Barbarous Civilization.
By Christian at Work
It is an awful satire on our civilization that one of the clauses of Senator Comstock's bill for the protection of children, just introduced in our State senate at Albany, should forbid the exhibition of insane, idiotic, or deformed children in museums. It is sickening to think that legislation should be needed in our day to prevent the mutilation by poor and besotted parents of their children in various ways in order to make profit out of them. Other restrictions in the measure are also commendable, among them the one forbidding the apprenticing and training of children in circuses and other shows. Another commendable clause is that forbidding the employment of children in the loathsome vocation of picking up cigar stumps which are subsequently made into cigarettes. These pursuits are dirty and dangerous, and to a certain extent are likewise morally degrading. Further proposals to visit with severer punishment than is now applicable, the abduction of children for immoral purposes, and to restrict the harboring of homeless or indigent children so as to prevent the existence or establishment of institutions such as have frequently been sources of scandal and abuse, will command the praise of all save those who have made a shameful profit out of what it is now sought to abolish.