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the statement that for the training of white children there is no lack either of institutions or of harmonious action. There is no difficulty in securing admission to an appropriate institution for all white children needing institutional training. The board now utilizes for its purposes the Industrial Home School, the Newsboys' and Children's Aid Society, the German Orphan Asylum, the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children, and perhaps other like institutions. Payment is made for each inmate placed by the board. During 1896 the Industrial Home School received from this source $1,447.15; the National Association for Colored Women and Children, $1,425.67; the German Orphan Asylum, $74.19; and the Newsboys' and Children's Aid Society, $1,682.55. These institutions are utilized only for the temporary care of children until they can be placed in homes; and inasmuch as there is now competition among the institutions for the care of the white wards of the board no new institution is necessary for this class. In regard to the children in institutions wholly or partly supported by the Government, the same rule should be adopted as is fixed in the New York constitution, namely, that no person shall be admitted to or maintained in an institution at public expense, without the express written consent of some competent public authority.

The question of disposing of the colored children is another and a more serious matter. For them there is practically but one institutionthe National Association for Colored Women and Children. The highest number of persons this asylum can accommodate is 103, and the number of children is limited to 90. The association has a long and honorable history, and it is managed by devoted women who have maintained it at once as an asylum for the aged and a training school for the young. Undoubtedly there is need for expansion along both of these lines, and the contention of the management is not an unreasonable one when they object to the incoming of the wards of the Board of Childrens' Guardians who come from the alleys and the slums and threaten to demoralize the orphans admitted at an early age by the managers and kept for several years of training before they are allowed to go into homes or to find situations. With suitable rules for the admission and dismission of children, and an adequate system of visiting of children placed in homes, this institution may well be left to continue its good work among that portion of the people who most need care and attention.

The really dependent colored children are of quite another sort. They have been aptly described to the committee, as follows:

The colored children are now here in force. There is no prospect that they will cease to arrive. Alarming numbers of them are practically homeless. Speaking broadly of those homeless children, it will not be far from the truth to say that their fathers are unknown. Their mothers are performing the exacting duties pertaining to domestic service, and carrying to their alley homes each night such articles of food as are given them or will not be missed from the kitchens of their employers. The children are usually locked in the home while the mother goes out

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to work. In time they learn the use of the windows as means of egress and ingress, and they substitute the street for the house. Later they repair in squads to the ash dumps for cinders, and these becoming exhausted, they attack coal yards and carts. Presently they learn of the possible association of an old tin can and a beer keg set on the curb not quite empty. They learn the name and address of the man around the corner who keeps late hours and who buys suspicious-looking property and never asks your name. Crowded out of the public schools and destitute of clothing sufficient to make it possible for them to appear in company, they sun themselves against a brick wall, gamble, smoke, plan minor crimes, and idle away their days, swiftly qualifying for that inevitable game with the police in which the artful dodger for a time succeeds, but is very apt to eventually land in the penitentiary. If the children of to-day are to be made fit for the performance of civic duties hereafter, we can not begin with them any too soon. Just in proportion to our neglect of them now will be the smart of them hereafter.

It is this class to whom society owes a very large amount of attention, both for the sake of the children and for its own sake. The charter of the National Association for Colored Women and Children provides for the operation of a farm; but this provision has never been utilized to cover more than a garden. The Board of Children's Guardians, however, has recently secured a farm on the Potomac, near Fort Washington, and have there begun in part to duplicate for the dependent colored the same work that is being done for the incorrigibles at the Boys' Reform School. If the undertaking shall be successful, the most difficult problem in all the work of child caring in the District will be solved. The white child, as a rule, requires but a short preliminary training to fit him for a free home. The colored dependent, on the other hand, has much to learn before anyone who is fitted to care for him will be willing to take him.

Home finding.-Every child-caring association that makes known widely its desire to place out children has applications for white children numerous enough to enable it to reject the undesirable, so that the supply of good homes exceeds the demand. Any organization, therefore, that can furnish white children so trained as to make them desirable need have no difficulty in disposing of them. With the colored children the task of finding good homes is more difficult, and it is necessary to go farther away. The main difficulty in this case, however, is the want of training for the children. Properly trained, the colored child also becomes desirable.

