FOURTH AND FIFTH HEARINGS.

DEPENDENT CHILDREN.

APRIL 9, 1897-2 o'clock p. m.

Present: Hon. James McMillan, chairman; Hon. C. J. Faulkner, Hon. Mahlon Pitney, Hon. S. A. Northway.

Senator MCMILLAN. The order for to-day is as follows:

FOURTH HEARING.

Subject: Dependent Children.

To be heard: Officers of the Board of Children's Guardians; officers of the Humane Society; judges of District courts.

TOPICS.

1. What children are, properly speaking, dependent; and what are the duties of the District toward such as are dependent?

2. Has the District a duty toward children not officially declared dependent?

3. Methods of taking up dependent children; the limits of guardianship.

4. The proper training for dependent children.

5. The disposal of dependent children; in homes; in boarding places. 6. The need of visitation in the case of children placed out.

FIFTH HEARING.

Subject: Dependent Children; Institutional Training.

To be heard: Officers of the Board of Children's Guardians; officers of the Industrial Home School; officers of the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children; officers of the Humane Society.

TOPICS.

1. The facilities offered by aided District institutions to care for dependent children.

2. What coordination of existing institutions and agencies is possible and desirable (a) for taking up children, (b) for training children, (c) for placing out and visiting children.

3. Changes in existing institutions necessary to adapt them for the care of all dependent children, properly so called.

4. Industrial training for dependent children.

5. The possibility of securing homes.

THE BOARD OF CHILDREN'S GUARDIANS.

Senator MCMILLAN. Are the officers of the Board of Children's Guardians here?

Mr. WILLIAM REDIN WOODWARD. I am president of the Board of Children's Guardians.

Representative PITNEY. You are president?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; we understood that the committee desired a paper in writing on this subject. Such a statement has been prepared and submitted to an informal meeting of the board of trustees so that their views could be as nearly unanimous as possible and indicate the ideas of the entire board. There are certain matters in the paper that some of the members dissent from. The paper was prepared hastily, and I will comment simply on matters that are objected to by certain members as I proceed:

"What children are, properly speaking, dependent; and what are the duties of the District of Columbia toward such as are dependent?

"The proper definition of dependency in children is, we believe, yet to be written. The test to be applied, and which must be met as a condition precedent to support and protection, as charitable cost, varies at different institutions according to the mental peculiarities of founders; so that, in this matter, we are compelled to consider what ought to be, rather than what is.

"The following classes of children should be subject to the protection of public authority, and should be supported at public cost, whenever no parent or relative can be compelled to adequately support them and they are not offered charitable care and support by private or religious organizations, approved by the Government:

"(a) Children under 16 years of age who are found exposed to such immoral and contaminating influences as make it probable that they will become morally depraved. It should not be necessary that the condition of depravity be already set up. If it is imminent, the child is entitled to authoritative removal to healthful moral surroundings.

"(b) Children whose personal habits, language, and manner of life render them unfit for association with their kind under ordinary circumstances. A corrupt boy or girl has often been known to contaminate a whole neighborhood or school. The career of all such should be cut short by their instant confinement in an appropriate institution.

"(e) Children of habitual but unnecessary paupers or workers of the charitable resources of a community. The pauper instinct, in addition to being transmissible from parents to children, is powerfully reenforced by example, precept, and necessity, when children are allowed to remain in the environment which such parents create.

"(d) Children subjected to willful abuse by drunken parents, or those whose brutality can not be restrained.

"(e) All children abandoned by their parents, all children found begging on the street or from door to door, and all children who, for any reason, are deprived of the common necessities of life.”

Senator FAULKNER. Do I understand that that is what you advise? Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir; that is the general practice now under the act incorporating the Board of Children's Guardians. In a little briefer space the act provides just such classes of children. Reference to the act will show that it was intended to comprehend those classes.

The next question is, "Has the District of Columbia a duty toward children not officially declared dependent?" We answer:

"Undoubtedly it has. The only way in which cases involving the

welfare of children can be successfully and adequately dealt with will be found to be by means of the maintenance of some agency to which reports and complaints regarding such matters can be made, and which will have for its specific duty the enforcement of the laws for the protec tion of children.

"The duty of making such provision that all cases of abuse, abandonment, moral danger, and hurtful poverty shall be speedily brought to light, and the children affected thereby promptly relieved, is by no means the least of the duties of the District of Columbia.

"There should also be provision made for the temporary care of children while the necessary legal steps toward commitment are being taken, for instances will often be found wherein the rescue of the child can not safely be delayed for a single hour."

We have no place for temporary detention of children. We have to use the agencies that are already in existence, such as orphan asylums, homes, etc., but the board has no place under its control where we can put a child under investigation.

Representative NORTHWAY. How do you get these children?
Mr. WOODWARD. Through the police court.

Representative NORTHWAY. They commit them to your charge?

Mr. WOODWARD. We are their legal guardians. Under the act the police court has power of temporary commitment, and we are empowered to detain children a week pending investigation.

Senator MCMILLAN. You do that, of course?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Senator MCMILLAN. You put them in private institutions?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; we have to do that, because there is no suitable public institution.

"We know of no reason why all children who come within the scope of the work which the Government can properly do should not be officially declared to be under the protection of public authority.

"(3) Methods of taking up dependent children; limits of guardianship.

