FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111  
112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   >>   >|  
n the beams are filtered through the reek of a court; and these same infants resemble the black fellows of Western Australia or the Troglodytes of Africa in general intelligence. I have little heart to speak of the parents who are answerable for such horrors of crass neglect and cruelty. By laying a set of dry police reports before any sensitive person I could make that person shudder without adding a word of rhetoric; for it would be seen that the popular picture of a fiend represents rather a mild and harmless entity if we compare it with the foul-souled human beings who dwell in our benighted places. What is to be done? It is best to grapple swiftly with an ugly question; and I do not hesitate to attack deliberately one of the most delicate puzzles that ever came before the world. Wise emotionless men may say, and do say, "Are you going to relieve male and female idlers and drunkards of all anxiety regarding their offspring? Do you mean to discourage the honest but poverty-stricken parents who do their best for their children? What kind of world will you make for us all if you give your aid to the worst and neglect the good folk?" Those are very awkward questions, and I can answer them only by a sort of expedient which must not be mistaken for intellectual conjuring; I drop ordinary logic and theories of probability and go at once to facts. At first sight it seems like rank folly for any man or body of men to take charge of a child which has been neglected by shameless parents; but, on the other hand, let us consider our own self-interest, and leave sentiment alone for a while. We cannot put the benighted starvelings into a lethal chamber and dispose of their brief lives in that fashion; we are bound to maintain them in some way or other--and the ratepayers of St. George's-in-the-East know to some trifling extent what that means. If the waifs grow up to be predatory animals, we must maintain them first of all in reformatories, and afterwards, at intervals during their lives, in prisons. If they grow up without shaking off the terrible mental darkness of their starveling childhood, we must provide for them in asylums. A thoroughly neglected waif costs this happy country something like fifteen pounds per year for the term of his natural life. Very good. At this point some hard-headed person says, "What about the workhouses?" This brings us face to face with another astounding problem to solve which at all satisfactorily
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111  
112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

parents

 

person

 

maintain

 
benighted
 
neglect
 

neglected

 
theories
 

starvelings

 

probability

 

chamber


dispose
 

lethal

 

shameless

 

interest

 

charge

 
fashion
 

sentiment

 

pounds

 

natural

 
fifteen

country

 
brings
 

astounding

 

problem

 

satisfactorily

 

workhouses

 

headed

 
asylums
 

extent

 

trifling


ordinary

 

predatory

 

ratepayers

 

George

 

animals

 

reformatories

 

mental

 

terrible

 

darkness

 

starveling


provide

 

childhood

 

shaking

 

intervals

 

prisons

 

adding

 
shudder
 

rhetoric

 

sensitive

 

laying