The economy of finding homes for children is seen from the fact that the annual expense per child for visitation and inspection in a home does not exceed $20 a year, whereas the average expense of maintaining a child in an institution is $113 per annum. From the establishment of the Board of Children's Guardians the work of placing children in homes has been carried on, and in 1896, although the number of children committed to the board was 93, the total number being maintained by the board rose only from 103 to 109, the others having been placed in free homes.

The result of this legislation would be to ascertain just what children are properly public charges and to make adequate provision for all such. At the same time the various institutions supported by private contributions would be relieved from the responsibility and the expense of taking care of the least desirable children, and could devote their entire energies to relieving the temporary necessities of orphans and half orphans whom the several boards of admission might see fit to take in. In this way the line would be drawn clearly between public and private charity.

The agent of the Humane Society testified that the reason why parents were not willing to trust their children to the Board of Children's Guardians was that they could never afterwards claim them. There is, unfortunately, another side to this matter. It has too frequently been the case that children placed in asylums at the whim or caprice of the parents are taken back to homes of want and to the same vicious surroundings from which they had been rescued. The managers of the institutions having obtained no legal hold on the child, can not refuse to return it to the parent, no matter how well known the unfitness of the parent is. Illustrations of this saddest of all conditions have happened in connection with all but one of the institutions in the District, and the Industrial Home School has frequently protested against the neces sity of such surrenders.' The only safe rule would appear to be to have the support and control go hand in hand.

The reason given why parents are unwilling to intrust their children to the Board of Children's Guardians is that when once the children have been committed to the board they can not be recovered by the parents. Theoretically the same is true of the asylum, for all the charters of these institutions provide for the absolute control of the child. It was never contemplated that the institutions were to be used as temporary receptacles, at the convenience of parents. There is here, however, a real difficulty that should be met. As the law now stands the investigation of the status of children must be made in the police court, often not at all the proper place for such an examination. The law should be enlarged to include the orphans' court. The committee therefore recommends that:

All children under 16 years of age who are hereafter found abused, abandoned, neglected, morally exposed, or in a condition of want and suffering in the District of Columbia, and for whom no other relief is offered, be committed to the guardianship of the board of children's guardians during minority. That such commitments be made by the police court or the supreme court of the District of Columbia holding sessions for orphans' court business, and that such courts be empowered to make, modify, and revoke orders for contributions toward the maintenance of such children by parents, and to enforce such orders.

'Hearings, p. 152.

This proposed legislation has been embodied in the bill, S. 1079, as follows:

[S. 1079, Fifty-fifth Congress, first session.]

A BILL to provide for the compulsory support of children by parents in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any person within the District of Columbia who, being the parent or having the custody of any child under the age of fourteen years, shall willfully make any false and fraudulent pretense regarding such child for the purpose of inducing another to assume the care and maintenance of such child, or who shall willfully or unnecessarily refuse or neglect to provide for any child under the age of fourteen years, of which he or she shall be the parent or guardian, such food, clothing, and shelter as will prevent the suffering and secure the safety of such child, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be subject to punishment by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment in the workhouse of the District of Columbia for not more than three months, or both such fine and imprisonment.

SEC. 2. That whenever petition shall have been filed in either of the courts of the District of Columbia authorized to commit children to the care, custody, and guardianship of the Board of Children's Guardians for such commitment of any child, and, upon the hearing of such petition before either of said courts, it shall appear, from competent testimony and from an examination of the child, to the satisfaction of the court that such child is entitled to be committed as aforesaid under or by virtue of any of the provisions of the act of Congress approved July twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, entitled "An act to provide for the care of dependent children in the District of Columbia and to create a Board of Children's Guardians;" and it shall further appear that such child has a father or a mother, either of whom is able to contribute to the support of such child, either by reason of having means or property, or having an income consisting of wages or salary due for personal services or labor or otherwise, said court may commit such child to the care, custody, and guardianship of the Board of Children's Guardians, and may, further, order the father or the mother of such child, or both such father and mother, to contribute by stated payments, to be made to said Board of Children's Guardians, toward the support of such child such sum or sums, monthly, weekly, or otherwise, as in the judgment of said court either or both such father and mother should and may be able to pay.

