HOME AND EDUCATION
Follette, Belle Case La & Hunt, Caroline L.
HOME AND EDUCATION The home is the real seat of government, and the Wise Men of all nations bring their gifts to the cradle. Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT If All the...
...Do not think that I have forgotten the ham...
...Babyhood, Human Babyhood—and not yet Motherhood to meet its needs...
...Loved...
...Just before serving we added a cup of milk and the slightly beaten yolk of an egg...
...And the eyes of The Child, steady, clear, deep as all Time, were on me: and I felt his pain...
...There were—there are—and there will be...
...It is a stream—a torrent...
...Of every twenty who set out to travel is way, four perish in the first year and four more before the end of the fifth year...
...with the date of the receipt of each consignment into cold storage plainly recorded, cold storage would become what it is meant to be—a method of storing the country's surplus products during each year's season of plenty, to be released during each year's season of comparative scarcity and increased demand.—Philadelphia North American...
...Rightly safeguarded and controlled, cold storage of foods would be as it should be, a factor for the general good...
...Banana John, who has sold fruit to three generations of government employees, has never yet concealed dynamite in any of his "bananas...
...For Monday's dinner we cut the meat from the chicken bones, and combined it with a little white sauce, making creamed chicken, not the soft, poury variety that runs all over and suggests food for the sick but a kind that has substance to it and will stay on a piece of toast when it is put there...
...But in my heart remained an emptiness that nothing could fill...
...said another, and wept...
...Dangerous though the Mall must be in spite of its outward quiet, there is a certain other path within Uncle Sam's domain which has been shown to be even more perilous...
...The chicken bones were not many, but they were enough to make a cup of good rich stock...
...Miss Addams did not doubt nor Ben Lindsey nor Judge Mack...
...The Child does not need sacrifice...
...It is the duty of every community through its board of health to spend money in the warfare against this enemy of mankind...
...A band of brigands might, to be sure, conceal themselves by night behind the hollyhocks in the Botanic Gardens, but they would be almost sure to be discovered by the Secretary of War when he takes his morning outing...
...It is everywhere present and it is disposed of with comparative ease...
...and I saw what it was I loved: It was THE CHILD...
...The ham was of the tin-can variety but for the purposes of my story it might have been home-made, the kind that utilizes the pieces of boiled ham which can not be easily cut into slices...
...Mine is stunted by the mill work," said another and wept...
...Then as I watched those deep child eyes: as my heart swelled and ached with that great love: I saw—I felt—I knew—what had been borne, and still was borne, by this, The Child in human history...
...and it did not seem a day since he was a tiny red creature, helpless and faintly groping...
...We could have added a little water if there had been danger of its burning...
...Charles F. Aked...
...I cried...
...Mine is a cripple...
...The housekeeper crossing the Mall on her way to and from the central market has never been caught with a shot gun in her shoe-string shopping bag, nor a revolver in her market basket...
...Also everywhere The Mother—still loving, still serving, still suffering, still without Knowledge or Wisdom or Freedom or Power, still unable to guard or feed or teach or save...
...You are but one, oh Child of Mine, and there are millions and millions...
...of how we loved our babies and could not keep them even if we would...
...I had seen and I had loved the Child—The Baby World...
...Aa;d I seemed to see the million babies of mankind all over the earth—black and white and yellow and brown, well-loved little ones of a million mothers—breaking into life like bubbles: blossoming, sprouting, coming into being everywhere, every hour, every minute, every second—this budding glory of babyhood—all over the earth: human life springing up in babies, like the spring grass...
...If we Americans must be spectacular in our methods, and it really seems as if we could not be happy without being so occasionally, how would it do to try to attract attention by the extra safeguards which we throw around our children...
...The Modern Death's Head THE United States Department of Agriculture gives this warning: "We have shown that the typhoid or housefly is a general and common carrier of pathogenic bacteria...
...Mine is ignorant and grows vicious because of our poverty and the vileness wherein we must live...
...To the fascination of the old rhyme "If all the seas were one sea" and "If all the men were one man" Mrs...
...Loved...
...Could Love allow all this...
...There was an echo of Sunday's meal in this Monday's dinner but it was a faint, pleasant, far-off echo and no member of the family objected to it...
...Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT If All the Children Were One Child THE AFTER SCHOOL CLUB of America in its first bulletin respecting the best magazine articles of the month bearing upon the most important of all problems —"the study and training of children"—gives most of its space to "The Permanent Child," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in her magazine The Forerunner for December...
