Golden Age, March 18, 1931
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ofe Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND. COURAGE
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in this issue
THE LITTLE FOLKS
RULES FOR NEXT WAR
THE GRIST
GERMS
THE MODERN SUPERSTITION
A CONFESSION
WHO IS JEHOVAH?
An address by Judge Rutherford broadcast in WATCHTOWER national chain program
every other
WEDNESDAY
five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25
Vol. XII . No. 300
March 18, 1931
CO N T E NTS
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
Starvation near Ashland, Ky. . . 398
■ Six-Hour Day at Battle Creek. . 399
4,357,000 Jobless in Germany . . 402
What Is the Matter? .... 402
Cause of Hard Times ..... 409
Forty Million a Year Graft . 400
The Cape Cod Canal .... 4.01
AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY
New Tree-Planting Device . . . 399
Trying to Find Uses for Cotton . 399
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
The Little Folks ...... 387
The Grist ......... 398
Einstein’s Stand on Militarism . 398
$7,500,000 for Alabama Schools . 400
What a Jail Is ..... . 403
Canada Still Uses Lash . . . 414
MANUFACTURING AND MINING
A Renovated Fable . . . . . . 408
FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION
8% of World’s Shipping Idle Prices of Bread ..... The Steel. Rail Trant . , Saved the Banks Too . .
Our Chain Civilization . .
. 398 . 399 . 399 . 402 . 403
Diversion of Wealth
SCIENCE AND INVENTION
Cane-Cutting Machine .... 4.00
Hellertion Makes All Tones . . 400 9,600 'Words a Minute .... 400 God Behind the Universe . . . 400 Chabal Method of Filtration . , 406
HOME AND HEALTH
Germs, the Modern Superstition . 404
A Confession ........ 407
Birds Dodged Aluminum .... 415
TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY
Esthonia to Miami by Sailboat . 398
Wireless in Arabia . . . . . 398
Forced Labor in Kenya . . , 401
Slaves of Abyssinia ..... 401
Child Labor in Egypt' .... 402
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Rui.es fok Conduct of Next War . 397
Free Power in Essex ..... 399
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Religious Liberty in Philippines 398
Federal Council Associates . . 409
Who Is Jehovah? ...... 410
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The Golden Age
V»i«ma XII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, Marsh 18, 1931 Number 300
The Little Folks
CHILDREN usually come into the world one at a time, and even if they do occasionally come as twins, and more rarely as triplets, every one of them brings his own problems. Nature evidently intended that they should be handled singly, and not in masses. They are happiest and make the best development that way, and yet, odd little sinners, they almost have to have the companionship of other children, to bring them up right.
Furthermore, little folks are little folks for a long time, even after their bodies are of large size, because the mind continues to expand. In our day men are counted mature at 21 and women at 18, but the divine regulation of the affairs of the Jewish people fixed the maturity of men at 30 years, and that is about right. He is then in possession of his full powers.
The way it works out now, a man develops for thirty years, works for thirty years, de-'•ays for ten years, and dies at seventy, wondering why it took so long Lor him to get ready to do so little. Nearly half his life is spent in getting ready to do something.
Some of the little folks at about two years of age are not so pleasant to have around. Not a few of them, naturally endowed by their parents with considerable destructiveness, cxecutive-ness, manifest it in ways that are a trial to the more civilized, seeming to think that to wreck everything in sight is life’s main objective. Tlmy usually have to feel, the strong arm of parental law to got them out of that frame of mind, and it takes time, and patience.
The present, and gro-w ingly popular misconception of a destructive or wayward child, that it should be studied and not punished occasionally, is nonsense. The Scriptures say that one may ‘spare the red and spoil the child’, and it is true. At the same time, punishment is often greatly overdone; and with a nervous, sensitive, conscientious child, is rarely necessary, and may take a very mild form and be completely effective.
Children should be brought up, but not overgroomed. More harm has been done by overbringing-up than by under-bringing-up. In the period of youth the child learns how to become a satisfactory member of his family and of the human family, and he learns it best with as little detailed guidance as possible.
Parents should not strive to make their children feel that they are dependent upon them for guidance. No parent knows enough to guide all the details of any child’s life, and if lie did, and used the knowledge, and the child submitted to it, the child would never amount to anything in this world. He would be an automaton.
A child that never has a chance to use his own judgment will never have any judgment to use. A parent that seeks to order all the affairs of a child is a despot, a kind-hearted tyrant perhaps, but a tyrant nevertheless: and the rule of even the most benevolent of despots is irksome. A good example on the part of the parents is the best instruction the child can ever have. Words are not so effective: talk is cheap.
The very best that a parent can do for a child is to truly Jove him. Love 'will know when to speak and when not to speak, when to act and when not to act, its object being at all times to help the child to grow up to a place where he can take •.-are of himself, lie independent, Le a care to nobody, but, on the contrary, be groomed to be a help to others.
The child gives as much as he gets, perhaps more. It would be impossible to gauge the benefit that has come to men and women through association with the fresh, sweet, unspoiled minds of little folks. They have been described as ‘the greatest civilizers and hmnanizers of the race’.
■n. QOLDEN AGE
The Country the Best
The country is the best place to bring up children. They learn to find companionship in the trees, the streams, the camp fires, the wild life, the changing seasons, the skies, the weather, a thousand things that the child brought up on the pavements hardly senses. One-half the children are now brought up in the city. It cannot well be helped at present, but it is not the. best place.
The Boy Scout movement tri.es to accomplish something in the way of getting city boys out into the country, and there are other moves to the same end, but the boys are necessarily compelled to travel in droves and to move almost mechanically, and this has its drawbacks.
