DR. BARNARDO'S HOMES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 243, 13 April 1912, Page 6

DR. BARNARDO'S HOMES.

"NO DESTITUTE CHILD REFUSED." To the Editor. I Sir, —'Last 'May the Press all over the • English-speaking world were good enough j to publish a letter from me, written on behalf of the Council of Dr. Barnardo'fi Homes, pointing out the difficulty in which we then found ourselves owing to 1 the drop of .€38,000 in our income for the. previous year, and to the continued decrease during the earlier months) of 1911. ! We were faced for the first time with the possible necessity for abandoning the rule which Dr. Barnardo laid down, and which we, as his successors, had faithfully maintained since his death —the rule that no destitute child shall ever be refused admission—unless we risked 'finding ourselves unable to perform our obligations to the 9400 children already in our care; or unless the public decided for us that the rule was worth

keeping, and by their help should be kept. Thanks, Sir, to the kindness of the Press, and to the additional help which came to us during the latter half of the year, the rule has been kept, and, so far as we know, no destitute child has yet been refused admission. But we found ourselves at the end of last year with only half of the deficiency made up. This is the excuse of myself and my council for troubling you again. In asking for more money we are met by a difficulty which the managers of every large institution have now to face. ; More and more the public are beginning to ask themselves whether individual generosity should tax itself with voluntary burdens, in addition to those already imposed by law, for the benefit of the less fortunate or less capable members of the community. We have therefore to show not only that our work is worthy of support, but that it i can better be carried on by private and individual effort than by the State.

In the ease of children we have no doubts; we believe the help which is given freely, which comes direct from human sympathy, blesses both those that give and those that take; and our appeal for Dr. Barnardo's Homes applies also to all those great, wisely managed institutions which are our rivals and our very good comrades in the children's service.

There is no workhouse taint about our children. Before our boys become men we doubt whether there is any heavier sense of dependence among them than there is among average public schoolboys towards the parents who have done their duty by them in the matter of maintenance and education; they are being given their chance, and in almost every case our children show that they deserve it. Our children do not become "charity children." In Canada, to have been at is a bond, of union among Bamardo boys, as to have been at Eton is among Old Etonians; and we are sending out into the country and the colonies as many Barnardo boys in a year as Eton produces Old Etonians in five. Our children are not ashamed of their bringing up—are proud of it, in fact, and do it credit. They grow up, as we want them to grow up, not pauperised, or humiliated by the remembrance of a somewhat grudging maintenance at the expense of unwilling ratepayers, but honest, independent men and women, with a grateful and often affectionate regard for the place that made them so. What might they have been? How many of these children would have had a chance of becoming anything but a curse to their country in the surroundings from which they were rescued? Yet almost every one will grow into a useful citizen, if we may judge by the past. I spoke, Sir, of our "excuse" for troubling you. Really, it is not an excuse we need, but a binding obligation that rests upon the voluntary help and sympathy of every one who loves the little ones, and who is as anxious as we are to sweep child misery, child mis-use, and child destitution from the face of our land. And for this cause we ask for donations and subscriptions to enable us to still to keep our rule intact, that in the last resort every destitute child may always have a home to come to, which can never be too full to take it, Into which it can always claim to be admitted by nothing but the sovereign right of its own destitution.—l am, etc., SOMERSET, President. Head offices of Dr. Barnardo's Homes, 18 to 26, Stepney Causeway, London. E., March 4, 1912.