How to Raise Children (1891)

[snopes]

Comment: I can't seem to find this on your site. Is it real? It appears to
be a newspaper article from 1981.

HOW TO RAISE CHILDREN
From the London Times, London Mills, Illinois, 1891

Hints to Workingmen by the Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Information
Among the Poor.

F. R. HAYES.

The ungrateful and immoral hesitation of
many working men to marry, thus curtailing the
supply of future labor, is inexcusable. Any
industrious man can afford to raise children,
and with proper management they soon become
a source of income, enabling the parents to
subsist on lower wages, increasing the
dividends of employers and thus enlarging the
support of church and state, and the spread of
the gospel of Christian civilization and the
heathen in foreign lands.

The proper time for children to be born is in
the latter part of spring, when the weather is
mild. Soon after birth the infant should be put
into a pen in which is a plentiful supply of
loose dirt. An old barrel or box, containing
some straw will answer for shelter from sun or
rain. At the top of the pen a tomato can,
containing milk should be placed and a tube
hanging from this with a nipple at the end will
supply the child with nourishment.

Now, by this judicious and inexpensive
arrangement the mother can be at work soon
after confinement. It costs no more to raise
children than it does to raise pigs, and the
former are more profitable, for when put at
work (which can be done soon after they begin
to walk) they become a source of steady
income; whereas a pig brings a certain sum and
then is of no further value. It is indeed a waste
of material to feed a pig, when the same food
will keep a child. Nutritious swill can be had
for little or nothing, and this homely food,
spiritualized, so to speak, in the form of
working energy in the child, can be
transformed into wages. No labor is so
profitable as child labor; and when such profits
enable the employer to contribute to the spread
of the gospel of light, in benighted heathendom,
we see the blessings that flow from the proper
use of swill, consecrated to the use of the Lord.

What working people need in order to marry
and propagate children is not higher wages, but
a spirit of humility and a recognition of the
duty they owe to their employers. Let them
bring up children in habits of self-denial and
industry, and so make of them contented
citizens, patriotically contributing to the wealth
and enlargement of their country's empire, and
the glory of its industrial magnates and rulers.