Care of the Homeless, the Helpless and the Vicious : Part 1

American Woman's Home
by Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 38 of 44)

In considering the duties of the Christian family in regard to the helpless and vicious classes, some recently developed facts need to be considered. We have stated that the great end for which, the family was instituted is the training to virtue and happiness of our whole race, as the children of our Heavenly Father and this with chief reference to their eternal existence after death. In the teachings of our Lord we find that it is for sinners - for the lost and wandering sheep, that he is most tenderly concerned. It is not those who by careful training and happy temperaments have escaped the dangers of life that God and good angels most anxiously watch. "For there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repented than over ninety and nine that went not astray."

The hardest work of all is to restore a guilty, selfish, hardened spirit to honor, truth and purity; and this is the divine labor to which the pitying Savior calls all his true followers; to lift up the fallen, to sustain the weak, to protect the tempted, to bind up the broken-hearted and especially to rescue the sinful. This is the peculiar privilege of woman in the sacred retreat of a "Christian home." And it is for such self-denying ministries that she is to train all who are under her care and influence, both by her teaching and by her example.

In connection with these distinctive principles of Christ for which the family state was instituted, let the following facts be considered. The Massachusetts Board of State Charities, consisting of some of the most benevolent and intelligent gentlemen of that State, in pursuance of their official duty visited all the State institutions and held twenty-five meetings during the year 1867-8. By these visits and consequent discussions they arrived at certain conclusions, which may be briefly condensed as follows.

No state or nation excels Massachusetts in a wise and generous care of the helpless, poor and vicious. The agents employed for this end are frugal, industrious, intelligent and benevolent men and women, with high moral principles. The pauper and criminal classes requiring to be cared for by Massachusetts are less in proportion to the whole number of inhabitants than in any other state or nation. Yet, admirable as are these comparative results, there is room for improvement in a most important particular. The report of the Board urges that the present mode of collecting special classes in great establishments, though it may be the best in a choice of evils, is not the best method for the physical, social and moral improvement of those classes; as it involves many unfortunate influences (which are stated at large:) and the report suggests that a better way would be to scatter these unfortunates from temporary receiving asylums into families of Christian people all over the State.

It is suggested in view of the above, that collecting fallen women into one large community is not the best way to create a pure moral atmosphere; and that gathering one or two hundred children in one establishment is not so good for them as to give each child a home in some loving Christian family. So of the aged and the sick, the blessings of a quiet home and the tender, patient nursing of true Christian love, must be sought in a Christian family; not in a great asylum.

In view of these important facts and suggestions, it may be inquired, if the great end and aim of the family state is to train the inmates to self-denying love and labor for the weak, the suffering and the sinful, how can it be done where there are no young children, no aged persons, no invalids and no sinful ones for whom such sacrifices are to be made?

Why are orphan children thrown upon the world, why are the aged held in a useless, suffering life, except that they may aid in cultivating tender love and labor for the helpless and reverence for the hoary head? And yet, how few children are trained therefore to regard the orphan, the aged, the helpless and the vicious around them!

Great houses are built for these destitute ones and all the labor and self-denial in taking care of them is transferred to paid agents, while thousands of families are therefore deprived of all opportunity to cultivate the distinctive virtues of the Christian household.

In this connection, let us look at some facts recently published in the city of New-York.

The writer, Rev. W. O. Van Meter, says in his report:

"The following astounding statistics are carefully selected from the Reports of the Police, Board of Health, Citizens' Association and more than twelve years' personal experience."

He then gives the following description of a section of the city only a few rods from the stores and residences of those who count their wealth by hundreds of thousands and millions, many of them professing to be followers of Christ:

"First, we see old sheds, stable lofts, dilapidated buildings, too worthless to be repaired, lofts over warehouses and shops; cellars, too worthless for business purposes and too unhealthy for horses or pigs and therefore occupied by human beings at high rent. - Second, houses erected for tenant purposes. Take one near our Mission, as a fair specimen of the better class of 'model' tenant houses. It contains one hundred and twenty-six families - is entered at the sides from alleys eight feet wide; and by reason of another barrack of equal height, the rooms are so darkened, that on a cloudy day it is impossible to sew in them without artificial light. It has not one room that can be thoroughly ventilated.

"The vaults and sewers which are to carry off the filth of one hundred and twenty-six families have grated openings in the alleys and doorways in the cellars, through which the deadly miasma penetrates and poisons the air of the house and courts. The water-closets for the whole vast establishment are a range of stalls, without doors and accessible not only from the building, but even from the street. Comfort here is out of the question; common decency impossible and the horrid brutalities of the passenger-ship are day after day repeated, but on a larger scale.

"In similar dwellings are living five hundred and ten thousand persons, (nearly one half of the inhabitants of the city,) chiefly from the laboring classes, of very moderate means and also the uncounted thousands of those who do not know today what they should have to live on to-morrow. This immense population is found chiefly in an area of less than four square miles. The vagrant and neglected children among them would form a procession in double file eight miles long from the Battery to Harlem.

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.