Since the inception of the Children’s Bureau in 1912 there has been much more attention paid to child rearing in America than was ever done previously. This bureau was created as a research bureau, directed to “investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people”.
At the time the bureau was formed only one state had a bureau of child health; now’ they are to be found in half of the states. At the time the bureau was formed there were about two million child workers; according to latest reports there are now only about half that number.
The bureau was a prominent factor in the recent White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. At that conference Secretary Wilbur said:
We attempt to herd all our children under 16 into the school rooms for a considerable number of hours each day for a considerable number of months, using their eyes and their brains in a certain way. We have increased the number of noise-making devices, raised the speed of our activities; we have brought in the moving picture, the radio, the phonograph. We are exposing our youth to an enormous series of influences and are becoming conscious that we have done something to rob them of their natural opportunities. Those of us who have a large university responsibility have thought a good deal about this question. For the most part we find that the students who come to us are physically competent, honest" clean and square. They think straight and true. But we find, too, that those students who come from the smaller communities seem to do the best; mass living gives us the poorest we get. And so I say mass living for children must go.
The awakening in the United States on the question of the importance of giving the children at least, an opportunity to get into the country is part of the general awakening now under way everywhere. In Austria during the last ten years 75,000 young workers have been given vacations in the country at nominal expense. The average vacation period is four weeks. Proper food and outdoor exercise and recreation are provided. The cost of the country homes is met by sicknessinsurance funds, appropriations by the national and local governments and the fees paid by the young vacationists.
A survey of the physical growth and mental attainment of the boys and girls of New Zealand, which included 20,000 town and country children ranging in age from ten to fourteen, showed that farm children are superior to city-reared children and that this superiority is most pronounced at the age of thirteen.
Keeping the Kiddies Well
It is not so easy to keep the children well. Most of them are now born in the cities, where the sunlight is deficient and the air is vitiated and impure. Fruits and vegetables can be had in greater profusion than ever before, it is true, and these are first aids to health; but the milk is pasteurized, too much of the bread is white bread, and too much of the food has the life refrigerated out of it.
Probably the worst thing the city-bred child has to contend with is the injection into his blood of poisoned calf blood and poisoned horse blood, in the superstition that they will prevent him from catching some of the numerous diseases of childhood and maturity.
Every year the automobile takes a very large toll of the lives of childhood. Some of this great waste of precious lives can be prevented by having the children memorize the following eleven rules for safety, put out by Morgan’s Message:
1. Walk on the left side of the road, facing the approaching traffic.
2. When in groups, walk in single file.
3. Before crossing the street, look first to the left, then to the right.
4. Do not play games along the street or highway while at school or while going to and from school.
5. Do not roller-skate in the street or on the highway.
6. Do not heedlessly run into the street or highway after a ball.
7. Do not hitch on to trolley ears, wagons oi’ automobiles.
8. Do not nm into the street or highway from behind parked autos or moving vehicles.
9. Do not hold an umbrella, on rainy days, in a manner that will obstruct your view of the road in front.
10. Never ride a bicycle on the highway for sport. When riding one, keep close to the right side of the road.
11. Do not beg or accept a ride from strangers along a highway.
May 1 has been officially proclaimed by President Hoover as National Child Health Day; but let us all make every day a child health day. The most beautiful thing in life is a child, and the most eare-iTee. Do not fuss over a child’s health, but out of the corner of your eye see to it that he gets enough rest, food of the right kind and the right quantity at the right time, and properly masticates it, and that he gets enough exercise, but not too much. If a child seems to be lazy he is ill.
As a general rule a child two years old is half the height he will be when he is fully grown. Height depends a great deal on the kind of food supplied to a child during the growing period. But there are abnormalities. The kind of food given him would hardly account for the fact that at 6-J years Harold Hines, of Morristown, Tenn., weighed 165 pounds.
Children in Institutions
That headline ought not to be necessary, for there should be no children in institutions. The poorest kind of home, where there is mother love in it, is better than any institutional home. The United States is the most institution-ridden country in the world, and is behind the times in that respect.
The most pathetic part of the population of the United States is the 125,000 little children in the orphan asylums, receiving a little attention on December 25, hut for most of the year unnoticed, neglected, and often sick, half-starved and half-educated, under the ill-paid care of those who have little or no real interest in them.
Besides the dependent children in institutions there are 300,000 that are wholly or partially supported in. their own or other private homes. The average cost of maintaining a child in an orphan asylum is around $40 a month, while in its own home it can be maintained for about $17 a month. New York city’s allowance for boarding dependent children in private homes is now $7.65 a week.
New York state has over 30,000 children being housed and trained in institutions. England has 60,000. If all their caretakers loved them and were kind to them most of these children would grow up to be kind; but if they are cruel it is inevitable that many of the children will be cruel.
On the other side of the ledger, working against cruelty in private homes, is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which in 1929 in New York took care of 5,577 children, in addition to looking after complaints of cruelty, abuse, neglect, improper guardianship, etc., of about 12,000 more not taken from their homes. The Society prosecuted 870 adults for crimes against children. .
Finding Homes for Little Folks
To provide a helpless little child with a good home and with the parental affection which it craves and which it must have if it is to bloom into happy youth and maturity, is one of the greatest works in which any man or woman can engage, and a work that has its own reward in the doing.
For seventy-five years, under the management of Charles Loring Brace, father and son, the Children’s Aid Society of New York has been placing thousands of children in homes, on farms or in villages away from the city streets and away from the regimentation of the orphan asylums. About $2,000,000 a year is spent in this work and in improving the condition of the city’s under-privileged children.
The position is well taken that while in a wellmanaged public institution the child might have better physical care, and perhaps better mental training, yet in a home where it can have discipline tempered with love and sympathy and understanding, it is far better off.
