By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 30, 1946.
“Aw, the poor little tyke!” exclaimed Jimmie Frise.
As we promenaded along the neighborhood shopping street, we were halted by the screaming outcries of a baby in a perambulator parked outside a store.
The busy afternoon traffic, consisting of women mostly, went happily by, arms full of parcels.
And not one of them so much as cast a glance at the roaring baby.
“You’d think some of these women,” I said indignantly, “would at least take a look to see if a safety-pin is sticking into it.”
We went over and looked down at the child.
It was a boy child. You could tell that by the wide mouth and the general snubbiness and chubbiness of it. Its mouth was stretched wide enough to swallow an orange, its eyes were tight shut, tears flowed over its cheeks. And it screamed.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I leaned down soothingly “Hey.”
The baby seemed to shut off its wind. Opened its eyes wide. Took one agonized look at me and then seemed to have a convulsion. It turned a maroon color. Shut its eyes. Opened its mouth. Bent itself back deeper in the pram and–roared!
Jimmie and I moved on. We stopped a couple of doors farther along and looked back.
“Just look at those women passing by,” I gritted. “Not one of them paying the slightest…”
“Women,” explained Jim. “aren’t so sensitive to a baby screaming as men. They’re used to it They know it doesn’t mean anything. They realize it’s just a baby’s way of taking exercise.”
“Exercise?” I snorted. “That baby’s dying. That baby’s suffering. I bet a safety-pin is sticking two inches into it.”
“Pawff,” said Jim. “It’s just scared. Maybe it was asleep when its mother left it there to go into the store for a minute. The pram stops and the baby wakes up. It looks around and starts to roar for its mamma. Probably it is one of those bad-tempered babies.”
We paused and glanced back.
“Just look at those heartless dames,” I pointed out.
Right beside the baby, three middle-aged women, their arms full of parcels, had stopped to chatter gaily. They didn’t even so much as glance at the baby. They leaned forward towards each other and got off witticisms that must have been killing, the way they leaned away from each other and laughed. We could hear their voices from where we stood. They had to talk loudly to hear, each other above the howling of the infant. Yet not one of these kindly housewives gave the child so much as a sideways glance.
“You see?” said Jim. “Women don’t get all overheated over a child bawling. They know it’s just routine. It’s part of the scene. Perfectly natural.”
“Darn it,” I said, the piercing screams penetrating my nerves. “Let’s go on.”
So we wandered along the block, in the pleasant sunshine, locking at the shopping crowd and in the windows, and gradually getting out of earshot. In front of nearly all the stores, babies were parked in prams Some of them were asleep. Some were awake, looking solemnly at the moving figures of the traffic. Some looked scared and self-conscious, even at two years of age.
“I think a mother, Jim,” I enunciated, “takes an awful chance leaving a baby alone in a pram like this out in front of stores. I don’t mean for fear of having it stolen, nor even having something knock the pram over and injure the baby. What I mean is, a little baby can get a scare or a fright that might affect it psychologically all the rest of its life.”
“Not At Six Inches”
“Pawff,” scoffed Jimmie. “These women have to do their shopping, don’t they? Should they leave the baby alone at home? Should they burden themselves in the store with a big, wriggling, fat armful of baby?”
“Nobody knows,” I asserted, “at what age a human being begins to learn. We used to think that the age of seven was the beginning of the power of reasoning in a child. But lately, the psychologists are doubting this. They think a child starts to observe and learn from the hour of its birth.”
“So what?” said Jim, as we strolled.
“A baby,” I exampled, “is left sitting out here alone in front of a store. He is a little alarmed at being left. He sees his mother vanish. He observes all manner of queer strangers swarming by. He notes the rumble of motor traffic and the growing roar of a street car passing. All this excites him and makes him tense. Suddenly, a playful dog comes along, jumps up and puts his front paws on the edge of the pram and looks, with laughing tongue hanging out, into the baby’s face. At a distance of six inches.”
“So?” said Jim.
“Now, that baby,” I said, “has never seen a dog close up before. The glittering eyes, the lolling tongue, the white sharp teeth! Why, that baby is likely to get such a scare his whole future life will be altered, misshapen. possibly ruined.”
“What nonsense!” cried Jim. “Why, every child loves doggies…”
“But not suddenly,” I countered, “close up, at six inches, at a time the baby is already keyed up. I assure you, Mr. Frise, courage is largely a matter of never having been scared before until now. If we could get all children to the age of 10 without ever having known what fright is, we would have a noble race indeed.”
