The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Survey, Volume 30, Number 6, May 10, 1913
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Survey, Volume 30, Number 6, May 10, 1913
Editor: Paul Underwood Kellogg
Release date: December 16, 2023 [eBook #72427]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Survey Associates, 1913
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Bryan Ness, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SURVEY, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 6, MAY 10, 1913 ***
THE SURVEY, Volume 30, Number 6, May 10, 1913
THE COMMON WELFARE
SOCIAL LEGISLATION AT THE PRESENT SESSION OF CONGRESS
In spite of the fact that the opening week of Congress saw the
introduction of the Kern compensation bill for employes of the federal
government suffering injuries or occupational diseases, the La
Follette-Peters eight-hour bill for women in the District of Columbia, a
bill prohibiting the shipment of goods manufactured in plants where
women are employed more than eight hours a day, a minimum wage bill
presented by Senator Chilton of West Virginia, and several other
measures which fall under the head of social legislation, the impression
seems to prevail that Congress will devote its chief energies to the
consideration of the banking and revenue statutes. In his personally
delivered message to Congress President Wilson said:
“It is best, indeed, it is necessary, to begin with the tariff. I will
urge nothing upon you now at the opening of your session which can
obscure that first object or divert our energies from that clearly
defined duty. At a later time I may take the liberty of calling your
attention to reforms which should press close upon the heels of the
tariff changes, if not accompany them, of which the chief is the
reform of our banking and currency laws; but just now I refrain.”
From these sentences, as well as from remarks made by the President to
callers, it is inferred that the possibility of taking up anything like
the program submitted to Mr. Wilson by the forty-five men and women
interested in social legislation is remote indeed. Those familiar with
the legislative processes of Congress point out, however, that after the
tariff bill or bills leave the House and while they are being debated in
the Senate, there may be an opportunity for the discussion of other
matters.
It is of interest to note that the House leaders decided to defer the
appointment of the majority of the standing committees till the tariff
bills shall be out of the way. Only the Committee on Ways and Means, the
Committee on Rules, the Committee on Accounts and the Committee on
Mileage were selected early in the session.
The Senate, however, fixed the membership of its standing committees
some time before the extra session began. With the change in political
control, there has been, of course, a thorough overhauling not only in
chairmanship but also in memberships. Today the two committees in the
upper chamber which will have much to do with social legislation, that
on the District of Columbia and that on Education and Labor, are as
follows:
Committee on District of Columbia: Messrs. Smith of Maryland
(chairman), Pomerene of Ohio, Smith of Arizona, Kern of Indiana,
Hollis of New Hampshire, James of Kentucky, Saulsbury of Delaware,
Martin of Virginia, Dillingham of Vermont, Jones of Washington, Works
of California, Kenyon of Iowa, Fall of New Mexico and Lippitt of Rhode
Island.
Committee on Education and Labor: Messrs. Smith of Georgia (chairman),
Shively of Indiana, Swanson of Virginia, Martine of New Jersey,
Johnson of Maine, Shields of Tennessee, Borah of Idaho, Penrose of
Pennsylvania, Page of Vermont, McLean of Connecticut and Kenyon of
Iowa.
Among the bills relating to the regulation of labor that have been
introduced into Congress at the present session is that by Senator John
Sharp Williams of Mississippi, aiming to safeguard the children of the
District of Columbia from employments that are dangerous or that are
conducted under unsanitary conditions. The measure provides that
children under sixteen years of age shall not work in factories, on
railroads or on boats. The bill divides occupations into classes, and
puts children into groups from the age of twelve to twenty-one,
enumerating the prohibited occupations, but permitting exceptions under
certain conditions. Discretion is vested in the District health officer
to pass upon other employment for children not already forbidden by the
proposed law.
The convict-made goods bill, substantially in its original form, has
been introduced into the Senate by Senator Thomas of Colorado. This
measure, it will be remembered, passed the House at the last session,
but was not reported out of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. As
Senator Thomas pointed out in a statement, “I propose that prison
products shall be divested of their interstate character, leaving them
subject everywhere to the laws of the states. Many states have
prohibited the sale of such goods. The principle of my measure is the
same as that employed in the Webb-Kenyon liquor law.”
While the principle involved in the Thomas bill is now on the federal
statute books, thus affording a valuable precedent for additional
legislation, it is not generally believed that the Senate will take up
this measure at least till later on in the session. The new Senate
Committee on the Judiciary is as follows:
Culberson of Illinois (chairman); Overman of North Carolina, Chilton
of West Virginia, O’Gorman of New York, Fletcher of Florida, Reed of
Missouri, Ashurst of Arizona, Shields of Tennessee, Walsh of Montana,
Bacon of Virginia, Clark of Wyoming, Nelson of Minnesota, Dillingham
of Vermont, Sutherland of Utah, Brandegee of Connecticut, Borah of
Idaho, Cummins of Iowa and Root of New York.
Senator Kenyon of Iowa has introduced a bill making it obligatory that
all railway employes shall have twenty-four hours consecutively off duty
in every period of 168 hours. It is stated that the belief that the
existing law, intended to protect railway employes and limit their hours
of labor, is being violated because of the impracticability of its
strict enforcement prompted Senator Kenyon to draw up this bill.
NEW YORK-BOSTON EXCHANGE OF SETTLEMENT EXPERIENCES
The inter-city settlement conference held the past month in Boston,
though not the first of such conferences, was unique in that it brought
together settlement residents so widely separated as the New York
Association of Neighborhood Workers and the Boston Social Union.
The first meeting dealt with the problem of securing and training
workers. Eva W. White, headworker of the Elizabeth Peabody House and
lecturer in the Boston School for Social Workers, spoke of the need of
such training as schools of philanthropy and settlements themselves can
give. Richard H. Edwards of the Inter-Collegiate Young Men’s Christian
Association explained the movement for community service by college men.
Settlement Scholarships and School and College Chapters for Settlement
Work was the subject of a paper by Geraldine Gordon of Denison House.
John L. Elliott of New York contributed the suggestion that young
college men and women contemplating social work as a profession might do
a half year’s field work in the settlement at the end of the sophomore
and senior years in lieu of academic courses.
Mrs. Max Morgenthau of the Henry Street Settlement told how that
settlement trained its volunteer workers in clerical work, in regularity
in attendance and in actual personal acquaintance with their tenement
community. This training has created in that settlement a group of
volunteers, who are becoming experts in their work and one of whom has
developed a series of pageant plays. The mistress of the wardrobe in
these pageants is an authority on costume, and has studied the technical
processes of dyeing fabrics in order to obtain the best possible
results.
The subject of an evening meeting was Standards and Stipends for Work
and Workers, and was under the leadership of Lilian D. Wald, president
of the National Federation of Settlements. Miss Wald held that there
should be flexibility in methods of work and a true equality between the
administrative officers of the settlement and the specialists who give
so much distinction to its work. She spoke of a university teacher who
came back to the settlement to “recapture the freedom of her method.” M.
deG. Trenholm, to whom very much of the success of the conference was
due, urged strongly the necessity of proper compensation for settlement
service, if standards are to be maintained.
The Sunday afternoon meeting was devoted to the subject of federation in
relation to standards of work. Henry Moskowitz of Madison House asked
that the settlements keep in mind their primary duty of furnishing
opportunity for the manifestation of local social spirit. He showed that
in an increasing number of neighborhoods the neighbors are forming
federations of their own, made up of representatives of the various
local societies. While this sort of community organization is sometimes
sporadic or indefinite the settlements should be willing to support it
both with money and workers. He warned the neighborhood worker never to
forget that the primary duty of the settlement is to build up
neighborhood life. He must, therefore, not permit what sometimes seems
the larger aspects or implications of neighborhood life to sap his work
at the roots.
Philip Davis of the Civic Service House suggested directions in which
federated action among settlements might be directed. He showed that,
outside of such oversight as the licensing of minors engaged in the
street trades involved, the great mass of the minors of the community
and the street merchants themselves are free to run into danger without
possibility of interference or guarding from the outside. Immigrants are
another class who will in the future be more and more in need of
constructive human service, especially at the point of entrance on
citizenship. The city, either through its officers or by delegating the
work to others, should surround the gift of citizenship with appropriate
safeguards and should make the process itself educational. The minimum
wage is now becoming a significant problem all over the country and Mr.
Davis believed that settlement workers should take their place among the
pioneers in endeavoring to push its benefits.
Elizabeth Williams, of the College Settlement, New York, spoke of the
enthusiasm of the pioneers and outlined some of the means of making the
settlement ideal today as great a challenge to young men and women of
capacity as it was to these early leaders.
Albert J. Kennedy of South End House discussed the question of
federations of settlements in relation to the problem of club and class
work. The chief task of the settlement is in his opinion to bring about
the democratic organization of local communities in order that the
people themselves may in time assume the task of local organization. The
chief function of club work as such must be that of building up
standards toward this end. The fear of rigidity which has oppressed
certain critics of federation is, he believed, unfounded and there are,
he held, great possibilities for settlement federations in enlarging and
bringing to a high standard certain forms of craft work, dramatics,
pageants and large recreational events.
At the evening meeting Jane E. Robbins spoke in behalf of definite work
in training young Italian Americans as social workers who would
contribute their enthusiasm for and knowledge of their own people
definitely to the task of social re-construction and Americanization.
Vida D. Scudder believed settlement work should be made more
fundamentally democratic and should give itself more definitely to the
task of fostering and championing working class movements as such. The
great danger of the settlement, she held, is that it will become one of
the regular philanthropies rather than an advance station, as it were,
in the progressive democratization of the national life. Settlement
residents should be free at times of crisis to drop detail work for the
larger task of assisting in the great forward movement of the people
themselves.
George Hodges, dean of the Episcopal Theological School, believed that
the church also should work along the lines suggested by Miss Scudder.
He believed, however, the best achievement could be secured only on the
high levels of personality.
John L. Elliott of the Hudson Guild held that it should more and more be
the final effort of the settlement to bring the mothers and fathers into
the streets, into the schools and into the dance halls that they may
come to understand the conditions under which their children live, and
contribute of their own experience and power in reorganizing communal
life.
The meeting on Monday morning was opened by Abraham Rosenberg, the
president of the Cloak and Suit Makers’ Union, who spoke of the work of
the various settlement leaders in securing the New York protocol. He
admitted a growing recognition on the part of labor leaders of the
factor of public good will and service.
Mary P. Follett of the Roxbury League urged the continued necessity for
social workers in the civic centre, and Gaylord S. White suggested the
need of such influence in enlarging the scope and horizon of church
work. Robert A. Woods summed up the more telling lines of interest
opened up in the meeting. He urged that the significance of the
settlement for the future, as for the past, lay not in any specific type
of service or reform—valuable as nearly all such effort is—but in the
development of social self sufficiency among the people from
neighborhood to neighborhood throughout the country.
The use which the younger element made of a question box as the meeting
ended led to the motion that at future conferences the junior speakers
should have the floor for at least one session.
“BOXING” THE COST OF LIVING
The cost of living was the very live subject taken up by the seventeenth
annual meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
held in Philadelphia in April. With the exception of the tariff, which
was omitted for lack of time, the session may be said to have covered
the whole field.
The first paper in the session on Family Standards was by Prof. Simon N.
Patten of the University of Pennsylvania. His analysis of changes in
woman’s dress is worth quoting:
“In the early history of America, the dress, the habits, the morality,
the relations between men and women could be predicted with certainty.
