughn  of  Ur- 
 bana,  Illinois,  worked  out  the  plan  for  the  first  Re¬ 
 ligious  Day  School,  held  in  1900.  In  his  account  of 
 the  beginning  of  the  work  he  says : 
 
 “The  object  of  the  movement  in  its  very  inception 
 was  to  provide  a  week-day  school  of  religion  with  a 
 teaching  force  equal  to  the  very  best  in  any  system  of 
 education;  with  equipment  of  rooms  and  other  school 
 appliances;  a  school  which  should  teach  the  Bible, 
 home  and  foreign  missions,  church  history,  and  church 
 music. 
 
 “The  schools  have  been  held  in  all  sorts  of  com- 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  143 
 
 munities,  from  the  farming  districts  to  the  largest 
 cities,  and  they  are  as  well  adapted  to  the  one  as  to 
 the  other.  Last  summer  we  held  a  school  of  six  pupils 
 where  there  was  not  a  house  in  sight  of  the  school 
 building  in  which  our  school  was  held.  In  that  school 
 we  included  the  total  enrolment  of  the  public  school 
 for  that  district.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  had 
 schools  of  more  than  500  pupils  with  more  than 
 twenty  teachers  in  one  school.” 
 
 These  schools  have  had  a  carefully  and  fully  de¬ 
 veloped  curriculum,  trained  teachers,  and  a  daily  ses¬ 
 sion  of  sufficient  length  to  make  possible  serious  edu¬ 
 cational  work. 
 
 DAILY  VACATION  BIBLE  SCHOOLS 
 
 Closely  associated  with  these  in  idea  have  been  the 
 Daily  Vacation  Bible  Schools  which  have  developed 
 largely  in  congested  sections  of  our  great  cities. 
 These  schools  are  usually  held  for  from  four  to  six 
 weeks  during  the  vacation  period.  Home  missionary 
 agencies  have  been  particularly  active  in  promoting 
 the  work  because  the  schools  provided  an  opportunity 
 for  doing  constructive  work  among  the  children  of 
 new  Americans.  During  the  summer  of  1922  thou¬ 
 sands  of  girls  and  boys  representing  almost  every  race 
 and  nationality  in  America  were  gathered  into  these 
 Daily  Vacation  Bible  Schools  under  home  mission 
 auspices.  In  general,  these  schools  are  held  from  nine 
 o’clock  in  the  morning  until  noon,  the  program  con¬ 
 sisting  of  a  devotional  period,  memory  work,  music 
 period,  Bible  study,  expressional  work,  habit  talks,  and 
 
144  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 missionary  instruction.  Many  of  these  schools  are 
 conducted  as  joint  enterprises  by  groups  of  churches. 
 Others  are  fostered  by  individual  churches.  During 
 the  summer  of  1922,  between  four  and  five  thousand 
 such  schools  were  held,  many  of  them  directly  under 
 home  mission  auspices  and  in  distinctly  home  mission 
 communities. 
 
 All  of  these  summer  plans  have  much  to  commend 
 them.  They  utilize  a  period  of  time  previously  un¬ 
 used  or  often  used  for  harmful  ends.  They  provide 
 a  session  long  enough  to  accomplish  definite  educa¬ 
 tional  results,  and  they  demand  trained  and,  usually, 
 paid  teachers.  They  have  proved  particularly  effec¬ 
 tive  in  reaching  children  of  foreign-born  parents. 
 
 THE  WEEK-DAY  CHURCH  SCHOOL 
 
 Good  as  is  the  vacation  school,  it  is,  of  course,  in¬ 
 adequate  to  meet  the  need  of  religious  training  which 
 must,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case  be  carried  on 
 throughout  the  entire  year.  To  meet  this  need  for 
 steady  and  persistent  religious  education,  the  Week¬ 
 day  Church  School”  has  come  into  existence,  and  in 
 a  variety  of  forms  it  has  spread  widely.  This  is  not 
 a  week-day  session  of  the  Sunday-school,  neither  is  it 
 a  week-day  gathering  of  the  children  of  the  church  to 
 be  addressed  by  the  pastor.  What  is  involved  in  this 
 plan  is  clearly  stated  by  Dr.  Henry  F.  Cope  in  The 
 Week-day  Church  School.  He  says : 
 
 “ A  system  of  week-day  religious  instruction  in¬ 
 volves  educational  mechanisms,  staff,  curriculum,  and 
 supervision  as  definitely  organized,  as  expertly  chosen 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  145 
 
 and  directed,  and  as  permanent  at  least  as  those  of 
 the  public-school  system,  the  difference  lying  not  in 
 quality  or  standards  of  work,  but  in  the  quantity  or 
 extent.  It  does  not  involve  as  large  buildings  or  as 
 many  professional  workers  or  as  great  expense  as  in 
 public  education.  It  does  mean  equal  educational 
 efficiencies  and  not  less  in  character,  definiteness,  or 
 abilities.” 
 
 Already  these  schools  are  to  be  found  in  all  our 
 Northern  states  and  in  many  states  in  the  South  and 
 West.  The  first  schools  appeared  about  fifteen  years 
 ago.  Since  then  they  have  increased  largely  in  num¬ 
 ber.  They  are  to  be  found  in  every  type  of  com¬ 
 munity  from  the  small  town  to  the  great  city.  They 
 employ  a  substantial  number  of  paid  workers,  and 
 they  have  already  won  recognition  for  themselves  at 
 the  hands  of  public-school  authorities.  Some  of  them 
 are  conducted  by  individual  churches,  some  by  groups 
 of  churches,  some  by  local  church  federations,  some 
 by  community  boards  organized  for  the  purpose,  and 
 some  by  home  mission  boards.  Some  schools  are  con¬ 
 ducted  entirely  independent  of  public-school  authori¬ 
 ties.  In  other  cases  the  public  schools  are  closed  for 
 certain  periods  so  that  the  work  of  religious  instruc¬ 
 tion  may  be  carried  on.  In  some  instances  pupils  are 
 excused  upon  request  of  parents  from  certain  public 
 school  periods  that  they  may  receive  religious  instruc¬ 
 tion.  There  are  also  communities  where  the  present 
 arrangement  of  the  school  schedule  enables  the  teacher 
 of  religion  to  carry  on  his  work  during  the  same 
 period  as  the  public  school  without  interfering  with  its 
 
146 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 work.  Where  the  cooperation  of  public  school  au¬ 
 thorities  is  not  secured — in  fact,  in  some  cases  where 
 it  is  secured — the  work  of  religious  instruction  is  car¬ 
 ried  on  either  before  or  after  the  school  session  and 
 on  Saturdays.  In  some  cases  these  week-day  church 
 schools  are  conducted  in  the  public  school  building, 
 sometimes  in  church  houses  or  church  buildings.  A 
 few  have  buildings  of  their  own  erected  for  their  spe¬ 
 cial  use. 
 
 The  experience  of  these  schools  has  taught  a  mul¬ 
 titude  of  lessons  at  which  we  have  not  space  so  much 
 as  to  hint,  but  possibly  a  brief  account  of  the  work 
 in  one  distinctly  home  mission  community  may  help 
 us  to  understand  its  method  and  purpose. 
 
 EXPERIENCE  AT  GARY,  INDIANA 
 
 Gary,  Indiana,  just  east  of  Chicago,  is  a  relatively 
 new  community  of  about  50,000  population.  Its  chief 
 industry  is  steel  manufacturing.  Its  adult  population 
 is  overwhelmingly  of  European  birth.  The  only  im¬ 
 portant  exception  is  a  substantial  group  of  southern- 
 born  Negroes.  In  many  respects  a  more  unpromising 
 field  for  an  experiment  in  week-day  religious  instruc¬ 
 tion  would  be  hard  to  find.  In  other  respects  Gary 
 possesses  some  decided  advantages  for  the  working 
 out  of  such  a  plan.  Chief  among  the  advantages  may 
 be  noted  the  type  of  public  school  system  which  has 
 been  developed  here.  Its  chief  characteristics  are  (a) 
 an  attempt  to  develop  the  child  on  all  sides  of  his 
 nature;  (b)  a  lengthened  school  day — seven  hours 
 instead  of  the  usual  five;  and  (c)  an  arrangement 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  147 
 
 whereby  all  school  rooms  and  school  equipment  can 
 be  used  by  different  groups  of  pupils  throughout  the 
 day — while  one  group  is  in  the  classrooms,  the  other 
 group  is  busy  in  the  shops,  in  the  gymnasium,  or  on 
 the  playground. 
 
 It  is  important  to  note  this  special  plan  of  school 
 organization  for  it  has  made  possible  a  dovetailing  of 
 religious  education  with  the  work  of  the  public  school, 
 which  is  most  suggestive  in  its  possibilities.  The  work 
 began  in  1914,  growing  out  of  a  strong  conviction  of 
 the  desperate  need  for  it.  In  the  beginning  arrange¬ 
 ments  were  made  whereby  upon  written  request  of 
 parents,  pupils  were  excused  from  any  non-recitation 
 period  in  the  public  schools  in  order  to  receive  religious 
 instruction.  In  later  practise  this  privilege  has  been 
 largely  confined  to  the  play  periods.  At  first  the  work 
 was  carried  on  by  the  various  churches  independently, 
 but  now  a  local  board  has  been  organized  and  is  re¬ 
 sponsible  for  it.  Several  denominations  cooperate  in 
 carrying  on  the  work.  The  board  endeavors  to  in¬ 
 clude  in  the  faculty  only  teachers  of  college  or  normal 
 school  training  who  have,  in  addition,  had  special 
 training  in  religious  study,  who  are  experienced  in 
 public  school  teaching,  and  who  have  both  Christian 
 character  and  attractive  personality.  A  recent  report 
 showed  ten  teachers  employed,  of  whom  six  were  on 
 full  time.  A  superintendent  of  the  work  is  also  em¬ 
 ployed.  The  plan  calls  for  one  school  for  each  public 
 school.  During  1917  three  schools  were  maintained. 
 The  highest  enrolment  that  year  was  800.  By  No¬ 
 vember,  1920,  eight  schools  were  in  existence,  with 
 
148  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 an  enrolment  of  3,308.  It  should  be  noted  that  this 
 number  of  pupils  was  taught  by  ten  teachers  who,  by 
 a  carefully  worked  out  schedule,  were  busy  with  class 
 groups  from  8:  15  a.m.  until  the  close  of  the  school 
 day. 
 
