City and State excerpt March 30, 1899, p. 216 - 217

City and State, pp. 216-217, March 30, 1899, 1899.45029

TO THE EDITOR OF CITY AND STATE:

A great many sincere friends of those best of our citizens whose beneficent works are carried forward at great personal sacrifice and in the truest spirit of humanity for the amelioration of the condition of the nation’s wards have deeply regretted the attack made in CITY AND STATE upon the Lincon Institution and Educational Home. Without calling in question the motives which have actuated you in this attack, it is undeniably injurious to philanthropy in general and unjust to one of the most conspicuous examples of this virtue in our community.

The first of the articles to which I refer that of March 9th, entitled “An Unfit Superintendent” deals with the incident of a visit to the Educational Home on December 9, 1898, by Mr. Sniffen, whom a former pupil, known to the institution as insubordinate and unfriendly, was conducting through the buildings without the formality of consulting the superintendent or the officer who represented him in his absence. The account of the altercation as given by Mr. Sniffen does not agree with that of Colonel Given, but both agree that the latter was knocked down by the former pupil. The most elementary view of courtesy and fairness would seem to have required that Mr. Sniffen should visit Colonel Given, or the superintendent for the time being, before proceeding to examine an institution under his care. In your article allusion is made to Mr. Sniffen’s “full account, showing the condition of the institution exceedingly untidy, and in other ways very unsatisfactory” so very vaguely that the only actual complaints discoverable are Colonel Given’s manner toward the boy, and the very indefinite charge, ascribed to “the boys of the school” that Given frequently struck them which deserves no consideration until the boys who make this charge are specified and their story investigated. Mr. Turner’s assertions of cruelty by a former superintendent (Mr. Jackson) will be more particularly noticed in connection with your article in the number of March 23d. Those relating to the continual idleness of a group of six or eight boys are flatly contradicted by the officers and managers of the Home. Considering the fact that the object of this attack is a woman, without a vote and ineligible to political office, the implication of the “little incident” ascribed to Mr. Turner at the end of this article is, as you would express it to say the least unfortunate in its appearance of disingenuousness. Or will it be seriously believed that Mrs. Cox retains a superintendent of the Educational Home because he is a supporter of a political boss, and through hm she can command the influence in Congress of Messrs. Quay, Penrose, Bingham, and Adams?

In your issue of March 16th you give a number of unfavorable extracts from various reports for 1885, when the school was in the transition state from soldiers’ orphans to Indian boys, down to 1895, when the State Board of Charities made a report “not so unfavorable as before,” and you conclude with an intimation of something very bad, which the unexpected visit of Mr. Sniffen revealed; yet you have not told your readers what it did reveal, except that a worthy gentleman could put himself in a very false position by entering an institution without the knowledge of the superintendent who was responsible for its direction, and under the guidance of a boy reckless enough to be guilty of assault and battery.

It is not stated that in the reports from which these unfavorable extracts were made there was not much that was highly commendatory of the school and its management. But why did you not include your own observations of a visit made about the period of the last of them in company with Mrs. Cox, and embodied in a letter to her? Even if your impressions then of the conduct of the institution were at variance with the unfavorable excerpts of the committees and so forth which you cite, it is not like yourself to be restrained on that account from referring to them. “The extraordinary and shocking cruelty” to which you allude is understood to be spanking, without intervention of clothing, of a number of bad and mischievous boys by the superintendent. It becomes almost a tragedy when clothed in such rhetoric, but there are many of us who have passed through the Scotch-Irish system of training youth (which was indorsed by many worth divines, among these the late Rev. Daniel R. Goodwin) who think that this punishment was well deserved, and probably of great service to the beneficiaries, even although the First Directress may have condemned it.

In this connection it is impossible to pass in silence what was unquestionably a slip of your pen in alluding to the apparent but not actual discrepancy of Mrs. Cox’s statements on this matter. She says in her letter to Sherman:

“... Their [the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] superintendent met me at the Home, ... and no charges that this man [Haigh] made were sustained.”

In an autograph letter to Mr. Crew, of September 26, 1896, Mrs. Cox says

“I did not know that the boys were ever stripped of their clothes. I do not approve of that,” etc.

Both statements may be entirely true – viz., the charges of “cruelly beating” may have unsustained even though the boys were, against the approval of the First Directress, “stripped of their clothes.” Most boys who have suffered corporal punishment will recall that its effects depend more upon the man behind the bamboo than on the presence or absence of ordinary pantaloons. If these statements were not necessarily inconsistent, then the following language is absolutely indefensible:

“This furnishes the absolute contradiction tothe truth of the statement [Italics mine] made by the same lady [Mrs. Cox] in February of this year.”

Even if your statement were accurate, which it is not, there are ways, of making it less gross than imputing falsehood to a lady who commands the undivided respect of the entire world where philanthropy and good works are known. To say that the imputation is as to the truth of the statement and not of the ·person making it, is a quibble which would not prevent bloodshed if you happened to be reckless enough to use such Ianguage in debate to the wrong man.

To sum up: Mrs. Cox is one of those persons who, from the highest and purest of motives, has devoted herself to good works throughout her long and useful life. She has dedicated an indomitable courage and perseverance, a bright and clear understanding of the obstacles to be overcome, and a kind and sympathetic heart to the alleviation of the sufferings and miseries around her. She has created the Church Home, the Lincoln Institution, the Educational Home, and a host of smaller charities which produced no less good than the larger for the emergencies which called them into being; and all have succeeded because she worked with deep earnestness and made others do so. Her very recreation includes more philanthropy than the loans of most people to the Lord. She has expended practically all her own means for these noble purposes, and has collected, by her own individual exertions, something near $200,000 from the wealthy and generous. Her entire happiness has been dependent upon the success of these enterprises, which she has most wisely been allowed to direct and conduct, for her ability, enthusiasm, and integrity have saved many of them from the dry-rot of indifference in the community and the moral canker of diversion to unworthy ends by interested traders in other people’s generosity.

Much that has been just said of her may be said of you, and the community is proud of you both, even though neither may be grateful for the comparison.

But whereas you as a man have some compensations for your devotion to the duties of the highest citizenship, she as a woman is debarred from them; and, in fact, is not even a citizen in the full acceptation of that term. It is her pride and pleasure to rear industrious men, who will ultimately receive the right to vote and hold office; while she is neither eligible to a seat in the Senate of Pennsylvania, nor is she invited to participate and speak in those meetings of our best fellow citizens which form bright oases in a dreary desert of political corruption.

As you both have the same ends in view, let there be no such misunderstandings as those which divide and always have divided the separate sects of Christians. The Educational Home is conducted ably, efficiently, and honestly. The $I67 which the Government allows per annum for each Indian boy must pay for salaries of teachers and for repairs and expenditures on the buildings here, whereas the Government provides the funds for these purposes at Carlisle, etc., and the State of Virginia at Hampton. The buildings here have been erected without· expense to the United States through Mrs. Cox’s efforts.

Do not let honest and conscientious people paralyze each other’s efforts for good because each wishes to save the Indians in his own way. Defects can be found in any administration (and the Indian Rights Association is no exception) if the scrutiny is only close enough. But there is enough good in each to warrant its continuance, and the field is broad enough for all.

PERSIFOR FRAZER.
March 25, 1899.

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• Transcribed by HS 2025-08-06