The Truant Children Law

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THE TRUANT CHILDREN LAW.

The crowning glory of the State of New York consists—not in the number of her inhabitants or the extent or fertility of her territory—nor even in the vastness of her commerce and the magnificence of her public buildings and institutions. All these things, which tend to exalt her among States, are possessed in an equal and in some instances superior degree by other communities. Her greatest glory and highest honor lie not in these, but in the provision which she has made for the training of her embryo citizens. She has recognized, more fully and clearly than any other community in modern or ancient times, the duty which the State owes to the rising generation who form part of the population; and in her Common School system she has provided means for their training into good citizens and worthy members of Society, which are nowhere else equaled. By the establishment, at immense cost to her taxpayers, of district schools throughout the State, she aims to place within the reach of every child born on her soil the knowledge which shall fit him efficiently to discharge the duties of citizenship which he will be called on to assume; and while in common with all other communities she claims obedience to her laws, she recognizes the fact that it is first the duty of the State to instil into the minds of the young those lessons which are afterwards to be put in practice in a virtuous manhood. Having no military despotism, like the nations of the old world, to enforce submission to the laws by force, she strives to inculcate in her Public Schools that sense and knowledge of the right which will lead the future citizen to yield an intelligent and cheerful obedience.

But there is a class whom the Public School system cannot operate upon, because it cannot reach them. In the large cities there are many children, some deprived of parental care, and others neglected by those who should be their natural guardians, who never enter the Public Schools, and hence in regard to them the benevolent and far-seeing statesmanship which gave New York her Common Schools is without effect. To reach these classes the Truant act of 1853 was passed—a fitting complement and apex of the Public School system, resting on the same unassailable and eternal basis of wisdom and philanthropy on which our glorious system of free education stands.

In the Eagle¹ of yesterday we find the enactments of this law misrepresented and its design and operation caricatured and calumniated. The editor says:—

The institution, we believe, was started under a general State law passed some years ago, and applicable to the cities and villages in the State. We are further of opinion that this is about the only community in which an attempt has been made to carry it into effect.

The law, if we recollect its provisions, authorises any policeman or constable to kidnap any child found on the sidewalk, even if the said child be committing no offence whatever and hurry it off to the general barracks at Flatbush. Every child over a certain tender age must be so many months of the year in school, or it becomes public property and a subject for the excercise of muddle-headed, milk-sop philanthropy. A parent may consider his child too delicate in structure to be cramped at a desk all day and inhale the vitiated atmosphere of a school-room;—no matter, it must go, or Dogberry will "comprhend" it as a "vagrom" and send it to the penal colony.

Is the doctrine to be acknowledged or tolerated for a moment, that no child can breathe the free air of heaven in the pent-up city, or look into the face of the clear blue sky, without being immediately kidnapped! Are bats and balls, and kites and hoops, crimes to be punished by imprisonment? Is the right to life and liberty an adult attribute, which no one has a right to claim until after arriving at maturity? Is involuntary servitude, except for crime, only an offence when applied to negroes? In a word, are white children, even if born in poverty, to be grabbed by a policeman for no offence?

To expose the falsity of this statement, and the fallacy of the arguments against the Truant Home which are based upon it, we need only quote from the law itself:

Section 1. If any child, between the ages of five and fourteen years, having sufficient bodily health and mental capacity to attend the public schools, shall be found wandering in the streets or lanes of any city or incorporated village, idle and truant, without any lawful occupation, any justice of the peace, police magistrates or justices of the district courts in the city of New York, on complaint thereof by any citizen on oath, shall cause such child to be brought before him for examination, and shall also cause the parent, guardian or master of such child, if he or she have any, to be notified to attend such examination. And if on such examination the complaint shall be satisfactorily established, such justice shall require the parent, guardian or master to enter into an engagement in writing to the corporate authorities of the city or village that he will restrain such child from so wandering about, will keep him or her on his own premises, or in some lawful occupation and will cause such child to be sent to some school at least four months in each year, until he or she becomes 14 years old. And such justice may in his discretion require security for the faithful performance of such engagement. If such child has no parent, guardian or master refuse or neglect within a reasonable time to enter into such engagement, and to give such security, if required, such justice shall, by warrant under his hand, commit such chiild to such place as shall be provided for his or her reception as hereinafter directed.

The above needs neither comment nor defense. None but those who fear early instruction and free inquiry—none but those who cling to the venerable errors of the theology of the Dark Ages, and hate alike all modern intelligence and freedom of belief, and who therefore abhor equally the Public School system and the Truant Law, can object to a legislative scheme whose design contemplates and whose operation will tend to effect, the reclamation of unfortunate uncared-for children from ignorance and vice, and their elevation into honest, decent, and self-supporting members of society.

The Protestant American people of Kings County will regard with indignation this attempt on the part of the Eagle to cast a slur on a law which they justly regard as one of the most beneficent and wise enactments on the Statute Book; and those of them who are acquainted with the paternity of the Eagle articles will not be long in discovering from what quarter of the theological world the writer drew his inspiration.

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