Newspaper Page Text
WhyWe
Should)
Pension
Mothers
Remarkable
Economy and
Humanity of the
Illinois Law
Which Pays a
Poor Mother to
Raise Her Child
Instead of Paying
an Institution
to Do It
THERE Is a philanthropic movement
throughout the country to pension
mothers. THiis means that a moth
er will receive from the taxes an allow
ance for each child she Is unable to sup
port. The necessity of sending a child to
an institution at public expense is thereby
avoided and a home is saved from dis
ruption
The advocates of this movement say
that children’s institutions produce shift
less citizens, with no conception of civic
duties. A grave question is raised here.
The institutions may say that they are
better fitted to raise children than moth-
By HENRY NEIL,
Secretary of the National Probation League.
IN the United States when a woman Is
deprived of her husband by some ac
cident we take her children away from
her and put them in an institution.
The mother is made miserable by the
loss of her children and is very often
driven into an early grave by her sor
rows. The children are •‘institutionalized.'
That means that they are stamped with
an influence that deprives them of self
respect, character, enterprise and loyalty
to home and family. They know neither
home nor family and therefore can have
no love for them.
The children of the institutions furnish
a large proportion of our delinquents
From the institution they pass on to the
reformatory—and then too often to the
jail. Os four young men of the age of
eighteen hanged in Cook County early
this year all had been raised in charitable
or reformative institutions.
A significant fact I have discovered Is
that more than half of all recorded wife
deserters were raised in Institutions.
This method of ruining families is be
ing followed practically all over the
United States It is certainly the method
followed by alll great cities. In Illinois we
have departed from it. We have passed
“The Mothers' Pension Law,’ which
makes a suitable provision for every
child whose mother, through no wrongdo
ing of her own, is unable to support it,
the money to be expended by her under
the supervision of an agent of the Chil
dren's Court.
This law, which went into effect on
July 1, 1911, reads as follows:
“If the parent or parents of such de
pendent or neglected child are poor and
unable to properly care for said child,
but are otherwise proper guardians, and
it is for the welfare of such child to re
main at home, the court may enter an
order finding such facts and fixing the
amount of money necessary to enable the
parent or parents to properly care for
such child, and thereupon it shall be the
duty of the County Board through its
County Agent or otherw'ise to pay tn such
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Pension Advocates Say That One Hundred Institutionalized Boys Will
Raise 500 Children of Whom 250 Will Go Back to Institutions and
These in Turn Will Send 625 to Institutions and So on Progressively.
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Mrs. Anna Squea of Chicago and Her Happy Family of Seven Little Ones Ail Saved from Being Sent to institutions. The
Father Was Killed by “the Black Hand” and the Mother Now Receives a Month from the County.
? rs of the destitute classes, often livtn
p slums. At any rate, the “Mothers
tension law” has gone into effect in I!
••n, Ol8 * Henry Neil, who has been called
the father of the Mothers’ Pension '.aw
and la working to have a> similar law
passed in every State in the Union, hero
describes its objects and working;
parent or parents at such times as said
order may designate the amount so speci
fied for the care of such dependent or
neglected child until the further order of
the Court.”
You will notice that this taw speaks of
parents, but from natural causes it is
practically always to the mother that the
money is paid.
This law, which I and my associates
succeeded in having passed, has worked
splendidly. Within » few months it has
saved hundreds of innocent mothers from
unspeakable torture It has saved over a
thousand children frpm becoming institu
tionalized and of doubtful value to society.
Cook County on July 1 was helping 327
mothers with 1.200 children. The sum
expended was $6,963.96 for the month of
Junfk the amount paid to each mother
averaging $21.30. There was an average
of three and two-thirds children to the
family.
The total amount expended during the
year in the whole State will, it is esti
mated, amount to SIOO,OOO. In ihe follow
ing year we expect that it will come to
$200,000. The total amount, we believe,
will never be more than $500,000 a year
for the State.
This method of taking care of depend
ent children is not only an immense ad
vance in humanity, it is a great, saving
to the State. Charitable institutions are
everywhere extravagant in their demands
and methods. In Illinois the poor mother
will take care of her child well for about
half the amount the. charitable institutio:
asks for doing the work unsatisfactorily.
