The Daily Morning Astorian

HOUSEHOLD CORRESPONDENCE
Encourage the Children to Work and Teach Them to Be Kind
In answer to the question given in the Blade Household on the question of allowing children some fixed remuneration for the assistance they give about the home, we have this week a very excellent paper from one who has evidently given much thought to the subject, and we hope to hear from others. who certainly must, as fathers and mothers, have a living interest in anything that concerns the welfare of their children. Are there good, logical reasons why children shall not be rewarded for work honestly and faithfully performed? If there are such reasons, the opening of this important question will surely bring them to the surface, and the discussion will certainly do much good, especially to those who have given the subject little or no thought. At present I can see only the pro side of it. We children of a larger growth realize how much the hope of compensation lessens our burdens. We are greatly given to the habit of complaining at fate when she forces us to toil week after week, with no reward but food and clothing, and knowing this we ought to be all the more anxious to deal justly with those little men and women who have not yet become inured to her crochety ways. It is our duty to make them feel that they live because they are needed in the world to perform certain duties, and that they are to be rewarded according to their faithfulness. The earlier they are taught to bear the responsibilities of life, the less heavily will disappointments weigh them down as they advance in years. Timely and tactful encouragement will keep their bright faces turned toward a self-sustaining maturity, and they will have no inclination, in after years, to become strikers and tramps. It may be argued that money is so scarce in some families that it is not possible to pay children wages. In such a case you can enter into a contract with each child, agreeing to pay him wages at stated times. Furnish him with a blank book and a pencil, and require him to keep an account of his work and his wages and teach him to take care of his book, as it represents money. If you cannot possibly give the money you can give him its value in eggs, poultry, butter, or whatever you have to sell, and see how heartily he will enter into the plan. When all is arranged satisfactorily and you have heard him express his intention a few times of buying a circus next year and of doing other impossible things, you can suggest how pleasant it will be for a boy to go to the store and choose for himself a suit of clothes and pay for them with his own money, and nine times out of ten he will agree with you. It never does any harm to mention to friends of the family that John is growing to manhood rapidly, that already he has begun to buy his own clothing; but it does great harm to tell your visitors that he is naughty and lazy, no matter how true such a report may be. Wise parents can so arrange the matter of wages that the small amounts paid will return to bless them an hundred fold. Business methods and orderly habits, as well as a commendable spirit of independence. will be inoculated, just when it is time to make lasting impressions. Let us also take into account the vast amount of nerve force which may thus be saved. and which is too often expended in scolding to get a little work out of "that bad child," and we have a very satisfactory result. The same rules will apply with equal force to girls. and if strictly carried out will hold at bay the many evils which idleness never fails to bring in its slimy train.-R. S. A.