...One whose language may disclose his identity said, "Some blankety-blank hypocrite wants to get glory from the passage of the bill...
...And they fled as fast as they came...
...My child is dead...
...Colored Bill, his rival, has never been proved to have anything more deadly about him than the aroma of his coffee...
...There was a little chicken left, meat and bones...
...soup should come before meat...
...There are cotton mills and other factories by the roadside ready to suck in little children of six or seven...
...No pitiful offered sacrifice of one Mother's life is enough...
...Is it the business of the federal government to protect its dollars and not its children...
...The days flew by—the weeks, the months, the years— and the babies changed and grew like a transformation scene...
...But I anticipate...
...We bought a bunch of water cress and chopped it finely...
...But the great picture faded and fled away...
...said one and wept...
...I said to her—aching for her yet full of awful blame—"Could you not have saved The Child from this...
...The Child disappeared and left first the flickering flight of a million babies like the leaves of a forest, and then but one, my child, asleep before me...
...I caught my baby to my heart—but he was not enough...
...Oh Child of Mine...
...Is it possible that a desire to get credit for extreme solicitude for the country's welfare may have suggested the spectacular procession across the Mall...
...A Monday Echo of A Sunday Meal SUNDAY AT OUR HOUSE is marked not only by rest from our labors but by a chicken dinner and a Bohemian supper...
...I saw the savage mother and the savage father caring for the children the best they knew, with all the torture and distortion, all the cruel initiations, all the black, blind superstitions of these old times, to the crowning horror of infant sacrifice when the child went through the fire to Moloch—for his parents' sins!—the living, loving, helpless child, sacrificed by his parents...
...Alas, no...
...taking new shape, becoming boys and girls, men and women...
...It is the duty of every individual tc guard so far as possible against the occurrence of flies on his premises...
...But I could love and I could serve—and I could suffer...
...And then I saw behind The Child, The Mother visible— The vague, composite, mighty form of a million mothers made as one, but her heart was my heart to feel and know...
...But while I watched this millionfold swift flutter of unceasing change, suddenly something happened to it...
...she said...
...But of course there is no way of telling when he may begin to do so...
...Haugen...
...I loved my child," she said...
...That was spread on the toast before the creamed chicken was added...
...This is the path that leads from human infancy to human maturity...
...Disease preyed upon The Child...
...The million and million seemed to coalesce and become one—one little child: and the swift flutter of change grew vague and faint around it, so that although there was a soft uncertainty around the child and a half-visible smoke of growing forms arising from it, yet that small, dimpled shape remained, a little uncertain in outlines as in a composite photograph, but steady and changeless as to the eyes—the clear, deep, searching eyes of a child...
...Four years ago there was a bill introduced into Congress providing for a special investigation of the dangers which lie along this route...
...But there replied only the faint, piping voices of a million mothers, isolated and alone, each sorrowing one heartfull for one child—and sorrowing in vain...
...No slavish Mother is enough...
...there are messenger services ready to take youths of fourteen and send them with messages to houses of ill-fame...
...I cried, "I will love you and serve you and I will feed and guard and teach and save—but that is not enough...
...In her vision—The Children of the World—"The million and million all seemed to coalesce and become one—one little child...
...My whole heart yearned to him: something rose and swelled within me, deeper, wider, stronger than anything I had ever felt before...
...It was said, "It is not the business of the federal government to give such information...
...And you can have today—if you will but take it—Wisdom and Freedom and Knowledge and Power, and you can feed and teach and guard and save...
...Could Love not guard and feed, could Love not teach and save...
...And I longed to feed and guard and shelter and serve that Child as might a million mothers made into one, with all the sweet helplessness, all the glorious promise of a million children made one for her to love...
...A mounted policeman rides ahead, three policemen sit on the front seat with the motorman and five more preserve a somewhat unstable equilibrium on the narrow shelf-like seat at the back...
...The soup was green and spring-like, peppery and appetizing...
...it may carry the bacilli of tuberculosis and certain eye diseases...
...Opponents of the bill said that probably its real object was to create a few jobs for place-seekers...
...said another, and wept...
...Gilman has added a deep philosophical thought, "If all the children were one child...
...and also a trifle of ham...
...Last Sunday our chicken was fricasseed and our Bohemian supper consisted chiefly of devilled ham sandwiches...
...No narrow, selfish Mother is enough...
...And I cried out to the Mother—that mighty figure I saw dimly there behind The Child—to save The Child...