In Chicago we used to pay $lO a month
to an institution lor taking care of a
child
New York is very liberal in its allowance
for dependent children, and the results are
no more satisfactory that elsewhere. New
York allows $2.75 a week for each child,
which amounts to $11.91 a month. In
addition, it allows seventy cents a day
for schooling and other amounts for med
ical attendance and other requirements.
According to the last report I have re
ceived, New York spent $1,089,609 on
pendent children, of whom there were
8,848 in various institutions at the close
of the year.
Not only does the city pay the large
amount mentioned to the charitable insti
tutions, but the public also contributes
largely in. the form of voluntary subscrip
tions. When this is taken into considera
tion, the economy of leaving the child
with its mother is seen to be all the
greater.
I have estimated that a mother could
take care of two children for the amount
paid by the City of New York to an in
stitution for one child, and still leave
41 cents per month of the taxpayers'
moifey that might be saved.
The institution is a costly affair. The
overhead charges for superintendents,
bookkeepers, nurses and ail kinds of cost
ly helpers are very great. AU this is
saved when you leave the child with its
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“Why not pension the mother instead of employing the police
man to do her work ?”
mother The mother asks nothing for
her labor.
The mother will do her best for her
child for the strongest of natural rea
sons. I have no patience with anyone
who argues that an institution can do
better for a child than an ignorant mother.
The facts 1 have mentioned concerning
the unhappy careers of children raised in
institutions sufficiently disprove this ar
gument If any inducement beyond he
natural one were needed, we have pro
vided it under the Illinois law, for the
mother must satisfy an officer of the
court that she doing her duty well in
order to secure a continuance of the al
lowance.
Let me emphasize the inhumanity of
the present system of separating a mother
from her children. Imagine a fainilv con
sisting of an unskilled' laborer, his wife
and five children We are told that a
healthy couple who raise a large lamily
are doing a service to the State. Assume
that this man ami his wife are doing
the best they can for their family, in
any case they will have no money to spare.
One day the man is killed by a freight
car he is going to load, an accident that
happens in his class many times a day
all over the country. The widowed
mother nearly kills herself in an effort
lo earn some money and take care of her
children at. the same time. She is un
equal to the struggle. Some charitable
society hears that the children are not
properly cared for The mother is hauled
up before a Children's Court and all or
most of her children are taken away from
her, probably never to be seen by | ler
again.
Thus in return for having tried to
her duty to the State you punish a naothe
py th' cruelest of tortures, it is ,0 l,ie "
vent this kind of tragedy that we have
passed "The Mothers' Pension Law."
1 can -how that under our old system
of caring for dependent children we have
really established a farm of legalized child
slavery 1 will tell x u the story of one
such child slave in Illinois.
When Effie Smith was seven years of
age her mother was left a widow. The
father was killed at his work. Her mother
managed to live and support her daughter
and two younger ones for eighteen
months. Then she became so poor she (
was found starving and freezing on a cold
Winters day.
Charity helped her for a few weeks It
was then found that she
could not work while she
had to care for the children.
In due course of time the
three little ones were taken
from her. Willie, the little
boy, and Grace, the baby
sister, were taken to institu
tions. and so was Effie. What
became of the young ones
I will not be told in this story.
■ Only Effie's career will be
• followed.
She was committed to an
, institution by law. Under the
law this institution (a pri
vate concern, depending up
on charitable contributions
i for existence) had full and i .
- charge of th- little girl « complete
She lived there for a few months Then
she was boomed out, now here now
mere, sometimes she went to school and
sometimes she did not. • ’ OO an ™
Mother love, mother sympathy, mother
softness, entirely was absent from her ex
perience In time she considered herself
wronged by every one. She could not
call her life her own. When she was lit
teen a woman told her she must go to
work She was large for her age and
they said she was strong.
You must go to work.’’ said this woman,
and Effie knew it was true, for alwavs she
was ordered to do things. She had no
choice
The county had been paying $lO a
month for her board through the institu
tion The court which had committed her
to this society concerned itself no more
about her That is the law.