Besides the children which it aids in finding better homes than the city streets provide, the Children’s Aid Society is also responsible for getting about 250 babies adopted each year. The demand is three times the supply. The favorite brand is a blond baby girl.
The Uses and Abuses of Imagination,
Find a person that is without imagination, and you find one of the most utterly uninteresting persons in the vwld. Such a person cannot even read the Bible understandingly, for it is impossible to read a hook filled with pictures, figures or symbols if one has no imagination.
It cannot be charged against children that they are without imagination. About one-third of all children tell fibs. Under the age of five ' there is no conscious falsehood, but imagination runs riot and requires thereafter to be gently guided into the realm of reality.
Many of the lessons that a child learns in the home are from contact with the things that are discarded. The scrap bag, with its bits of cloth of all textures and colors, offers fine training for the eyes and fingers. There is a time when the child wishes to touch everything with which he comes in contact. Let him do it: it is a necessary part of his education.
Children should never be frightened. A three-year-old child playing in the yard of a farmhouse near Sandusky, Ohio, was frightened to death by the terrifying spectacle of a goose, attacking with bill and flapping wings. Two parents in Georgia locked a three-year-old daughter in a clothes closet and later found her strangled by a eoachwhip snake that had secreted itself there.
In New York a boy endured for four days the pain of a bullet in his abdomen, and finally died in agony, because he dared not tell his parents he had been playing with a forbidden rifle. At Point Pleasant, N. J., a three-year-old child died of fright when a dog that had been sent in a crate to her father jumped upon her from the crate.
Health, Cedtuve tells of a boy whose health ■was undermined from seeing a film called "'The Haunted Bedroom”. For three; years after that he was accustomed to awake from his sleep declaring that the ghosts were coming. Quite probably the demons took advantage of his fear to invade his mind.
Sometimes a boy’s inquisitiveness gets him into trouble, but even then it should not be discouraged. At Cambridge, Mass., an eight-year-old boy was studiously watching the mechanism of a rotary sweeper, when he was picked up by its revolving brush and swept into its reservoir with a bundle of leaves. He was not injured.
On the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen the children of Copenhagen, Denmark, had a great time. Not only were they given a holiday for the day, but lemonade and orangeade 'were free to them all over town all day, and free chocolates and candies were also distributed.
The years of imagination are soon over. In after life the rills of childhood that once seemed like little rivers grow smaller and smaller in the mind’s eye, and the hills that once seemed to be imposing heights are seen as but small elevations, without lure and without romance.
Social Instincts of Children
The social instincts of children are more pronounced than those of grown people. They demand the companion ship of those of approximately the same age, and will do almost anything to get it. A house full of children is sure to be full to overflowing, not merely with its own children, but with all the boys and girls of the neighborhood.
Frequently the New York newspapers contain the letters of little girls expressing their desire for addition to the families of their parents. Little Audrey Schlipp, eight years old, wanted a baby sister and took definite steps to get one. She wrote to the Long Island College Hospital:
'All the other children have sisters or brothers and I haven’t any. I want a sister' to play with and to mind. I spoke to mother and dad about it, but they just put mo off. I saw in the newspapers that the Long Island College Hospital has a whole lot of new babies, so I thought they could send one of them down here. It seems mother will take eare of it if it comes here, but she doesn’t want to go after it. If I knew the way, I’d go after it myself.’
A little nine-year-old boy in Boston stole $20 from his teacher not long ago, and when the matter got into the hands of Boston's Institute for Guidance in Childhood and Youth the Foundation discovered that the child had bought shoes and stockings for his younger brothers and sisters and had spent only twenty cents upon himself. He had the makings of a Wall Street philanthropist, only he was much move unselfish.
What was it that made three-year-old Richard Moore climb out of bed at two-thirty in the morning and go out into the street barefoot, clad only in his pa.jamas? He paraded around for an hour, until a taxicab driver found him and took him to a hospital for the remainder of the night. Even then he did not want to go to bed. He told the nurses he wanted to make a night of it. He was a typical son of some New York city fathers.
What was it that made Jerry Postora, seven years old, climb up the front of a building to the cornice on the second floor? Jerry started in a bad line of business. When he got up one flight he could not got hack, and he had to hang on while they sent for the lire department to rescue him.
The officials of the Palisades Interstate Park are making the boys socially-minded by compelling offenders to learn to recite the park ordinances by heart when they are caught doing damage. This method of disciplining boys for tearing up young trees and destroying flowers is said to work well.
It is claimed by some that every boy should grow up with a dog, on the ground that it will make the boy a fairer, kinder, truer man. The Greenwich Joxtrnal says: “He will learn to love fairness, justice and mercy, just as he will come to hate meanness, cruelty and cowardice, through daily contact with his big-eyed, shaggy-coated, understanding friend.” But we remark that there are some dogs, not many, however, that really seem to have as mean disposition as any human could possibly have. Such a dog is of no benefit to anybody, and one wonders why some dogs are allow’ed to live.
On this matter of the social instincts of children, students of such subjects have pointed out that in their association one with another children pass around the world the rhymes that they repeat in their games at recess. Some of these rhymes are ancient, some are adapted from folklore, and some are modern. They pass from place to place, from country to country, and from generation to generation, without the intervention of the printing press, a survival of the days of minstrelsy.
Baboon and Wolf Foster-Children’
Some twenty-five years ago the South African police, in a barren stretch of country, came across a pack of baboons and fired upon them. As the men fired the beasts scattered; but one of them lagged behind and, though he proved to be a slippery customer, was captured. He turned out to he a native boy that had been captured by the baboons while he was still a baby.
After a year in a hospital he learned to speak a little English, and in time disclosed the habits of his baboon friends. He had no idea of time, not even of the meaning of sunset or sunrise. He remembered how during cold nights one of the baboons had been in the habit of holding him in his arms, to shield him from the cold, and how they appeased their constant hunger by eating crickets.
