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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 It I ii i &4B 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. iMBSft.. snT ■ AVr‘.~L... lEMKRtiw ? j Mo -W' I’-Msji&SSs *'"”W'''**&; , _. - K- - —■—.. 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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 1 ■ Mil rc, t A,' - - ■ I b_n . ■' 4jf~ ▼ “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- X** AwOHe ”"• •• •• 13 !! I I •• •• •• H/' xY \ ( bi as U / \ f| IB ABB Bl I I jal Iml /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.