EIGHT TO SIXTEEN

LORD SHAFTESBURY recently stated in a public meeting in London, that from personal observation he had ascertained that of adult male criminals of that city, nearly all had fallen into a course of crime between the ages of eight and sixteen years, and that if a young man lived an honest life up to twenty years of age, there were forty-nine chances in favor and only one against him as to an honorable life thereafter.

This is a fact of singular importance to fathers and mothers, and shows a fearful responsibility. Certainly a parent should secure and exercise absolute control over the child under sixteen. It can not be a difficult matter to do this, except in very rare cases, and if that control is not very wisely and efficiently exercised it must be the parent’s fault; it is owing to the parental neglect or remissness. Hence the real source of ninety-nine per cent of the real crime in a country such as England or the United States lies at the door of the parents. It is a fearful reflection. We throw it before the minds of the fathers and mothers of our land, and there leave it to be thought of in wisdom, remarking only as to the early seeds of bodily disease that they are, in nearly every case, sown between sundown and bedtime, in absence from the family circle, in the supply of spending-money never earned by the spender, opening the doors of confectioneries and soda fountains, of beer, and tobacco, and wine shops, of the circus, the negro minstrel, the restaurant, and dance; then follows the Sunday excursion, the Sunday drive, with the easy transition to the company of those whose ways lead to the gates of social, physical, and moral ruin. From eight to sixteen; in these few years are the destinies of children fixed in forty-nine cases out of fifty—fixed by the parents. Let every father end mother solemnly vow, “By God’s help, I’ll fix my darling’s destiny for good by making home more attractive than the streets.”