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 ORPHANS

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ORPHANS

interesting asylum in No^v York City is the Leake and Watts Asylum founded in 1831 to provide "a free home for well-beliavcd full orphans of rcsportable parentage in destitute oirrumstanees. phy.sically and mentally sound, between the ages of three and t\vcl\-e years, who are entrusted to the care of the trustees until fifteen years of age. Disorderly and uiigo\(>rn- able chiklren are not admitted." The Hebrew orphan asylums of New York City are large and well managed, caring for about 3000 children. In the Catholic in- stitutions of the Archdiocese of New York the orphans and half-orphans number about 8000. In the Diocese of Brooklyn they number close to 3600. In all the large cities of America, Catholic orphanages are found. It is probable that they would number close to 300 and the orphan inmates close to 50,000.

The upkeep and management of these large institu- tions call for the solution of many complex problems of varying components. They must provide plenty with- out wastefulness, clothe adequately without cheapness or painful uniformity, educate in letters and handi- craft without overwork, and ]5ro\-ide amusement with- out laxity, as well as discipline without repression. Buildings must be safe and have adequate sanitary de- tails conducive to health. A thorough medical over- sight of inmates, individually and collectively, com- pletes a programme of requirements which bear very heavily and continuously on the management. Al- ways and everywhere it has been considered an honour to take part in such works and in the oversight of them. Naturally the feature about orphan asylums most often remarked by visitors not accustomed to the situation is the radical difference from domestic life in the surroundings of the children. This has led some to propose changes in the institutional scheme, by which buildings of reduced size but adequate number shall be substituted for one or two large ones; that a matron or house-mother be employed to supervise each, and that each also shall have its own outfit and details for domestic management. Some would recom- mend that such charges be put in the joint care of a man and his wife, that the home-like protection of the children may be provided for. These and similar features comprise what is known as the "Cottage System". It fails in many points to present the hoped-for advantages. The fixed charges and salary list are so extensively increased that the burden would be in most cases unbearable. Some few institutions have made efforts in this direction, resulting in sudden and heavy increases in expenditures. .Vdojited on a modest scale, the "Cottage System" offers some ad- vantages to Catholic religious communities operating orphanages, and its success would seem to be a ques- tion of wisely planned management and skillful archi- tecture, controlled by conservative authority over the proposed, new, and regularly recurrent expenditures. Perhaps the real difficulty is that it does not improve the situation of the child in the matter of accustoming it to the natural life of the outside world.

Over against this institutional method of caring for destitute children, resulting in what is called the orphanage, but not necessarily opposed to it, are those methods which .seek to put the child earlier under the influences of family hfe. This is done by boarding-out and by placing-out. The former is a system in which the overseer of the poor or similar officer confides the child to some family, as a boarder, and pays regularly for its care up to the age of self-support. Success and prevention of wTong in this .system can only be ob- tained at great expense and by rigorous watchfulness. It originated in the English poor law and was designed to provide a means by which i-hildren could be removed from the poorhouse; it is much in vogue still through- out the United States. The weakness seems to lie in the danger of profit-seeking amongst pcf)ple who offer to care for children for money. Alore i)ermaiient good for the child is obtained by the second method —

placing-out in free homes. This is sometimes called indenturing in the cases of older (children and some- times adoption. The former has almost disapjicared in the United States, except as a form oKscrved by some overseers of the poor and some child-caring agencies. Real apprenticing or "binding-out" has passed away. Adoption is not a legal act unless con- firmed by the proper procedure in a court of record. Advantage in placing-out appears to lie in the full ab- sorption of the child into a vacancy in a household, where affection can be expected to develop, and where the conditions surrounding the child during all of its ma- turing years will be those entirely normal to any simi- lar family group in the community. Nearly all the States which have laws bearing upon this practice have recognized religious rights, and have provided that where practicable such children must be placed in homes of their own religious faith. Placing-out can only be practised where an ample number of excellent homes can be obtained. By specializing in the work it becomes possible to place even large numbers of orphans and to surround them with a strong and en- lightened protection. The good results most often are mutual, the foster-parents gaining as much by their charity as the child.

When the New York Catholic Protectory was taken over in 1863 from the St. Vincent de Paul Society which had organized it, .Archbishop Hughes impressed upon the managers how placing-out should be con- ducted: "Let one or two gentlemen be employed, the one to keep office during the absence of the other, but one or the other to go abroad through the interior of the country, with good letters to make the acquaint- ance of the bishop of a diocese and the priest of a par- ish as well as such Catholic mechanics and farmers as might be ilispo.sed to receive one or other of the childrrn who will come under your charge, and in this way let the children be in their house of protection just as short as possible. Their lot is, and is to be in one sense, a sufficiently hard one under any circumstances, but the sooner they know what it is to be, the better they will be prepared for encountering its trials and diflSculties" (Letter to B. Silliman Ives, 19 June, 1863). The St. Vincent de Paul Society of New York City had for years assisted in performing such a work as this, and in 1898 established a sjjecial agency for it, known as the Catholic Home Bureau. It acts with the co-operation between the committing authorities and the institutions housing orphans and other destitute children. About two hundred and fifty children are placed by it each year in good Catholic families. Subsequent visitation of the children is practised with great care. In 1909 a similar bureau was started in Washington and another in Baltimore. In many cities of the Union, Catholic agents are employed by the local children's aid societies to perform this work for the protection of Catholic children.

Placing-out was the practice in early Christian days. The widows and deaconesses of the early church took orphans into their homes as Fabiola did in Rome. Some believe that the terms widow and orphan are so often found joined in ancient Christian literature because of this custom. It was the general practice at the time of the first persecutions. Uhl- horn (Christian Charity in the Ancient Church, p. 185) says: " It would al.so often happen that individual members of the Church would receive oiphans, es- pecially those whose parents had perished in a perse- cution." Thus was Origen adopted, after Leonidas, his father, had sufTcred martyrdom, by a pious woman in Alexandria (Eu.scbius, "Hist. Eccl.", VI, ii). Again the child of the female martyr, Felicitas, fount! a mother; and Eusebius tells us of Sevems, a Palestinian composer, who especially interested himself in the orphans and widows of those who had fallen. In the Apostolic Constitutions members of the Church are urgently exhorted to such acts. "If any Christian^