66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



desertion. Rich people even are living in Inxury, while their 

 nephews, nieces, and grandchildren are being corrupted in orphan 

 asylums ! The niece of a President of the United States was, not 

 long ago, in an asylum, while her uncle, aunt, and three cousins, 

 occupied the White House ! Such people often give as their excuse 

 that the child was too vicious, or rude, or even homely, to be re- 

 ceived into their families. " No one seemed to want him." 



Better the humble home of a poor farmer in the West, far bet- 

 ter for such children as are unavoidably orphaned, than these un- 

 natural corrals. But this kind of orphans constitutes not over one 

 fifth of all. The other four fifths represent indulgence, by the asy- 

 lum founders and managers, toward parents and relatives who wish 

 to shirk resjDonsibilities imposed by Nature upon them. With 

 every such indulgence issues moral miasma upon society, which 

 festers and reproduces its kind. And all this time people with 

 good motives and benevolent spirits thank God that they are not 

 as other men are, and proceed to build additional asylums ! Better 

 and far better live and die among the Zuni Indians of New Mex- 

 ico, having never heard of Christian charity, than to die and leave 

 your orphan child alone in a large city of the United States ! In 

 the latter case he goes to an asylum, to be swallowed up in the 

 masses. In the former case, although he has lost his own father 

 and mother, he has found many fathers and many mothers, all of 

 whom will feel a personal interest in him and responsibility for 

 him, and who will share with him if need be the last pot of corn, 

 and will weep over his grave as if it contained their own flesh and 

 blood. We should need no orphan asylums if we possessed the 

 virtues of the Zuni. 



How to set forth the economic effects of such institutions, and 

 to point out to society the way to make its members rear the chil- 

 dren to whom they have given birth, and to show the disastrous 

 effects of ill-considered altruism, is a task which comes within the 

 province of this section of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science. 



III. Foundling Asylums. — Here, again, sentimentalism has 

 contributed money to build asylums, and even more unwisely 

 than in the case of the orphans. An orphan can not be com- 

 mitted without something being known of its parents, or their 

 circumstances, and without formal papers of transfer. This rou- 

 tine exposes many frauds, and leads managers to reject thousands 

 of applicants for admission. Managers like to boast of the cases 

 they have. rejected. With foundlings, nothing of the sort occurs. 

 The girl whose yieldings to temptation have made her a mother, 

 be she in high life or in low, the intemperate who prefer to use 

 their means for drink to rearing their own offspring, the society 

 people who have boasted that there will be no children in their 