SEC. 3. That at any time after the commitment of any child to the guardianship of the Board of Children's Guardians of the District of Columbia the said board may apply to the court before which such commitment shall have taken place for an order for contribution toward maintenance by any parent of a child committed as aforesaid, or for an order reducing or increasing the amount payable under any order previously made; and in like manner any parent or guardian may apply for an additional order reducing the amount payable under any order previously made, or revoking such order, or varying or suspending, in whole or in part, the operation of the same; and the courts of the District of Columbia, which have heretofore been or which may hereafter be authorized to commit children to the guardianship of the Board of Children's Guardians, are hereby empowered to make, modify, and revoke orders for contribution toward maintenance as herein provided for.

SEC. 4. That any person against whom an order for contribution toward maintenance may have been made, as provided for in this act, who shall refuse or neglect to make such payments as ordered shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be sentenced to suffer imprisonment in the workhouse of the District of Columbia for not less than three months nor more than one year: Provided, however, That if, after such conviction, any such parent shall appear before the court before which such conviction shall have taken place and shall show to the satisfaction of the court that the amount due under such order, up to the time of

conviction, has been paid, and further, with good and sufficient surety, to be approved by said court, shall enter into bond to the United States in the penal sum of five hundred dollars, conditioned that he will thereafter pay such sums as may have been ordered until such order shall be revoked, the said court may suspend sentence therein during the continuance of such bond.

SEC. 5. That if any person against whom an order for contribution toward maintenance shall have been made as provided for in this act shall leave the District of Columbia, and shall thereupon disobey such order, such person shall be deemed to be a fugitive from justice, and shall be returnable under provisions heretofore made, or which may hereafter be made, for the return of fugitives from justice.

SEC. 6. That the disbursing officer of the Board of Children's Guardians shall receive and shall be responsible under his bond for all moneys paid to said board under the provisions of this act, and shall pay the amounts so received by him into the Treasury of the United States within twenty days after the close of each fiscal quarter.

SEC. 7. That any person who shall lead, take, or entice away, or attempt to lead, take, or entice away, from the institution or private home wherein it may have been placed by the Board of Children's Guardians, any child duly committed to the care, custody, and guardianship of said board, or shall harbor or conceal, or aid in harboring or concealing any such child who shall have absconded from any such home or institution without the knowledge and consent of said board, shall, upon conviction thereof in the police court of the District of Columbia, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be subject to a fine of not less than ten nor more than one hundre dollars, to be recovered as in the case of other fines imposed by said court.

Any police officer in the District of Columbia shall have power, and it is hereby made his duty, to arrest, without warrant, any child who shall have absconded from any institution or family home in which he may have been placed by the Board of Children's Guardians, and to restore such child to the custody of the board. SEC. 8. That all acts or parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this act are hereby repealed.

It so happens, however, that because the board is limited to $4,000 a year for all administrative expenses it has been compelled to suspend the work of placing out children and is compelled to maintain them at an annual expense per capita of $113, instead of $16.99 (the cost of supervision). In other words, because of an unintelligent division of the appropriation the board is compelled to waste money.

This work of personal inspection of the children placed out is essential to proper care of the children; and wherever the system has been adopted its success has been found to depend on the thoroughness with which those receiving children have been held to a strict accountability. No promises, no investigation, no form of contract or indenture has been found to take the place of personal inspection of the home and conversation with the children apart from their foster parents. The committee therefore recommends that:

In future appropriations for the work of the Board of Children's Guardians the expense of visitation and inspection be included with the amount for maintenance.

THE CARE OF FOUNDLINGS.

From the testimony before the committee it appears that foundlings are cared for by the Washington Hospital for Foundlings, by St. Ann's Infant Asylum, and by the Board of Children's Guardians. The Wash

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