The Waif from Topeka, Kansas • 2

JHZ WAIF. tution. We have more calls for girls than for boys, and could place many such in as good homes as there are in the. State. We would here call the attention of our readers to the fact that our work is not restricted to the children of Topeka, and that any child in the State under fourteen years of age, who stands in need of such friendly assistance as our Home is designed to give will be received and cared for.

In this connection we desire and purpose undertaking to establish in every county in the State, an advisory board of five influential people who will look after the interests of our institution in their community; find homes for the children, looking after their welfare after they are placed in homes, and receiving donations for the support of the work. This matter will be presented to the people at each point where we lecture in future, and by this means we hope to broaden the field and increase the results. DANGER AHEAD. The Waif does not wish to be considered an alarmist, but in considering the present situation we feel sure there is grave cause for fear -concerning the introduction and spread of that deadly disease Asiatic cholera, during the coming summer, in this country. Every condition is not only favorable to this, but to our mind makes it an unavoidable result to be expected.

Even last summer, when the epidemic had gained but comparatively little foot-hold in the territory of its origin, and the most rigid quarantine was maintained along our coast, which almost shut off intercourse with the contaminated regions, a considerable number of cases were reported in New York and Brooklyn. And now, after the disease has been accumulating its full forces for pionths, like a great internal ulcer, in the land of its birth and in the large cities of Europe to which it has spread, carrying the contagion of actual contact to thousands of people to whom our gates will be thrown open and by whom Chicago will be thronged during the heat of the coming summer. To our mind the situation is one for grave alarm, and we look forward to the gathering of the hosts at the Worlds fair as likely to mark an epoch in American history more disastrous than beneficial. It costs an average of $1,000 to convict and send a criminal to the penitentiary, and not less than $250 a year to maintain him while there. The purpose of the Waifs Home is to take from the school of the street such boys as are almost certain candidates for the penitentiary, and by placing them in proper homes, where they will receive an education and training that will fit them for an honorable life, rescue them from prison and from being a constant expense and menace to society.

Experience demonstrates that it costs not more than an average ef $50 for each boy thus rescued from the path to ruin as against the greater sum that it costs the community to abandon him to his fate. This is the practical dollars and cents side of this question, the other advantages are simply beyond computation. The latest literary venture, coming to our attention, is the Monthly Summary published at the Elmira, N. reformatory; No. 1, Vol.

1, of which lies before us. The Weekly Summary is one of our oldest and most valued friends and we welcome its sister publication, if we may so term it, most heartily. The weekly issue is designed more particularly for the inmates and their friends, while this new periodical is designed for general circulation in the interest of prison reform. The sixteen pages of the first number are filled with valuable matter, as may be surmised from the following table of contents The Prison Question; by Rev. Caroline J.

Bartlett. History of Charities and Corrections; by Hon. H. H. Hart.

The Habitual Misdemeanant; Warren F. Spalding. A Letter from England; Wm. Douglas Morrison. The Psychological Examination of Prisoners; Dr.

Julie Morrel. From Drink to Crime; (Editorial The Youthful Criminal; (Editorial.) The Spirit of Liberalism; (Editorial Michigan to the Front; Hon. L. C. Storrs.

The Bureau of Charities and Corrections at the Worlds Fair. Prison Reform in Tennessee; Dr. P. D. Simms.

Prison Reform Notes. Need of Marriage Laws; Hon. C. H. Reeve.

New Books Worth Reading. The subscription price of this new monthly is $1.50 a year, and we advise our readers who desire to keep posted on penological and sociological questions, to remit that amount, with their address, to the Monthly Summary Elmira, N. Y. and legislation aimed at the restriction of this feature of railroad management to a gitimate basis, would solve the problem, with final advantage to both the people and the corporations. It should be made a crime, with a heavy penalty, for any railroad company to issue bonds or stock in excess of the actual value of the property represented.

