Charles Loring Brace

“ The drunkards' homes are the darkest spots even in the abyss of misery in every large city. Here the hearts of young women are truly broken, and they seek their only consolation in the same magic cup; here children are beaten, or maimed, or half-starved, until they run away to join the great throng of homeless street-rovers in our large towns, and grow up to infest society. From these homes radiate misery, grief, and crime. They are the nests in which the young fledgelings of misfortune and vice begin their flight. ”

“ For seventeen years this woman of refinement and education has spent her days in this School of poor children, and her hours of leisure in those wretched shanties—an angel of mercy and sympathy to every unfortunate family for miles around. Whatever woman falls into misfortune, loses husband or child, is driven from home by poverty, or forced from work by depression of business, or meets with troubles of mind or body, at once comes to her for sympathy and relief. ”

“ Then the strange and mysterious subject of sexual vice comes in. It has often seemed to me one of the most dark arrangements of this singular world that a female child of the poor should be permitted to start on its immortal career with almost every influence about it degrading, its inherited tendencies overwhelming toward indulgence of passion, its examples all of crime or lust, its lower nature awake long before its higher, and then that it should be allowed to soil and degrade its soul before the maturity of reason, and beyond all human possibility of cleansing! ”

“ We would not breathe a word against the absolute necessity of Christianity in any scheme of thorough social reform. If the Christian Church has one garland on its altars which time does not wither nor skepticism destroy, which is fresh and beautiful each year, it is that humble offering laid there through every age by the neglected little ones of society, whom the most enlightened Stoicism despised and Paganism cast out, but who have been blessed and saved by its ministrations of love. ”

“ But the necessities of capital on the one side, and the wants of poverty on the other, soon put the children again at the loom, the machine, and the bench, and the result is—masses of little ones, bent and wan with early trial, and growing up mere machines of labor. England has found the evil terrible, and, during the past ten or fifteen years, has been legislating incessantly against it; protecting helpless infancy from the tyranny of capital and the greed of poverty, and securing a fair growth of body and mind for the children of the laboring poor. ”

“ There they live, breeding each day pestilence and disease, scattering abroad over the city seeds of fearful sickness—raising a brood of vagrants and harlots—retorting on society its neglect by cursing the bodies and souls of thousands whom they never knew, and who never saw them.
"Yet it is cheering—it cheered me even in that squalid hole—that the children are so much superior to their parents. It needs time for vice and beggary and filth to degrade childhood. God has given every fresh human soul something which rises above its surroundings, and which even want and vice do not wear away. ”

“ The effort to place the city-children of the street in country families revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural districts, which was truly delightful to see. People bore with these children of poverty, sometimes, as they did not with their own. There was—and not in one or two families alone—a sublime spirit of patience exhibited toward these unfortunate little creatures, a bearing with defects and inherited evils, a forgiving over and over again of sins and wrongs, which showed how deep a hold the spirit of Christ had taken of many of our countrywomen. ”

“ One of the best religious speakers that ever address our boys is a lawyer, who has been a famous sportsman, and has in his constitution a fellow-feeling for their vagrant tastes. I often fancy, when he is speaking to them, that he would not object at all to being a boy again himself, roving the streets, "turning in" on a hay-barge, and drifting over the country at "his own sweet will." But this very sympathy gives him a peculiar power over them; he understands their habits and temptations, and, while other gentlemen often shoot over their heads, his words always take a powerful hold of them. ”

“ Those who were too negligent, or too selfish to notice them as children, will be fully aware of them as men. They will vote—they will have the same rights as we ourselves, though they have grown up ignorant of moral principle, as any savage or Indian. They will poison society. They will perhaps be embittered at the wealth and the luxuries they never share. Then let society beware, when the outcast, vicious, reckless multitude of New York boys, swarming now in every foul alley and low street, come to know their power and use it! ”

“ All these great masses of destitute, miserable, and criminal persons believe that for ages the rich have had all the good things of life, while to them have been left the evil things. Capital to them is the tyrant.
Let but Law lift its hand from them for a season, or let the civilizing influences of American life fail to reach them, and, if the opportunity offered, we should see an explosion from this class which might leave this city in ashes and blood. ”

“ The system of Free Schools is the life-blood of the nation. If it be corrupted with priestcraft, or destroyed by our dissensions, our vitality as a republican people is gone. The whole country would realize then the worst fruits of a popular government without intelligence. Demagogism and corruption, founded on ignorance, would wield an absolute tyranny, with none of the graces of monarchy, and none of the advantages of democracy. Jarring sects would each have their own schools, and the priests would enjoy an unlimited control over all the ignorant Catholics of the country. ”

“ Drunkenness has darkened the childhood of some, and made home a hideous place, till they have been glad to sleep in the crowded cellar or the bare attic of some thronged "tenement," and then go forth to pick up a living as they could in the great metropolis. Some are orphans, some have parents whom they detest, some are children of misfortune, and others of vice; some are foreigners, some native. They come from the north and the south, the east and the west; all races and countries are represented among them. ”

“ Still, unlike the experience of Paganism under the Roman Empire and before it, rays of light, of intelligence, and of moral and spiritual influence penetrate to the depths of these masses. The spirit of Christ is slowly and irresistibly permeating even this lowest class of miserable, unfortunate, or criminal beings; inspiring those who perseveringly labor for them, drawing from wealth its dole and from intelligence its service of love, educating the fortunate in the habit of duty to the unfortunate, giving a dignity to the most degraded, and offering hope to the despairing. ”

