The Child of the Slums by William Samuel Sadler

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 12, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 37.

The Child of the Slums

By William Samuel Sadler

DEMORALIZATION OF THE YOUNG MAN. No. 10.

The Child of the Slums.

COMING on further down the social scale, we reach the "child of the slums," sometimes fatherless, motherless, homeless; but occasionally so fortunate(?) as to have a lone domicile somewhere in the slums, which to him is known as "home." Many of these places known by that sacred term "home" you would hardly consider fit for human habitation. This poor boy, the product of the slums, is indeed to be pitied. What can we do to help him? What can be done to save him from a life of vice and crime? You can clothe him when he needs it; you can feed him when he is hungry; you can bring him to Sabbath-school and impart valuable instruction,—which seems to go in at one ear and out at the other. But there is a missing link somewhere in the poor boy's makeup, and to human appearance, you will never be able to accomplish much in your efforts to make him better until you have forged this missing link and put it in place.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the time to begin to train a child's character is a hundred years before it is born. My experience in dealing with these boys of the street has often led me to seriously wonder if, indeed, heredity, perversity, and iniquity, did not conspire together a century ago to make these children what they are to-day. Hundreds of them seem to have been born almost without moral discernment. A brief study of child life in the slums of a great city will soon dispel all query and wonderment as to why these boys, when older grown, become such dissolute specimens and desperate criminals. How could it be otherwise when they are born, bred, and reared in an atmosphere of crime, vice, and iniquity? These poor lads, who, unless rescued, are to become in the future leeches upon society; and vagabonds upon the face of the earth, are in reality the end-product of generations of sin, vice, and crime. The ennobling influences of a Christian home and home life are as unknown to, and as far removed from, the child of the slums as if they existed only on another world.

Child-life Environment in the Slums of a Great City.

From the earliest dawn of reason, the boy of the slums is confronted with a panorama of evil, ever presenting its images of vice and iniquity before his young mind. You would scarcely think it necessary to speak of his having been demoralized,—for truly it seems as if "demoralization" expresses better than any other word his very character and the environment of his birth and subsequent life. You will work with his parents, if he has any, with but little success. They do not seem to be able to make use of even the facilities within their reach, that might tend to improve their condition. The only great hope of the future, in assisting a very considerable number of these children of the slums, lies in some plan whereby they must be transplanted from their native soil of vice and crime into one of purity and industry.

A short time ago, two philanthropically inclined gentlemen fitted up several of these squalid slum quarters with all modern conveniences, including bath-tubs, etc. A few weeks later these gentlemen paid a visit to their beneficiaries and were not a little surprised, upon entering the first place, to find the bath-tub used as a dumping-ground for the ash-pan. In the second home this utensil for personal cleanliness was serving a somewhat more practical use,—as a wash-tub in which the family washings, taken in as a source of livelihood, were being turned out. Careful inquiry elicited the fact that the tubs had never once been used for the purpose for which they were originally designed. This incident but serves to show that the remedy is not in supplying people from day to day with the things which they think they need, or we think they need, but in teaching them how to embrace present opportunities, how to transform failure into success, how to utilize to the best possible advantage that which Divine Providence has placed at their disposal.

The Orphan and the Newsboy.

The orphan, of course, is a subject of pity in the eyes of all, and the numerous benevolent associations, orphanages, and similar institutions scattered throughout the land, are evidence that at least a small portion of this class is being cared for. But the newsboy is a character that has received very little attention. Some of our large cities, it is true, have homes where these boys are given some care.

There is one lesson, however, which every boy and young man might learn from the newsboy, and that is the vital one of activity and industry, as well as individuality of thought and action. These traits of character are highly developed in the average street, or newsboy, because the getting of a livelihood is to him a real thing. It is provided neither by his imagination nor by interested parents. Many of these boys survive the terrible influences of heredity and early environment, and really develop into industrious and prosperous men.

W. S. SADLER.