Carl Schurz

“ I can now only express the confident hope that this grand structure which you are dedicating to the noblest and most useful of charities will forever remain consecrated to high purposes; that it will be to the orphan children who are to inhabit it an abode of happiness and useful preparation to which they will look back all through their lives with affection and gratitude; that to those whose generosity built it up it will ever be an object of love and a source of satisfaction ”

“ Ordinary children who have their fathers and mothers and homes may indeed in the large institutions in which they are educated, to a certain degree be merged in the multitude, but they have still their fathers and mothers and family homes to fall back upon; they have their foothold outside upon which they do not cease to stand and upon which their individuality will assert and develop itself. The orphan child, on the other hand, if secluded in an institution, has to find there everything with which to nourish his moral and intellectual nature. ”

“ And how energetic that charity is appears from the singular fact that before arrangements could be perfected to lay the corner stone of this grand structure, its walls are already run up high enough to receive the roof.
“It is most praiseworthy to relieve the wants and sufferings of the infirm and to cheer the declining days of the aged. But a far more important and fruitful charity is that which devotes itself to the task of taking helpless youth by the hand to lead it upon the path of duty, virtue, and usefulness. ”

“ In the public school they are by the same right as any other child. There they are upon an equal footing with the rest of mankind. There they are not charity children. And then, in the asylum, you give them in addition industrial training, to enable them to gain an independent living when they enter into the competition of the world. Thus your asylum does not supersede, but it merely supplements the public school. ”

“ But even if you have to scatter your orphan children among many of them, and send them some distance for their common schooling, the moral advantage gained by making the poor orphans breathe the free air and consciously enjoy the rights they have equal and in common with the rest of the world, will far outweigh all apparent inconvenience. ”

“ To unorphanize your orphans still more, one thing seems especially desirable: that thing is a bond of living individual sympathy between the orphan in the asylum and some human being outside of it, which in some measure may supply the affectionate and confidential relations between parent and child. In this respect the relation between teacher and pupil, be it ever so sympathetic, is not sufficient, for there is only one teacher to a great many pupils, and the sympathy of the teacher is, therefore, necessarily too much divided and dispersed. ”

“ No appeal to them has ever failed to call forth a response. Now, each one of the lady patrons of this institution might constitute herself the individual patroness of some one child, to be selected by her among the many in the asylum; or, in order to avoid a perhaps not unnatural but unwholesome partiality for the prettiest and brightest, to be assigned to her by lot or otherwise; and, surely, patronizing the least attractive would be the most humane and meritorious work of charity. ”

“ This charity confers a blessing not only upon the present but upon coming generations.
“We who have been so fortunate as to grow up under the blessed shadow of the parental home are certainly all agreed that it is the early care and guidance of mother and father, the influence of family life, which furnishes the best and strongest foundation of the moral and intellectual growth of every human being. It is true that this care and guidance and influence is not always in all respects what it ought to be. ”

“ While you gathered your orphans in your asylum building, and housed and nourished and took care of them there, you sent them for their regular elementary instruction to the public schools, where they mingle with the other children of the people, and are taught like them, and play with and like them, and feel like them. ”

“ It is, therefore, the peculiar problem of the education of orphans not only to teach them the necessaries of knowledge and to discipline them into compliance with the ordinary duties of life, but to avert the effects of their situation I have spoken of ”

“ And in this magnificent structure you can establish facilities for industrial instruction and training in increasing variety which will supplement the public school more completely and effectively than ever before, and thus send the wards of your charity well prepared and equipped into the world to meet its struggles and to improve its opportunities. ”

“ Orphan asylums are therefore a necessity. But it is equally certain that the orphan asylum can adopt and cultivate some of the most important features of the system just mentioned, and thus in a great measure obviate the difficulties to which great institutions of this kind are liable. ”

“ The reason of this is plain: the individual child will then be liable to be looked at, and to be treated and to feel himself less and less as a distinct individual, and to become more and more a mere part of a large aggregation in which the individual, with its peculiar wants and desires and capabilities, disappears. It may be said that this is also the case with all other large institutions in which great numbers of children not orphans are educated and live together. ”

“ But, except in the worst cases, it gives to the child at least the consciousness that it belongs somewhere; that it has somebody to whom it can look with natural affection, and with the certainty of natural affection in return; that there is a sustaining home power behind him upon which it can fall back; that it has the assurance of a foothold in life. And it is the saddest feature of the orphan child's lot that of just this it finds itself deprived.
“The poor orphan is cast upon the world a stranger, as it were ”

“ But here are many families, hundreds of generous and warm-hearted men and women, who have already by their magnanimous contributions shown how sincerely their hearts are in this noble work, and who are always ready to do still more. ”

“ This is a wise and most excellent system, and I venture to express the hope that the establishment of this larger institution will not endanger its continuance and development. It is true, the public school facilities in this immediate neighborhood are not as abundant as in the densely-populated parts of the city, and the large number of children you expect to gather here may not be easily accommodated in the schools now existing. ”