 It  should  also  be  remembered  that  this  has  been 
 from  the  first  distinctly  a  home  missionary  proposi¬ 
 tion  in  that  it  has  been  promoted  and  fostered  by  gen¬ 
 eral  church  boards.  The  percentage  of  local  support 
 has,  however,  been  steadily  increasing.  The  budget 
 for  1920-21  called  for  an  expenditure  of  $16,500.  Of 
 this  it  was  expected  that  $10,000  would  be  raised 
 locally  and  the  balance  provided  by  church  boards. 
 This  support  on  the  part  of  general  agencies  is  sig¬ 
 nificant  in  that  Gary  is  typical  of  many  communities 
 which  for  special  reasons  will  not  be  able  to  provide, 
 particularly  at  the  inception  of  any  plan,  the  neces¬ 
 sary  funds  for  carrying  on  any  adequate  system  of 
 religious  training  for  their  youth.  In  no  possible  way 
 can  this  be  provided  except  as  general  agencies  are 
 entrusted  with  funds  which  will  enable  them  to  branch 
 out  more  extensively  into  this  most  promising  field  of 
 activity. 
 
 And  the  results  of  the  work  up  to  date  have  been 
 definite  and  most  gratifying  along  such  lines  as  in¬ 
 creased  intelligence  in  regard  to  religion,  better  be¬ 
 havior  of  pupils  in  the  public  schools,  greatly  increased 
 honesty,  and  higher  standards  of  conduct  in  many 
 other  particulars.  These  testimonies  have  come  from 
 the  most  varied  and  unprejudiced  sources.  One  pub¬ 
 lic  school  teacher  says,  “There  has  been  a  decided 
 
 t 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  149 
 
 decrease  in  lying,  stealing,  and  quarreling  among  the 
 pupils  who  attend  the  Week-day  Religious  School.” 
 A  principal  of  one  school  marks  such  a  difference  in 
 the  conduct  of  the  pupils  that  “now  it  is  perfectly  safe 
 to  hang  wraps  in  the  hall,  and  there  is  practically  no 
 stealing.”  Children  of  foreign-speaking  parents  are 
 asking  for  and  buying  Bibles  and  hymn-books,  and 
 they  are  telling  the  Bible  stories  to  their  parents. 
 Children  are  learning  to  pray,  to  forgive,  and  to  play 
 square.  One  little  girl  after  a  lesson  on  forgiveness 
 came  to  her  teacher  and  said,  “Mary  hit  me  yesterday 
 and  I  did  not  hit  her  back.  I  did  not,  I  forgave  her.” 
 A  Catholic  mother  came  to  the  school  and  stayed 
 through  an  entire  class  hour.  At  the  close  she  said, 
 “I  wanted  to  see  what  you  are  doing  in  this  school, 
 for  it  has  made  such  a  change  in  my  little  girl.  She 
 used  to  have  the  reputation  of  being  the  most  quar¬ 
 relsome  child  in  the  neighborhood,  but  since  she  has 
 been  coming  here,  she  is  a  different  child.  She  is 
 always  quoting  what  the  teacher  says  about  being 
 kind  and  playing  fair  and  not  quarreling.  If  it  can 
 do  so  much  for  her,  I  want  her  to  come  as  long  as 
 there  is  a  school.”  One  little  girl  after  a  lesson  on 
 God  as  the  giver  of  food  and  drink  came  to  the  teacher 
 and  said,  “I  never  take  a  drink  of  water  now  without 
 thanking  God  for  his  gift.”  Thus  there  are  many 
 evidences  that  the  schools  are,  not  only  instructing  the 
 pupils,  but  enabling  them  to  interpret  their  own  social 
 relationships  in  religious  terms. 
 
 The  foregoing  is  an  illustration  of  the  type  of  thing 
 which  is  being  attempted  now  in  many  communities 
 
150 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 in  many  different  states.  It  also  suggests  the  sort  of 
 program  upon  which  the  Church  is  almost  unwittingly 
 embarking.  It  means  buildings  for  the  purpose, 
 trained  and  salaried  workers,  and  standardized  edu¬ 
 cational  equipment.  Nothing  short  of  this  will  do  the 
 job.  There  is  great  danger  that  we  shall  forget  these 
 facts  and  undertake  to  do  the  work  on  the  spare  time 
 of  pastors  and  Sunday-school  teachers.  Nothing  will 
 bring  the  work  into  disrepute  with  parents  and  pupils 
 more  quickly  than  that. 
 
 THE  TASK  OVERWHELMINGLY  HOME  MISSIONARY 
 
 IN  CHARACTER 
 
 It  is  also  evident  that  in  some  of  its  most  impor¬ 
 tant  aspects,  the  task  is  distinctly  a  missionary  task. 
 This  is  particularly  true  in  the  polyglot  sections  of  our 
 great  cities  and  in  many  other  neglected  spots,  includ¬ 
 ing  our  sparsely  settled  frontier  areas.  No  religious 
 agencies  stand  so  close  to  the  boys  and  girls  who  are 
 in  need  as  do  the  distinctly  home  mission  agencies, 
 and  unless  they  provide  suitable  religious  training,  it 
 will  not  be  provided.  There  is  no  feasible  way  to 
 reach  effectively  our  “New  American”  and  other 
 neglected  groups  except  through  the  rising  generation, 
 and,  up  to  date,  no  method  has  been  devised  which  is  so 
 well  suited  to  the  purpose  as  the  week-day  church 
 school  under  trained  leadership.  Home  mission 
 agencies  are  already  finding  in  this  plan  a  most  effec¬ 
 tive  method  for  building  out  of  the  America  that  is, 
 the  America  that  ought  to  be.  “It  is  clear,”  says  Dr. 
 Walter  S.  Athearn,  “that  the  price  which  we  must  pay 
 
CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IN  CHURCH  SCHOOL  151 
 
 for  our  religious  liberty  is  whatever  price  it  may  cost 
 to  build  a  system  of  religious  schools  which  will 
 parallel  the  public  schools  and  be  equally  efficient. 
 The  building  of  such  a  system  of  religious  schools  is 
 one  of  the  most  important  tasks  of  the  Church.” 
 
 The  price  is  a  large  one,  but  one  within  the  resources 
 of  the  Church.  Will  the  Church  pay  the  price?  ' 
 Rarely  has  it  faced  a  question  so  important.  The 
 future  of  Christianity  in  the  United  States,  and,  to  a 
 considerable  extent,  throughout  the  world,  will  be 
 affected  to  a  very  marked  extent  by  the  sort  of  answer 
 which  is  given. 
 
 And  through  what  channels  is  this  answer  to  be 
 given?  So  far  as  we  can  see,  they  are  two — the  so- 
 called  self-supporting  churches  usually  in  American 
 communities  and  the  home  mission  churches  through 
 which  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ  reach  out  in 
 service  beyond  the  limits  of  their  respective  communi¬ 
 ties.  To  illustrate,  62  per  cent  of  the  people  of  New 
 York  State  or  6,503,761  persons  are  immigrants  or 
 the  children  of  immigrants.  In  some  other  states  the 
 proportion  is  still  higher.  An  overwhelming  per¬ 
 centage  of  these  people  are  distinctly  a  home  mission 
 responsibility.  A  single  home  mission  church  in  one 
 community  can  and  does  gather  within  its  walls  on 
 a  Sunday  afternoon  1,200  children  from  these  foreign¬ 
 speaking  homes.  At  the  same  hour  there  are  at  least 
 a  million  similar  children  in  the  state  who  are  entirely 
 neglected  so  far  as  their  religious  training  is  concerned. 
 The  young  people  can  be  reached.  Home  mission 
 agencies  which  have  already  become  the  greatest 
 
152 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 boards  of  religious  education  which  America  has  ever 
 produced  are  embarrassed  and  overwhelmed  by  oppor¬ 
 tunities  to  which  they  cannot  respond  for  lack  of  re¬ 
 sources  and  workers.  If  this  situation  is  to  be 
 remedied,  treasuries  must  be  replenished  and  workers 
 recruited.  Within  a  few  years  scores  of  our  most  bril¬ 
 liant  college  and  university  trained  young  people  have 
 given  themselves  to  this  work.  The  number  of  such 
 workers  needs  to  be  increased  by  hundreds.  Old  and 
 inadequate  buildings  must  be  replaced  by  new  struc¬ 
 tures  adapted  to  purposes  of  religious  education  and 
 the  training  of  youths.  The  staffs  of  many  home  mis¬ 
 sion  stations  must  be  increased  from  one  untrained  or 
 partially  trained  individual  to  six,  ten,  twelve,  or 
 twenty  persons  thoroughly  trained  for  their  work.  To 
 speak  conservatively,  at  least  fifty  per  cent  of  the  mil¬ 
 lions  of  young  people  growing  up  in  America  with¬ 
 out  religious  training  are  a  home  mission  responsi¬ 
 bility,  and  that  responsibility  is  preeminently  and  pri¬ 
 marily  one  of  religious  education. 
 
 Through  thousands  of  Sunday-schools,  Daily  Vaca¬ 
 tion  Bible  Schools,  Week  Day  Schools  of  Religion, 
 and  clubs  of  many  sorts,  home  mission  agencies  are 
 seeking  to  discharge  this  responsibility.  They  but 
 wait  the  word  of  the  churches  to  move  forward  to 
 far  greater  achievements  in  the  future. 
 