When captured lie was running about on all fours;but he learned to walk upright, and could run a ten-mile errand without stopping for breath, lie could lift and carry two iOO-pound sacks of grain. He had almost no memory, and was capable only of doing what he was told at the moment the order was given.
In the province of Oudh, India, in times past, several native children have been adopted by wolves and been recovered to civilization. One such was found at Maiwana, seventy-five miles from Allahabad, in 1927. The child is able to walk, but at times prefers to crawl, sitting on his haunches with his legs curled underneath him, and propelling himself forward with the palms of his hands on the ground. Having lived on roots and herbs for years, he even now eats grass when taken out in the evening.
At Chupra, India, in 1843, a man and his wife were out in their fields accompanied by their child, marked on one knee by a severe scald. The child was carried off by a wolf, and six years later was recaptured, after a fierce resistance, and plainly recognized by the mother as her child.
Several “wolf-boys” have been kept at various times at the Secundra Orphanage at Agra. One such was there in 1874, having then been there for nine years and supposed to be about fifteen years old. His arms W’ere but nineteen inches long, due to arrested growth, through his going about on all fours.
It is supposed that these numerous “wolf-childreij” in India have come about through the fact that in times of famine the parents in this part used often to abandon their children in the forests, and the wolves some years ago were very plentiful. The fact that the wolves kept these human babies instead of eating them shows plainly the reverence which wild animals naturally have for humans, and the love of all mothers and fathers for child life in any form, whatever.
The thing works in reverse order too. In New York city it has been found that the best agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are the children. The vicinity of Clarkson and Houston Streets, New York, is known by horse drivers as “Animals’ Paradise” because of the close watch that the children of the neighborhood keep as to how the drivers treat the brute beasts under their care.
Juvenile Delinquency
It is natural for ail healthy children to keep in motion, and a juvenile delinquent is a child, that, for the time being, is busy in the wrong direction. Some of this delinquency is due to inquisitiveness, a desire to find how far one may go in a 'direction that has the 'disapproval of his elders without getting into trouble.
It is natural for boys to be mischievous. Mark Twain said that all hoys should be kept in a 'barrel and fed through the bunghole until they reach fourteen years of age, and after that time the bunghole should be closed up. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were normal boys.
It is well recognized by those who have studied the matter that there is a direct relation between the juvenile delinquency of a district and its recreational facilities. Boys and girls must be given something to do or they will do something else. Automobiles have increased juvenile delinquency by taking away from thousands of children the only places where they could play.
The great majority of delinquents come from areas where bad housing and lack of open play spaces prevent suitable outlet for their energies. Forty percent of juvenile delinquents come from broken homes in which death, desertion, divorce or separation of the parents has disrupted the family.
Delinquency and the World War
Much of present delinquency, not only of children, but of adults, can be properly traced to the beastly influence of the World War. When men and wrnmen have their minds filled with hate of their fellow men and disregard of human life, what can be expected of the children that come into the world while their minds are in that condition ?
At Ronchin, near Lille, France, in 1927, a boy twelve years of age called a five-year-old child to his side with the words, “Come here, I will give you a bonbon.” The tiny boy ran to him, and laughingly the bigger boy pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the throat. When told that the little fellow would probably die, the bigger boy only laughed. There was no feud between the two children. The bigger boy was born in 1915, when the horrors of the World War were at their height.
A boy of the same age, at about the same time as the above occurrence, was arrested for planning to blow up a school building in which he had been disciplined. He gave himself away by visiting numerous hardware stores and making inquiries about shells and other explosives.
We can fairly charge to the World War the intoxication of a nine-year-old boy in the Bronx. He got into his grandmother's cellar and helped himself to a bottle of her cherry wine. But for a well-known war measure, now the laughingstock of the world, she would probably never have thought of making the cherry wine and he would never have thought of drinking it.
Yet the men that were responsible for making the World War as bad as it was are still looked up to in some communities as men to be admired. In York, Pa., five girls and two boys, constituting a shoplifting team, were sentenced to go to their ministers, confess their sins, and attend Sunday school for a three-year probation period.
The Delinquency Is Growing
One of the saddest things about juvenile 'delinquency is that it is growing. There is a marked tendency among youth to go to the bad. Statistics show that every 'boy in the city, when he reaches the age of sixteen has at least a one-to-three chance that his name will be part of the criminal record ; and in'New Yrork city in 1929 there were more cases of degradation of girls under sixteen than in any other year in history.
It should not be thought that the delinquent children are mostly morons. This is not true. Seventy-six percent of them are normal, and eleven percent of this number are above the average in mentality. Delinquents cannot be made into good men and women in institutions. That work must be done in the future where it lias been done in the past, in the homes.
Some parents believe in taking the police into their confidence and giving them a chance to do something before it gets too late. In Springfield, Illinois, eleven-year-old Cedric Dickinson decided that he would not go to bed at his usual time, 8.30 p. m., and went on a rampage. His grandmother telephoned for the police that there was.a wild man in the house. Three husky cops responded and the grandmother explained, “Cedric is wild; he won’t go to bed.” “Yes, I will,” cried Cedric, and he made a dive for the hay and pulled the covers over his head.
It isn’t only the grandparents that kno-w when to summon the police. A New York lad, Hersey Garfinkle, is only seven years old, but he knows what he wants. He called up the police station and demanded a patrol wagon and a couple of cops in. a hurry. 'There was a good deal of commotion in the station until the man at the desk managed to find out that Hersey’s ten-year-old brother Albert would not let him into the pantry for some crackers and jam.
