第29章 THE CHILDREN OF THE LOST.(2)

The home is largely destroyed where the mother follows the father into the factory,and where the hours of labour are so long that they have no time to see their children.The omnibus drivers of London,for instance,what time have they for discharging the daily duties of parentage to their little ones?How can a man who is on his omnibus from fourteen to sixteen hours a day have time to be a father to his children in any sense of the word?He has hardly a chance to see them except when they are asleep.Even the Sabbath,that blessed institution which is one of the sheet anchors of human existence,is encroached upon.Many of the new industries which have been started or developed since I was a boy ignore man's need of one day's rest in seven.The railway,the post-office,the tramway all compel some of their employes to be content with less than the divinely appointed minimum of leisure.In the country darkness restores the labouring father to his little ones.In the town gas and the electric light enables the employer to rob the children of the whole of their father's waking hours,and in some cases he takes the mother's also.Under some of the conditions of modern industry,children are not so much born into a home as they are spawned into the world like fish,with the results which we see.

The decline of natural affection follows inevitably from the substitution of the fish relationship for that of the human.A father who never dandles his child on his knee cannot have a very keen sense of the responsibilities of paternity.In the rush and pressure of our competitive City life,thousands of men have not time to be fathers.

Sires,yes;fathers,no.It will take a good deal of schoolmaster to make up for that change.If this be the case,even with the children constantly employed,it can be imagined what kind of a home life is possessed by the children of the tramp,the odd jobber,the thief,and the harlot.For all these people have children,although they have no homes in which to rear them.Not a bird in all the woods or fields but prepares some kind of a nest in which to hatch and rear its young,even if it be but a hole in the sand or a few crossed sticks in the bush.

But how many young ones amongst our people are hatched before any nest is ready to receive them?

Think of the multitudes of children born in our workhouses,children of whom it may be said "they are conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity,"and,as a punishment of the sins of the parents,branded from birth as bastards,worse than fatherless,homeless,and friendless,"damned into an evil world,"in which even those who have all the advantages of a good parentage and a careful training find it hard enough to make their way.Sometimes,it is true,the passionate love of the deserted mother for the child which has been the visible symbol and the terrible result of her undoing stands between the little one and all its enemies.

But think how often the mother regards the advent of her child with loathing and horror;how the discovery that she is about to become a mother affects her like a nightmare;and how nothing but the dread of the hangman's rope keeps her from strangling the babe on the very hour of its birth.What chances has such a child?And there are many such.

In a certain country that I will not name there exists a scientifically arranged system of infanticide cloaked under the garb of philanthropy.

Gigantic foundling establishments exist in its principal cities,where every comfort and scientific improvement is provided for the deserted children,with the result that one-half of them die.The mothers are spared the crime.The State assumes the responsibility.

We do something like that here,but our foundling asylums are the Street,the Workhouse,and the Grave.When an English Judge tells us,as Mr.Justice Wills did the other day,that there were any number of parents who would kill their children for a few pounds'insurance money,we can form some idea of the horrors of the existence into which many of the children of this highly favoured land are ushered at their birth.

The overcrowded homes of the poor compel the children to witness everything.Sexual morality often comes to have no meaning to them.

Incest is so familiar as hardly to call for remark.The bitter poverty of the poor compels them to leave their children half fed.There are few more grotesque pictures in the history of civilisation than that of the compulsory attendance of children at school,faint with hunger because they had no breakfast,and not sure whether they would even secure a dry crust for dinner when their morning's quantum of education had been duly imparted.Children thus hungered,thus housed,and thus left to grow up as best they can without being fathered or mothered,are not,educate them as you will,exactly the most promising material for the making of the future citizens and rulers of the Empire.

What,then,is the ground for hope that if we leave things alone the new generation will be better than their elders?To me it seems that the truth is rather the other way.The lawlessness of our lads the increased license of our girls,the general shiftlessness from the home-making point of view of the product of our factories and schools are far from reassuring.Our young people have never learned to obey.

The fighting gangs of half-grown lads in Lisson Grove,and the scuttlers of Manchester are ugly symptoms of a social condition that will not grow better by being left alone.

It is the home that has been destroyed,and with the home the home-like virtues.It is the dis-homed multitude,nomadic,hungry that is rearing an undisciplined population,cursed from birth with hereditary weakness of body and hereditary faults of character.It is idle to hope to mend matters by taking the children and bundling them up in barracks.A child brought up in an institution is too often only half-human,having never known a mother's love and a father's care.

To men and women who are without homes children must be more or less of an incumbrance.Their advent is regarded with impatience,and often it is averted by crime.The unwelcome little stranger is badly cared for,badly fed,and allowed every chance to die.Nothing is worth doing to increase his chances of living that does not Reconstitute the Home.

But between us and that ideal how vast is the gulf!It will have to be bridged,however,if anything practical is to be done.