“ Education may not, in all cases, prevent crime; yet we well know that, on a broad scale, it has a wonderful effect in checking it.
The steady labor, punctuality, and order of a good school, the high tone in many of our Free Schools, the self-respect cultivated, the emulation aroused, the love of industry thus planted, are just the influences to break up a vagabond, roving, and dependent habit of mind and life. The School, with the Lodging-house, is the best preventive institution for vagrancy. ”

“ It is one of the most unpleasant experiences of the student of political economy, that the axioms of his science can so seldom be understood by the masses, though their interests be vitally affected by them. Thus, every thoughtful man knows that each new "job" among city officials, each act of plunder of public property by members of the municipal government, every loss of income or mal-appropriation or extravagance in the city's funds, must be paid for by taxation, and that taxation always falls heaviest on labor. ”

“ He exerted his talent in embellishing this building, and in making a cheerful spot in the midst of a ward filled with rookeries and broken-down tenements. In the bit of a back yard he created a beautiful garden, with shrubbery and flowers, with vases and a cool shaded seat—and these in a place of the size of a respectable closet. There a poor child could stand and fancy herself, for a moment, far away in the country, Thence, on a spring morning, drowning the prevalent smells of bilge-water and sewers, ascended the sweet odors of hyacinth and heliotrope, sweet-william and violet. ”

“ The daughter of the rag-picker or vagrant sees the children she knows, continually dressing better or associating with more decent people; she beholds them attending the public schools and improving in education and manners; she comes in contact with the greatest force the poor know—public opinion, which requires a certain decency and respectability among themselves. She becomes ashamed of her squalid, ragged, or drunken mother. She enters an Industrial School, or creeps into a Ward School, or "goes out" as a servant. In every place, she feels the profound forces of American life ”

“ In the initiation of all great and good causes there is a time of pure enthusiasm, when life and thought and labor are given freely, and hardly a care enters the mind as to the prizes of honor or wealth which are struggled for so keenly in the world. No reformer or friend of humanity, worthy of the name, has not some time in his life felt this high enthusiasm. ”

“ Her power, whether with rich or poor, was her wonderful consideration for others, and her quick sympathy. The highest inspiration of Christian faith breathed through her life and animated her in laboring with these children of poverty. The same inspiration sustained her subsequently in a prolonged and terrible trial of months under a fearful disease, and made her death a sun-set of glory to all who knew her. Never did the faith in immortal union with God through Christ attain a more absolute certainty in any human being. ”

“ If a student of history were reviewing the gloomy list of the evils which have most cursed mankind, which have wasted households, stained the hand of man with his fellow's blood, sown quarrels and hatreds, broken women's hearts, and ruined children in their earliest years, bred poverty and crime, he would place next to the bloody name of War, the black word—INTEMPERANCE. No wonder that the best minds of modern times are considering most seriously the soundest means of checking it. ”

“ For the old poor, for the sensual who have steeped themselves in crime, for the drunkard, the thief, the prostitute who have run a long course, let those heroically work who will. Yet, noble as is the effort, one's experience of human nature is obliged to confess, the fruits will be very few. The old heart of man is a hard thing to change. In any comprehensive view, the only hopeful reform through society must begin with childhood, basing itself on a change of circumstances and on religious influences. ”

“ If it has been his duty to struggle with such an evil as Slavery, the wrongs of the slave have been burned into his soul until he has felt them more even than if they were his own, and no reward of riches or fame that life could offer him would be half so sweet as the consciousness that he had broken these fetters of injustice. ”

“ If he has been inspired by Christ with a love of humanity, there have been times when the evils that afflict it clouded his daily happiness; when the thought of the tears shed that no one could wipe away; of the nameless wrongs suffered; of the ignorance which imbruted the young, and the sins that stained the conscience; of the loneliness, privation, and pain of vast masses of human beings ”

“ If the directors of a benevolent institution or enterprise can arouse these great motives in their agents,—spiritual enthusiasm with a reasonable gratification of the love of honor and a hope of fair compensation,—they will undoubtedly create a body of workers capable of producing a profound impression on the evils they seek to remove.
It is always a misfortune for an agent of a charity if he be too constantly with the objects of his benevolent labors. He either becomes too much accustomed to their misfortunes, and falls into a spirit of routine with them ”

“ The man is inspired with "the enthusiasm of humanity." He maps out a city with his plans and aspirations for the removal of the various evils which he sees. His life flows out for those who can never reward him, and who hardly know of his labors.
But, in process of time, the first fervor of this ardent enthusiasm must cool away. The worker himself is forced to think of his own interests and those of his family. His plan, whatever it may be,—for removing the evils which have pained him, demands practical means,—men, money, and "machinery." Hence arises the great subject of "Organization." ”

“ Selfishness is more alert and economical than benevolence.
On the other side, however, it will not be best to let a charity become too much of a business. There must always be a certain generosity and compassion, a degree of freedom in management, which are not allowed in business undertakings. The agents must have heart as well as head. The moisture of compassion must not be dried up by too much discipline.
Organization must not swallow up the soul. Routine may be carried so far as to make the aiding of misery the mere dry working of a machine. ”

“ As the wife grows old or ugly—as children increase and weigh the parents down—as the home becomes more noisy and less pleasant,—the man begins to forget the vows made at the altar, and the blooming girl he then took; and, perhaps meeting some prettier woman, or hearing of some chance for work at a distance, he slips quietly away, and the deserted wife, who seems to love him the more the more false he is, is left alone. ”