Occasionally there is a ease of delinquency which must be charged to the demons. There seems no other way to explain the following speech of a four-year-old child at Chambersburg, Penna., when questioned concerning the death of his mother, who was found with a bullet wound in her neck: “Sure I shot hex. I’d shoot her again if she were here now. I’ll shoot you too, if you don’t lay off me. I killed my mamma because she took the box of matches away from me and told me not to play with them.”
The Children in Russia
Before the revolution in Russia the pigs and cows and horses received much more attention than the children, and about the only instrument used in bringing up children was the fist. That was how much use the “'Orthodox Church” really was to the people.
When the war and the revolution upset everything thousands of the children were left orphans and literally went wild. These Bezprizor-ni, as they were called, have been one of Russia’s great problems. The claim is made that this problem is solved, yet as late as the fall of 1929 in one city of Transcaucasia 480 of them were arrested.
These vagabond children flock to the cities in the wintertime and to the country in the summer. They go north in the summer and south in the winter and travel in packs, governed by laws and regulations of their own. They live on whatever falls into their grasp, picking pockets, and stealing valises, handbags, fruit or whatever can be seized.
In the “'new day” that has dawned for Russia’s children there is apparently being made a sincere effort to uplift them physically and mentally, while closing to them every door that would lead them to a knowledge of God. Russia is admittedly short of the necessities of modern life: books, paper, pencils, are luxuries. Yet there is some effort to supply these, and there are kindergartens in almost every village. All over the country are posters warning parents that they have no right to beat their children.
The radio is being used to entertain the people, and to instruct them as well. Mothers are taught over the radio much that is of interest and importance in the care of their children’s bodies. There are now 476 museums in Russia, as compared ’with 30 before the revolution. And these museums are crowded most of the time. The motto or slogan which the Soviet government has provided for the children is “Learn, Learn and Learn”.
Soviet laws forbid the employment of children up to fourteen years of age, yet in the summer of 1929 papers published in Russia, but not usually circulating outside of Russia, claimed that there were at that time more than 1,000,000 children between the ages of eight and fourteen who were working as wage-earners. Russia is a good way from being a paradise for. children, therefore, though there seems to be no reasonable question of the great effort being made to rectify and atone for the previous intolerable conditions.
The Child Defectives "
There are three million child defectives in the United States, and that is more than ten percent of all the children in the elementary schools of the country. These children are suffering from defective sight, hearing, speech, mental retardation, emotional instability, or some other handicap. And this does not include the 625,000 with weak hearts and the 6,000,000 that are undernourished.
It is believed essential that all these children should be given training in special classes if they are to become useful citizens. That seems like a large under taking, but-it is claimed that ferv investments of the taxpayers money have yielded as large returns as that expended in the rehabilitation of disabled adults, and-it is believed that even more can be done with, the same money expended on children. New York city provides special classes fox its 4,000 crippled children.
A recent survey of children attending kindergarten in a congested section of Brooklyn disclosed that only one child out of five was free from physical ailments of some kind. In a continuation school in New York city less than one out of seven of 2,700 boys was found free from physical defects. Left-handed children are not defective, and their left-handedness should not be interfered with.
It is an unfortunate fact that the children who go into factory work at the earliest possible moment are the ones who are least fitted for it. It is the children of the poor whose nerves are unstrung by what they have seen and heard and experienced, not the children of the aristocrats.
And if they are not defectives when they go into the factories, many children soon become so. The constant tending of machines results in nervous 'diseases, heart 'defects, tuberculosis, toxic poisoning, catarrhal affections, curvature of the spine and permanent injuries to bones and muscles. The worst effect of all. is on the child’s mind.
The Manchester Guardian claims that in England there are at least half a million children in the elementary schools who are dull and backward, and half a million others who need medical attention before they can gain reasonable benefit from the education which the state provides.
Child Labor
There, are over one million children in the United States who are between „the ages of 10 and 15 and who are not in school because they have to do something to keep alive. A report gives the number in various occupations as follows:
5,800 mine boys,
7,500 shoe factory workers,
10,500 furniture factory workers, 12,000 clothing factory workers, 13,000 in steel mills,
18,000 messenger boys and girls, 20,700 insurance boys, 22,500 office boys and girls, 30,000 sales boys and girls, 41,000 child servants, ,
55,000 textile workers.
It is claimed that in the city of Reading, Pa., 51 percent of all the children between 14 and 16 years of age are working for wages. This is the worst showing of any city in Pennsylvania. The evil of getting out of a child all there is in him at this tender age is that it stunts his physical and mental growth, and puts him into a blind alley job where he can never hope to make any appreciable progress.
New Jersey has a bad reputation for overworked children. In the northern part of the state much work is brought into the homes to escape the relatively more stringent regulations in effect in New York. In the southern part of the state thousands of Philadelphia children work on the truck farms throughout the summer months for wages that are a disgrace to even put in print. Twelve percent of these child workers on farms get less than 5c an hour when working at their best speed. Only 33 percent get over 15c an hour. In some of the Philadelphia school districts more than one-half of the pupils join in this truck farm migration early in the spring and, of these, 90 percent do not reach the normal grade in school for children of their age.
The economic factor plays a large part in sending children to work at an early age. The United States Children’s Bureau studied the cases of 7,000 children engaged in street trades, newspaper selling and carrying, and street peddling, and found that in almost all cases the children came from poor families. They did these things, not because they wished to, but because they had to.
Stringent school attendance laws will not control child labor. If the fathers cannot earn enough to maintain the family, the boys and girls will inevitably go out to help them. New York has plenty of urchins 6 to 12 years of age who are illegally acting as bootblacks. All their work is done with one eye out for the cops.
In biting words Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote of child labor many years ago:
No fledgeling feeds the father bird!
No chicken feeds the hen!