This uniformity has been broken up by recent industrial changes
through which the working population has been transferred from the
farm to shops and factories. City life makes new demands and excites
new wants.
“A new woman is appearing who differs in many ways from her
predecessor. She is stronger, more healthy, more ambitious and with
moral qualities that match the new vigor. With greater physical vigor
and more ambition, women love activity and cut out the contrasts in
color and design in which the primitive woman indulged. The man-made
woman dresses to emphasize her sex; the self-conscious woman
subordinates her clothing to the needs of her own personality and her
activity.
“The active, healthy woman creates a spiritual impress by simplifying
her dress and thus enhancing her facial beauty. Her less advanced
sister clings to the older dress forms, through which a lower appeal
is made. Out of the struggle is coming a new womanhood with higher
morality and more beauty. Dressing is thus more than an economy; it is
the essence of moral progress.”
Martha Bensley Bruère of New York city, author of Increasing Home
Efficiency, maintained that twelve hundred dollars a year was the lowest
standard for decent family living. This twelve hundred dollars she found
from her study of family budgets to be distributed as follows:
“Food, $447.15, on the basis of 35 cents per day for an adult male and
a sliding scale for others in the family; shelter, $144; clothes,
$100, based on New York prices “where clothing is cheaper than any
other place in the country,” she said; operation of household,
including light, heat, etc., $150; advancement, meaning education,
recreation, charities, church, savings, etc., $312; incidentals, $46,
a total of $1,199.15.”
ELEMENTS ENTERING INTO COST OF FOOD
Edith E. Smith, president of the Pennsylvania Rural Progress
Association, asserted that the fallacy that lessened production is the
chief cause of high prices has been exploded and there is ample food
produced if waste were eliminated. Said she:
“While city people are complaining of the prices paid the farmer, it
is an absolute fact that the farmer has a hard time to make a living
profit on his business. The farmer has to face the combined problems
of production and distribution and he runs the gamut of both. If any
manufacturer were compelled to face the difficulties of the farmer ...
attempted it on so small a margin of profit, he would quickly go to
the wall.”
Mrs. Smith showed that it costs a Pennsylvania or New York farmer about
50 per cent more to raise a hog or a steer than it costs the Iowa farmer
and that the latter can ship his cattle to the New York market and sell
them cheaper than the Pennsylvania farmer.
Mrs. Frank A. Pattison of Colonia, N. J., who was for some time in
charge of the experiment station maintained by the New Jersey women’s
clubs, spoke on Scientific Management in Home-Making. She showed how, by
the introduction of mechanical devices, such as patent dish-washing
machines or vacuum cleaners, it might be possible to minimize household
drudgery without employing a servant and without using paper dishes or
bare floors.
Everett P. Wheeler of the New York bar laid the high cost of living to
increases in rent, due to governmental requirements and increased
taxation; increases in the cost of food because of governmental
inspection and regulations; legislation shortening the hours of work and
increasing wages; the syndicalist movement and other influences that add
to cost of production.
An interesting comment on the general discussion was made by Christine
M. Frederick, national secretary of the Associated Clubs of Domestic
Science, and consulting household editor of the _Ladies’ Home Journal_,
who pointed out that the whims of women were in no small way responsible
for the high cost of living.
H. B. Fullerton, of Medford, L. I., director of agricultural development
for the Long Island Railroad, was the first speaker at the afternoon
session on Public Control. He told of the development of the “Long
Island Home Hamper,” which is a system of delivering, direct from
producer to consumer, standard hampers containing food products at an
established price.
Mrs. Elmer Black, member of the advisory board of the New York Terminal
Market Commission, discussed Communal Benefits from the Municipal
Terminal Market.
Dr. Mary E. Pennington, chief of the Food Research Laboratory of
Philadelphia, showed in a masterly fashion the contribution made by cold
storage warehouses by providing mechanical means of food preservation
and thus equalizing supply and demand regardless of seasons. Dr.
Pennington pointed out that chickens kept for twenty-four hours under
average ice-box conditions of the private family, changed more
chemically than those kept for months in cold storage warehouses.
Clyde L. King, instructor in political science, University of
Pennsylvania, urged municipal control of wholesale terminal markets to
reduce cost of distribution. Said he:
“This plan of placing terminal wholesale facilities under municipal
control and operation will unquestionably make for the elimination of
certain of the middlemen, will make for the payment of higher prices,
because of the large number of buyers present, and will give to
retailers a greater choice of goods.
“The situation as to the retailers of food products in the city can
well be illustrated by the situation in Philadelphia. There are at the
present time in this city about 490 chain stores, 700 members of the
Retail Grocers’ Associations and 4169 independent grocers. In addition
there are 258 delicatessen stores, 200 butchers, handling some
groceries, and 1923 variety stores.
“This makes 1190 chain stores as compared with 6550 independent
stores. It is clear that the maximum point to which prices can be
boosted by the retailers is that fixed by a subsistence wage on the
part of these small independent stores.”
Irving Fisher of Yale University, in his opening remarks at the evening
meeting, emphasized the growing belief that the real significance of the
increased cost of living was to be found in changing the value of money.
The most striking address of the evening was an appeal by Frances
Perkins, executive secretary of the Committee on Safety of the City of
New York, for the living wage.
“HIRING A SHEET FROM A MISSUS”
In a recent strike Miss Perkins found that many of the girls in
factories lived away from home, many coming from rural districts, and
that most of them lived by “hiring a sheet from a missus.” That means
that two or three of the girls slept in one bed, with a cup of coffee
thrown in with the “hiring” in the morning. Many of these girls had
coffee and rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with an occasional
extravagance, such as a fifteen-cent dinner. Their wages ran from $4 to
$5 a week. Other girls, according to Miss Perkins, buy bread and bananas
for meals, the bananas being great fillers.
Another speaker on this subject was Paul U. Kellogg, editor of THE
SURVEY, who talked on the Wage Scale and Immigration. He outlined the
proposal of transferring the economic regulation of immigration from the
seaboard to the centers of congested industry by applying the minimum
wage to unnaturalized citizens after the manner of child labor
legislation. It would go far, he argued, toward bringing the common
labor market to normal.
Margaret F. Byington, associate director of the Charity Organization
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, pointed out at the session on
Waste and Extravagance, that scientific ratios of nourishment, while
probably accurate quantitatively, in the number of calories to be
supplied to the different age groups, might justly be criticised on the
side of cost, as various elements tend to make assimilative power
different in different cases. The sedentary worker cannot, for instance,
digest the heavy, cheap food of the manual worker, and the infant’s
modified milk makes its food not cheaper, as scientific ratios would
make it, but dearer than the older child’s.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Home: Its Work and Influence, in
a paper on Waste of Private Housekeeping, stated that:
“Industrial progress follows lines of specialization, organization and
interchange. Domestic service is unspecialized, unorganized and
self-supplied. For all men and women to perform their own
house-service separately would be the lowest line of industrial
efficiency; for each man to require one whole woman, with more if he
can afford it; to perform his house-service is next to the lowest.
“The waste of labor involved is over 40 per cent of the world’s full
output; fifty women doing work for fifty men, which could be done by
ten women if specialized, organized and interchanging their products.
The ‘waste of plant,’ the kitchen space, cooking apparatus, dishes and
utensils, fuel, with breakage, etc., is at least 90 per cent. The
waste in purchasing is the difference between the cost of a steady
supply at wholesale and the entire expense of all retail service and
delivery equal to at least 60 per cent. The waste in efficiency is the
difference between highly specialized professional work, and the grade
of labor possible to the lowest average—practically all women, under
conditions of overwork, if it is done by the housewife, or, of eternal
apprenticeship, if done by servants.”
Mrs. Julian Heath, founder and president of the National Housewives
League, explained the work of the league. H. W. Hess of the University
of Pennsylvania raised active discussion by his paper on Advertising:
Waste or Necessity, Which? He claimed that advertising was a necessity
and socially advantageous. Samuel H. Barker, financial editor of the
_Philadelphia North American_, discussed the effects of false
capitalization.
At the session on the Minimum Wage, Henry R. Seager, professor of
political economy, Columbia University, pointed out the social factors
involved in the introduction of a minimum wage, showing that we must be
prepared for the elimination from industry of certain groups now
employed and their maintenance in some fashion. The minimum wage to
Professor Seager is only part of a general scheme including social
insurance.
H. La Rue Brown and Mathew B. Hammond discussed the minimum wage from
the experience of Massachusetts, of Australia and New Zealand. Scott
Nearing, instructor in economics, University of Pennsylvania, discussed
the existing wage scale and pointed out that to a large extent the wages
paid in the United States are not up to the necessary minimum.
The first address at the closing session on How Can the Cost of Living
be Reduced? given by Dr. Shaw, editor of the _Review of Reviews_, traced
the development of the co-operative movement in this country and abroad
and indicated the role that productive co-operation might well play in
the development of our industrial institutions. He maintained that
poverty is decreasing, while wants increase.
Martha Van Rensselaer, chief of the Department of Home Economics of
Cornell University, who told wittily of the difficulty of securing
women’s interest in household affairs, they frequently failing to
recognize as do their husbands their own importance in our economic
institutions.
The last paper was by Amos R. E. Pinchot, a lawyer of New York, who
pointed out the relationship which exists between overcapitalization and
the cost of living and the necessity for regulating monopolies.
COMPENSATION LAWS IN TWENTY STATES
The 1913 legislative session has so far raised the number of state
compensation acts in the United States to almost a score. West Virginia
was the first this year to pass such a law, which was signed by the
governor on Washington’s Birthday, though it will not go into effect
until October. It creates a pseudo-elective insurance fund contributed
by employers and employes, to be administered by a Public Service
Commission created at the same time, all administrative expenses to be
met by the state and not out of the fund. The commission shall each year
determine the premium rates of the twenty-three classifications into
which the law divides the industries of the state. Election to pay to
the fund, on the part of employer and employe—10 per cent only is to be
paid by the latter—does away with the right to go to law.
Medical benefit under the law shall not exceed $150, and funeral
expenses shall not exceed $75. The money benefits, which do not begin
till one week has elapsed, are 50 per cent of wages or wage loss for
disability. In case of death the benefits in some cases are 50 per cent
of wages and in others a sum of $20 a month for one dependent and $5
additional for each additional dependent with a maximum of $35 is
reached. Non-resident aliens are in express terms included as
beneficiaries.
In Oregon a law establishing a state accident insurance fund was passed
shortly after that of West Virginia. This is to be administered by a
commission of three whose salaries are to be paid out of the fund. The
fund is made up of contributions by employers and employes—in hazardous
occupations the former furnish twice as much as the latter in amount—to
which the state adds an initial contribution of $50,000 and one seventh
of the total amount each year thereafter.
This act like that of West Virginia is pseudo-elective, election being
presumed on both sides in default of written rejection. In case of
accidents due to failure to provide proper safeguards, however, this
election can be waived and the workman can then sue under a liability
law with the customary defenses removed. Benefits which begin
immediately are more generous than under the West Virginia law. In case
of death one surviving dependent is to receive $30 a month, with $6 for
each additional dependent up to $50; parents of a minor workman to
receive $25 a month until he would have reached his majority.
Payments for total disability are much the same as to dependents on
decease. Partial temporary disability is to be compensated for a limited
period with “that proportion of the payments provided for total
disability which his earning power at any kind of work bears to that
existing at the time of the occurrence of the injury.” Lump sum payments
may be made to beneficiaries out of the state, a provision which must
include non-resident aliens.
