Concerning the futility of the people who try to
help, I wish to make one notable, noble exception,
namely, the Dr. Barnardo Homes. Dr. Barnardo
is a child-catcher. First, he catches them when
they are young, before they are set, hardened, in
the vicious social mould; and then he sends them
away to grow up and be formed in another and
better social mould. Up to date he has sent out of
the country 13,340 boys, most of them to Canada,
and not one in fifty has failed. A splendid record,
when it is considered that these lads are waifs and
strays, homeless and parentless, jerked out from the
very bottom of the Abyss, and forty-nine out of
fifty of them made into men.

Every twenty-four hours in the year Dr. Barnardo
snatches nine waifs from the streets; so the enor
mous field he has to work in may be comprehended.
The people who try to help have something to learn
from him. He does not play with palliatives. He
traces social viciousness and misery to their sources.
He removes the progeny of the gutter-folk from
their pestilential environment, and gives them a
healthy, wholesome environment in which to be
pressed and prodded and moulded into men.

When the people who try to help cease their
playing and dabbling with day nurseries and Japan
ese art exhibits, and go back and learn their West
End and the sociology of Christ, they will be in

[[309]]

p308 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p309w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p310

v?