“I believe in treating ’em rough,” replied Jim. “Pampering is what softens us. Get a baby used to the rough and tumble of life, and he’ll grow up a useful citizen.”
“I don’t know,” I mused. “I’ve been reading all this stuff in the papers about tragic fires and children left by their parents alone in the house…”
“There I agree with you,” said Jim. “Little children should never be left alone…”
“How about all these kids being left alone along the street, right here?” I demanded quickly. “It’s exactly the same thing. Convenience. The convenience of the parents is what makes them leave small children alone in the house. It is convenience that leaves these babies out in front of the stores.”
“It’s a far different thing,” protested Jimmie.
“Nothing is different,” I explained, “when it is the same at the root. What we’ve got to get after, these days, is that whole business of the convenience of the parents It is not merely at the root of these fire tragedies. It is at the root of the juvenile delinquency problem1. The convenience of the parents is the reason why a child has time or inclination to get into serious mischief.”
“Maybe not the convenience of the parents,” corrected Jim. “How about the convenience of the parents’ boss? Or the convenience of our present form of society, which permits parents of young children to work long hours in order merely to live and keep their children alive. What would you think of a law that forbade the mothers of children between infancy and 14 years of age working at any job that took them from their homes?”
“But thousands would starve!” I protested.
“Not if we paid a proper mother’s allowance,” triumphed Jim. “If a woman can prove she can earn $30 a week and has a baby, she would automatically get a pension of $30 a week until the child was 14.”
“The millennium!2” I scoffed.
“No, that’s a proper and rational system of pension,” stated Jim firmly. “We’ve got to have children. We’ve got to have good children. Okay, we pay the mothers what they have demonstrated they can earn, in order to free them for their proper job of motherhood.”
Educate the Parents
“You’ve got something there, Jim,” I ad mitted. “Only, it will come high on the taxpayer.”
“Things are going to come a lot higher on the taxpayer,” agreed Jim, “before the world is through with its present difficulties. We are all so busy trying to escape taxes that our taxes are rising all the time due to our stinginess. If we want good men and women, we’ve got to have good babies and good boys and girls.”
“What’s your solution,” I inquired, “of the juvenile delinquency problem?”
“It is not juvenile delinquency at all, it’s adult delinquency,” replied Jim. “If a child is brought up on a delinquency charge, it is the parents who should be tried. And if any punishment is meted out, it should be the parents who are punished.”
“Aw, an awful lot of parents of juvenile delinquents,” I protested, “are poor, weak, worried, helpless little women…”
“Okay, then,” corrected Jimmie. “If the parents are not punishable, for neglect, then they are fit subjects for education. The court should sentence such parents to a six months course in child care and child psychology. There should be a large school maintained, just the way we maintain jails and prisons. It would be a ‘corrective institution’ in the best sense of the word. An all-year-round school, night and day, for the correction of the parents of juvenile delinquents.”
“Jim,” I admired, pausing, “you’re in great form today. It must be the spring sunshine. Let’s turn and walk back now.”
We had come to the end of the interesting blocks of the neighborhood shopping district. Every neighborhood shopping district has an interesting stretch. But it dwindles off, at both ends, into dull and uninteresting blocks.
“I hope that kid,” I said, “has stopped screaming by now.”
“Nobody’d let it yell,” said Jim, “for five or 10 minutes on end.”
But, when we reached the first block again, above the racket of traffic, I thought I could hear faint piercing shrieks. We quickened our pace. And sure enough, ever louder grew the screams, and we came in sight of the cake shop, in front of which the same pram stood and the same ear-splitting uproar continued.
“Jim,” I cried, starting to double, “we’ve got to do something. This is unbearable!”
When we arrived, the same crowd of nice local housewives was hurrying smilingly along or stopping to chatter, in complete indifference to the riot right under their feet.
A small boy with a dog was standing looking into, the pram with an expression of quiet interest and enjoyment. He was watching the twisting and yowling of the blue-clad baby with considerable satisfaction. He was making his own mouth go in imitation of the contortions of the baby’s.
“Here,” I said, pushing the little boy aside, “let me have him.”
And I scooped the baby up in my arms. Now, it is 20 years since I last changed a diaper. But I remembered enough to make the necessary exploration to satisfy myself that there was no safety-pin sticking into him.