No kitten mouses for the eat—■ This glory is for men.
We are the Wisest, Strongest Race—
Loud may our praise be sung!
The only animal alive
That lives upon its young!
Child Labor Legislation
Some time in the eighties New York and Colorado passed laws fixing the 14-year age minimum for employment of both boys and girls in manufacturing. This general rule has been extended to many of the other states, so that in 1907 there were 29 states that kept children under 14 out of the factory. This law is frequently indifferently enforced.
New York state now’ has a law’ making it illegal for a minor under 14 to be employed in. any business or service. Minors from 14 to 17, are required to receive part-time instruction in school, and those from 17 to 21 who cannot read and write English must take evening instruction.
There are still three states where there is no minimum age for work in factories except indirectly through the school laws; and five more where children may work in factories at 12 years or even younger outside of school hours. In 11. states children under 16 may still work in factories after 7 p. m., and in 12 states they may work more than eight hours a day. Most of these states are in the South.
The employment of children under the legal age is very common in canneries, and in part due to the fact that canneries were formerly exempted from compliance with the age factors of the child labor laws. In the fall of 1930 a check-up was made of 1,127 under 14 years of age found at work in canneries and it was found that 78 percent of these were under the legal working age of the states in which they were found. The cannery employees often go from state to state and may work legally in one state and illegally in another. .
According- to the laws of the state of New York double indemnity is awarded for minors injured while illegally employed, but sixteen of the states, including the great industrial state of Pennsylvania, exclude such minors from any compensation whatever.
In one industrial accident in Pennsylvania in which a boy under 18 was killed the employer was fined $25 and costs amounting to $10.60. In another accident in the same state, in which a boy of 15 was killed and three children of 13, 14 and 15 years were injured, the employer was fined $15.
The minimum age at which children may leave school to go to work in Britain is 15. In Ecuador no child under 14 years may be employed, except that between 12 and 14 certain work may 'be done by a child who lias completed certain studies or whose parents need his assistance.
In Brazil no child under 12 may work, and between 12 and 14 only if certain school work has been finished. Every child under 18 must have a certificate of physical fitness before he may go to work at all; he may not work to exceed six hours a day, and night work is forbidden.
Congress has twice tried to enact child labor legislation, only to have its work destroyed by the Supreme Court. A child labor amendment was passed in 1924, but so far only five states have ratified it. The Roman Catholic church used its great political power’ in Massachusetts to defeat this humane piece of legislation in that state; the priests were required to openly oppose it.
Child Prodigies
Adults are always interested in child prodigies, and every generation produces many. At the age of ten months Christian Heinicker, born " in 1721, at Dubeek, could speak and repeat any word said to him. Within a year thereafter he knew most of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. In his third year he was conversant with history and geography. In his fourth year he mastered French, and died from a weakened constitution the same year.
Mozart composed music before he was 4; Beethoven played in public when he was 8, and was publishing music at 10. Chopin played a concerto in public with distinction at the age of 9. An Alabama boy recently finished reading his twenty-seventh book at the age of 4J.
Occasionally there seems to be a child with a natural bent in a mathematical direction that baffles understanding. A little Danish boy 6 years old instantly multiplies figures with products as high as 10,000, giving accurate answers in less than ten seconds.
At the age of 6 years Lorraine Jaillet, of New York, speaks and writes in French, English and Spanish; writes and directs her own dramas; composes poetry, paints, and conducts all her correspondence on a typewriter. Twenty physicians have, pronounced her as nearly physically perfect as a child may be.
The outstanding musical genius of today is a boy of 12, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. At twelve years of age he astonished the world with a performance in Carnegie Hall, New York, that the musicians are still talking about. Off the concert stage he is said to be a-normal child.
Harold Finley, 13, has just been congratulated by the president of Northwestern University upon matriculating in that institution. It is denied that prodigies develop into inferior adults. An investigation of hundreds of cases proves that it is not correct.
A Few Educational Items
In England about 1,000 children of school age live on canal boats which are always on the move. The natural result is that these children get only about 20 half-days a year in school. It is proposed to rectify this matter by having traveling schools in which the teachers follow the children from, port to port. This method of teaching forester’s children in Canada has been, tried and found sueetssful.
There are now about 60 publishers that publish hooks and magazines for children, as against a very few only a generation ago. Columbia University is making an effort to purify ehil-dren’s literature, by cutting out fairy stories and other literature that is false and impossible.
Kingsley Fairbridge maintains in Western Australia a school for poor children in which they are educated to step out of the slums of London and into the fresh air and sunshine of Australia. It is said that the output of this school provides just the kind of immigrants that Australia needs and desires, a>_d that the school is a great success and has no enemies.
Two or three years ago New York city staged a novel addition to the education of its boys and girls, causing them to engage in a city-wide competition. for model airplanes with rubber bands as their sole motive power. In several instances the children developed planes that are quite different from any planes in use and that may sometime be used for full-sized planes.
Educating the Parents
A generation ago parents took the view that children owed them gratitude for bringing them into the world and maintaining them during infancy; and that is God’s view, the Bible view. But it is no longer popular. The present view seems to be that no matter how badly a child needs correction the parent should withhold it and look on the child as a mysterious creature that needs constant study to be understood.
There is nothing so mysterious about children. If a father is disorderly his son is liable to be so too. If a mother is quick-tempered she is liable to have a daughter that has tantrums. Parents usually see in their children a composite of what they were when they were young.
With the idea of helping both the children and the parents there are now visiting teachers in some localities who go about visiting homes finding out what makes Johnny do the impossible things lie does in school and suggesting what the parents may do or not do to turn him into a civilized person. It is a ticklish job, but it is a good place to begin. Some parents lie to their children, and even tell them to lie to others, and then marvel that they are lied to in return.