There is not a trunk line in the country that is not burdened in this manner to an amount double or thrible the value of its property, and its charges upon traffic must be proportionately greater than it would need be to maintain expenses of a legitimate indebtedness. This then is the point where legislation should come in, after which railroads could make money out of their present volume of business at half their present charges. We have heard a great deal during the past two months about the railroads of Kansas controling the affairs of the State, and after looking the subject over we have come to the conclusion that they do, and have always largely done so, although not in the offensive sense generally ascribed by politicians. Looking at this matter fairly what would Kansas be to day if it were not for the Santa Fe, Rock Island, and Missouri Pacific systems? and all of these roads are to day maintaining hundreds of miles of branches that are not paying expenses and are almost solely of benefit to the people of the community through which they run, and these communities could not exist without them. Singularly some of the wildest ranters against railroad monopolies come from communities so situated and benefitted.

The people of Kansas should go slow in this matter of cutting off their nose to spite their face by such railroad legislation. The Waif for February is on our exchange table. On February 1 it was burned out of house and home for the second time, this fire being the work of incendiaries. But the 1 noble young editor, Walter L. Ituss, is nothing daunted and is still holding the fort and working in the interests of unfortunate boys in prison and wayward and neglected boys on the outside.

He was married on January 30 to Miss Carrie D. Mills and together they superintend the Waifs Home, founded by kMr. Russ and now under the care of the Kansas Waifs Aid Society. Lane, Kansas, Leader, March 3. The Waif, published at Topeka, Kansas, under the able and aggressive management of Walter L.

Russ, has suffered a second time from fire. The last fire which oc- curred February 1st is attributed to incendiaries. The Waif, however, never skips a cog, but notwithstanding fire, water, abuse and other evils it puts in its appearance with smiles and precision. It is fearless in its advocacy of right and the denouncing of wrong. The unfortunate boys inside and outside of prison have a genuine friend in the editor.

The Courier sends greetings over the successful career of The Waif and sympathy for its losses by fire. It is finding the human heart which has been placed under every human skm. May prosperity and success crown its future efforts. Kearney Courier. New subscriptions or renewals at Cottonwood Falls may be handed to Mrs.

S. A. Breese, at the postoffice. TOPEKA, MARCA, 1893. WALTER L.

EUSS, Editor. OFFICE DRNNIB-KWART BLK, JACKSON ST. Entered in the Postoffice at Topeka Kama as second class mail matter. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. Published Monthly 50 cents per year CONTRIB UTI0NS9 Contributions solicited on all humanitarian subjects, over the writers own name.

We demand the adoption ot the graded and parole system In the Kansas penitentiary, by which the boys shall be separated from the hardened criminals, and discharged prisoners be provided with situations until they can get a start toward an honest living. KANSAS WAIFS AID SOCIETY. Bev. Chas. M.

Sheldon, President Mks. A. J. Brown 1st Vice President Bev. Dr.

2nd Vice President Olive P. Brat Treasurer Walter L. Buss, Secretary Marion Watson, Assistant Secretary J. B. Larimer Legal Advisor THE WAIFS HOME.

Walter L. Buss Superintendent Dr. Ida C. Barnes Physician HOUSE COMMITTEE. Mrs.

J. N. Henry. Mrs. S.

L. Sherwood. A blue pencil mark over this paragraph indicates that your subscription has expired and you are solicited to renew by remitting a fifty cent postal note. To those who did not receive their February copy of The Waif, we would say that when about half of the issue had been mailed the Home and everything in it was put under quarantine. The balance of the papers have been fumigated and will be enclosed with the March number, to those who had not been attended to.

Only about half of tjie February edition of The Waif had been mailed when the Home was placed under quarantine for diptherea so that we could send out no more until the quarantine was raised. This will explain to many of our subscribers the non-appearance of their paper, and to them it will be sent with the March edition. All persons having business with the Home, will find it most expedient to come direct to the institution, as we will not attempt to keep open a down town office for the present at least. To reach the Home take a Quinton Heights car, to the end of the line, going south. The Home is the large house on the hill to the left as you get off the car.

Visitors are welcome any day it may be convenient to call, but residents of the city are given special invitation for Tuesday and Thursday afternoons of each week. Children's Home Finder is the name of a twenty-four page monthly magazine that has recently came to our table for exchange. It is published at Davenport, Iowa, and is the organ of The Childrens Home Society, and American Educational Aid Society. These societies are engaged in the same line of work, and employ about the same methods as our own, and to them we hereby extend the right hand of fellowship. The Home Finder is edited by an able staff of which Rev.

