_Socialism_ versus _Child-Protection_.--The considerations put forward regarding poor-relief bear to some extent on the relationships of child-protection to capitalism. Many departments of child-protection--foundling hospitals, for instance--are merely departments of poor-relief. Child-protection is chiefly concerned with the children of the poor, since these are far more in need of protection than the children of the rich.
Child-protection and socialism both existed, in a sense, prior to the development of capitalism. But in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, child-protection has received much more attention than in former times. This extensive development of child-protection is one phase of that general development whose other phase is the development of capitalism. Modern child-protection and modern socialism are necessary consequences of capitalism, and the existence of the last in the absence of child-protection and of socialism is altogether unthinkable. Capitalism gives rise to numerous diseases in the social organism, and then endeavours to cure them, for the most part, by the methods of child-protection. The causal relationship between capitalism and child-protection is not direct or primary. Certain applications of child-protection are not the direct consequences of capitalism itself, but only consequences of the causes by which capitalism has been created and evolved. When we come to examine concrete conditions, such as those of some particular country, we invariably find that child-protection and capitalism are intimately connected with the general development of the country with which we are concerned. This fact may interpose modifying conditions in the causal chain connecting capitalism and child-protection.
(The origin of the Children’s Courts in the United States of America offers an instructive example of this. In this country, as in England, special causes led early in the last century to the establishment of reformatory schools. But whereas in England, until quite recently, boarding institutions were preferred for this purpose, from the first, in the United States the attempt was made to arrange for the upbringing of neglected and criminal youths under family auspices. The reasons for the adoption of this latter plan in America were the enormous possibilities of territorial expansion and the lively demand for new population. When juvenile offenders came before the courts, responsible individuals would offer to undertake the upbringing of these children, binding themselves over to report at regular intervals upon the behaviour of the children, and generally accepting all necessary responsibility. The judges ventured upon such experiments, and as the successful results multiplied, this method of procedure attained the force of a customary institution, and subsequently was formally embodied in legislation.)