The Oregon law provides funeral expenses not to exceed $100 and contains
a clause, such as was defeated in the Washington law on which it was
modelled, giving the commission authority to provide first aid to
workmen entitled to benefits under the act, together with medical and
surgical expenses up to the sum of $250.
In March a further step in compensation legislation was taken by the
Ohio legislature when it established, in place of its elective law, a
compulsory state insurance fund contributed by employers in all
industries. Comment on this act by the state actuary will be published
later. According to latest reports laws were on the eve of passing in
Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas.
In New York a compensation bill was passed at the close of the session.
It is pseudo-elective in form and provides benefits of 50 per cent of
the employe’s wages up to $10 a week.
SOCIOLOGY’S WELCOME IN THE NEW SOUTHLAND
Genuine enthusiasm and interest on the part of nearly a thousand social
workers, who gathered in Atlanta from April 25–29 to attend the sessions
of the Second Southern Sociological Congress, tended to disprove the
statement of a speaker at the opening session that “when sociology came
south it met with a cold reception.” At Atlanta sociology received a
hearty welcome. Signs that a spirit of “constructive criticism” is awake
in the South were present on every side, in the newspaper, the pulpit
and in conversation.
Though the South is still a section and in some respects probably wishes
to remain one, still, in the words of Acting President A. J. McKelway:
“Broadly speaking, all our problems are American problems. There is no
peculiarly southern problem of poverty, illiteracy or crime; our
problems of the city, of rural life and child welfare are the same
throughout the nation.”
The spirit of introspection was apparent on the floor of the different
conferences. The boastful paragon of knowledge was lacking. The frank
admission of all was: “We want to know.” Dr. John E. White, of Atlanta,
expressed this when he declared: “We have come at last to the conclusion
that to rid ourselves of criticism, we must first criticise ourselves.
We here propose constructive criticism at the hands of southern men.”
But the southerners at the conference were willing to receive the
message of those from the North who went to counsel and advise. Both
Owen R. Lovejoy and Walter Rauschenbush declared, in essence, “The North
is farther along in industry and consequently has more of the evils
incident thereto than the South—evils which the South is sure to suffer
unless it is more wise than we. We come south, not to criticise, but to
warn—confessing our own failures and urging upon you the exercise of
wisdom and common sense.” These men, together with such speakers as
Francis H. McLean, Charles S. MacFarland, Hastings H. Hart, Alexander
Johnson, Clifford G. Roe, John Ihlder, Mornay Williams, as well as Miss
Lathrop, were listened to with a true regard which made itself apparent
later. “I confess with shame that we have no adequate laws in the state
of Tennessee,” said one member, “and that is the reason I am here—to
learn as much as possible even at the risk of making myself obnoxious
with questions.” The statement expressed the attitude of a large number
of the delegates.
A striking feature of the departmental conferences of the congress was
the series of thirty-five recommendations or principles adopted at the
conference on the church and social service. Several of the more
important recommendations follow:
1. We would recommend a more aggressive policy on the educational side
of civic matters. Such questions as sanitation, the milk supply, meat
inspection, social hygiene and other important matters can be taught
with tremendous effectiveness by the use of the moving picture
machine.
2. We would recommend that each church make a social survey, getting
complete possession in systematic form of the various needs of the
community in which they work and listing possible types of social
effort.
3. We would recommend that each church elect a social service
committee for the whole congregation and a social service assistant
superintendent for the Sunday school, whose business it shall be to
direct the expressive activities of the whole body.
4. We recommend the unification of our church forces upon one
concerted effort at evangelizing the down-and-outs in a thoroughly
equipped union mission.
5. Unify the charity forces of the city. Let the churches do their
miscellaneous charity work through the regular organized charity
forces of the city.
6. We would urge the cities to organize their churches into
federations to meet at regular intervals for the discussion of social
problems and plans.
7. Encourage wider use of church buildings.
8. We would urge the exchange of delegates by ministerial bodies with
the labor unions, and the observance of Labor Sunday in all the
churches.
9. We should be glad to see all of our cities have a woman’s boarding
home, where, under safe conditions, the working girl who comes to town
may be supported and directed at small cost while she learns her new
trade.
10. We would recommend a down-town social center for men, with
Christian influences.
11. Help in the fight against preventable disease, and for the art of
living intelligently.
12. Let the country churches make wider use of their buildings,
providing circulating libraries. Let them help provide better
highways, better schools, better comforts and conveniences for the
home, better culture forces in general and better living conditions on
the whole.
The remaining twenty-three recommendations are practically elaborations
of the ones given above, and all touch upon the same phases of work that
are outlined above.
RURAL EDUCATION IN THE NEW SOUTH
The Conference for Education in the South, meeting in Richmond April
15–18, brought together more than 2300 men and women. Farmers and
business men, college presidents and country school teachers, men
interested in local credit associations, men bent upon improving tax
systems, and ministers of churches—all met together to tell what they
themselves out of their experience had gathered of the ways to make life
better.
The coming ambassador to the Court of St. James, a southern man, and a
freckled, sunburned Virginia boy stood in the great auditorium at
Richmond before thousands. Walter Page, the ambassador, introduced Frank
Brockman, the boy, who told slowly and carefully how he had raised 167
bushels of shelled corn on one acre of Virginia land, how he had made
$175 upon that acre thereby breaking the corn growing record of a state.
He had listeners who understood and appreciated. In front of the boy sat
southern farmers, teachers, demonstration leaders and superintendents of
schools. Behind him, upon the platform sat the men who have made
possible his work and the success of thousands like him in southern
states. The men on the platform, like the boy, told their story simply
and slowly to the men on the floor.
The immediate aim of the conference, as its name implies, was to
stimulate progress in the South, but the speakers were not drawn from
the South only. From New York and Ohio, Minnesota and Canada, men had
come to bring their expert knowledge of improved farming, of
co-operative agencies for buying and selling, and of more efficient
schools. The men and women whose names were on the program talked not
theories but facts which they themselves knew and had demonstrated and
about the value of which they were intensely enthusiastic.
One humorous illustration of this came one morning during a session on
co-operation. A. V. Nelson, a Swede from Minnesota, was telling of the
farmers’ co-operative enterprise in his home town. As he proceeded, with
enthusiastic impetuousness, faltering now and then in his use of English
and then plunging on again, someone in the audience called out “Take
your time!” Someone else at the same time asked him a question. “But dey
von’t let me take any time,” he exclaimed ruefully, looking at the
chairman who stood firm for the time limits of his program—“but I tell
you vat I do! I stay here till tomorrow morning if you want to ask
questions—I did not come here yust to talk, but to get you to go home
and do somethings too!”
A third fact about the conference was the great emphasis it laid upon
the present opportunities for life in the country. The long program
contained only incidental references here and there to city conditions.
No addresses in the whole conference were listened to with more
attention than the earnest account by Frank Brockman of the way he
raised his prize-winning crop of corn and the stories by two girls of
how they won their prizes for growing and canning tomatoes. Their
enthusiasm gave an added human interest to all the other discussions in
the conference of how the work on the farm can be made more profitable
and attractive.
Men and women from the rural schools gave actual instances in which the
schools are being conducted to fit boys and girls for intelligent
citizenship in their own country communities; school superintendents
told of the new emphasis which is being laid on the proper training of
teachers for the rural work; physicians detailed the activities of
boards of health and of the Rockefeller Commission in fighting typhoid,
the hookworm and other diseases. Still others told of the ways in which,
by labor saving devices and by the promotion of a closer social life,
the drudgery for women in the country homes can be alleviated. Business
men from the cities told how chambers of commerce, railroads and other
organizations centering in the city could help to stimulate the
prosperity of the country. Throughout the conference the chief emphasis
was not so much upon benefits for individuals, but upon the chance for
individuals to work together for the benefit of whole communities.
What may be called the religious spirit of the gathering was not
confined to this general ideal of co-operation. There were well-attended
and enthusiastic conferences on the opportunities of the country church.
Without dissent it was assumed that the church is concerned with every
agency which makes for the finer development of country life—with better
schools, better system of land ownership, better health, better
recreation, a closer knit and happier society. It was recognized that
the country minister, as a natural leader in his community, has an
almost unequalled chance to promote co-operation for community good. He
must be, as one speaker put it, “a man of piety walking with God, a man
of humanity walking with men.”
During the conference there was an exhibit in the old high school
building. Here the kind of progress in rural education which the
speakers in the conference had talked about was visualized by pictures
and charts and whole rooms full of the work turned out in the manual
training and domestic science classes.
EDITORIAL GRIST
MARKETING AND FARM CREDITS
HERMAN N. MORSE
Though little that was new on the subjects under discussion was brought
forward, the First National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits,
through the papers presented and the official resolutions adopted,
called attention to certain highly important facts. The conference
agreed that a number of conditions detrimental both to the farmers and
the general public are prevalent, and that certain constructive remedial
policies are necessary. One proposition to which there was general
agreement was that the margin between the price which the producer
receives for his product and that which the consumer pays for it is too
great. The farmer receives too little and the consumer pays too much.
The market for farm products is too unstable and the fluctuations and
variations in price are too great and too uncertain. Competition has
failed adequately to control and regulate prices.
The present marketing facilities, it was stated, are utterly inadequate
to bring the supply and the demand together. Quantities of farm produce
rot in the fields because they cannot be gotten to those markets in
which there is an active demand for them. This is partly because of the
lack of properly distributed shipping facilities; partly because the
producers are not sufficiently in touch with the markets; partly because
storage firms, commission men’s associations, etc. interfere with the
normal operation of the markets; and partly because certain kinds of
products are not provided to the mass of consumers at prices which they
can afford to pay, though that price would give the producer an ample
profit if exorbitant middleman’s profits were eliminated.
B. F. Yoakum estimated that every year fruit and vegetables worth
$35,000,000 rot on the ground from the lack of shipping and storage
facilities and of knowledge of receptive markets. The annual loss from
corn stalks, rice, flax and other grain straw which is now burned he
estimated at $250,000,000. The additional amount which the farmers could
receive for their products, if by co-operation they knew when and where
to sell their products, he placed at $1,500,000,000 per year, making a
total loss of $1,785,000,000. In the judgment of the conference this was
not an over-statement of the facts.
The delegates to the conference also agreed that the average farmer has
a total income disproportionate to his importance in the national
economy. W. J. Spillman, chief of the Bureau of Farm Management of the
federal Department of Agriculture, estimated that the average farm
income in this country is about $655 a year; of this amount about $1 a
day is the entire return for labor. This labor income, he asserted,
holds throughout the states. After computing the interest on his
investment, the farmer averages $1 for every day he works. In states
such as Illinois, he said, where the investment is greater, the farm
family has a larger sum to use without impairing the capital than in a
state like New York. The difference, however, is in the interest on
invested capital not in labor income.
Even in sections where the farmers generally are satisfied with the
return which they get for their labor, they are unable to get products
to the consumers at a reasonable price. This works a great and
unnecessary hardship upon the poor.
Farmers generally, and especially small farmers, it was agreed, are at
present unable to secure for sufficient time and at a reasonable rate,
the capital with which to purchase land or proper equipment and
materials for the most effective and economical operation of farm
property. In this connection the European methods of rural credit were
discussed at some length.
In considering the remedies for these conditions, certain general
principles, it was decided, should control whatever policies were
advocated.