Geo. Hoover is chief. It is filled with well selected matter bearing upon the subject to which it is devoted. Nearly five hundred children have been cared for by this society, in the State of Iowa alone, during the past four years. They are doing a great work.

THE PANSY CLUB. The Home has again been visited by representatives of the Pansy Club bringing with them, as usual, many valuable donations for the institution. The Waifs home owes more to the young ladies of that society than can be expressed in cold type. Miss Dora Furman and Miss Kelley were the representatives of the club on this occasion and brought the following articles which had been obtained through their efforts: Ten pound roast from Mr. Wolt.

Basket of clothing and groceries, from Mrs. Furman; clothing and shoes from Mrs. Hammett. Clothing from Mrs. Clements.

Fruit and clothing from Mrs. Kelley. Three dollars and fifty cents in cash from Mesdames Swift and Wall, and Messrs. Noel and Furman. We were just fitting out a little boy to take to a home in a distant part of the State, and only lacked a cap in making his outfit complete, so that we were very much pleased to observe just the article we desired among the things brought by these young ladies.

OTHER DONATIONS. During the recent period of quarantine while it was impossible for the superintendent to leave the house or to get supplies, and ten hungry mouths to be fed, all concern on that score was allayed by the arrival of Mesdames Arnold and Archibald with their carriage ladened with both the necessities of life and luxuries for the sick, which had been donated by themselves and several other friends of the Home. It has been our intention to start a poultry yard at the Home this spring and having mentioned this fact while on a visit to the home of Mr. Geo. Pidduck at Scranton, the other day, he at once presented us with a valuable trio of imported game fowls, from his own yard.

Both pullets began laying the day after we brought them home, so that we feel that we have a very favorable start in the poultry business. Mr. Pidduck has taken one of our boys to raise, and we were pleased with the prospects of kindly treatment and a good home training, which his surroundings promise. We would be glad if persons calling at the office of publication and not finding us in would leave their card or name. RAILROAD legislation.

It seems to us that legislators are pursuing a very blind course and making insensate war upon the railroads, in the measures they are bringing forward, and in many cases enacting into laws in this and other States. There are unquestionably matters in this connection needing legislative oversight; but we can see no occasion for the bitter and indiscriminate antagonism existing or seeming to exist between the people, or real patrons of the average railroad, and the corporations running them. A prominent railroad official gave us some light upon the subject of the seeming antagonism of a certain class of legislators, recently, which is worthy of consideration by thinking people. It seems from what this gentleman tells us, that blackmailing railroad corporations, has become a regular and profitable business with these men. A number of them will club together, formulate a bill that would, if enacted into a law, become a source of great annoyance and loss to these wealthy corporations, and at the same time apparently designed in the interest of all classes of shippers thus giving it sufficient favor and prestige to constitute a formidable menace and a powerful lever, with which to open the treasure vaults of the threatened corporations who desire to prevent its passage.

We could readily see how such a scheme could be successfully worked undea cover of pretended reform. But where a legitimate effort has been made to reduce freight rates it seems to us that the most vital point of the subject has been overlooked. Both freight and passenger rates are too high, and yet but few of the roads of the country are making more than enough to pay actual running expenses and the interest on the bonded indebtedness, so that a forced reduction in their present tariff rates would result in actual loss and final bankruptcy. The evil of this entire question ies in the fact of excessive or ficticious bonds and watered stock, THE WAIFS HOME. Since our last issue the work of the Home has been very materially interfered with by sickness and two weeks of quarantine, which prevented the Superintendent from filling some of his engagements outside the city, thereby curtailing the income necessary for its support.

Since quarantine was raised four children two girls and two boys have been taken to homes which will be permanent if the conditions prove satisfactory after a few weeks trial. The locations are North Topeka, Manhattan, Cottonwood Falls and Scranton; and another boy will be taken to a home at Medicine Lodge by the time this paper reaches its readers. All of these five children have been with us all winter, four of them having attended school regularly during that time, which marks the longest period of schooling which they have ever received. We have applications on file for three girls for whom homes are dpen, and two applications for boys to be admitted to this insti 4.