“What do we do?” demanded Jim, taking hold of the pram handles.
“I’ll hold it up,” I suggested, “to the cake store window.”
And I went and held the infant up high before the cake store windows and let it screech and yowl and wrestle and twist. There were six ladies shopping in the cake store. I elevated my eyebrows anxiously at all of them, one after the other, through the window: but they all shook their heads and shrugged.
The baby by this time was really having a fit, and quite a number of people began to slow down and start a small crowd of spectators.
“Where on earth,” I demanded, “can the woman be?”
I moved over to the windows of the self-serve grocery store next to the cake shop and held the child up at both its windows. Large numbers of customers came and looked, but none of them showed any maternal interest.
“Call inside,” suggested Jimmie.
So I went in to the turnstile inside the grocery and held the screaming baby aloft. This attracted silence.
“Is the mother of this child,” I bellowed above the baby’s clamor, “in this store?”
Several ladies came running from the back of the store, but none of them was the mother.
I went outside and joined Jimmie in front of the cake store, where he was hanging on to the pram.
“Put it back,” hissed Jim. “Stick it back in the pram and let’s get the heck out of here.”
“Jim,” I stated angrily, “this is a matter of public concern. This is something that has to be dealt with. This may be an ABANDONED CHILD!”
“That’s what suddenly occurred to me,” gritted Jim, “so let’s get the heck…”
“JIM!” I said very shocked, from behind the squalling brat’s bonnet.
“Let ‘Em Holler!”
At which moment, a shrill scream from up the street brought the attention of us all, including the crowd of loitering shoppers and the little boy with the dog, to a young woman sprinting towards us, her arms outstretched, emitting a short, high yelp at every jump.
She grabbed the baby from me and almost bowled me over.
“You brutes!” she choked.
“You brutes!” echoed two ladies in the rapidly growing crowd.
An elderly man with spectacles took a short jujutsu hold on Jimmie’s arm from behind and pinned him.
A lady stepped to my flank, drew a quart bottle of milk from a paper bag and assumed a threatening attitude.
“Don’t you move!” she warned, laying the bottle back to throw.
And at that exact instant, Constable Angus McLeod, a good friend of Jim’s and mine – we go jack-rabbit hunting – loomed from the back of the crowd, saying:
“Here, here, here, what goes on!”
“These brutes,” sobbed the mother, “stole my baby…”
Angus looked at us sternly.
“Angus,” I said, “for Pete’s sake…”
The little boy with the dog piped up:
“I saw two little girls,” he said, “wheel the baby from away up the street. They left it
here.”
“Good for you, boy…” I began.
“Just a second,” said Angus. “Now, boy, what was this?”
“I saw two little girls, their names is Minnie and Lana,” he said, “wheel the baby from up at the other end of the block. And they left it here.”
“And how did you get mixed up?” inquired Angus, turning to us.
“The child,” I stated hotly, “was having a conniption fit. It was screeching. I simply picked it up to see if a pin was sticking into it…”
“Uzzy mussies wuzzy,” cried the mother, clutching the child.
“Uzzy muzzy nothing,” said Angus to her. “It serves you right. Leaving a baby loose out on the public highway. It’s a mercy worse didn’t happen.”
“I was only in the store a minute…” protested the young woman.
“We’ve been listening to this baby yell,” I interrupted, “for 15 minutes…”
“I met a friend I haven’t seen for YEARS…” faltered the young mother. “It didn’t seem only a minute or two…”
“Let it be a lesson to you,” propounded Angus to her and with his arms brushed all and sundry on their way.
“Boys,” he said, as we sauntered back along the street, “let me give you a piece of advice from a professional policeman. Never interfere in a domestic situation, under any circumstances. Whether it be man or woman, old maid, mother-in-law or baby, never, never interfere in a domestic situation.”
“You mean.” I said, “let ’em holler?”
“Let ’em holler,” said Angus.
Editor’s Notes:
- During and after the war there was an increase in youth crime that caused a lot of hand-wringing. ↩︎
- I’m not entirely sure what this exclamation means. At the time was the discussion over social security, old-age pensions, and family allowances. I think the idea was that these programs were new and “futuristic” and therefore bringing closer the new millennium where things would be better. It might also have been a derogatory term against those who were in favour of it. ↩︎
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