It was urged that farm products ought to be generally standardized as
commercial products are. There should also be organization among farmers
for the raising of particular standardized products in different
communities or in different parts of the same community to which they
are especially adapted. Scientific farming and soil conservation were
assumed.
The key-word emphasized by the speakers for all efforts to improve
agricultural conditions was co-operation. This co-operation, they
declared, must have the dual purpose of giving the producer a fair and
consistent profit and of giving products to the consumer at the lowest
possible price. The producer and the consumer must be taken into
complete partnership. Combination must never be on the principle of the
industrial combinations or trusts. This will require some little
revision of our present anti-trust laws to permit combinations except
“in so far as they are detrimental to the interests of the people.”
Finally, the conference in its formal resolutions advocated the
following constructive measures:
(a) The passage by Congress of a currency system which will permit
farmers to obtain currency on their land in much the same manner that
national bankers obtain currency by depositing bonds as security.
(b) Taking government crop reporting out of the hands of “stock
gamblers” and making it a public matter.
(c) The rapid development of the government Bureau of Markets about to
be established.
(d) The organized co-operation, both of consumers and producers, under
proper supervision, to promote effective distribution, economical
marketing, and to reduce expenses between producer and consumer.
(e) Organized co-operation properly supervised to secure more
advantageous systems of rural credit.
(f) The extension and improvement of the parcel’s post as a potent
factor in reducing the cost and facilitating the distribution of the
products of the farm to the ultimate consumers.
SOUTHERN SCHOOLMEN AND THE CIRCLE OF LIFE
WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER
You can’t be wise on an empty stomach. You can’t fill that stomach until
you are wise. Nor can you be educated or fed until you are good, happy,
clean—nor good, happy or clean until you are educated and fed. In the
individual, then, life is a complete circle, every part of which is
integral. In the whole group of individuals, there is the same circle,
no part of which is complete in itself, or even significant unless
considered merely as a segment.
This fundamental fact, so obvious, yet so seldom fully recognized, gave
form and force to the Conference on Education in the South, recently
held in Richmond. Farmers, business men, country preachers, officials,
writers, editors, physicians, plain citizens, and school teachers—some
2,300—met together to discuss the problems which are common to them all.
Wonder of wonders, the “conference” was a real conference; spell binding
addresses were conspicuous by their absence. To a remarkable extent, the
program consisted of concise and vigorous statements of actual
accomplishments and constructive pleas for needed accomplishments. At
one meeting Virginia Pearl Moore of Tennessee would tell how a mountain
girl had made at the cost of a dollar or so a home canner with which she
had won a prize—and rebuilt a whole community; at another E. M. Tousley
of Minnesota would tell how the farmers’ corporation at Dassel in his
state had procured for the consumer his share of the price of his
crops—and rounded out and made full the life of the neighborhood.
These men and women who met at Richmond had their faces set toward the
village and the open country. They realized that American life was
becoming a pyramid set wrong end up. To turn the pyramid over, so that
at the bottom supporting the whole structure will be a satisfied and
satisfying country life, was the large task to which these southerners
gave vigorous attention. The conference took note of the fact that the
“great American contortion” of the fed trying to support the feeder
cannot be perpetuated. It realized, too, that the general assumption
that all country people are or are to become men is wholly wrong; that
it is many generations past the time when in an organized and
comprehensive way, educational and social agencies should have begun to
help the farmer’s wife and daughter so that they could help themselves.
To be sure, wife and daughter will not have their due until the farmer
is economically efficient, but what are the chances that he will
increase his yield if he has to eat poorly cooked food, to say nothing
of putting up with a nagging wife and a discontented daughter?
As the most tangible and immediate method of making the farmer more
efficient economically, the conference emphasized better business
methods. Here again Dr. Albert P. Bourland, executive secretary, showed
discernment, in that he related the subject of agricultural co-operation
and better farm credits to the other topics discussed—school, church,
home and business in the large. The conference had the right to preach
co-operation for it was practicing it!
All the discussions were illuminated by honesty—the recognition of
problems and the characterization of evils by their right names. Indeed,
this meeting made the few visitors from north of Mason and Dixon’s line
again wish that in their sections of the country there were the same
hearty frankness joined to tact.
Since this conference discussed the whole of the circle of life, what
right had it to be called a conference for _education_?
In the South, the machinery for social amelioration is to a large extent
educational. Whether it be the hook worm in South Carolina or bad
housing in Texas that is attacked, efforts to make the South a better
place in which to live emanate to a surprising degree from state
departments of education, agricultural colleges, state universities,
sectarian colleges, secondary schools, and—praise be!—one-room rural
schools. Whether or not these institutions have the help of individuals,
they do their work in the name of all of the people.
LESSONS FROM OHIO RESERVOIRS
MORRIS KNOWLES
Pittsburgh Flood Commission
Early reports of the recent Ohio floods gave many the impression that
the disasters were due to the failure of reservoirs; and as these
reports were not generally corrected later, this impression no doubt
remains in the minds of some. An investigation made during the week
following the disasters showed this to be incorrect; but the escape was
so narrow in some instances that the lesson of reservoirs of this sort
is driven home almost as strongly as if they had failed and caused an
enormous destruction of life and property.
Most of the reservoirs in the flooded districts belonged to the Ohio
state canal system and were constructed to supply water for the canals
in the dry seasons. In addition, the Columbus water supply storage dam
on the Scioto river, was reported to have failed, causing a panic in
Columbus. A number of power dams in various parts of the state were also
the subjects of similar rumors. But these reports were either entirely
without foundation, as in the case of the Columbus dam, or else the dams
were relatively unimportant, so that this article may well be confined
to the canal reservoirs.
The Ohio canal system, built in the second quarter of the last century,
consists of two main divisions—the Ohio Canal, or eastern route,
connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio river by way of the Cuyahoga,
Tuscarawas, Muskingum, Licking and Scioto river valleys; and the Miami
and Erie Canal, or western route, connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio
river by way of the Maumee, Auglaize, and Miami river valleys. In
addition, the Muskingum river was slack-watered below Zanesville.
Numerous lateral, feeder and tributary canals completed a system which
had cost approximately $16,000,000 and which comprised in 1850 over
1,000 miles of canals, more than 300 lift locks and half a dozen
reservoirs.
In the case of each of the main canal routes, water was lacking on the
summit level during the dry season, and the reservoirs were constructed
to supplement the normal flow at such times. The Portage Lakes, just
south of Akron, were dammed about 1840, to supply the summit of the
eastern route; Loramie and Lewistown Reservoirs about 1850–60, for the
western route; and the Licking Reservoir, or Buckeye Lake, about 1832,
for the Licking summit. In addition, Grand Reservoir, the largest in the
state, was built about 1841, to supply the northern slope of the Miami
and Erie Canal.
[Illustration:
LOOKING DOWN THE EAST RESERVOIR CREVASSE
In the wreckage are the remains of a saloon and of a concrete bridge.
]
During the middle of the last century, just prior to the Civil War,
these canals were very active, and brought in a gross revenue, during
some years, of over $500,000. In 1851 the gross earnings were over
$799,000, and the net earnings almost $470,000. But later, the decline
came, as it did on all of the old canals. As the canal section and lock
dimensions were out-grown by the demands of modern traffic, a gradual
abandonment of navigation followed, until now, for many years, there has
been no canal freight traffic at all. Some of the branch and feeder
canals have been officially abandoned, and either left to deteriorate
without attention, or else filled up. Several of the reservoirs were
dedicated by the legislature, by several acts passed since 1894, to use
as public parks and pleasure resorts, with the provision, however, that
they must be maintained for canal purposes.
For the past few years, therefore, the only revenues from the canals
have been from the leasing of lands for oil well drilling and from the
sale of water or water power to private or municipal water works and
industrial plants. An annual appropriation has been made, in addition,
to assist in meeting the expense of maintenance. There has, therefore,
been no great stimulus to comprehensive and thorough work, and probably
a great deal of the maintenance has been of a perfunctory character. The
canals and reservoirs are in charge of a Board of Public Works of three
members, but neither this nor any other state body or official appears
to have had the specific duty of investigating these reservoirs from the
sole point of view of public safety.
The Portage Lakes, about six miles south of Akron, were provided with no
spillway whatever. The only way water could be discharged from them was
through a thirty-six inch pipe. At the beginning of the rain-storm, the
level in the reservoirs was within about one foot of the top of the
embankment. It was not surprising, therefore, that the lakes filled up,
overflowed the low embankment and washed out a crevasse about
twenty-five feet deep and nearly 200 feet wide. The water overflowed a
considerable area of low farm lands.
At the Lewistown Reservoir, which covers 6,000 acres, about a quarter of
a mile of the west embankment was overflowed continuously for a day and
a half. Waves dashed over the top of the south bank for several days.
Both banks were almost despaired of, and a large force of men, including
cottagers and citizens from neighboring towns, worked hard, placing logs
and sand bags, to save them. In this they were successful, but a large
area south of the reservoir was overflowed.
The Loramie Reservoir of 1,830 acres was already filled to above the
spillway level when the rain started, and the water reached a maximum
elevation of about four feet above the 200 foot spillway. Two small
crevasses about twenty and twenty-five feet wide respectively and five
or six feet deep, were washed out at a low portion of the embankment.
The Grand Reservoir is one of the largest artificial bodies of water in
the world and covers about 13,400 acres. The water rose to about two
feet above the ninety-five foot spillway. The water did not come near
overtopping the banks, but heavy waves were driven against and over
them, eroding them seriously at some points, and softening and furrowing
their backs at others. A large force of volunteers worked with the
laborers, filling and placing bags of sand, while a company of state
militia patrolled the banks. No breaks occurred at any point, but the
situation was critical for two or three days.
[Illustration:
REPAIRED BREAK IN LORAMIE RESERVOIR EMBANKMENT.
When the break occurred the water was about four feet over the
spillway.
]
* * * * *
These situations teach a lesson that ought never to need repetition.
Reservoir failures did not contribute measurably to the flood damage in
Ohio. The trouble was caused by excessive and extensive rains.
But even if the reservoirs did not fail with disastrous results, the
margin was a narrow one and the lesson is equally plain. It has long
been an engineering principle that an earth embankment must not be
overtopped. Twenty-four years ago, the Johnstown disaster, due to
insufficient spillway capacity, impressed this upon the whole world. And
it is an interesting parallel, that this was caused by an old reservoir
originally built by the state for canal purposes, and later abandoned
and used for pleasure purposes. Yet in Ohio there were four earth
embankment reservoirs, one of which had no spillway and a far from
sufficient discharge pipe; two of which filled up so that the banks were
overflowed; and one which did not overflow, but which filled up
sufficiently so that waves were driven over the embankments. Nor was the
rainfall one beyond the range of probability. The March storm probably
broke all records for combined intensity, duration and extent. But for
small drainage areas such as these (52 to 114 square miles) the rainfall
was not unprecedented. At least two storms have occurred in Ohio during
the past forty years in which the rainfall in forty-eight hours was
greater than that recorded in any forty-eight hours of the late storm,
at any station, excepting Piqua, which is below the reservoirs in
question. And in at least one storm in the same period, the rainfall for
twenty-four hours was within .06 inch of the highest twenty-four hour
rainfall of last month.