CHAPTER  VI 
 
 The  Child  and  America’s  Future 
 
 Thus  far  in  this  discussion  we  have  laid  great 
 emphasis  upon  the  fact  that  the  hope  of  America  lies 
 with  her  girls  and  boys.  We  have  also  pointed  out 
 some  of  the  major  divisions  of  our  task  so  far  as  it 
 relates  to  their  training.  We  have,  however,  said 
 little  or  nothing  about  the  particular  sort  of  America 
 which  we  hope  to  see  emerge  as  the  result  of  our 
 efforts  with  the  rising  generation.  This  is  a  matter 
 of  great  importance  for  we  cannot  achieve  any  very 
 satisfactory  ends  if  we  have  no  definite  goals  at  which 
 to  aim.  It  matters  little  that  we  can  go  from  New 
 York  to  San  Francisco  in  a  few  hours  by  aeroplane 
 if  we  have  no  worthy  purpose  for  going.  It  is  of 
 little  avail  that  we  can  talk  thousands  of  miles  with¬ 
 out  wires,  if  we  have  nothing  worth  saying.  It  is  of 
 slight  moment  that  mechanical  contrivances  have  made 
 the  world  a  neighborhood,  if  we  fail  to  learn  the  real 
 lesson  of  neighborliness.  And  it  is  of  no  consequence 
 that  we  build  up  extensive  machinery  for  dealing  with 
 boys  and  girls  in  America,  unless  we  have  some  con¬ 
 ception  of  the  sort  of  America  which  we  hope  to  build 
 through  the  rising  generation.  It  has  been  said  that 
 the  nineteenth  century  was  characterized  by  the  de¬ 
 velopment  of  “child  saving”  movements.  The  orphan, 
 the  blind,  the  deaf,  the  crippled,  the  feeble-minded, 
 the  delinquent  child  was  the  center  of  attention.  The 
 
 twentieth  century  bids  fair  to  stress  the  even  more 
 
 153 
 
154 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 constructive  task  of  establishing  suitable  goals  for  the 
 strong  and  the  well  and  the  alert  and  the  capable  child. 
 
 IMPORTANCE  OF  A  GOAL 
 
 Our  whole  task  with  girls  and  boys,  whether  it  be 
 in  the  home,  the  schoolroom,  the  church,  on  the  play¬ 
 ground,  or  in  the  workshop,  may  be  summed  up  in 
 one  word — education.  But  the  very  idea  of  education 
 suggests  that  the  educator  has  some  ideals  which  he 
 would  like  to  see  realized,  both  in  the  life  of  the  indi¬ 
 vidual  and  in  the  society  of  which  he  forms  a  part. 
 He  is  far  more  than  a  mere  observer  watching  the 
 child  develop  into  something  or  other  he  knows  not 
 what.  Instead,  he  is  in  a  very  real  sense  a  guide.  He 
 is  supposed  to  know  something  of  the  path  over 
 which  he  is  traveling  and  to  have  certain  goals  toward 
 which  he  is  aiming.  As  Christians,  our  distinctly 
 Christian  goals  transcend  all  others.  We  are  seeking 
 far  more  than  merely  to  draw  out  all  of  the  possi¬ 
 bilities  of  the  child’s  life,  for  he  has  immense  possi¬ 
 bilities  for  evil  as  well  as  good,  and  the  mere  random 
 expression  of  multiplied  impulses  may  lead  to  the 
 second-best  things  of  life  as  easily  as  to  the  best.  We 
 cannot  be  satisfied  to  have  our  young  people  grow  up 
 as  Mohammedans,  or  Buddhists,  or  pagans.  We  are 
 deliberately  seeking  to  check  certain  impulses  and  to 
 encourage  the  expression  of  others  in  order  that  we 
 may  see  realized  in  the  lives  of  individuals  and  in  the 
 life  of  the  nation  those  things  which  in  our  best  mo¬ 
 ments  we  call  Christian.  Consciously  or  unconsciously 
 we  have  a  goal  toward  which  we  are  working,  and 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 155 
 
 so  far  as  it  relates  to  America  it  may  be  interpreted 
 in  terms  of  our  conception  of  the  meaning  of  the 
 Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  As  to  detailed  interpre¬ 
 tation  of  what  that  means  we  may  not  be  entirely 
 agreed,  but,  so  far  as  its  broad  outlines  are  concerned, 
 there  is  less  difference  of  opinion  among  Christians 
 than  we  are  sometimes  led  to  believe.  It  would  be 
 impossible  to  picture  in  all  its  multiplicity  of  detail 
 the  kind  of  America  which  we  hope  to  have  when  we 
 have  succeeded  through  our  efforts  with  the  rising 
 generation  in  molding  it  more  nearly  into  the  likeness 
 of  what,  as  Christians,  we  think  it  ought  to  be.  We 
 can,  however,  suggest  some  definite  aspects  of  the  new 
 America  for  which  we  hope. 
 
 A  HEALTHIER  AMERICA 
 
 Possibly  we  can  begin  at  no  safer  point  than  by 
 saying  that  we  definitely  hope  for  a  healthier  America 
 in  the  future  than  we  have  had  in  the  past.  From 
 that  never-to-be-forgotten  winter  when  the  little  band 
 of  Pilgrims  on  the  New  England  shore  laid  under  the 
 sod  so  many  of  America’s  first  white  settlers,  down 
 to  the  present  moment,  the  toll  of  unnecessary  deaths, 
 disease,  and  personal  suffering  which  we  have  paid  as 
 a  nation  has  been  beyond  comprehension.  Helpless 
 babies,  happy  girls  and  boys,  fond  fathers  and  mothers 
 — they  have  been  sacrificed  in  a  steady  stream  by  mil¬ 
 lions  upon  the  altars  of  ignorance  and  neglect.  Many 
 a  home  is  being  robbed  of  its  children,  and  many  chil¬ 
 dren  are  robbed  of  their  parents  at  the  time  when  those 
 parents  are  most  needed,  by  the  diseases  which  might 
 
156 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 be  prevented  if  we  would  undertake  seriously  the  mat¬ 
 ter  of  preventing  them.  Added  to  this  is  the  appalling 
 and  continuous  economic  and  physical  wastage  of  ill- 
 health.  While  you  read  these  words  there  is  in  the 
 United  States  on  beds  of  sickness  from  entirely  pre¬ 
 ventable  causes  an  army  of  men  and  women  and  boys 
 and  girls  so  vast  as  to  stagger  the  imagination.  These 
 people  are,  for  the  time  being  at  least,  deprived  of 
 schools  or  participation  in  productive  employment  and 
 of  a  part  in  the  joys  of  life.  And,  while  they  are 
 recovering,  their  places  will  be  taken  by  others  who 
 perhaps  are  today  strong  and  well,  but  who  will  fall 
 the  victims  of  their  own  ignorance  or  of  the  ignorance 
 and  carelessness  of  others  with  whom  they  will  be 
 forced  to  associate.  A  recent  health  survey  of  our 
 important  states  containing  almost  exactly  one  fiftieth 
 of  the  population  of  the  United  States,  showed  that, 
 on  the  average,  500,000  persons  or  nearly  one  fourth 
 of  the  entire  population  are  sick  all  the  time. 
 
 Our  task  here  is  a  clear  one,  but  it  can  be  performed 
 only  through  the  children.  We  must  rear  a  genera¬ 
 tion  of  girls  and  boys  who  are  themselves  strong  and 
 healthy,  and  we  must  give  them  both  the  ideals  of 
 health  and  the  instruction  concerning  its  care  which 
 will  protect  them  against  disease.  We  already  have 
 the  knowledge  and  the  machinery  for  doing  the  task 
 through  our  homes,  our  schools,  and  our  churches. 
 It  remains  for  us  to  determine  that  the  job  shall  be 
 done  in  a  thoroughgoing  way,  not  when  an  individual 
 becomes  twenty-one  years  of  age  or  after  he  has  begun 
 to  show  symptoms  of  disease,  but  while  he  is  at  his 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 157 
 
 mother’s  knee,  and  along  through  the  years  of  gram¬ 
 mar  school,  high  school,  and  college.  Nor  can  the  job 
 be  done  for  any  group  alone.  It  must  be  done  for 
 all.  The  avenue  can  never  be  safe  so  long  as  the  alley 
 is  unclean.  The  most  neglected  street  lad  in  the 
 schoolroom  or  public  conveyance  will  carry  infection 
 to  the  child  from  the  clean  home  as  quickly  as  to  any 
 other.  No  child  can  be  safe  so  long  as  the  health 
 ideals  and  habits  of  another  child  in  the  community 
 are  on  a  lower  level  than  his.  It  is  our  task  and  privi¬ 
 lege  to  raise  the  common  level  of  public  health  by 
 making  available  for  all  the  best  knowledge  concern¬ 
 ing  health  in  all  its  aspects  that  we  possess  and  the 
 best  training  in  the  care  of  health.  And  the  one  way 
 that  we  can  be  sure  of  reaching  all  the  people  is  to 
 deal  with  each  rising  generation  as  it  comes  along. 
 Jesus  came  that  his  followers  might  have  life  and  have 
 it  more  abundantly,  and  it  is  ours  to  help  in  bringing 
 his  purpose  to  realization  here  and  now  by  undertak¬ 
 ing  seriously  the  task  of  laying  sure  health  founda¬ 
 tions  for  our  nation  through  its  children. 
 
 A  MORE  INTELLIGENT  AMERICA 
 
 Then,  too,  the  America  that  is  to  be  must  be  a  more 
 intelligent  America.  It  must  be  better  educated,  not 
 in  order  that  our  girls  and  boys  may  earn  more  money 
 in  fewer  hours  or  acquire  within  a  period  of  years  a 
 larger  pile  of  material  possessions,  but  rather  that 
 they  may  be  fitted  for  the  duties  of  a  democracy  and 
 that  their  personalities  may  be  enriched  and  their  in¬ 
 terests  and  joys  multiplied  as  they  are  introduced  to 
 
158 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 the  spiritual  values  of  the  world  in  which  they  live. 
 We  cannot  make  of  our  nation  what  it  ought  to  be 
 while  multitudes  cannot  read  or  write  and  while  many 
 others  have  never  progressed  far  enough  in  these  arts 
 to  make  them  of  use  to  them  in  interpreting  the  cur¬ 
 rent  thought  of  the  day, — without  a  knowledge  of 
 which,  citizenship  in  a  democracy  loses  all  of  its  finest 
 significance. 
 
 Again,  we  know  how  to  proceed  to  accomplish  the 
 end  which  we  seek.  It  is  largely  a  task  of  making 
 accessible  to  all  the  opportunities  which  many  already 
 have.  It  involves  reaching  out  to  communities  which 
 are  deficient  either  in  ideals  or  resources  and,  with 
 gentle  insistence,  laying  upon  them  the  responsibility 
 of  the  task  and  then  coming  to  their  assistance  with 
 such  help  as  may  be  needed  from  time  to  time.  It 
 involves  in  all  our  communities  the  taking  of  the  task 
 of  education  seriously,  the  insistence  upon  school 
 facilities  and  adequately  trained  teachers,  and  the  will¬ 
 ingness  to  pay  the  salaries  requisite  for  securing  the 
 best. 
 
