has but just begun. It is doubtful if all the kindergartens in the
city, including those now in the public schools, accommodate much more
than five or six thousand children, if that number. The last sanitary
census showed that there were 160,708 children under five years old in the
tenements. At least half of these are old enough to be in a kindergarten,
and ought to be, seeing how little schooling they will get after they
outgrow it. That leaves in round numbers 75,000 children yet to be so
provided for in New York's tenements. There is no danger that the
kindergarten will become too "common" in this city for a while yet. As an
adjunct to the public school in preparing the young minds for more serious
tasks, it is admitted by teachers to be most valuable. But its greatest
success is as a jail deliverer. "The more kindergartens the fewer prisons"
is a saying the truth of which the generation that comes after us will be
better able to grasp than we.

The kindergarten is the city's best truant officer. Not only has it no
truants itself, but it ferrets out a lot who are truants from necessity,
not from choice, and delivers them over to the public school. There are
lots of children who are kept at home because someone has to mind the baby
while father and mother earn the bread for the little mouths. The
kindergarten steps in and releases these little prisoners. If the baby is
old enough to hop around with the rest, the kindergarten takes it. If it
can only crawl and coo, there is the nursery annex. Sometimes it is an
independent concern. Almost every church or charity that comes into
direct touch with the poor has nowadays its nursery where poor mothers may
leave their children to be cared for while they are out working. Relief
more practical could not be devised. A small fee, usually five cents, is
charged as a rule for each baby. Pairs come cheaper, and three go for ten
cents at the nursery in the Wilson mission. Over 50,000 babies were
registered there last year, which meant, if not 5,000 separate children,
at least 5,000 days' work and wages to poor mothers in dire need of both,
and a good, clean, healthy start for the infants, a better than the
tenement could have given them. To keep them busy, when the rocking-horse
and the picture-book have lost their charm, the kindergarten grows
naturally out of the nursery, where that was the beginning, just as the
nursery stepped in to supplement the kindergarten where that had the