Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/725

Rh and crowded with those who might have been saved to good citizenship by preventive measures.

While crime was so treated, private charity, instigated by the highest motives, fed and clothed the wanderer, built asylums for children and the aged in some localities, while in others there was no helper. Here was a village home of many cottages for children, founded by some generous donor, while elsewhere there were destitution, wretchedness and exposure. Severity increased crime and overindulgent charity pauperized. While private charity was noble where extended, it was local and insufficient. A stronger power was needed that could reach all. Under the regime of severity and indiscriminate charity crime and pauperism increased in greater ratio than the population and there appeared no remedy. Among the methods tried was

It exists today in most states for adults and children. It is usually crowded and there is no separation of inmates. Associating in common are the insane, idiotic, diseased and depraved. In this corrupting atmosphere are many impressible children who are early influenced in ways that lead to poverty and crime. Children are placed there and born there. The district school, however near, is seldom open for them, and a school in the average poorhouse is an impossibility. An instance can be given where the united lives of three children of one family was twenty-nine years and they received no education. Under such conditions it cannot be expected that child dependence will decrease. It must increase in greater ratio than the population.

A modern device is the support of dependent children in private or sectarian asylums mainly by appropriations from public funds. The constitutions of some states prohibits this union of public and private funds. The supreme court of Illinois has passed on this provision of the constitution of that state so that