The faults in these reservoirs, then, were not due to a lack of
knowledge as to what to expect, but only to failure to apply knowledge
already gained. In this case, of course, state ownership put an extra
responsibility on Ohio to see that its property was not a menace to its
citizens. But, in any case, the state is the only institution which can
see that such structures are provided with the necessary facilities to
make them safe. Johnstown ought to have taught the necessity of
examining reservoirs and dams, and of enforcing suitable standards of
design and construction. Yet if we examine the statute books of Ohio we
find no legislative provision of this kind whatever. Nor is there any
provision for the study, mapping and gauging of the water resources.
This is a necessary preliminary to a full understanding of the possible
menace from uncontrolled waste.
With only two or three exceptions, conditions are precisely the same
throughout the country. Even in Pennsylvania, which has probably
suffered more grievously from dam failures than any other state, there
is as yet no public knowledge of the design and condition of all dams,
and no authority in any official or body to correct a dangerous
condition.
Must we wait for another Johnstown or an Austin to change these things?
Or will we learn from what might well have occurred in Ohio, and make a
repetition of such disasters impossible? The lesson is plain. Will we
profit by it?
BOOKS
MODERN PHILANTHROPY
By WILLIAM H. ALLEN. Dodd, Mead & Co. 437 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of
THE SURVEY $1.64.
During 1910 and 1911, the years immediately succeeding the death of her
husband, Mrs. E. H. Harriman received many thousands of appeals from as
many individuals, charities, churches or other enterprises, most of whom
either felt that they had some claim upon her generosity or hoped that
their individual desires or necessities were particularly worthy of
support. These appeals, to the number of 6,000, Mrs. Harriman turned
over to the New York Bureau of Municipal Research for analysis and
study. They came from all corners of the globe. The plans and remedies
proposed ranged from a sage’s advice to a cheap cure-all emanating from
a freakish brain.
Using the results of this study as a text, the author has written this
volume, a part of which is a discourse on the relation of philanthropy
to the functions of government. Another part is more like a manual on
will making and successful appealing for private funds. The final
section is an argument in favor of a national clearing house for appeals
and charitable causes.
The details with which the analysis and classification of the 6,000
appeals is presented are so elaborate that they become tiresome and
confusing. Besides, many of them are so exceptional that while they
might be texts for discussions in social ethics, few general conclusions
of value can be reached from them.
The discussion of will making has greater value for our various
communities, and is receiving increasing attention among lawyers, social
workers and civic reformers. The author proposes that lawyers recognize
this value and equip themselves as experts or consultants for those who
in increasing number wish to leave of their resources a contribution
toward the betterment of social and civic conditions. He calls attention
to the fact that the terms of a will are generally an expression of a
previous generation’s interest and that it is altogether too commonly
true at the present time that the will maker’s thought is not kept
abreast with the development of the community and the needs of the
times. For instance, the important work in scientific research of the
present day is not provided for to any large extent by bequests but is
largely financed by gifts from the living.
The continuous education of prospective givers is urged so that their
bequests may express a vital interest of the donor’s present instead of
his past. The tendency of men to make their wills in middle life will,
however, always prove to be an obstacle to this desired result, and
hence the terms of a will must be made as general as a careful
description of the donor’s interest allows it to be, rather than so
restricted that its usefulness will soon be so lessened that the state
must set a limit to the life of the bequest.
The list of nation-wide needs that the book presents is certainly a
formidable one. Many of them require a paragraph while others ought to
have a whole chapter if not a whole volume to elucidate them and show
their value to the skeptical reader or legislator. In the shape in which
they are presented they bewilder all except the expert social scientist
or social reformer. That the needs have diverse values is easily seen by
examining two in the list of 4 per cent to 6 per cent investments,
combining public service and private profits. Here we find the enigmatic
suggestion that we discover the “application of the Child’s Restaurant
idea to boarding houses” placed side by side with the need of a “model
factory system that would net capital 4 per cent or 5 per cent and let
the earnings above that limit go to make high wages, shorter hours and
lower prices.” Many utopias are contained in these lists. The
enumeration is impressive and suggestive but not convincing.
The author’s tendency to question every social fact, every community
habit and every form of benevolence is found throughout the volume. This
undoubtedly arouses thought. It is nowhere better exemplified than in
the following statement: “It is doubtful whether the philosophy of
giving formulated by Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller rings truer than
does that of begging letters. After all, philosophy is not much more
than straight seeing, and a person in trouble, needing help, can see
almost as much and as far as a person wanting to get rid of money.
Neither a multi-millionaire nor a professor of ethics could surpass the
good wife whose husband is harassed to pay $200 debts.” These half
truths challenge one to find the whole truth, but they do not much
enlighten him who is seeking to find a safe social policy.
Mr. Allen’s mind is fertile. He has the unusual gift of throwing out
sheaves of questions for arousing one’s interest, and for this purpose
the volume in question is particularly noteworthy.
C. C. CARSTENS.
VOCATIONS FOR GIRLS
By MARY A. LASELLE and KATHERINE WILEY. Introduction by Meyer
Bloomfield. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 139 pp. Price $.85; by mail of THE
SURVEY $.92.
This little volume is designed to be of service in assisting
wage-earning girls to a wise and intelligent choice of a vocation and
may be used as a reference or text book in the elementary grades, as
well as furnish “advisory material” for those girls who continue in
school after fourteen years of age.
The chief value of this book has been pointed out by Mr. Bloomfield;
namely, that it is written by teachers who perhaps thus unconsciously
express the prevailing discontent of the teacher alert to modern demands
on education, and the reaching out of the hitherto secluded educator
into the realities with which the child, unequipped, constantly
struggles.
The material is attractively arranged, presented in a breezy, readable
form, tinged with the spirit of sentiment, calculated to excite and hold
the interest of the girl reader. It cannot fail to make the careless,
irresponsible girl more thoughtful to untangle many perplexities for the
troubled girl and to arouse ambition for personal efficiency in all
girls who read it. The emphasis for gaining success is laid almost
entirely upon personal efficiency. While the necessity cannot be made
too clear to the girl—who is inclined to look upon her wage-earning life
less as a profession than the boy—the book is disappointing in its
almost total lack of recognition of the many failures in industry to
meet the reasonable claims of efficiency. The absence of such
information is prone to tempt the girl into industry sooner than there
is financial need for her service, and does not protect her incentive or
optimism, which protection is hoped for by the concealment of these
facts. It is this feature which is too often damaging to the beneficial
effect of many vocational bulletins published without an intimate and
accurate knowledge of the trades discussed.
This setting forth of disadvantages as well as advantages has been most
excellently done in another recent Boston publication, Survey of
Occupations Open to the Girl of Fourteen to Sixteen Years, by Harriet
Hazen Dodge. This pamphlet presents both sides of the question in a most
helpful, concise and scientific form. The knowledge of the
“disadvantages” is needful to the educator with whom will lie the
decision as to the kind of trade or industry with which education can
assist and co-operate in moulding the life of the child.
Vocations for Girls will be of assistance to the elementary teacher in
providing an opportunity for intelligent contact with the girl worker,
and suggestive material for further investigation as to the educative
motive in trades and the benefit of the “occupative motive” in the girl
pupil.
Little or no new information is given the sociological worker concerning
specific lines of work for girls, or concerning her education for wage
earning and home making.
The note of unquestioned recognition of the permanency of the girl’s
wage-earning life which pervades every page of the book, is most welcome
and all too urgently needed—both by girl and employer. But above all
else, let me repeat that the book deserves a pioneer place in vocational
literature, as one of the outward proofs of that which has long been
felt,—that the destiny of the wage-earning child can be safely trusted
to the keen interest, stimulating sympathy and sound judgment of his or
her main dependence—the most potent of our social forces—the public
school teacher.
MARY EDITH CAMPBELL.
GENETICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HEREDITY
By HERBERT EUGENE WALTER. 272 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY
$1.65.
Everyone interested in the modern problems of eugenics and the care of
defectives will find much of value in this book. The author says: “An
attempt has been made to summarize for the intelligent but uninitiated
reader some of the more recent phases of the questions of heredity which
are at present agitating the biological world.”
The book is an excellent statement of the present most generally
accepted theory of heredity, with only as much reference to other
theories as will enable the reader to see how modern theories have grown
out of the old ones.
Much of the book is extremely interesting to anyone with the least
beginning of a scientific mind. The incidents with regard to the various
experiments by biologists are illuminating.
The author is fair and guarded in his statements on questions which are
in dispute. Although there can be no doubt as to his own beliefs in such
matters, for example, as the inheritance of acquired characters, yet he
gives both sides of the question fairly. Some of the instances of
experiments read like a romance. The story of Lamarck’s Evening Primrose
as studied by De Vries is fascinating.
Of course, to the socially minded person, the most interesting part of
the book is that which deals with its application to man, and the
chapter on human conservation which takes up such topics as how mankind
may be improved, control of immigration, discriminating marriage laws,
educated sentiment, segregation of defectives, etc., is compelling and
well worth study.
The text is illustrated by a large number of diagrams some of which,
although simple to the student of biology, will require considerable
study by the ordinary reader. On the whole, the book is a valuable
contribution to our literature on heredity and will be of great service
to those who, while unable to study eugenics exhaustively, still feel
that they must know the general theories on the subject.
ALEXANDER JOHNSON.
MARRIAGE AND THE SEX PROBLEM
By DR. F. W. FOERSTER. Frederick A. Stokes Co. 225 pp. Price $1.35: by
mail of THE SURVEY $1.44.
This is a translation of a work entitled _Sexualethik und
Sexualpadagogik_ by Dr. F. W. Foerster of Zürich, Switzerland. The
translator supplies a brief statement of Foerster’s personal development
and his final adoption of a positive ethical and religious philosophy
akin to the new idealism of Prof. Rudolph Eucken. The book devotes
considerable space to the theories of Ellen Key, Freud and Forel. On its
positive side it advocates undeviating adherence to the traditional
point of view in matters of sex and marriage. A somewhat pedantic touch
results from the translator’s use of “ethic” in preference to the more
familiar “ethics” as an equivalent for the German _Ethik_.
KATHARINE ANTHONY.
BEDROCK
By ANNIE L. DIGGS. The Social Center Publishing Co., Detroit. 70 pp.
Price $.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $.30.
Although, like Hayne’s famous speech on Foote’s resolution, this book
shoots a passing reference at almost every topic of public affairs, it
is in essence an argument for establishing an employment bureau in
connection with every educational institution in the United States. The
reasoning of the treatise, like its rhetoric, is thoroughly
ill-digested. While the author has imagination enough to see the perfect
beauty of a social adjustment which would provide a suitable occupation
for every educated person, and an educated person for every occupation,
she apparently relies on the sentimentality and good-heartedness of
mankind to bring this about.
Her program for starting an employment bureau is to get a handful of men
and women into a parlor and start one. The task of launching raw
youngsters on their life-work is to be done at first by volunteers
“whose imaginations are quickened by a longing to serve humanity.” The
author is evidently unacquainted with the history of vocational guidance
in Boston, which has emphasized above all else the need of full and
scientific information about industry and individual aptitudes before
placement is sparingly attempted. She says not a word about the age at
which children are to be steered into jobs, and is apparently unfamiliar
with recent investigations in New York, Cincinnati and Philadelphia,
which have made it alarmingly probable that there are no positions in
cities into which it is wise or safe to place children. She seems to
accept as good, without discrimination, any and all attempts at
vocational training, at the same time not realizing that such training
should precede organized placement.