 The  notion  that  this  task  of  education  is  beyond 
 our  financial  or  human  resources  is  an  untenable  one. 
 We  talk  much  concerning  the  cost  of  education,  and 
 in  total  the  cost  is  large,  yet  when  compared  to  other 
 expenditures  it  seems  slight.  We  forget  sometimes 
 how  large  a  nation  we  are  and  that  our  resources  are 
 commensurate  with  our  size.  During  a  recent  year 
 we  spent  in  the  United  States  for  public  education, 
 elementary  and  secondary,  for  normal  schools,  for 
 higher  education  in  colleges,  universities,  and  profes- 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 159 
 
 sional  and  technical  schools,  both  public  and  private, 
 a  grand  total  of  nearly  $920,000,000.  This  includes 
 expenditures  for  buildings  and  equipment,  repairs, 
 heating,  lighting,  and  other  incidentals,  as  well  as  ex¬ 
 penditures  for  teachers’  salaries.  The  sum  total  is  a 
 large  one.  It  is  little  wonder  that  we  are  told  that 
 education  is  very  expensive. 
 
 We  are  only  in  a  position  to  see  it  in  its  true 
 light,  however,  when  we  begin  to  make  some  com¬ 
 parisons.  Government  records  show  that  the  people 
 of  the  United  States  spent  more  for  luxuries  during 
 the  one  year  1920  than  they  have  spent  for  education 
 of  every  sort  during  the  entire  history  of  the  country. 
 Not  only  that,  but  the  amount  spent  for  luxuries  in 
 that  one  year  would,  after  footing  all  of  our  educa¬ 
 tional  bills  of  every  sort  since  the  founding  of  our 
 government,  still  leave  six  billion  dollars  to  apply  on 
 our  public  debt — sufficient  to  reduce  our  enormous 
 debt  one  fourth  in  a  single  year.  We  spend  nearly 
 twice  as  much  each  year  upon  face  powder,  cosmetics, 
 and  perfume  as  we  pay  for  the  salaries  of  all  our 
 teachers  in  all  our  elementary  and  high  schools 
 throughout  the  country.  The  amount  which  we  spend 
 for  jewelry  annually  represents  a  total  larger  than  all 
 the  endowments  of  all  our  colleges  and  universities 
 in  the  United  States.  We  spend  as  much  for  ciga¬ 
 rettes  alone  as  we  spend  for  all  our  elementary  and 
 secondary  education  in  the  United  States,  both  public 
 and  private,  including  capital  investments  in  new 
 buildings  and  equipment,  and  the  cost  of  heating  and 
 lighting  and  all  other  upkeep.  We  spend  five  times 
 
160 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 as  much  for  tobacco  each  year  as  we  spend  for  the 
 salaries  of  all  our  teachers  in  the  country,  or  more 
 than  we  have  spent  for  higher  education  since  the 
 founding  of  Harvard  College  nearly  three  centuries 
 ago. 
 
 We  need  to  recall  some  of  these  facts  when  we  are 
 told  by  the  same  government  reports  (the  report  of 
 the  Commissioner  of  Education,  dated  September  i, 
 1920)  that  a  recent  study  had  revealed  18,000  schools 
 closed  for  lack  of  teachers  and  at  least  42,000  schools 
 taught  by  entirely  sub-standard  teachers,  and  when  we 
 are  told  that  we  must  spend  at  least  two  or  three  times 
 as  much  upon  education  if  we  are  to  do  the  task  which 
 needs  to  be  done.  The  same  report  indicates  that  a 
 third  of  a  million  boys  and  girls  are  literally  being 
 deprived  of  schools  for  lack  of  teachers,  and  that 
 more  than  half  of  the  teachers  employed  are  not  pre¬ 
 pared  for  their  tasks  according  to  any  reasonable 
 standard. 
 
 Surely  we  must  do  better  by  the  rising  generation 
 in  the  way  of  education  than  we  are  at  present  doing 
 if  American  democracy  is  to  be  made  safe  and  beau¬ 
 tiful  and  if  the  girls  and  boys  of  America  are  to  have 
 a  chance  to  live  the  full,  free,  and  enlightened  life 
 which  should  be  theirs. 
 
 BETTER  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING  FOR  AMERICAN  YOUTH 
 
 Again  we  must  have  an  America  in  which  every 
 child  shall  have  the  privilege  of  an  intelligent  and 
 thorough  religious  training.  Religious  education  must 
 come  to  fill  a  much  larger  place  in  our  national  life 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 161 
 
 than  it  has  in  the  past.  The  need  is  imperative.  We 
 know  the  general  nature  of  the  task  to  be  done,  but 
 much  of  the  machinery  necessary  for  its  accomplish¬ 
 ment  has  still  to  be  created.  The  job  is  going  to  re¬ 
 quire  careful  planning  and  much  consecrated  effort, 
 but  it  can  be  mastered.  It  must  be  so,  for  without  the 
 undergirding  of  religious  ideals  and  definite  religious 
 training,  the  goal  set  us  by  Jesus  cannot  be  realized, 
 and  our  social  order  stands  in  constant  danger  of  col¬ 
 lapse.  The  Church  alone  can  never  do  the  task;  but 
 the  Church  and  the  home  working  hand  in  hand  can. 
 Particularly  does  America  need  that  spiritual  interpre¬ 
 tation  of  life  which  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  alone 
 can  give,  and  the  only  chance  to  infuse  spiritual  ideals 
 into  our  social  order  is  through  our  girls  and  boys. 
 America  cannot  go  on  indefinitely  in  her  mad  scramble 
 for  material  possessions.  She  must,  if  she  is  to  sur¬ 
 vive,  anchor  her  life  deeply  in  the  great  spiritual 
 realities  of  religion,  for,  as  in  the  days  of  old,  the 
 things  which  are  seen  are  temporal,  but  the  things 
 which  are  not  seen  are  eternal. 
 
 BETTER  PROVISIONS  FOR  USING  LEISURE  TIME 
 
 The  America  toward  which  we  are  working  is  also 
 an  America  where  the  opportunities  for  wholesome 
 recreation  will  be  far  more  abundant  than  they  are 
 today.  It  will  be  an  America  from  which  lurid  novels, 
 unclean  magazines,  degrading  motion  pictures,  inde¬ 
 cent  dancing,  immoral  plays,  and  other  unwholesome 
 recreations  will  be  crowded  out  by  the  expulsive  power 
 of  that  which  is  clean  and  wholesome.  With  the  de- 
 
162 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA'S  FUTURE 
 
 veloping  use  of  automatic  machinery  the  amount  of 
 leisure  time  is  steadily  increasing,  and  with  it  the  im¬ 
 portance  of  providing  wholesome  recreation  is  con¬ 
 stantly  becoming  greater.  Whatever  we  may  have 
 done  in  the  past,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  the 
 days  ahead  we  must  devote  much  energy  to  the  task 
 of  training  boys  and  girls  in  the  art  of  using  their 
 leisure  time  in  wholesome  and  worth-while  ways.  It 
 will  be  most  unfortunate  if  we  contentedly  turn  over 
 the  leisure  time  of  our  girls  and  boys  exclusively  to 
 agencies  for  commercialized  amusements.  America 
 can  never  be  safe  on  such  a  basis. 
 
 NEED  FOR  A  SENSE  OF  STEWARDSHIP 
 
 The  America  that  is  to  be  must  be  one  in  which  the 
 principles  of  Christian  stewardship  are  recognized  and 
 applied  to  the  details  of  daily  living.  The-  Christian 
 Church  has  perhaps  no  more  characteristic  and  no 
 more  important  message  for  the  times  than  the  mes¬ 
 sage  of  stewardship,  a  thoroughgoing  stewardship 
 which  deals,  not  alone  with  the  handling  of  posses¬ 
 sions,  but  which  rigidly  applies  the  exacting  ethics  of 
 Jesus  to  the  very  method  of  their  acquisition.  No 
 method  of  administering  wealth  can  atone  for  an  un¬ 
 social  method  of  acquiring  it.  Some  years  ago  Josiah 
 Strong,  speaking  of  what  he  described  as  America’s 
 “new  peril  of  wealth”  said:  “Why,  good  friends,  such 
 wealth  as  that  is  not  only  amazing,  it  is  absolutely 
 appalling.  It  will  place  such  a  strain  on  the  moral 
 character  of  the  United  States  as  no  people  of  history 
 has  ever  endured  or  been  called  upon  to  endure.  .  .  . 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE  163 
 
 Wealth  means  luxury.  Luxury  has  always  been  a 
 peril.  .  .  .  There  are  many  men  who  will  say,  ‘My 
 money  is  my  own;  I  can  do  what  I  please  with  it.’ 
 .  .  .  The  multitude  of  wealthy  men  today  look  upon 
 wealth  as  a  private  affair  for  their  own  gratification. 
 They  must  learn  that  social  wealth  is  a  social  trust. 
 .  .  .  All  wealth  is  social  wealth,  every  dollar  of  it, 
 every  penny  of  it;  and  therefore  every  dollar,  every 
 penny,  is  a  social  trust,  to  be  expended  not  for  the 
 pleasure  of  self,  but  for  the  service  of  humanity.  This 
 is  the  doctrine  of  social  science,  and  it  simply  reaffirms 
 the  teaching  as  old  as  the  Bible  itself.  ‘The  earth  is 
 the  Lord’s  and  the  fullness  thereof;  the  world  and  they 
 that  dwell  therein.’  ‘The  gold  is  mine,  the  silver  is 
 mine,’  saith  the  Lord,  ‘and  the  cattle  on  a  thousand 
 hills.’  But  we  have  not  taken  God’s  word  seriously. 
 Men  have  treated  their  possession  as  if  it  were  their 
 wealth.  They  have  said,  ‘It  is  mine.  I  will  do  with 
 it  as  I  please.’  They  have  recognized  an  obligation 
 to  use  a  certain  proportion,  possibly  a  tenth — very, 
 very  few  go  as  far  as  that — for  the  extension  of  the 
 kingdom  of  God.  But  rare  indeed  is  the  man  who 
 recognizes  the  fact  that  all  his  wealth  belongs  to  God, 
 and  he  is  to  administer  every  penny  of  it  as  will  best 
 serve  the  interests  of  the  kingdom  of  God.” 
 