"There is only one process through which children may properly become permanent public beneficiaries, i. e., through a commitment had in a properly organized court of justice. The attempts at fraud on the part of persons who wish to push off their children during the years of their helplessness are so insidious and such persons become so expert at invoking sympathy where none is due that only by the proc ess and among the surroundings of judicial examination can the truth be ascertained. Again, if the doors of public support open only in obedience to orders of the courts, they will remain closed to the hundreds of children whose parents have been affected in imagination by an imposing edifice, erected as a home for dependent children, and who would appeal for admission thereto if it could be done practically in secret, but who will struggle on to the end of life, bearing burdens which they alone should bear, rather than appear in court in an attempt to secure a share in the benefits provided for the children of the unfortu nate, the incompetent, and the depraved.

"We urge the legal and binding commitment as the only proper process for the reception of children into public care and support, for the additional reason that only by such means can their parents and relatives be prevented from interfering with them to their damage. The relations of a child-caring body with the parents of its wards are the most annoying and the most unsatisfactory to the interests of the children under care, of the whole round of its varied experience. Somebody must have authority to, in the first place, take children away from

unfit parents, and in the second place, keep such parents away from the children, if good work is to be done."

We find that a large proportion of cases, upon examination, are cases of people who are measurably able to support their children, but who under the law are not obliged to support them. For instance, the District of Columbia is a favorite resort for people who want to get rid of their children, who bring them here and desert them, and then go back to their homes in the States, and we have to support them; and we often find upon investigation that the parents are nonresidents of the District or are able to support their children.

Senator FAULKNER. Can you state the percentage of children of nonresident parents that you take care of?

Mr. WOODWARD. We are not compelled to take care of any.

Senator FAULKNER. I mean that you control, but that are placed in these different institutions?

Mr. WOODWARD. We do not knowingly place them in institutions where their parents are nonresidents.

Senator MCMILLAN. What do you do with them?

Mr. WOODWARD. We return them to the parents for them to take care of. However, in many cases, where the child is absolutely deserted, we take care of the child. Upon investigation, we sometimes find that a mother has recently come here with the secret purpose of leaving her child in the District and then returning home, and we do not take the child. If we find the mother we provide her with transportation home, if she will go with the child.

Senator FAULKNER. Is there any percentage, or considerable percentage, of children whose parents live outside of the District that you have been compelled to provide for by reason of desertion?

Mr. WOODWARD. I can not tell you the exact percentage, but there is seldom a meeting of the board that we do not have some such case, of a child left at a railroad station or left with some person, and the parent never returns.

Representative PITNEY. Little children?

Mr. WOODWARD. Babies.

Senator FAULKNER. How do you know that these parents of children left at railroad stations are nonresidents?

Mr. WOODWARD. In many cases they have previously applied to us. Senator FAULKNER. This preliminary investigation of your board has a tendency to weed out undeserving cases?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Representative PITNEY. I understood you to read something in that paper in reply to question No. 2, as to whether the District has a duty toward children not officially declared dependent, to the effect that relief ought not to be confined to those who have been adjudicated upon by the court. Do you undertake any part of that work?

Mr. WOODWARD. We can not, for lack of means.

Representative PITNEY. Do you ever avail yourself of the work of the Associated Charities in making investigation and giving relief to cases brought to your attention?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; and the Humane Society and other kindred organizations.

Representative PITNEY. You keep in touch with them?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; as I understand the second question, it asks if there should not be some agency established or used, the Board of Children's Guardians or other society, by which investigation should

be made of children that are not reported to us. who ought to be attended to that are not reached.

There are many more

I was reading from the paper the reply to question 3-methods of taking up dependent children and the limits of guardianship. We say"We urge the legal and binding commitment as the only proper process for the reception of children into public care and support, for the additional reason that only by such means can their parents and relatives be prevented from interfering with them to their damage. The relations of a child-caring body with the parents of its wards are the most annoying and the most unsatisfactory to the interests of the children under care, of whole round of its varied experience. Somebody must have authority to, in the first place, take children away from unfit parents, and, in the second place, keep such parents away from the children, if good work is to be done.

"The objection to this as an exclusive process of reception is that it is antiparental; that it excludes the children of worthy widows who look with horror upon a judicial commitment placed between them and their children, and that, being practically irrevocable, it prevents the restoration to parents of children who might with safety, and therefore should be, so restored. We reply that, in theory, it is no doubt antiparental, but that in practice it need be no more so than is found necessary. A child-caring association is invariably made up of the most humane and kindly disposed persons in the community. No matter how much authority they may have, they can not be accused beforehand of maintaining absolute and permanent separation of parents from children, unjustly and without regard to the interests of the children, whose welfare they have undertaken to promote. There is nothing to prevent a properly organized child-caring associa tion from restoring children to parents, for such an organization can do anything for and with a child, committed to its care, which may seem reasonable and just. In case of such a restoration, if the parent should again lapse into the condition which made it necessary to take the child in the first place, the legal guardianship, never surrendered, will be found a most valuable element in the summary correction of the mistake made in the tentative restoration; while the supervision maintained over all placed out wards will serve as a frequent reminder to the parent to maintain a home of a high order of excellence, thus preventing many relapses otherwise certain to occur.

"In actual experience we have never known a single case wherein children have been allowed to suffer through fear of the effect of the authoritative commitment. We have found that parents actually and necessarily in distress can always be prevailed upon to trust the childcaring society to deal with them reasonably and justly, or that some other appropriate resource was available.

"Extraordinary care should be exercised in the examination of cases presented for commitment; in order, first, that the rights of parents be not lightly set aside; and, second, that the public be not burdened with the support of children not necessarily dependent. Once acquired, guardianship should only be revoked for improper administration. It should continue during the minority of the child."

Senator FAULKNER. Well, does not the law provide all that?

Mr. WOODWARD. It does not provide for restoration of a child to parents. It provides for our absolute guardianship.

Senator FAULKNER. What is the judgment of the court that it be committed to you until the child is 21 years of age?