A Portland (Oregon) woman, interested in the case of four boys who confessed to thefts of 40 automobiles and one attempted holdup, made the bold proposal that their parents should be prosecuted on the ground that they had neglected them; and maybe she was right at that.
Many a father is so immersed in money-making, and many a mother is so wrapped up in her social affairs, that there is little time left for thought respecting the most important thing entrusted to them. Scolding a child now and then, or interfering often in its activities, does not give it the aid it needs for its development.
Today there are high school courses in parent-craft, and there should be. The children of trained parents are said to be more self-reliant, better able to make their own decisions than those of the untrained. They are said to have initiative and enterprise and to be working nearer the limit of their capacity, to be sounder in health, and to be more tolerant and courteous and unafraid.
Today organized parent education programs are in operation in 22 states of the Union. Six universities and two schools for social work offer graduate provisional training for parent educational workers. Parents are learning that the first few’ years of a child’s life are the most important, and a study of the .spoiled child problem shows that children do not outgrow early habits as soon as parents think they will. Many of them go through life with these attitudes and then develop mental and nervous breakdowns when they find they are not equipped to meet bravely the vicissitudes and responsibilities of adult existence.
We conclude with a touching little skit entitled “Father to Son”, taken from The Blue Flame .•
Listen, son-—I am saying this to you as you lie asleep, one little hand crumpled under your cheek and the tumbled hair stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a hot stifling wave of remorse swept over me. I could not resist it. Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are things that I was thinking, son; I had been cross to you and I scolded you because you gave your face a mere dab with, the towel instead of washing- well. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when I found you had thrown some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread too much jelly on your bread and it dripped on the tablecloth. And as you started off to play and I drove away for the office, you turned and waved a little hand and called, “Goodbye, Dad,” and I frowned and said in reply, ‘ ‘ Hold your shoulders back—walk straight! ’ ’
And then it began all over again as I was coming home. You were over on the vacant lot at the corner, down on your knees playing marbles. I stopped the ear and some of the other boys yelled, “There’s your father! ’ ’ and some of them ducked. There were holes in your stockings and I humiliated you before the boy friends who were left by making you march home. I shouted to ■ you that stockings cost money and you should be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! It was such stupid, silly logic.
Do you remember later, when I was reading in the library, and you came in softly, timidly, -with sort of a hurt, hunted look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated. “What is it you want?” I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across the room with one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms ’round my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God has set blooming in your heart, and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
W ell, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. Suddenly I saw selfishness and I felt sick at heart.
M hat has habit been doing to me? The habit of complaining, of fault-finding, of reprimanding—all of these were my rewards to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected so much of youth—and you are so young, son. I "was measuring you by the gauge of my own years.
It is a feeble atonement. I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours, yet I must say what I am saying. I must burn sacrificial fires, alone, here in your bedroom, and make free confession. Tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer and laugh when you laugh. ,
Rales for the Conduct of the Next War
[Reprint of a triple-column editorial of the all-American he-editor of the Portland (Oregon) A7ews]
IT SEEMS to have been determined, by the bankrupt minds that operate the world, that the only solution for present troubles is “another war”.
A new war will, it is hoped, kill off surplus labor. This is obviously the easiest means of getting rid of it, and the “best minds” will, as usual, take the easiest way.
It is so much easier to start a war than to apply common sense to world ills.
Well, if we are going to have another war, we might as well have some rules for it. The last was fought, as the politicians say, “ir-regardless” of rules—and it was pretty much of a mess.
We offer, for public approval, a model set of rules: ..
(1) That the manufacturers of army raincoats be compelled to wear their own product, pay their own doctor bills when stricken with pneumonia, and defray their own funeral expenses.
(2) That all congressmen and senators voting for war be given the choice of enlisting in the shock troops or being shot on the Capitol steps.
(3) That all manufacturers of war supplies bo hanged when their profits reach the million-dollar mark.
(4) That uplift agencies, charged with the moral welfare of the troops, be prohibited from shipping cash registers into the war zone.
(5) That all Four-Minute speakers be shot at the completion of their first two minutes of oratory.
(6) That all holy men who announce to their congregations that the Almighty is fighting with us be dispatched to interview Him personally on the subject and find out.
(7) That each battleship, cruiser, destroyer and submarine shall carry, as excess baggage, one or more stockholders in battleship building concerns.
(8) That the secret service be restrained from the discovery of “enemy plots” every time somebody turns on a light in the parlor.
(9) That paper manufacturers be prohibited from entering the shoe-making trade.
(10) That restaurant proprietors near concentration camps be enjoined from having two menus—one for civilians and one, with higher prices, for soldiers.
(11) That college professors be stopped from delving into history to prove that the enemy always was a low-down scoundrel, anyway.
(12) That the cause of the war shall be clearly stated to the people as the reduction of unemployment, and' not disguised as “a holy war to save civilization”.
There are, of course, many more rules needed. But these will suffice for a starter. We suggest their adoption by luncheon clubs, sewing circles, debating societies and other cultural agencies, and their transmission, with resolutions urging their passage, to Congress.
The Grist
Made a Mistake Taking It All
November Shootings in New York
IN THE month of November there were 89 per- Qenator Millard E. Tydings, of Maryland, sons, most of them men, shot in New York bJ states that, according to the Census Bureau,
Newtok D. Baker, former secretary of war, in an address to a group of vocational educators, said: “I have a notion that industry has no right, as a fundamental proposition, to take all the gains that come from this rapid substitution of machine processes for human labor.” city. An analysis shows that 19 of the shootings were committed by racketeers; and probably there were more. In the racketeer shootings no arrests were made.