 It  is  evident  that  Dr.  Strong  was  correct  in  his 
 prophecy.  Since  that  statement  was  made,  the  wealth 
 of  America  has  increased  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
 America  does  face  the  peril  of  wealth.  Its  solution 
 lies  in  remaking  our  economic  order  and  in  passing 
 our  wealth  on  to  a  generation  which  has  been  trained 
 
164  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 in  the  principles  and  practise  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  may 
 seem  strange  to  attack  the  great  problems  of  capital 
 and  labor  through  the  girls  and  boys,  but,  as  a  matter 
 of  fact,  there  is  no  other  hopeful  point  of  attack.  We 
 have  at  present,  says  Mr.  R.  H.  Tawney  of  Oxford, 
 a  society  in  which  rights  and  privileges  are  supreme 
 and  in  which  functions  and  obligations  are  only  sec¬ 
 ondary.  As  a  substitute  for  such  a  social  order  Mr. 
 Tawney  would  have  a  society  in  which  functions  are 
 supreme,  in  which  there  would  be  no  right  without  a 
 corresponding  function,  no  privilege  without  a  cor¬ 
 responding  obligation.  “If  society  is  to  be  healthy,” 
 he  says,  “men  must  regard  themselves,  not  as  the 
 owners  of  rights,  but  as  trustees  for  the  discharge  of 
 functions.”  It  is  this  sort  of  a  healthy  society  which 
 we  seek,  but  it  is  to  be  obtained  only  through  the  rising 
 generation. 
 
 The  whole  matter  was  recently  brought  into  sharp 
 relief  by  Professor  C.  G.  Manning  of  Lewistown, 
 Montana,  President  of  the  Montana  State  Teachers’ 
 Association.  He  said :  “Only  in  the  schools  can  the 
 student  secure  an  impartial  viewpoint  of  our  social 
 and  industrial  problems.  Once  launched  in  an  occu¬ 
 pation,  his  views  are  forever  warped  by  the  interests 
 of  his  vocation.  Ruthless  hostility,  inability  to  see 
 justice,  and  willingness  to  sacrifice  lives  to  maintain 
 even  unjust  power  result.  To  insist  that  teachers 
 should  refrain  from  teaching  social  justice,  or  in  other 
 words,  the  ‘golden  rule,’  and  refrain  from  exposing 
 its  violators  is  a  travesty  upon  common  sense.  The 
 schools  are  more  responsible  than  any  other  single 
 
 t 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 165 
 
 agency  for  the  selfish,  non-community-serving,  and 
 unpatriotic,  law-breaking  individuals  that  we  have 
 with  us  and  that  dominate  at  present  all  classes  of 
 society.  We  need  to  realize  clearly  that  the  school 
 not  only  trains  for  life,  but  is  life  itself — life  inten¬ 
 sified.” 
 
 And  that  is  but  another  way  of  emphasizing  the  fact 
 that,  if  Christian  principles  are  not  inculcated  in  the 
 life  during  the  days  of  childhood,  there  is  little  hope 
 of  their  taking  deep  root  in  the  society  that  is  to  be. 
 Yet,  if  for  a  brief  period  of  years  we  would  give  our¬ 
 selves  seriously  to  the  training  of  our  youth  in  these 
 principles,  many  of  our  most  perplexing  problems  of 
 the  present  would  find  their  solution.  When  those 
 who  control  capital  recognize  that  ownership  is  not 
 absolute  but  relative,  when  they  acknowledge  that  their 
 possessions  are  but  a  trust  to  be  used  for  the  common 
 good,  when  labor  comes  to  a  similar  realization  con¬ 
 cerning  its  own  productive  abilities,  and  when  “suc¬ 
 cess”  is  no  longer  made  a  god  to  be  worshiped,  and 
 service  is  enthroned  in  its  place,  the  problem  of 
 “capital  and  labor,”  with  all  its  myriad  complexities, 
 will  vanish,  strikes  will  be  no  more,  and  lockouts  will 
 be  a  thing  of  the  past.  Then  society  will  no  longer 
 suffer  the  terrible  resulting  waste  which  now  makes 
 the  burdens  of  each  of  us  the  heavier.  Surely  our 
 country  will,  indeed,  be  the  richer  when  every  dollar 
 of  capital,  every  bit  of  human  muscle,  every  ounce  of 
 brain  power,  and  all  creative  ability  is  in  the  control 
 of  those  who  recognize  God  as  the  owner  of  all  things 
 and  themselves  as  humble  stewards  of  a  divine  trust. 
 
166  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 The  very  suggestion  of  such  a  land  gives  wings  to 
 our  imagination.  It  seems  indeed  like  Utopia.  Yet 
 we  have  in  our  homes,  our  schools,  and  our  churches 
 the  boys  and  girls  who  will  control  every  bit  of  our 
 national  wealth  and  all  of  our  human  resources.  If 
 they  grow  up  to  lives  of  selfishness  rather  than  to 
 recognize  themselves  as  stewards  of  the  living  God, 
 on  whose  shoulders  does  the  responsibility  lie? 
 
 CHECKING  CRIME  AT  ITS  SOURCE 
 
 There  was  something  almost  pathetic  in  the  frantic 
 efforts  made  recently  by  a  great  city  to  check  a  much 
 advertised  “crime  wave.”  Motorcycle  squads  were 
 organized,  high-powered  automobiles  were  purchased, 
 reserve  policemen  were  called  into  service,  retired  men 
 were  called  back,  volunteers  were  enlisted,  all  vacations 
 were  canceled,  and  officials  were  put  on  twenty-four 
 hours’  service,  that  they  might  be  called  at  any  mo¬ 
 ment.  And  who  were  the  criminals  who  called  forth 
 all  this  effort  and  all  this  vast  expenditure  of  money? 
 The  answer  to  that  question  the  daily  papers  carried 
 day  after  day.  They  were  young  men,  youths  of  six¬ 
 teen  and  seventeen  years  of  age,  of  eighteen  years, 
 of  nineteen  years,  of  twenty  years,  and  the  like.  They 
 were  boys,  most  of  them  born  and  reared  in  the  very 
 city  which  they  were  rendering  unsafe  by  their  depre¬ 
 dations.  They  were  youth  for  whom  the  city  had 
 failed  to  provide  the  training  which  might  have  made 
 them  useful  citizens,  and  the  Church  had  failed  either 
 to  reach  them  or  to  give  them  the  care  and  the  ideals 
 which  would  have  saved  them  from  moral  shipwreck. 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE  167 
 
 They  were  young  men  upon  whom  the  idea  of  life  as 
 a  trust  had  never  dawned.  To  them  life  had  become 
 a  matter  of  grabbing  what  they  could  get  regardless 
 of  moral  or  religious  considerations.  The  city  had 
 first  made  them  what  they  were  and  then  taxed  its 
 resources  to  control  their  actions.  The  principles  of 
 the  Christian  religion  with  all  that  they  imply,  which 
 could  have  been  built  into  the  lives  of  these  boys  and 
 were  not,  would  have  protected  the  city  more  ade¬ 
 quately  than  all  the  high-powered  cars  that  could  be 
 purchased  or  all  the  multiplied  police  forces  which 
 might  be  made  available. 
 
 One  of  the  fine  things  about  the  America  which  is 
 to  be  is  that  its  crime  prevention  will  be  done  by  the 
 quiet  processes  of  the  home  and  the  school  rather  than 
 by  six-shooters,  clubs,  and  jails.  The  editor  of  a  Chi¬ 
 cago  publication,  The  Detective,  tells  us  that  we 
 have  a  new  crop  of  criminals,  three  million  strong, 
 made  up  of  youths  ranging  from  eighteen  to  twenty- 
 five  years  of  age.  A  single  issue  of  a  daily  paper 
 picked  at  random  recently  reported  nearly  forty  cases 
 of  crime  chiefly  on  the  part  of  boys  and  young  men 
 ranging  from  sixteen  years  old  and  upwards.  One 
 young  man  of  twenty-two  was  sentenced  to  twenty 
 years  in  the  penitentiary;  another  of  twenty-one  re¬ 
 ceived  a  sentence  with  a  similar  maximum;  a  third  of 
 twenty-three  was  sentenced  for  holding  up  a  woman 
 with  mask  and  pistol;  a  boy  of  sixteen  confessed  to 
 more  than  twenty  burglaries;  and  another  of  nineteen 
 to  a  similar  number  of  offenses.  Yet  all  of  these 
 offenders  were  the  direct  and  natural  product  of  pov- 
 
168 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 erty,  ignorance,  and  a  lack  of  sufficient  moral  and 
 religious  training  to  build  into  their  hearts  the  con¬ 
 sciousness  that  our  life  is  a  trust  from  a  loving  father, 
 God.  That  there  is  a  very  close  relationship  between 
 lack  of  training  and  crime  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that 
 in  a  group  of  a  thousand  prisoners  examined  recently 
 only  twenty-five  per  cent  had  so  much  as  finished 
 grammar  school  and  only  seven  per  cent  had  a  high 
 school  education,  while  an  examination  of  22,000 
 criminals  showed  that  only  four  of  them  had  a  college 
 education. 
 
 LEARNING  TO  BE  FRIENDS 
 
 Again  we  need  an  Atnerica  in  which  there  is  room 
 for  people  of  different  complexions  and  varying  ideas. 
 We  have  within  our  borders  people  of  different  races. 
 We  do  not  need  to  ignore  the  fact  of  this  difference 
 in  order  to  recognize  the  still  more  fundamental  fact 
 that  God  is  no  respecter  of  complexions  and  that  every 
 child  of  the  living  God  should  have  a  chance  to  make 
 of  himself  all  that  he  can  make  and  to  live  his  life 
 free  from  the  restraints  which  grow  out  of  prejudice 
 and  racial  hatreds.  If  these  unlovely  things  are  to  be 
 driven  from  our  midst,  it  will  be  accomplished  only 
 through  childhood,  for  it  is  there  that  the  attitudes 
 of  prejudice  and  contempt  are  fostered.  Only  recently 
 nation-wide  prominence  was  given  to  the  folly  of  a 
 group  of  boys  and  girls  who,  in  a  Western  city, 
 “struck”  because  a  Japanese  girl  in  the  class,  through 
 sheer  merit,  won  the  highest  prize  in  scholarship  and 
 through  it  the  appointment  as  class  orator.  It  is  easy 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 169 
 
 to  condemn  these  children  for  their  selfishness  and 
 absurd  prejudice,  especially  when  they  could  so  easily, 
 on  the  basis  of  their  own  acknowledged  superiority, 
 have  relegated  the  little  Japanese  girl  to  oblivion  by 
 the  simple  device  of  doing  better  school  work  than 
 she  did,  but  such  condemnation  does  not  get  to  the 
 heart  of  the  matter.  The  fact  is  that  these  girls  and 
 boys  were  the  natural  product  of  the  environment  in 
 which  they  had  grown  up,  an  environment  in  which 
 the  yellow  press,  politics,  and  other  interests  had 
 flourished  by  promoting  racial  dislikes  and  antago¬ 
 nisms. 
 
