by their rights, denied them by
institution life. Then, too, we shall find, I think, that there is a good
deal less of the problem than we thought. The managers of the Union
Temporary Home in Philadelphia decided, after thirty one years of work, to
close the House and put the children out to board, because experience had
convinced them that "life in the average institution is not so good for
children as life in the average home." The intelligence of the conclusion,
and the earnestness with which they presented it, guaranteed that their
"Home" had been above the average.

"The testimony of two gentlemen on our Board of Council," they reported,
"both experienced as heads of great industrial enterprises, is that
institution boys are generally the least desirable apprentices. They have
been dulled in faculty, by not having been daily exercised in the use of
themselves in small ways; have marched in platoons; have done everything
in squads; have had all the particulars of life arranged for them; and, as
a consequence, they wait for someone else to arrange every piece of work,
and are never ready for emergencies, nor able to 'take hold.'" But when
they came to actually board the children out, all but the parents of nine
were suddenly able to take good care of them themselves, and of the rest
three found a way before final arrangements were made. There were seventy
children in the Home. Pauperism runs in the same ruts in New York as in
Pennsylvania, and the motive power is the same--ill-spent money.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE VERDICT OF THE POTTER'S FIELD

Looking back now over the field we have traversed, what is the verdict?
Are we going backward or forward? To be standing still would be to lose
ground. Nothing stands still in this community of ours, with its
ever-swelling population, least of all the problem of the children of the
poor. It got the start of our old indifference once, and we have had a
long and wearisome race of it, running it down.

But we have run it down. We are moving forward, and indifference will not
again trap us into defeat. Evidence is multiplying on every hand to show
that interest in the children is increasing. The personal service, that
counts for so infinitely much more than money, is more freely given day by
day, and no longer as a fashionable fad, but as a duty too long neglected.
From the colleges young men and women are going forth to study the problem
in a practical way that is full of