'1 bus it went for five years. Once she
escaped, but a policeman caught her and
locked her in prison. Effie claimed she
was twenty-one, although the court rec
ords said she was but twenty and still a
slave to be disciplined by a policeman
In all these years she had no control of
her own earnings. She was large and
strong and had she not been held by an
institution she easily would have earned
from $5 to $8 a week doing housework.
Finally a young man made love to Effie
and she ran away and was married Af
ter she was marrried she received papers
giving her freedom for the first time in
eleven years There are many Effies in
Illinois, but they do not all end as well
as she.
The cruelty of the system Is often
brought out by the pitiful struggles of
mothers to prevent their children from
being taken by institutions. In Chicago I
have known of mothers who have hidden
their children, of others who have fled
from the city, of others who have barri
caded themselves in their rooms, of those
who have threatened to commit suicide
simply because they knew that charitable
institutions were seeking to take their
children from them. I do not wish to
dwell on morbid details, but there is no
doubt that many mothers have committed
suicide simply because their children had
i been taken from them.
• I'he Inhumanity of prevailing laws goes
even further than 1 have yet outlined. In
> Illinois there was a provision in the law
that when a society found a home for a
i dependent child, with adoptive parents,
> it must refuse all information to the
mother or natural parents concerning the
i whereabouts of the child. It was a crim
inal offense to furnish such information
' The law, you see, deliberately planned to
i effect the perpetual separation of mother
and child.
In New York there are laws and rules
* that are equally objectionable. For in
stance, the city pays S2O to a charitable
* society for finding’'a home” for a depend
ent child In the vast majority of cases
the “home” is with a farmer in some dis-
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/Advocates of Mothers’ Pensions Say the
Mother Will Raise a Child at Less Than
Half the Cost an Institution Will Require.
tant part of the country, say South Da
kota. where there is a keen demand for
labor.
I he farmer gets the child’s services for
nothing, for some years at least. He has
no material mterest in the child. His
interest is primarily a business one The
result in this case again is almost invari
ably the perpetual separation of a mother
from her child.
Now. I maintain that every child has a
natural right to th • support and compan
ionship of its mother, and conversely,
that the mother has a natural right to the
love and companionship of her child. I
am speaking, mark you, of mothers who
are accused of no wrong doing. Every
argumeni drawn from nature and morality
will prove that these are natural rights.
1 he memory of a mother's care and af
fection is the best possession that a child
can have in after life. It will make him
true to his wile and children and to his
obligations as a citizen.
Our charitable institutions are produc
ing children who have no conceptions of
these obligations The extent to which
the number of these “institutionalized”
children is increasing among the unskilled
laboring classes is startling and is not
realized by the average respectable citizen.
An institution grows strangely by what it
produces.
Suppose that a hundred dependent boys
are sent to an institution After they
have left and grown up they will marry
.nd have on the average five children
apiece. They are as a rule utterly shift
less. reckless a.nd improvident. More
than half of them will desert their wives
as the burden of supporting the children
becomes severe. Thus 250 children will
be sent to institutions. They will raise
1,250 children of whom half, or 625, will
be sent to institutions.
These in turn will provide a proportion
ate crop of dependent children. At this
rate it may easll? be calculated that the
whole of the unskilled laboring population
of the groat cities would in a few genera
tions fall into ihe “institutionalized"
class. I cannot believe that that calamity
will ever come to pass, for it would reduce
us to the rank of an uncivilized nation of
shiftless nomads.
The Mothers Pension law has been
proved to be one practical step on the
way to averting this calamity. Our task
now is to have a similar law put in force
throughout the country. With this in
view I am sending information to the legis
lators in all our States, explaining the
vital and unassailable moral object of the
l?w and its excellent practical working in
Illinois at present. I am concentrating
my energies on an appeal to the legisla
tors of New York, so that they may take
action at the coming session of the Legis
lature
I appeal to the good citizenship of the
country to save the mothers of the poor
est laboring classes from lifelong and un
deserved misery and their children from
degeneration.