In a word, the book embodies nearly all of the fallacies and half-truths
which make so difficult the progress of wise educational readjustment in
this country at the present time. Mrs. Diggs describes herself as the
chairman of the Department of Employment Bureaus of the National Social
Center Association. It is to be hoped that if that organization ever
addresses itself to active propaganda, it will not adopt Mrs. Diggs’
views on finding work for children.
WINTHROP D. LANE.
CATCH-MY-PAL
By REV. R. J. PATTERSON, LL.B. Geo. H. Doran Co. 192 pp. Price $1.00;
by mail of THE SURVEY $1.07.
The author, a Presbyterian minister, in the north of Ireland, catches
enthusiasm from a Catholic priest, and a temperance movement of great
significance results, enrolling 130,000 men in a year’s time, chiefly by
the work of ex-drinkers for their former “pals.” The book is a glowingly
Irish account of what has been a unique illustration of the power of
sheer brotherhood, applied after the method of the Gospels and in the
unconventional spirit of the Good Samaritan. The material given here is
to be classed for significance in interpreting religious experience with
two recent publications—Varieties of Religious Experience and Twice-Born
Men.
Perhaps the core of the book is the conclusion phrased in words
previously and independently used by Professor Horne: “Sometimes
conviction leads to action.... Sometimes action leads to conviction.”
The experience of the mystic seems incalculable; the religion of the
Gospels and of this book reveal a constant, lawful and infinite power, a
source of true miracle, latent until men take its challenge and by a
brotherly act of will allow it to work its wonders through them. “All
our attempts to save a man,” says Mr. Patterson, “should be made at the
point where he understands.... [Jesus] began at the blind man’s eyes, at
the lame man’s feet, at the deaf man’s ears, at the dumb man’s tongue.”
This movement has given also another proof of the pressing necessity of
social centers for men, equally attractive and unconventional as the
saloon, and the author has interesting things to say about “Temperance
saloons,” public opinion, and legislation.
J. F. BUSHNELL.
THE LIFE OF ELLEN H. RICHARDS
By CAROLINE L. HUNT. Whitcomb & Barrows. Boston. 328 pp. Price $1.50;
by mail of THE SURVEY $1.66.
CAROLA WOERISHOFFER, HER LIFE AND WORK
Bryn Mawr College, Class of 1907. 137 pp.
“The large, outgiving life” is a graphic phrase used by the biographer
of Ellen H. Richards in introducing the story of her sixty-eight
well-spent years. Mrs. Richards was a woman in whose nature the quality
of acquisitiveness seems almost to have been omitted. She gave
boundlessly of herself to individuals and to the common welfare. Her
thoughtfulness for friends and associates and her notable public
services were intrinsic forms of self-expression. Apparently, she was
incapable of a perfunctory act. Her letters to friends, the gift for the
coming baby, the “treat” for the girl student away from home for the
first time, the pot of flowers sent to a new neighbor, her letters to
“correspondence” students, her analysis of the water supply of the state
of Massachusetts, her leadership in the home economics movement—all
these things, from the least to the most important, were but the sincere
expressions of her outpouring spirit.
Her impulse for service was re-enforced by a remarkable talent for
administration. It was this which made possible the extraordinary
generosity of her life. It was scientifically managed from the start. At
the height of her career, as Miss Hunt remarks, Mrs. Richards was doing
the work of ten people. Even as a little girl, Ellen Swallow had shown
her capacity to carry on a triple career by helping her mother at home
and her father in the “general store,” besides doing the lessons proper
for a little girl. Later she combined teaching with housekeeping and
storekeeping and helped to earn the money with which she went to
college. During the greater part of her two years at Vassar, she
supported herself by tutoring. From this time on, as student in the
Boston Institute of Technology and subsequently as instructor, Mrs.
Richards was steadily increasing the range of her energies and
activities. The history of her life is the history of the inauguration
of many social and scientific movements.
As a leader, she united to a marked degree the qualities of pioneer and
conservator. To have been the first woman to enter the Institute of
Technology and to have opened the way for other women was for her a
life-long satisfaction. She was never weary in fighting the battle for
the higher education of women. But she had also a strong instinct for
sustaining the victory so hardly won. This is illustrated by a
reproachful letter which she wrote to a woman friend, a college
professor, who had fainted. “Take beef three times a day for a fortnight
to tone yourself up,” she wrote, “and don’t do it again. It is fully as
important to keep in physical condition as to have a mental grasp.
Nowadays the last card they can trump up against us is that we are not
physically equal to what we try to do. The more prominent we are the
more closely they watch us. Just now, too, when so much is in the air
against woman’s education.”
The volume is issued as a memorial and was prepared with the
co-operation of Professor Richards and a committee of Mrs. Richards’
friends representing her various interests.
* * * * *
At the age of twenty-five, Ellen Swallow was just pulling herself free
from the narrow life of a New England village and starting off to Vassar
College. At the same age, Carola Woerishoffer, thanks to a more
favorable environment and a more enlightened generation, had finished
her college course and entered upon a well-established career of social
service. When her gallant and useful life came to a tragical end in an
automobile accident at this same age, she had already accomplished much
that was worth recording.
A picture of her life and personality is given in a small memorial
volume, which consists chiefly of a series of addresses made by personal
friends at a meeting held in Greenwich House shortly after her death. In
the descriptions of her friends, the girl’s devotion to athletics, her
spirit of comradeship, her strong-willed nature, her democratic
instincts, her German fondness for thoroughness and hatred of
dilettantism, and her sense of social responsibility as the possessor of
wealth are the qualities which are made to stand out as most
representative of her.
The spirit in which her social work was done was thus described by one
of the speakers: “She and another young woman, Elizabeth Butler, who
also did immeasurably hard things and who also left us forever this
summer—they undertook so simply the things that to us of my generation
seemed a moral adventure, a wonderful undertaking,—these young women
took them in such a matter-of-fact way. It did not seem to Carola an
adventure to go into laundries any more than it did to Elizabeth Butler
to go into the depths of blackest Pittsburgh. The things were there, and
we had to know about them, and it was all matter-of-fact, just as it
would have been for an able-bodied man to go and look at things and come
back and tell the world what it bitterly needs to know about them. It
was all matter-of-fact for them, and I believe they are forerunners of
new generations of women who will insist in their youth on knowing life
as it is, on facing the world clear-eyed and changing these things which
we of my generation, in our youth, shirked and preferred not to know.”
KATHARINE ANTHONY.
BOOKS RECEIVED IN APRIL
A BUNCH OF LITTLE THIEVES. By David S. Greenberg. The Shakespeare
Press. 336 pp. Price $1.35; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.46.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIALISM. By Allan L. Benson. B. W. Huebsch. 188 pp.
Price $1.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.10.
SYNDICALISM, INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM AND SOCIALISM. By John Spargo. B. W.
Huebsch. 243 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.35.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE. By H. G. Wells. B. W. Huebsch. 61 pp.
Price $.60; by mail of THE SURVEY $.65.
THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE. By Karl Marx. Chas. H.
Kerr & Co. 160 pp. Price by mail of THE SURVEY $.50 (cloth), $.25
(paper).
SABOTAGE. By Emile Pouget. Chas. H. Kerr & Co. 108 pp. Price by mail
of THE SURVEY $.50 (cloth), $.25 (paper).
WAY STATIONS. By Elizabeth Robins. Dodd, Mead, & Co. 371 pp. Price
$1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.64.
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS—WHO IS SHE? Dodd, Mead & Co. 76 pp. Price
$.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $.56.
DIVORCING LADY NICOTINE. By Henry Beach Needham. Forbes & Co. 70 pp.
Price $.35; by mail of THE SURVEY $.39.
THE MAN AND THE WOMAN. By Arthur L. Salmon. Forbes & Co. 145 pp. Price
$.75; by mail of THE SURVEY $.81.
WOMEN AS WORLD BUILDERS. By Floyd Dell. Forbes & Co. 104 pp. Price
$.75; by mail of THE SURVEY $.80.
THE HAPPY FAMILY. By Frank Swinnerton. Geo. H. Doran Co. 308 pp. Price
$1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.36.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. By Oliver Onions. Geo. H. Doran Co.
284 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.35.
GOLD, PRICES AND WAGES. By John A. Hobson. Geo. H. Doran Co. 178 pp.
Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.32.
FURTHER REMINISCENCES. By Henry Mayers Hyndman. The Macmillan Co. 545
pp. Price $5.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $5.20.
THE BRITANNICA YEAR BOOK, 1913. Edited by Hugh Chisholm, M. A., Oxon.
Encyclopedia Britannica Co. 1226 pp. Price $2.25; by mail of THE
SURVEY $2.40.
THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM. By Frederick Chamberlain. Little, Brown & Co.
240 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.60.
WHEN TO SEND FOR THE DOCTOR. By F. E. Lippert, M.D., and A. Holmes,
Ph.D. J. B. Lippincott Co. 265 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of THE
SURVEY $1.34.
PRIMER OF PHYSIOLOGY. By John W. Ritchie. World Book Co. 250 pp. Price
$.80; by mail of THE SURVEY $.88.
FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. By P. A. Kropotkin. G. P. Putnam’s
Sons. 477 pp. Price $.75; by mail of THE SURVEY $.82.
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT. By Oscar S. Strauss. The Century Co. 379 pp.
Price $2.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $2.15.
THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION IN FLORIDA. By William Watson Davis,
Ph.D. Longmans, Green & Co. 769 pp. Price $4.00; by mail of THE
SURVEY $4.23.
THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM. By William English Walling. The
Macmillan Co. 406 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.63.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VALUE OF CHRISTIANITY. By George Chatterton-Hill,
Ph.D. The Macmillan Co. 285 pp. Price $2.75; by mail of THE SURVEY
$2.88.
CHRISTIAN UNITY AT WORK. Edited by Charles S. MacFarland. Federal
Council of Churches in America. 291 pp. Price $1.00; by mail of THE
SURVEY $1.15. A copy of the Business Proceedings of the Council is
sent, free of charge, with the book.
THE MODERN TREATMENT OF MENTAL DISEASES. Volume I. Edited by William
A. White, M.D. Lea and Febiger. 867 pp. Price $6.00; prepaid of THE
SURVEY $6.35.
TREND
LEADERS IN THE MONTH’S MAGAZINES
THE CASE OF LAURA SYLVIA. By Mary Vida Clark. _Outlook._ This is the
almost unbelievable story of the finding and rehabilitation of a
little savage child found living with savage people in the midst of
a prosperous farming community in the Hudson River Valley. Miss
Clark tells the story from her long experience in placing out work
of the State Charities Aid Association of New York. It is not an
unusual one, and her comment suggests the possibilities of neglected
and degenerate families in the cabin homes of the New England and
the southern mountains.
TIGER. By Witter Bynner, and STATE REGULATION OF VICE AND ITS MEANING.
By Anna Garlin Spencer. Both in the _Forum_. The first is a one act
play dealing with prostitution. A father, a patron, finds his
daughter a prisoner in a house of ill fame. “Painful and terrible”
says the editorial introduction, “as this may seem to some readers
it merely focuses, in dramatic form, the abominable realities to
which ‘civilized’ people have so long shut their eye publicly and
pharisaically; but to which, in tens of thousands of cases, they
have given vicious private and personal encouragement.”
Mrs. Spencer’s article is a careful historical study of state efforts
to deal with vice by regulation instead of abolition and to protect
monogamy by putting vice on a legal footing.
WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO DO. _World’s Work._ Thirty-five teachers in the
Washington Irving High School tell how they are trying in this model
New York school to “improve the human machine,” to “form character”
and to “perfect womanhood.”
THE COMING CITY. By John S. Gregory, and MY WORK FOR CRIPPLED
CHILDREN. By Blanche VanLeuvan Browne. Both in the _World’s Work_.
In the latter article a cripple woman tells with magnetic
simplicity, how, beginning only seven years ago with $6 in her
pocket, she has succeeded in building up a hospital-school for
cripples in Detroit.
The Coming City tells of the remarkable work of another single
individual, John Nolen, who has made more than twenty American
municipalities more convenient and more beautiful. It is the record
of “a rapidly growing national movement to correct the evils of
careless growth and to insure that the cities of the future shall be
definitely planned to serve and please their citizens.”
“CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED.” By Gifford Pinchot. _Pearson’s._ The
origin and purport of this important article is thus told by the
editor: It is written in answer to the article on conservation by
Edward H. Thomas, which was published in the January issue of this
magazine. Mr. Thomas’s article submitted that conservation in
principle was all right but that conservation in practice was
nowhere near the principle; that conservation as practised aids
monopoly instead of hindering it: and that the West, where
conservation is being practised, is getting sick of it.
Mr. Pinchot holds that conservation as practised is for the greatest
good of the greatest number. He asked for space in which to correct
what he held was a wrong impression on the minds of the magazine’s
readers. He answers Mr. Thomas, point by point.
THE COST OF MODERN SENTIMENT. By Agnes Repplier. _Atlantic._ This
writer on matters of culture and art for leisurely readers, a
vigorous defender of child labor on the stage on the ground of its
artistic value, has had it borne in upon her that human interests
are today arousing more and more public interest and emotion. Three
of these absorbing human issues are the progress of women, the
condition of labor and the social evil. Miss Repplier counsels
against the misdirecting of sentiment through incomplete knowledge.
* * * * *
The recall last month of a San Francisco municipal court judge, for
setting so low a bail on a man charged with rape as to make it possible
for him to escape trial by skipping bail, gives special interest to a
recent article in _The Sunset Magazine_ by Miriam Michelson. This is an
analysis of the dawning sense of responsibility of the women of a
suffrage state toward the social evil:
Now this threatened recall of a police judge is undertaken, I should
say, not because the women believe this particular judge to be unique
in flagrant adherence to a police court system of leniency in
sex-crimes; not because they think him the worst of his type that San
Francisco has known; but because they consider him a type and because
they consider the police court system one that must be changed. This
recall presents something definite, something to do, which feminine
hands have been aching for.
Miss Michelson continues:
You may talk to women of the futility of figuring social sex sins, but
they seem to be congenitally incapable of believing you. I heard a man
talk to an audience in behalf of this measure, and when he touched
upon that old, old text—_it always has been; it always will be_—there
came a curious resemblance in every woman’s face within my vision; for
every face had hardened, stiffened, was marked with the family
likeness of rebellion. The lecturer was addressing himself to deaf
ears, to eyes determined not to see.
And this is at once the weakness and the strength of the new element
in elections. Those who have watched the ardor of the most eager and
high-minded reformers burn out in commissions, in barren resolutions
and recommendations, see in the average woman’s limitations that
power, that one-idead incapacity to look philosophically on both sides
of a question which marks Those Who Can Change Things. You may object
that such qualities produce a Carrie Nation. They do, but they also
make a Joan of Arc, a Harriet Beecher Stowe....
Her recently awakened realization of equality, the new broom that her
conscience is, revolts at a policy that establishes a municipal clinic
for women prostitutes, yet by a curious, cowardly subterfuge,
overlooks the male’s share in infection; as though the plague created
and disseminated in common could have but one source! And in addition
to all this, she is learning that when she is ready at last to attack
the vested, organized, recognized institution of prostitution, the
first result of her activities will mean greater misery and perhaps
speedier death for the woman who is already at the lowest point of the
social scale....
But over against this set this fact: There are seven hundred women in
San Francisco whose one aim in civic life is to found a State Training
School for girls gone wrong who would go right. This association has a
representative in Sacramento whose sole business it is to further a
bill for the establishment of a helping station for girls on the way
to usefulness and moral health, modeled upon similar establishments in
other states. Here is work, backed by thirty thousand club women of
the state, proceeding definitely, practically to a solution of one of
the most appalling obstacles to the crusade against vice.
This work of restoring the prostitute to decency and happiness is the
side of woman’s work in the field of vice least developed; it is,
however, a side which is most essential. Says Miss Michelson:
But the time has not yet come when woman will face her individual
share of atonement for a social sin in which she has acquiesced.
Ultimately, with universal suffrage, the wheel of time must place at
the door of the protected women responsibility for the prostitute. As
yet she can not see herself, in her own home, taking up the broken
lives, diseased bodies, debased minds and deadened souls—the
by-product of that which men tell her has always been and always must
be.
* * * * *
The following passages are from Cardinal O’Connell’s pastoral letter on
the labor problem:
THE PROBLEM
The social problem of the relations between employers and employed
seems to be the one most fraught with danger to our peaceful living.
THE WORKMAN’S RIGHTS
The right of a man to provide for his family is a natural one. The
living wage which he has a right to demand is the one which will
maintain his family in decent and frugal comfort.
He may combine with others to enforce this right and form a union with
his fellow-workers to exert the adequate moral power to maintain it or
better his condition within the limit of justice.
The worker in the last resort has the right to refuse to work, that
is, to strike, and to induce by peaceful and lawful measures others to
strike with him.
PRINCIPLES GOVERNING EMPLOYERS
Capital has a right to a just share of the profits, but only to a just
share. Employers should treat those who work under them with humanity
and justice; they should be solicitous for the healthful conditions of
the place where workmen daily toil; they should use all reasonable
means to promote the material and moral well-being of their employes.
WARNING FOR RICH
Men with money should be careful to regard it as a means to do good
rather than an end. There is no double moral standard, no loophole of
escape from the sanctions which the moral law of Christ imposes. Men
of wealth should not buy that which is not sellable according to
Christian ethics.
WARNING FOR WORKMEN
Workers are just as much bound by the Christian law as their
employers. There is a disposition to regard work as an intolerable
burden to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible and with as little
effort as possible. This is contrary to Christian teaching.
This natural discontent is fomented and intensified by the noisy
agitators of Socialism, the enemies of God and man, who would overturn
the foundations upon which human society is built, and exile God from
His universe.
This singular set of men who seek to conceal the malice of their real
principles, but who cannot, are a brood of disturbers. Their doctrines
are an abomination striking at the foundations of family life and
religion. There is not, and cannot be, a Catholic Socialist. Certain
misguided Christians may call themselves Socialists, but, objectively,
a Catholic Socialist is an utter impossibility.
Another source of unrest among working people, and one against which
they should be warned, is the desire to give themselves over too much
to the pleasures of life.
* * * * *
Some of the tricks of the trade are described in the personal
experiences of a saleswoman who writes in a recent number of the
_Outlook_ on the wastes of retailing. A serious element of waste arises
she maintains from downright dishonesty practised in unnamed
establishments:
The management cheats the public through the employes, and logically
the employes turn about and cheat the management, and in either event
the public pays the bills.... A cheese is cut into pieces weighing
about a pound each, and all are sold within an hour under four
different names and at four different prices. Canned peas which cost
ninety cents a dozen are sold at nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
and fifteen cents a can—all the same grade. The jobber was willing to
put different labels on the same goods because he had an order for two
carloads.
“Don’t want that pie; want your money back?” said Willie. “How much
was it? Seven cents? I thought so. What do you expect? The
higher-priced ones were beside it. If you want good stuff, why don’t
you pay for it?”
Later I asked Willie what the difference was between the seven and the
twelve-cent prune pie, and he told me that the stones were taken out
of the twelve and put into the seven-cent lot. I counted the stones or
pits in the pie that the angry woman returned. There were forty-three.
COMMUNICATIONS
THE WEST VIRGINIA COAL STRIKE
TO THE EDITOR:
I read with much interest the article by Mr. West in the April 5 number
of THE SURVEY and I must raise my voice in protest against taking Mr.
West too seriously. I have lived with the miners of West Virginia for
the past four years and have made a pretty thorough study of the entire
situation.
It is perhaps hardly to be expected that a newspaper reporter visiting
the field during the struggle would get an unbiased view of the
situation.
No one who is conversant with the situation would deny that there are
two sides to the fight and that both have made their mistakes. The
question of union or non-union has little to do with it. The worst
living and working conditions are to be found in some of the union
settlements along the Kanawha river; perhaps there are some equally bad
ones in non-union fields. The best working and living conditions of West
Virginia are found in non-union fields. Yet, I do not wish to be
understood as arguing against unions, as I do not believe that the union
question has much bearing on the real conditions.
It is simply the character of the operators and the men themselves that
determines the conditions of any mining settlement. There is much
mis-understanding and mis-information among the men themselves.
Mr. West mentions the company stores as being a source of contention.
Now, it is true that in some of the stores some articles are priced too
high, but, on the other hand, men are often mis-informed as to prices in
other places. To illustrate, in the early days of the strike a miner on
Cabin Creek told me he was paying $1.20 per bushel for potatoes at the
company store that could be bought in Charleston for $.60. The next day
I was in Charleston and meeting a farmer on the street, selling his own
product, I learned that the price was $.30 per peck. My miner friend
therefore had jumped at a conclusion that the facts would not justify,
and yet that same man could, by this mis-information, stir up much
dissatisfaction.
When I lived in Charleston, I used frequently to buy meat at the company
store and take it home, a distance of thirty miles, because I could buy
it from three to five cents per pound cheaper than in Charleston. On the
other hand, I saw in two different stores in another district, bedsteads
marked $7, the exact counterpart of which I have bought myself in
Charleston for $4.50. Such a profit as this certainly is not
justifiable. Taken all in all, the prices on necessities do not vary to
any great extent between the company and the independent stores when one
considers the additional cost of transportation.
Nothing is more dangerous than truth and error mixed. Mr. West says the
operators have a larger number of men than they can make use of at each
operation and that the reason of this is that they may have their houses
filled. The real fact is that nearly every operation must have from 20
to 30 per cent more men than are needed in order to run the mine to the
full capacity, as about that proportion will lay off work each day. I
have tried to find the reason for this and have been told repeatedly by
the miners themselves that since they could earn enough money in four or
five days to support themselves for a week they could see no reason why
they should work every day.
The “guard system” is certainly not an ideal one. Neither are all of the
men serving as guards ideal citizens. They certainly have been guilty of
many of the abuses which might be expected from so much authority with
so little responsibility to the state. But there must be some method of
policing the mining districts. Thus far the state and county have failed
to provide police facilities, and an “absentee” police system would make
crime easy to commit in such a country. Thus far, there has been no
improvement suggested by those who are leading this insurrection.
In regard to the housing, if Mr. West or any one else could build one of
the four room cottages at a labor expense of $40., or even twice that,
he would be in great demand as a contractor for house building.
Moreover, any operator would be glad to get his houses built at a net
expense of twice the figures given by Mr. West. One needs only to visit
the houses vacated by miners to convince himself that the 10 per cent
income on the actual investment will hardly pay for repairs. The average
miner is not at all careful as to where he collects his kindling wood. I
have seen many houses with from one to four doors and perhaps a quarter
of the ceiling missing, having been used for this domestic purpose.
