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How To Save Children

How To Save Children image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
July
Year
1873
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

An English writer has just publisbel a book called " The Gaol Cradte ; Who Bocks It," in which he brings home to cvery reader the condition of the Btreet cliildren of Loudou, and shows what to niany had not ocourred before, that these poor creatures are human, and that their gradual degeneracy into crimináis is du to the neglect of society toward them. He calk to mind tho little outbutsts oL wiokedness that the best of children in the happiest of homes are soraetimes addicted to, and declares that these very outbursts in the street children lead to their arrest and impiisonment. Th child that the pólice captures goe8 to sorae reformatory or prison for tivo years, and then is discharged to take its chances of lieing arrested again ; the child that is ill-behaved at home is warned of its bad conduct, perhaps is sometimes whipped, and learns government gradually, grows up to be a man or woman and takes its turn at the whipping, training and educating eomebody else. The children of the street know no government but that of the pólice, and no gradation of discipline. Educated as they aro, it is as natural for them to grow up to hate law and society as it is for the others to become gradually a part of the -well-b"haved potmlation. The writer starts with the idea of a general rcsemblance in the characters and natures of all cbildren, and holds that the differences developed afterward are greatly due to different inttuences brought to beer upon them. The rernedy that he proposes and calis for is a change of treatraent toward these poor things, and a removal of their charge trom the pólice to a board of humanitarians who shall try to prevent crime by educating children out of th schools for crimináis that tlieir present lives really are.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus