Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 187 



also of the fact that a number of states have public institutions or 

 agencies charged with the complete supervision of the welfare of 

 dependent and neglected children. These state bureaus have in a 

 few cases existed for many years, and they publish statistics show- 

 ing a remarkable public benefit from their child-saving work. But 

 in Missouri there is no State system of child-saving. Children 

 who through misfortune are left homeless or whose parents are 

 plainly unfit persons to have charge of them are victims of an un- 

 happy fate, indeed. To be sure, there are private institutions and 

 associations established to care for neglected and dependent chil- 

 dren, and these agencies deserve the highest praise for the unselfish 

 work they are doing. But their number and facilities are not suf- 

 ficient to meet the need; there is no correlation and no compre- 

 hensive plan in their relationships one with another, and it is im- 

 possible to vest in them proper authority to control this field 

 satisfactorily. And there are juvenile courts in six counties, as I 

 have said, which have a substantial supervision over the welfare 

 of children. But in respect to dependent children, these courts 

 are greatly in need of a supplementary State agency for child-plac- 

 ing. So there appears to be a wide breach in our laws, for the chil- 

 dren — the wards of the State — are not being fully protected. 



But the urgency of reform in this field would not be so great 

 were it not that scores of actual instances of the need of a chil- 

 dren's bureau have been observed. The thoughtless way in which 

 children are thrown into jail with adults has just been pointed out, 

 and you must remember that in the large majority of cases the 

 boy or girl that is thrown into jail is the victim of a defective home. 

 The county courts are continually having brought to their at- 

 tention orphans and others of the type mentioned who need homes 

 but for whom the court is not prepared to find such foster homes. 

 Frequently the best they can do is to have them sent to orphan 

 asylums without further supervision, and often they cannot do even 

 so well as that. An inquiry among organizations and public of- 

 ficials this summer disclosed the fact that there are in Missouri 

 between three hundred and six hundred dependent and neglected 

 children immediately in need of the benefits of a State children's 

 bureau. And the situations in which some of them are to be found 

 are truly deplorable. Some dependent children are treated as 

 though they were delinquents and sent to the State reform schools. 

 There are a few who are really but feeble-minded who have been 

 committed to the hospitals for the insane. And, saddest of all, 

 there are about sixty confined in the county poorhouses, their young 



