1884.1 THE EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE FARM. 193 



* 



single line, -'over 60,000 homeless children have been placed in 

 good homes in the country " — good homes in. the country — could you 

 find such " good homes " in the cities for 60,000 homeless and often 

 vagrant children ? No, unfortunately, the '' good homes'' in the city 

 mostly, don't want any more children, they find it too hard to train 

 up in industry and virtue those they already have. I speak with 

 some experience and authority on this matter. I have spent part 

 of this very week in the work of getting ready the temporary 

 home for neglected children being provided for this county, under 

 the recent law; I have before had to do with the dependent 

 classes. In this State hundreds of poor, and vicious, and neglected- 

 children from cities have already been taken by small farmers in 

 the country and reared to useful men and women; we don't expect to 

 keep many of the neglected and pauper children in our new home ; 

 there is a demand for them, and that demand, luckily, is all in the 

 country. I see farmers all the time taking children from the 

 "poor-house" to bring up; very poor stock. They would not take 

 as a gift a young cow or horse of such poor stock and low breeding. 



This naturally leads us to the moral side of the question. The 

 report I quoted, of the 60,000 homeless children sent into country 

 homes, follows with the statement that " the fruits [of this work] 

 are seen in the diminished number of petty thieves, child vagrants, 

 and youthful criminals," etc. This is not the merely removing of 

 city temptations to vice. We cannot make a saint of a sinner by 

 merely removing the obvious temptations, the work is deeper than 

 that. These children were placed where they had something use. 

 f ul to do, as well as good to learn ; industry and education in thrift 

 are the first elements in moral education. We have all heard who 

 finds mischief for idle hands to do. Working in the shops and 

 manufactories of great cities does not serve the same end. The 

 routine life of such places is not so healthful either morally, intel- 

 lectually, or physically. 



And this brings us to the matter of health. How to check the 

 child-mortality of large cities has been one of the great problems 

 of civilization. As President of the Board of Health of a great 

 city, I am continually brought face to face with this. I cannot 

 follow up this subject here, but the country child has exemption 

 from a host of physical dangers which beset the city child, and the 

 education in matters pertaining to health are correspondingly 

 unlike. This is an old question, and goes along with that of 



13 