...When there is doubt, shall we give the benefit of it to our bank-notes and not to our babies...
...Poverty preyed upon The Child...
...With a proper system of inspection of the goods received...
...This bill, known a's the Children's Bureau Bill, was favorably reported by both committees of the Sixtieth Congress but Speaker Cannon absolutely refused to recognize either its author, Mr...
...This duty is as pronounced as though the community were attacked by a band of ravenous wolves...
...And I cried to them again, "But you are millions upon millions —and you are Mothers...
...Finally Speaker Cannon doubted if the Bureau would really do the children of the country any good...
...Then the moving screen of The Past was swept away and The Present spread and widened before me 'till I saw the whole wide range of Earth in all its starlit glory and sunlit joy—and everywhere The Child...
...It is everlasting...
...Could the Speaker and other opponents of the bill prove absolutely that the money wagon needs those nine policemen...
...with a time limit set on the storage of various foods to safeguard the consumer's health...
...Could the same suspicion possibly be said to hang about that guard of nine policemen for the money wagon...
...What we want now is an American people trained for American enterprises and American home life...
...but the Speaker did...
...We have seen the folly of educating our lads and lasses in such a way that they are less and less qualified to do the things most needed for home and community and state.—Independent...
...That vague and mighty figure of The Mother disappeared, leaving first the sad-eyed faces of a million mothers— loving, serving and suffering—and then nothing but myself and my child...
...In the session just closed, it was reported by both committees unanimously and passed the Senate by a unanimous vote but the Speaker absolutely refused to allow it to come to a vote in the House...
...It is an impressive sight calculated to strike terror and discouragement to the mind of any housekeeper in danger of permitting her thoughts to wander from the question Whether she shall cook the cabbage today, or save it for tomorrow, to the possibility of a successful raid upon government funds in transit...
...In fact, if the messenger boys from the departments could play better ball, the Mall would seem to be a comparatively safe place...
...I saw The Child in Sparta, and The Child in Rome, The Child in the Dark Ages, The Child scourged, imprisoned, starved, its mind filled with all manner of black falsehoods, its body misunderstood and maltreated...
...and my heart ached, and I cried out, "Were there no Mothers for those children...
...It needs Wisdom and Freedom and Knowledge and Power...
...Labor preyed upon The Child...
...The article follows: THE PERMANENT CHILD ISAT WATCHING my baby, my little son, who was asleep— a year old child, fair and strong...
...Uncle Sam is safe—carrying his newly-made dollars across the Mall from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to the Post-Office...
...Then we added the chicken stock and boiled it until the cress was tender...
...Then I thought of all the other mothers whose babies were flying from them by day and night—growing up, pushing away...
...I loved him as I had never loved my own, as I had never known I could love—and suddenly I felt that I too had changed, and that I was now not only a mother but THE MOTHER...
...This we cooked in a tablespoonful of butter for about five minutes...
...I had neither knowledge nor Freedom, nor Wisdom, nor Power: and I could not guard nor feed nor teach nor save...
...The measure of Child Labor is the measure of our shame, and there is no Christian man or woman who ought not to feel the sting and disgrace of it, except as each one has delivered himself from reproach by earnest and continuous effort to get the Big, Black Wrong out.—Dr...
...I saw the bent skull of the Flathead Indian child, the crippled feet of the Chinese girl child, the age-long, hideous life and death of the child-wife and the child-widow of Hin-doostan...
...Into the quiet of this spot devoted to agricultural pursuits and scientific research there turns every morning at about eleven o'clock a heavy closed motor wagon...
...A highwayman might get on the right side of a bamboo tree to hide himself from the Secretary of Agriculture, but, if he did, he would be almost sure to come within the line of vision of the Surgeon General...
...It may carry typhoid fever, Asiatic cholera, dysentery, cholera morbus and other intestinal diseases...
...And she wrung her hands...
...Parsons, or the chairman of the committee reporting it, Mr...
...It needs Social Motherhood— the conscious, united Mother Love and Mother Care of the Whola World...
...If We Must be Spectacular THE WASHINGTON MALL seems to the casual observer to be a peaceful spot unfavorable to acts of outlawry, either organized or unorganized...
...I gave Love: it was all I had...
...No savage Mother is enough...
...As I looked and loved, I thought how it would not seem another day till he was a sturdy boy—a tall youth—a man grown, and I should lose my baby forever...
Vol. 3 • April 1911 • No. 13