 About  the  time  this  incident  occurred,  another  inci¬ 
 dent  took  place  in  another  city.  In  this  city  there  was 
 a  troop  of  Boy  Scouts  made  up  of  American  boys,  and 
 there  was  another  troop  organized  in  a  mission  church 
 and  made  up  of  boys  of  Italian  parentage.  It  occurred 
 to  the  first  troop  to  invite  the  Italian  boys  over  to  one 
 of  their  regular  meetings,  and  they  acted  upon  the 
 impulse.  The  Italian  boys  came  and  they  learned 
 many  things  about  the  proper  conduct  of  a  Scout 
 meeting.  They  also  got  acquainted  with  the  American 
 boys  and  had  a  generally  enjoyable  time.  Not  to  be 
 outdone  by  their  friends,  they  invited  the  first  troop 
 to  one  of  their  meetings,  and  they  provided  a  surprise 
 in  the  shape  of  refreshments.  Later  a  banner  was 
 presented  by  one  troop  to  the  other  and  various  other 
 friendly  interchanges  took  place.  The  American  boys 
 did  not  know  it,  neither  did  the  Italian  boys,  but  they 
 were  partners  in  one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  real 
 “Americanization”  which  could  well  be  imagined. 
 
170 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 They  were  not  only  developing  friendships  on  a  per¬ 
 fectly  natural  basis,  but  they  were  also  learning  that 
 differences  did  not  necessarily  spell  inferiority  or  fur¬ 
 nish  just  cause  for  prejudice  or  contempt. 
 
 Incidents  similar  to  those  just  related  might  be  mul¬ 
 tiplied,  but,  for  our  present  purposes,  the  point  to  be 
 stressed  is  that  there  is  no  hopeful  approach  to  the 
 important  question  of  racial  hatreds  and  prejudices 
 except  through  the  children,  and  that  if  we  are  to  have 
 an  America  from  which  these  causes  of  friction  are 
 to  be  eliminated,  we  must  deal  earnestly  and  construc¬ 
 tively  with  the  years  during  which  these  abiding  atti¬ 
 tudes  are  being  formed. 
 
 A  WORLD  BROTHERHOOD 
 
 Nor  can  we  stop  with  creating  Christian  attitudes 
 toward  the  people  under  our  own  flag.  We  must,  for 
 the  sake  of  America  and  for  the  sake  of  the  world, 
 have  an  America  of  an  international  mind.  Never 
 were  the  nations  of  the  world  so  interdependent  as 
 they  are  now.  Indeed,  it  has  been  one  of  the  difficul¬ 
 ties  throughout  the  present  discussion  to  move  for¬ 
 ward  without  calling  attention  at  every  step  of  the 
 way  to  the  fact  that  the  problems  of  the  children  of 
 America  are  inevitably  and  inextricably  linked  up  with 
 those  of  the  children  of  the  entire  world.  Lloyd 
 George  has  told  us  that  the  task  of  the  present  genera¬ 
 tion  is  to  learn  the  lessons  of  the  World  War,  and 
 one  of  the  outstanding  lessons  which  it  teaches  is  that 
 the  welfare  and  interest  of  the  girls  and  boys  of  the 
 world  are  inextricably  linked.  We  must  move  for- 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE  171 
 
 ward  together.  When,  indeed,  in  the  whole  previous 
 history  of  the  world,  has  a  victorious  nation  found 
 itself  in  the  position  where  it  could  not  afford  to  exact 
 a  crushing  penalty  from  its  defeated  foe?  Yet  in  the 
 months  which  have  passed,  we  have  faced  exactly  that 
 situation.  Even  America,  strong  as  she  is,  can  never 
 again  live  to  herself  alone.  We  are  part  of  a  living, 
 growing,  throbbing  world,  a  world  in  which  moral 
 principles  must  be  made  to  prevail,  a  world  from 
 which  war  must  be  driven,  and  other  international 
 immoralities  banished — and  our  young  people  must 
 be  taught  to  face  this  fact  and  recognize  its  implica¬ 
 tions.  We  need  a  new  baptism  of  respect  for  other 
 peoples,  and  we  can  create  such  an  attitude  when  we 
 undertake  the  task  seriously.  Fortunately  there  is 
 much  here  upon  which  we  can  build.  The  printed 
 page,  the  camera,  and  modern  transportation  have 
 brought  the  world  to  our  children.  It  remains  for  us 
 to  interpret  these  world  relationships  in  Christian 
 terms  and  to  infuse  into  the  lives  of  the  generation 
 which  must  deal  with  them  those  Christian  motives 
 which  alone  will  stand  the  test  of  time  and  use. 
 
 We  might  add  to  the  picture  which  we  have  sug¬ 
 gested  many  details  of  an  America  which  shall  be  so 
 much  better  than  the  America  that  now  is  that  we 
 shall  find  it  a  far  more  suitable  place  in  which  to  be 
 born,  to  grow  up,  to  labor,  and  to  grow  old.  We  shall, 
 however,  leave  the  reader  to  fill  in  the  picture.  Our 
 aim  has  been,  not  to  complete  the  outline,  but  to  sug¬ 
 gest  something  of  the  size,  the  nature,  and  the  impor¬ 
 tance  of  the  task.  We  shall  at  least  have  made  a  good 
 
172  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 beginning  in  building  a  better  America  when  we  have 
 stopped  unnecessary  disease;  supplied  good  schools 
 for  all  our  children ;  provided  thoroughgoing  religious 
 training  for  them;  made  wise  and  adequate  provision 
 for  the  use  of  constantly  increasing  leisure  time;  de¬ 
 veloped  a  sense  of  social  responsibility  which  finds  its 
 clearest  interpretation  in  terms  of  Christian  steward¬ 
 ship;  substituted  justice,  tolerance,  and  broad  sympa¬ 
 thies  for  injustice,  intolerance,  and  prejudice;  and 
 created  a  true  sense  of  world  fellowship  with  all  peo¬ 
 ples  under  the  sun.  These  are  some  things  to  start 
 with,  at  least.  They  represent  definite,  specific  tasks 
 to  any  one  of  which  or  all  of  which  we  are  equal,  when 
 we  determine  that  they  shall  be  done. 
 
 DOING  THE  TASK 
 
 There  is  perhaps  less  chance  for  difference  of 
 opinion  relative  to  the  nature  of  the  task  to  be  per¬ 
 formed  than  concerning  the  division  of  responsibility 
 for  it.  In  general  we  have  three  outstanding  agencies 
 for  its  accomplishment — the  home,  the  school,  and 
 the  church.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  home 
 is  on  the  whole  the  most  important  of  all,  yet  the 
 average  home  must  depend  for  help  upon  the  school 
 and  the  church.  In  this  discussion  we  have  had  little 
 opportunity  to  stress  the  importance  of  the  home  in 
 detail  or  to  suggest  its  problems.  Under  modern  con¬ 
 ditions  the  problem  of  the  home  and  home  discipline 
 has  become  a  most  difficult  one  and  particularly  so 
 in  the  homes  of  New  Americans,  yet  for  most  chil¬ 
 dren  the  home  and  its  environment  are  still  the  most 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 173 
 
 important  determining  factors  of  life.  The  reason  for 
 this  is  not  hidden.  It  grows  largely  out  of  the  fact 
 that  the  child  is  in  the  home  at  the  most  impression¬ 
 able  period  of  life,  that  he  spends  more  hours  there 
 than  anywhere  else,  and  that  his  experiences  there  are 
 real  and  not  artificial.  For  the  unfortunate  child 
 whose  mother  is  away  at  work  or  who  for  other  rea¬ 
 sons  spends  most  of  his  time  on  the  street,  the  street 
 may  easily  become  a  bigger  factor  in  his  life  than  the 
 home. 
 
 As  the  number  of  hours  spent  outside  the  home  in¬ 
 creases,  the  influence  of  the  home  over  the  life  of  the 
 child  tends  to  decrease.  Thus,  for  children  who  grow 
 up  in  a  day  nursery  such  an  institution  may  easily 
 come  to  occupy  a  far  larger  place  in  their  lives  than 
 their  homes  do.  In  a  similar  way  institutional 
 churches  and  like  institutions  which  care  for  the 
 leisure  time  of  girls  and  boys  may  become  the  domi¬ 
 nating  factor  in  their  lives.  There  is  little  doubt  that 
 modern  conditions  have  tended  to  limit  the  functions 
 of  the  home.  In  many  cases  this  has  tended  to  relieve 
 the  home  of  responsibilities  which  no  other  agency  has 
 adequately  assumed  or  can  assume.  We  cannot,  for 
 example,  hope  to  supply  in  an  hour  or  two  each  week 
 the  religious  training  which,  to  be  really  effective,  must 
 come  in  as  a  vital  part  of  a  seven-day-a-week  religious 
 training  in  the  home.  When  the  home  fails,  our  line  of 
 defense  is  thin,  indeed.  Fortunately,  however,  it  often 
 does  save  us  from  utter  defeat.  There  is  much  chance 
 for  discussion  as  to  just  what  the  home  ought  to  do 
 and  what  it  ought  to  leave  to  other  agencies.  There 
 
174 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 is,  however,  no  way  of  bringing  compulsion  upon  the 
 home,  and  agencies  which  deal  with  girls  and  boys 
 must  take  the  children  as  they  come  from  the  homes 
 and  .attempt  to  supply  the  deficiencies  which  appear. 
 At  the  same  time,  they  work  to  improve  the  standard 
 of  the  home.  This  they  are  doing,  sometimes  almost 
 unconsciously,  as  with  precept,  example,  and  training, 
 they  labor  with  the  youth  who,  in  a  steady  stream,  are 
 going  out  to  found  homes  of  their  own. 
 