Starvation near Ashland, Kentucky
RED CROSS workers in a radius of thirty miles from Ashland, Kentucky, found no fires in the kitchen stoves, because there was no food to cook, and none in prospect. Even when visitors found obvious starvation many cried when asked to tell their plight, because they did not wish their poverty known.
Times Not Hard for Some
THE times are not so hard for some as they THE king of Hedjaz has just contracted wjth are for others. It seems that the corporation the Mareoni company for the construction
payments on account of dividends and interest increased $612,000,000 in 1930 over 1929. This will be interesting to the millions that are out of work, but it will not buy them any coal or food or clothing.
8% of World’s Shipping Idle
IT IS an expensive business for a ship to be idle, but the latest reports from London are that 8 percent of all the shipping in the -world is now idle, and British ports are crowded with vessels that have nothing’ to do. Vessels have been sent to Australia in ballast, looking for return cargoes of grain.
Esthonia to Miami by Sailboat
TWO boys made a trip from Esthonia to Miami by sailboat. They started August 7, and traveling in their thirty-six-foot boat via Penzance and the Canary Islands, landed in Miami in 133 days. One of the two boys was constantly at the helm. They made accurate calculations and had altogether a wonderful trip. The oldest was but 23 years of age.
Einstein’s Stand on Militarism
Alcoholism Death Rate
REFERRING to his stand in the next war, Professor Albert Einstein said: “I should unconditionally refuse every direct or indirect war service and try to induce my friends to take the same stand, and this independent of any critical opinion of the causes of the war.” in 1929, after nine years of supposed prohibition, the death rate from alcoholism in this country is six times as great as it was in the year when prohibition was adopted.
Skyscrapers Live Thirty Years
EXPERIENCE has demonstrated that the
useful economic life of the average New York skyscraper is thirty years. Few office buildings attain greater age, and many of them are pulled down before the thirty years are up. The courts have now recognized this fact and reduced assessments accordingly.
Wireless in Arabia
of fifteen wireless stations that will enable him to keep in constant touch with every part of his kingdom. So are the barriers of time and space breaking down and disappearing for ever from the earth.
Religious Liberty in the Philippines
Misinformed as to how to get religious liberty, fifty-four men and ■women are in prison in the Philippines for trying to put the Independent Catholic church on the map by forcibly seizing the city of Tayug by force of arms. Several were killed on both sides before the authorities put down the uprising. y
Real English Christmas
THE London News Chronicle says: “The real
English Christmas is hardly English at all. It consists in lighting the Lithuanic log, suspending the druidic mistletoe from the lintel, giving the Roman strenae, or Christmas boxes, to the servants, attending gladiatorial circuses and generally celebrating the Latin festival of the winter solstice.”
Dangerous to Go to Church
T GUELATOVA, Mexico, on January 14, a great crowd was assembled in the church for a fiesta, when an earthquake occurred and the great spires of the church fell in upon the congregation. The priests and seventy others were slain. This looks as if, in these days, it were dangerous to go to church.
Six-Hour Day at Battle Creek
WK. Kellogg, Battle Creek cereal mannfac-
• turer, has placed his plant on a six-hour-day basis, with continuous operation of four shifts each. This is really the way to get the utmost out of the plant and out of the men, and gives labor to more men than wrould otherwise be possible. In six hours of uninterrupted labor most men will give about all there is in them.
Unemployed Railroad Men
IT IS pathetic to read that the members of the brotherhoods of trainmen and firemen are voluntarily reducing their monthly mileage to aid unemployed fellow members. In effect this means that the unemployed are being helped, not out of the treasuries of the railroads where they were once employed, but out of the small bank accounts of the 'workers themselves.
The Prices of Bread
TN GREAT BRITAIN the average price for a 24-ounce loaf of bread is 6.26 cents. In the United States, three thousand miles nearer where the wheat is grown, the average price for a 24-ounce loaf is 11.85 cents, or almost twice as much. Whom do we have to thank for this? In Canada, where the four great milling companies control virtually all the bakeries of the country, the average price for a 24-ounce loaf is 10.2 cents.
Harvard Scrubwomen Paid
EVERYBODY will be glad to know that the
Harvard scrubwomen were finally paid. Of course they lost their jobs in the meantime, and that is hard lines in these times, but some of the alumni, were unwilling that the stigma laid upon the university should remain and they clubbed together and paid the scrubwomen the 2c an hour which was coming to them as unpaid ■wages, i. e., the 2c an hour less than the minimum required by Massachusetts law.
4 New Tree-Planting Device
£W YORK state has in use a tree-planting device, which enables the planting of 1,7.18 trees an hour in reforestation work. The machine will carry 6,000 trees at a time. The cost of planting is fig'ured at considerably less than half the cost of hand planting.
Ng Lame Duck Sessions Elsewhere
HE United States is the only country where newly elected congressmen have to wait thirteen months before being able to legislate for their country. In Brazil and the Netherlands they must vrait three months; in Argentina, two months; in Hungary, six weeks; in Germany and Austria, 30 clays; in England, Canada and Poland, two to three weeks; and in France, only ten days.
Trying to Find Uses for Cotton
WITH the exception of the year 1926 the cotton crop for the year 1930 is the largest on record, amounting to 26,400,000 bales of 478 pounds each. The increase was general all over the world, and is accompanied by less use for cotton than formerly, on account of wide use of rayon and other yarns. Attempts are now being, made to find neve uses for the surplus cotton.
Free Power in Essex, Ontario
IN ESSEX, Ontario, the users of electric current make two annual payments for current at the rates of Side and a l%c a kilowatt hour. The remaining three months of the year cost light users nothing. Some of the newspapers in the United States that devote so much space to trying to prove to the people that they should pay 9c to 16c a kilowatt hour to private concerns manufacturing electric current should move over to Essex.
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