STARTLING STATISTICS FROM A SCHOOL.
By Lucy A. Wiggin
"I hurt my finger this morning," said Carrie, a child of seven years, in a primary school to-day, holding up her little hands for the teacher's sympathy. "How did it happen?" asked the teacher. "I went to the saloon for beer, and the screen door swung back and pinched my fingers. I cried hard it hurt so," said the child. "Why did you go there for beer?" "Oh," said the teacher, "little girls should not go to the saloon! They see men drink and play cards and hear them curse. It isn't a nice place for children. Tell your mother the teacher said please do not send you there again. We must be little ladies here, and ladies do not go to such places." "I go there, too," said another child. Then the question was carefully asked, How many children in this room sometimes go to the saloon for beer? Forty-eight of the fifty present raised their hands. It seemed incredible that so many children should become acquainted at an early age with the interior of a saloon. The average age of these children is about eight years, or less. They do not belong to the lowest stratum of society, by any means, but are children of well-to-do work people, living in one or two rooms, wearing quite good clothes; some of the mothers go out to work. Many pitiful incidents occur to show the general demoralizing influences of the saloon on any neighborhood. One dear little girl, Bessie, had been absent from school some days. The children said she could not come for she had no shoes. Teachers more often supply these, and other much needed articles, than is generally known, so Bessie's shoes were furnished. One day the teacher went in search of her in the dirty back street where the family kept a cheap boarding house. The little maid was seen coming down the street with an old shawl over her head and shoulders, and with something on her arm, but her bare little feet, red and cold, on the frosty sidewalk. "Where are you going?" questioned the teacher. "To the butcher's shop," said Bessie readily. As she tucked the ragged old shawl around the child, she discovered a tin pail instead of a basket on her arm. "You are going for beer, aren't you, dear?" asked the teacher. "My father sent me," said the child, trembling with fear. Later the teacher made an earnest effort to induce the parents to allow her to place Bessie where she would be well cared for and taught; but no, they needed her to run errands. A startling murder occurred in this miserable family the following Sunday, and Bessie was released from the cruel father forever. In a drunken fight with the mother the father struck her with a chair; a boarder tried to defend her, but was in danger of losing his own life, when he seized a heavy iron poker and struck the striker dead. The convenient saloon is almost wholly responsible for this and other terrible tragedies. Familiarity with such scenes is demoralizing to the children of a whole neighborhood. Tender hearts are hardened and the way paved to a downward career. God speed any wise measure to free the land from this terrible blight upon childhood and curse upon manhood.—Lucy A. Wiggin, in Union Signal.