 Nor  is  there  an  entirely  clear  demarcation  of  the 
 functions  of  the  church  school  and  the  public  school. 
 When  our  government  was  founded  there  seemed  to 
 be  good  and  sufficient  reasons  for  avoiding  the  evils 
 of  a  church-controlled  state.  Unfortunately  we  have 
 often  confused  the  “church”  and  religion.  We  have 
 pressed  the  point  that  our  government  had  nothing  to 
 do  with  religion,  and  we  have  carried  this  down 
 through  to  our  public  schools.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
 religion  has  always  had  much  to  do  with  our  schools, 
 that  is,  if  we  mean  by  religion  what  Micah  meant 
 when  he  said,  “What  doth  Jehovah  require  of  thee, 
 but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  kindness,  and  to  walk 
 humbly  with  thy  God?”  Indeed  the  matter  has  gone 
 much  further  than  that  in  many  communities,  and 
 many  a  public  school  teacher  has  come  to  be  a  larger 
 religious  influence  in  the  lives  of  her  pupils  than  have 
 the  Sunday-school  teachers  of  those  same  pupils.  Re¬ 
 ligious  education,  as  such,  has,  however,  found  no 
 place  in  our  public  schools.  Just  what  the  future  de¬ 
 velopments  in  this  field  may  be,  we  cannot  say.  There 
 may  be  much  shifting  of  the  lines  which  determine 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 175 
 
 the  functions  of  the  public  school  as  it  is  related  to 
 the  church  school,  but  at  present  these  two  institutions 
 occupy  a  strategic  position  in  our  national  life. 
 
 THE  PLAN  OF  HOME  MISSIONS 
 
 With  both  of  these  institutions  we  are  intimately 
 concerned,  but  a  special  word  relative  to  the  task  of 
 the  Church  may  not  be  out  of  place.  In  many  of  its 
 aspects  this  task  is  one  to  be  worked  out  community 
 by  community,  but  what  of  the  multitudes  of  com¬ 
 munities  where  there  are  not  the  moral,  intellectual,  or 
 financial  resources  to  care  for  the  need — the  congested 
 centers  of  our  great  cities,  our  foreign-speaking  com¬ 
 munities,  our  industrial  settlements,  our  frontier  re¬ 
 gions,  our  poverty-stricken  rural  districts.  Thousands 
 of  communities  cannot  do  the  job  without  outside  help. 
 Fortunately  the  Church  has  an  arm  to  reach  into  just 
 those  places.  It  is  the  missionary  arm,  and  it  works 
 through  the  home  mission  agencies  of  the  Church. 
 These  missionary  agencies  have,  almost  within  a 
 decade,  got  a  fresh  vision  of  their  task  and  of  its 
 nature.  They  have  acquired  new  ideals;  they  have 
 established  new  standards;  they  are  employing  new 
 types  of  workers;  they  have  the  educational  approach 
 to  their  task.  Added  to  this,  they  are  strategically 
 located  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other. 
 They  are  rendering  an  enormous  service — far  greater 
 than  even  the  Church  itself  realizes.  They  are  con¬ 
 ducting  day  nurseries;  they  are  carrying  on  kinder¬ 
 gartens;  they  are  feeding  hungry  children;  they  are 
 distributing  milk;  they  are  conducting  boys’  clubs  and 
 
176 
 
 THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 girls’  clubs;  they  are  teaching  cooking  classes;  they 
 are  training  in  sewing;  they  are  conducting  Sunday- 
 schools;  they  operate  Vacation  Bible  Schools;  they 
 carry  on  week-day  religious  instruction;  they  hold 
 large  children’s  assemblies;  they  conduct  summer 
 camps;  they  carry  on  a  thousand  activities  which  are 
 helping  to  make  our  country  a  better  place  in  which 
 to  live  and  which  are  helping  to  build  the  America  of 
 the  future.  They  are  doing  all  of  these  things  quietly 
 and  unostentatiously.  The  Christian  Church  and  the 
 American  nation  could  not  afford  to  have  their  activi¬ 
 ties  cease.  Yet  they  are  moving  haltingly,  when  they 
 might  move  forward  triumphantly;  they  are  often 
 working  with  poor  facilities,  when  they  ought  to  have 
 the  best;  they  have  a  small  staff,  when  they  ought  to 
 have  a  large  one ;  and  in  many  other  respects  they  are 
 in  the  embarrassing  position  of  being  forced  to  face 
 great  needs  which  their  resources  will  not  allow  them 
 to  touch. 
 
 Many  of  these  institutions  are  in  communities  where 
 self-supporting  churches  may  never  exist,  or,  at  least, 
 not  for  a  long  time.  This  is  particularly  true  of  con¬ 
 gested  foreign-speaking  sections.  The  aim  of  the 
 work  is  not  to  build  up  such  a  church.  Rather  is  it  the 
 mission  of  such  organizations  to  feed  their  people  out 
 into  multitudes  of  other  churches  and  communities 
 where  they  take  their  places  in  all  sorts  of  church  and 
 community  activities.  From  one  such  center  a  Polish 
 boy  recently  graduated  from  one  of  our  great  institu¬ 
 tions  of  learning  to  become  a  missionary  among  his 
 own  people  in  the  United  States;  two  Russians  entered 
 
THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 1 77 
 
 a  training  school  for  the  Christian  ministry;  an  Italian 
 boy  entered  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  college;  and  a  Lithuanian 
 girl  went  into  training  for  work  among  her  own  peo¬ 
 ple.  These  were  all  individuals  who  had  been  won  by 
 the  varied  work  of  one  home  mission  institution,  and 
 the  record  takes  no  account  of  those  who  in  other  ca¬ 
 pacities  have  gone  out  to  take  their  responsible  places 
 in  the  work  of  the  world.  This  is  the  sort  of  thing 
 which  the  churches  are  doing  through  their  missionary 
 agencies  today  and  which  they  would  do  much  more 
 extensively  if  they  could  see  at  first  hand  the  work 
 which  they  are  making  possible.  It  would  indeed  be 
 a  calamity  for  America  and  for  her  youth  should  this 
 mighty  home  mission  arm  of  the  Church  ever  be  short¬ 
 ened  or  made  ineffective. 
 
 SUCCESS  ONLY  AT  THE  PRICE  OF  SACRIFICIAL  EFFORT 
 
 The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  to  be  wrought  out  in 
 America  by  the  most  diligent  consecrated  effort. 
 Sometimes  in  our  optimism  we  forget  just  that.  We 
 fancy  that  Christianity  will  win  out  in  spite  of  our 
 indifference  rather  than  because  of  our  sacrificial 
 service.  Yet  Christianity  has  lost  its  grip  in  other 
 places.  The  very  land  which  gave  it  birth  is  a  no¬ 
 table  example,  as  is  also  North  Africa,  which  it  so  early 
 occupied. 
 
 Bishop  Thomas  Nicholson  has  recently  called  our 
 attention  to  a  passage  from  a  letter  sent  by  Cyprian 
 in  North  Africa  to  his  friend  Donatus.  In  it  he  says : 
 “We  look  out  from  our  cathedral  windows  and  from 
 our  domiciles.  We  see  a  great  wicked  world.  We 
 
178  THE  CHILD  AND  AMERICA’S  FUTURE 
 
 see  the  slums  of  our  cities.  We  see  bandits  on  the 
 highways.  We  see  soldiers  marching  to  war.”  Thus 
 he  goes  on  to  complete  the  picture  and  then  he  adds, 
 “But  it  does  not  concern  us.  We  withdraw  ourselves 
 into  our  quiet  dwellings ;  we  sing  our  hymns ;  we  chant 
 our  prayers;  we  renounce  the  world;  we  are  Chris¬ 
 tians.” 
 
 That  was  the  religious  attitude  of  the  Christian  in 
 a  day  which  has  forever  passed.  In  North  Africa 
 where  it  found  expression  the  Christian  Church  was 
 long  since  driven  out  and  another  religious  organiza¬ 
 tion  flourishes  in  its  place.  Here  where  hundreds  of 
 churches  stood  and  where  great  Christian  convoca¬ 
 tions  were  held,  the  only  evidence  left  to  remind  us 
 of  that  fact  is  the  occasionally  uncovered  ruins  of  one 
 of  those  same  churches.  Fortunately  we  live  in  a  new 
 day.  The  Christians  of  the  present  have  no  idea  of 
 renouncing  the  world.  Instead,  they  are  boldly  claim¬ 
 ing  it  for  Jesus  Christ.  Their  religion  is  not  the  re¬ 
 ligion  of  the  cloister,  but  rather  the  religion  of  the 
 street  and  the  market-place.  Thus  far  a  high  type  of 
 ethical  Christianity  has  never  dominated  any  country. 
 Christianity’s  supreme  opportunity  of  two  thousand 
 years  is  here  and  now  in  America.  The  stage  is  set 
 for  a  great  scene.  The  responsibility  for  its  success 
 is  upon  the  actors.  You  and  I  and  the  girls  and  boys 
 of  America  are  cast  for  the  leading  roles.  The  future 
 of  an  entire  world  will  be  very  largely  determined  by 
 the  manner  in  which  we  play  the  parts  assigned  to  us. 
 
A  SELECT  READING  LIST 
 
 There  can  be  listed  here  but  a  few  of  the  vast  number  of 
 books,  pamphlets,  and  periodicals  that  have  been  published  on 
 the  theme  of  this  book.  Those  who  wish  to  consult  a  wider 
 range  of  sources  than  the  titles  noted  will  find  the  following 
 lists  useful : 
 
 1.  Publications  of  the  Children’s  Bureau  of  the  U.  S.  Depart¬ 
 ment  of  Labor,  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  D.  C. 
 Lists  more  than  ioo  pamphlets  and  special  studies  on  many 
 phases  of  child  welfare.  Free  on  request. 
 
 2.  List  of  books  and  pamphlets  on  child  welfare.  Compiled 
 by  E.  L.  Bascom  and  D.  M.  Mendenhall.  Wisconsin  Library 
 Commission,  Madison,  Wisconsin.  6  cents. 
 
 3.  Selected  list  of  books  for  parents.  Federation  for  Child 
 Study,  2  West  64th  Street,  New  York.  25  cents. 
 
 4.  List  of  Educational  Panels  and  Publications  of  the  Na¬ 
 tional  Child  Welfare  Association,  70  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 
 Bulletin  40.  Free  on  request. 
 
 5.  List  of  Publications  of  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee, 
 105  East  22nd  Street,  New  York.  Free  on  request. 
 
 6.  The  “American  Home  Series”  of  pamphlets.  Edited  by 
 Norman  E.  Richardson.  The  Abingdon  Press,  150  Fifth  Avenue, 
 New  York.  List  of  pamphlets  free  on  request. 
 
 The  pamphlets  deal  with  specific  problems  which  parents  face. 
 Each  pamphlet  is  devoted  to  a  single  subject.  The  material  is 
 entertainingly  written  and  is  suited  to  the  needs  of  fathers  and 
 mothers.  They  vary  in  price  from  15  to  25  cents. 
 
 GENERAL 
 
 Science  of  Power „  The.  Benjamin  Kidd.  1918.  G.  P.  Putnam’s 
 Sons,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 You  Are  the  Hope  of  the  World.  Herman  Hagedorn.  1920. 
 The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  80  cents. 
 
 The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
 Science ,  November,  1921,  issue.  James  H.  Bossard,  Editor. 
 Academy  of  Political  Science,  Columbia  University,  New 
 York.  $1.00. 
 
 Character  Training  in  Childhood.  Mary  S.  Haviland.  Small, 
 Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston.  $2.00.  By  mail,  $2.15. 
 
 Childhood  and  Character.  Hugh  Hartshorn.  1919.  Pilgrim 
 Press  Boston.  $1.75. 
 
 Child  Nature  and  Child  Nurture.  Edward  Porter  St.  John. 
 Pilgrim  Press,  Boston.  Cloth,  75  cents ;  paper,  50  cents. 
 
Girlhood  and  Character.  Mary  Moxcey.  Abingdon  Press,  New 
 York.  $1.50. 
 
 New  Homes  for  Old.  Sophonisba  Preston  Breckinredge.  1921. 
 Harper  and  Brothers,  New  York.  $2.50. 
 
 Youth  and  the  Race.  Edgar  James  Swift.  1912.  Charles 
 Scribner’s  Sons,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 National  System  of  Education,  A.  Walter  Scott  Athearn. 
 Missionary  Education  Movement,  150  Fifth  Avenue,  New 
 York.  Cloth,  $1.50. 
 
 THE  FAMILY 
 
 Religious  Education  in  the  Family.  Henry  F.  Cope.  1915. 
 University  of  Chicago  Press,  Chicago.  $1.50. 
 
 Religious  Nurture  of  a  Little  Child,  The.  William  Byron  For- 
 bush  and  Frederick  W.  Langford.  1920.  American  Insti¬ 
 tute  of  Child  Life,  1714  Chestnut  Street,  Philadelphia.  20 
 cents. 
 
 Study  of  the  Little  Child,  A.  Mary  Theodora  Whitley.  1921. 
 Westminster  Press,  Philadelphia.  60  cents. 
 
 The  Mother-Teacher  of  Religion.  Anna  Freelove  Betts. 
 Abingdon  Press,  New  York.  $2.00.  By  mail,  $2.20. 
 
 Training  of  Children  in  the  Christian  Family,  The.  Luther  A. 
 Weigle.  1922.  Pilgrim  Press,  Boston.  $1.50. 
 
 HEALTH 
 
 Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children.  John  Spargo.  1906.  The  Mac¬ 
 millan  Co.,  New  York.  This  book  is  out  of  print,  but  it  is 
 obtainable  in  most  libraries. 
 
 Community  Health  Problem,  The.  Athel  Campbell  Burnham. 
 1920.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 New  Public  Health.  Hibbert  Winslow  Hill.  1916.  The  Mac¬ 
 millan  Co.,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 Newer  Knowledge  of  Nutrition,  The.  Elmer  V.  McCollum. 
 1923.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  A  new  and  revised 
 edition  in  preparation. 
 
 Nutrition  and  Growth  in  Children.  William  R.  P.  Emerson. 
 1922.  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  New  York.  $2.50. 
 
 Child  Health  Study  of  New  York  State,  A.  Conducted  by  the 
 Child  Welfare  Committee  of  the  New  York  State  League  of 
 Women  Voters,  1625  Grand  Central  Terminal  Building,  New 
 York.  15  cents. 
 
 RECREATION 
 
 Play  Movement  in  the  United  States,  The.  Clarence  E.  Rain¬ 
 water.  1922.  University  of  Chicago  Press,  Chicago.  $2.75. 
 
 Boy  Scouts  of  America.  Edited  by  Franklin  K.  Mathiews. 
 1922.  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  New  York.  $2.50. 
 
Moving  Pictures  in  the  Church.  Roy  L.  Smith.  1921.  Abing¬ 
 don  Press,  New  York.  35  cents. 
 
 Rural  Child  Welfare .  Edward  N.  Clopper.  National  Child  La¬ 
 bor  Committee.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  $3.00. 
 
 Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets,  The.  Jane  Addams.  1912. 
 The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  $1.75. 
 
 Pamphlets  published  by  the  Playground  and  Recreation  Associa¬ 
 tion  of  America,  315  Fourth  Avenue,  New  York: 
 
 (1)  Community  Recreation.  1919.  30  cents. 
 
 (2)  Comrades  in  Play.  1920.  30  cents. 
 
 (3)  Pioneering  for  Play.  1921.  30  cents. 
 
 JUVENILE  DELINQUENCY 
 
 Juvenile  Delinquency.  Henry  H.  Goddard.  1921.  Dodd,  Mead 
 &  Co.,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 Care  of  the  Destitute,  Neglected,  and  Delinquent  Children,  The. 
 Homer  Folks.  1902.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  $1.00. 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Public  Education  in  the  United  States.  Ell  wood  P.  Cabberley. 
 1919.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston.  $2.40. 
 
 History  of  Education  in  the  United  States.  Edwin  Grant 
 Dexter.  1904.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  $3.00. 
 
 Consolidated  Rural  School,  The.  Louis  W.  Rapeer.  1920. 
 Charles  Scribner’s  Sons,  New  York.  $3.00. 
 
 Hygiene  of  the  School  Child,  The.  Lewis  Madison  Terman. 
 1914.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston.  $1.65. 
 
 Work  of  the  Rural  School,  The.  John  D.  Eggleston  and 
 Robert  W.  Bruere.  Harper  &  Brothers,  New  York.  $1.00. 
 
 Rural  Child  Welfare.  Edward  N.  Clopper.  The  Macmillan  Co., 
 New  York.  $3.00. 
 
 Rural  Education.  O.  G.  Brim.  1923.  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 
 Rural  Life.  C.  J.  Galpin.  1918.  Century  Co.,  New  York.  $2.50. 
 
 Rural  Teacher  and  His  Work,  The.  H.  W.  Foght.  1920.  The 
 Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  $1.40. 
 
 Successful  Teaching  in  Rural  Schools.  M.  S.  Pittman.  1922. 
 American  Book  Co.,  New  York.  $1.40. 
 
 Consolidated  Schools  of  the  Mountains,  Valleys,  and  Plains  of 
 Colorado.  C.  G.  Sargent.  Colorado  Agricultural  College 
 Bulletin,  June,  1921.  Colorado  Agricultural  College,  Fort 
 Collins,  Colorado. 
 
 RELIGIOUS  NURTURE 
 
 m 
 
 New  Program  of  Religious  Education,  The.  George  Herbert 
 Betts.  1921.  Abingdon  Press,  New  York.  75  cents. 
 
 Evolution  of  the  Sunday-School,  The.  Henry  F.  Cope.  1911. 
 Pilgrim  Press,  Boston.  75  cents. 
 
Week-day  Church  School,  The.  Henry  F.  Cope.,,  1921.  George 
 H.  Doran  Co.,  New  York.  $2.00. 
 
 School  in  the  Modern  Church,  The.  Henry  F.  Cope.  1919. 
 George  H.  Doran  Co.,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 Religious  Education  and  American  Democracy.  Walter  Scott 
 Athearn.  1917.  Pilgrim  Press,  Boston.  $1.75. 
 
 Social  Theory  of  Religious  Education,  A.  George  Albert  Coe. 
 1917.  Charles  Scribner’s  Sons,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 How  to  Organise  a  Daily  Vacation  Bible  School.  Albert  H. 
 Gage.  1922.  Judson  Press,  Philadelphia.  $1.50. 
 
 Christian  Citizenship  for  Girls.  Helen  Thoburn.  1922.  The 
 Woman’s  Press,  New  York.  Cloth,  55  cents;  paper,  35  cents. 
 
 Handbook  for  Comrades.  A  program  of  Christian  citizenship 
 training  for  boys  fifteen  to  seventeen  years  of  age.  1920. 
 Association  Press,  New  York.  75  cents. 
 
 Handbook  for  Pioneers.  A  program  of  Christian  citizenship 
 training  for  boys  twelve  to  fourteen  years  of  age.  1919. 
 Association  Press,  New  York.  85  cents. 
 
 Missionary  Education  of  Juniors.  J.  Gertrude  Hutton.  1917. 
 Missionary  Education  Movement,  150  Fifth  Avenue,  New 
 York.  60  cents.  Order  through  denominational  head¬ 
 quarters. 
 
 SPECIAL  GROUPS 
 
 Near  Side  of  the  Mexican  Question,  The.  Jay  S.  Stowell. 
 1921.  George  H.  Doran  Co.,  New  York.  $1.50. 
 
 Trend  of  the  Races,  The.  George  E.  Haynes.  1922.  Mission¬ 
 ary  Education  Movement,  150  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 
 Cloth,  75  cents ;  paper,  50  cents.  Order  through  denomina¬ 
 tional  headquarters. 
 
 «  _  _  _ 
 
 American  Indian  on  the  New  Trail,  The.  Thomas  C.  Moffett. 
 
 Same  as  above. 
 
 PERIODICALS 
 
 American  Child,  The.  Published  quarterly  by  National  Child 
 Labor  Committee,  105  East  22nd  Street,  New  York.  $2.00 
 per  year. 
 
 Playground,  The.  A  monthly  magazine  published  by  Playground 
 and  Recreation  Association  of  America,  315  Fourth  Avenue, 
 New  York.  $2.00  per  year. 
 
Date  Due 
 
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