One real difficulty with the miners is a lack of constructive
leadership. When they are taught such anarchistic ideas as that voiced
by Mr. Houston at the investigation of the commission, it is no wonder
that such men, under the leadership of individuals, whose past history
will hardly bear the light of day, band themselves together for
desperate purposes. Mr. Houston stated that the miner should be paid
every cent that the coal brings in the market, except what the railroad
gets for transportation, and there are many mine workers who actually
believe this.
My sympathy is with the miner whose work is dangerous and who should
have every consideration consistent with good order and business
conditions. There is no calling which requires so little investment on
the part of the worker that brings such returns in money. Any miner in
the Cabin Creek or Paint Creek field who is willing to work steadily can
earn anywhere from $3 to $6 per day and many earn more than this clear.
The real difficulty with these men is that they need education and
training as to how to care for their money after it has been earned. It
is true that there are many days when the mines cannot run owing to
breakdowns or lack of sufficient cars in which to load the coal. This
latter reason is especially frequent in some sections.
I have hardly touched the subject but I do hope this matter will be
thoroughly investigated and I personally believe no person is more
anxious for a federal investigation than the operator himself, although
Mr. West says the operators oppose such an investigation.
IRA D. SHAW.
[Industrial Department, the International Committee of the Young Men’s
Christian Association.]
Pittsburgh.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
I went to the strike district unprejudiced. My instructions were to tell
the truth about the situation. I did so to the best of my ability. I
believe I was fair. In my article in THE SURVEY I simply told what I saw
in the mines. I believe such conditions as exist there are brutalizing
in the extreme. I believe they are responsible for much of the
lawlessness that exists throughout West Virginia.
In regard to the cost of the houses, I was told in the mines by a well
informed man that the labor cost on a certain set of the cottages
erected some years before had been $40 each. That is not at all
unreasonable. Two carpenters at $2.50 a day each could build one of them
in eight days. As I happen to be somewhat familiar with building
operations I am confident that my figures are not out of the way,
especially when you consider that the land on which the buildings stand
cost little or nothing. The expense for lumber was only the cost of
sawing the timber already at hand, plus the cost of window frames and
doors, bricks for the chimneys, composition roofing and the little
hardware required.
It is true that some of the things sold in the company stores are sold
at prices no higher than those which prevail in Charleston. Some of the
prices may even be lower. That is really not the point. It is the fact
that men are compelled, by one means or another, to deal at the company
stores. That has always been a grievance among miners. I reported the
Frostburg strike in the George’s Creek region of Maryland twenty years
ago for the _Baltimore Sun_. While the conditions there were ideal as
compared with those now existing in the Kanawha valley, the company
store was one of the greatest grievances of the men.
I stand by what I have said about the crowding of the mines and the mine
guard system. I know the miners are not all they should be, but they are
not to be measured by the standards among men whose opportunities have
been greater. Theirs is a skilled occupation and a dangerous one. Yet
they have few if any of the advantages of the men of other skilled
occupations and live under conditions that are oppressive and
brutalizing. The stock argument that they can earn anywhere from $3 to
$6 a day if they work steadily is idle. No set of men who could earn
from $18 to $36 a week would live under such conditions as prevail in
the mines. Mr. Shaw says there is no calling which requires so little
investment on the part of the worker that has such returns in money.
That is a very broad statement. Investment in what, in tools or in time
spent in learning the trade? How about the bricklayer, the Belgian block
paver, the stone-mason, the plasterer or any one of a dozen trades that
might be mentioned?
As for the desire of the operators for an investigation. I stated that
the operators opposed such an investigation. Mr. Shaw has his _belief_
that the operators would welcome one. I have the statement of the
representative of the operators that they would oppose any
investigation, state or federal, because of “its unsettling effect on
the men.” And the letter of the operators opposing an investigation on
the part of the state, proposed by the then Governor Classcock, and
refusing to become a party to it, is on file among the records in the
capitol of West Virginia.
My statements were conservative and most of them even at this late date
are susceptible of proof by any commission of investigation. Finally it
is up to the SURVEY readers whether they take the article seriously or
not. If the criticisms of Mr. Shaw are the most serious that can be
brought against my article, I do not fear that my reputation for
accuracy will be greatly damaged.
HAROLD E. WEST.
[Staff of the _Baltimore Sun_.]
Baltimore.
THE SHOPPERS’ PUZZLE
TO THE EDITOR:
The excuses of the St. Louis firms quoted by the Consumers’ League of
that city are all too familiar to those who have been interested in the
Saturday half-holiday elsewhere. There is always one department at least
under the roof of every reluctant merchant which positively cannot be
closed on Saturday afternoon and evenings for the two summer months,
either because of the heavy trade on that day, or because competitors
among the single-line stores keep open. Then there is the alleged
hardship to working people in that their only shopping time would be
taken away.
The one thing which is not heard from such employers in discussing the
question is that Saturday is the day when clerks most need a respite,
especially in cities where it is not only the weariest day, but the
longest.
Has it occurred to the St. Louis League that the day of heaviest trade
bears some relation to advertising? Their reactionary firm probably
makes an advertising feature of Saturday bargain sales. This firm ought
to realize that in cities where the Saturday half-holiday is most
general and successful the Saturday trade has not been lost but has been
readjusted by a shift of bargain sales to other days.
The argument based on the working-men’s need has a semblance of truth
and might have more if the early closing were for more than the eight or
nine Saturdays of July and August. Most working-men can arrange to do
necessary shopping at some other time for those few weeks. Many of them
in trades which have the eight hour day have the hour from five to six,
in addition to the noon-hour daily—and in the case of family-buying
there is the wife who is the natural shopper. When the matter came up in
Syracuse labor leaders assured the Consumers’ League that the argument
had no real basis.
Let us hope that the Consumers’ League of St. Louis may be able to
convince its reactionary firm that the approval and consequent patronage
of the public the year round is worth as much as its trade in men’s
furnishings on Saturday afternoons of July and August.
EMILY LOVETT EATON.
[President Consumers’ League of Syracuse.]
Syracuse, N. Y.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
It has always been a puzzle to me why the weekly half holiday, so
strongly advocated for store and factory workers, should be Saturday
rather than a mid-week afternoon and why all the stores in any city
should close on the same afternoon.
Half the number closed on Wednesday, the others closed on Thursday
afternoons would necessitate a change in pay day, possibly in positions
where members of the same family work in different stores. Open stores
on Saturday afternoon ought to be a help to the class of people who
never have anything ahead, to keep the Sunday ordinances.
S. P. QUIGLEY.
Ovid Center, N. Y.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
THE SURVEY of March 29 printed a letter from me telling of a problem
with regard to Saturday afternoon summer closing. A St. Louis department
store (one of a chain of stores established in various cities under one
firm) kept open all last summer on Saturday afternoons. The president of
the corporation told representatives of the Consumers’ League that the
stock-holders would never consent to Saturday closing because a great
bulk of business was done in the men’s furnishing department at this
time, the only time men have for shopping.
A few weeks ago the Consumers’ League laid their problem before the
Central Council of Social Agencies. The trades unions sent the firm word
of their objection to the custom of remaining open Saturday afternoons
during the summer months. The Retailers’ Association added their
protest.
A committee from the Central Council called on the corporation
president. He gave this committee the same negative answer that the
Consumers’ League Committee had received. But the dismissal was not
final. Soon he sent for the Central Council Committee to return. He gave
them the news that the store would close Saturday afternoons during the
summer months, as is the custom of all other large St. Louis department
stores. He said that the firm had always done all in its power for its
employes and, as it was agreed that keeping open Saturday afternoons was
not consistent with the best welfare of the employes, the store would
close at that time. Of course the contention that closing Saturday
afternoons would deprive men of their shopping time and would only
increase night shopping remains unanswered.
At any rate, the fear that other department stores might follow the
example set by this particular one is banished.
ALTHEA SOMERVILLE GROSSMAN.
St. Louis.
* * * * *
SEX HYGIENE LECTURES
TO THE EDITOR:
In the health section of your issue for April 19, the writer saw your
article on Courses on Sex Hygiene. Considering the fact that these
lectures were given expressly for social workers, it was surprising to
learn that only the first few were well attended. If there is any
subject demanding the attention of social workers, it surely is this
most important one.
About eighteen months ago a young woman, a member of the Factory
Committee of the Wolf Company’s plant, incidentally mentioned the
interest taken in a series of lectures on this subject given to members
of a girls’ club in one of the main social houses on the East Side. The
question of giving these lectures was immediately taken up with the
management, with the result that four series of four lectures each were
given to about 175 employes. This was the first time that many of these
workers had the opportunity of learning, in a dignified and instructive
manner, the interesting story of reproduction.
The lectures were given by Nellie M. Smith whose book containing these
talks, The Three Gifts of Life[1] has recently been published, and many
of those who attended the lectures purchased copies of this volume with
the intention of giving them to their mothers or younger sisters to
read.
Footnote 1:
The Three Gifts of Life. By Nellie M. Smith. Dodd, Mead & Co. 138 pp.
Price $.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $.56.
These same lecturers are now being given by a large industrial
corporation in this city which is always ready to investigate
thoroughly, any work that makes for the betterment of the life of its
workers. Furthermore, the question of giving these lectures to six other
manufacturing establishments is now being seriously considered.
It might be well to mention that these lectures were merely announced to
the workers and in no case was attendance compulsory. They were given
without charge during regular working hours.
Our workers have surely benefited by the knowledge gained through this
course and the writer trusts that many other manufacturing concerns will
give this matter serious thought. It is an established fact that the
worker cannot get full production from any power machine unless the
human machinery is properly cared for, and but few persons thoroughly
understand how to best care for themselves.
W. IRVING WOLF.
New York City.
SEGREGATING VICE
TO THE EDITOR:
It is not a little curious that in all the agitation on the vice
question no one has suggested what has always seemed to me the evident
solution of the whole matter. Without a second thought, if there were no
men there would be no prostitutes; the men are the sole and only source
of the whole evil. I am aware that segregation has its drawbacks. It
does stimulate clandestine prostitution. It has the fault of legalizing
a shameful business. Also under our present conditions it supplies an
opportunity for graft. But overruling all these disadvantages is the
fact that it facilitates the catching of the men. This is impossible in
hotels and apartment houses, but if men found frequenting the segregated
district were seized and submitted to compulsory examination, it would
only be the blatant sinners who would ever run the risk, and the number
of such customers would be greatly reduced.
This suggestion may appear Utopian, for do not the originators of
prostitution themselves make the laws? However, there now seems some
chance of the public conscience, male and female, being widely aroused
and it is possible that the originators of the whole evil may not escape
the dragnet.
H. MARTYN HART.
Denver.
* * * * *
SEX HYGIENE AND YOUNG PEOPLE
TO THE EDITOR:
The present excessive demand for prostitution which comes largely from
young boys is, I believe, caused by the nature of our present social
organism which abnormally emphasizes the sex relation and puts it before
every other influence a boy meets. Women’s dress, current literature,
musical comedies and problem plays, “smutty” stories told by boys among
themselves, even our advertisements—all combine to throw a fascinating
glamor around sex indulgence and develop an abnormal instinct in our
boys, which takes command of their nervous system and insists that sex
indulgence is necessary.
The average boy of eighteen cannot think of marriage for economic
reasons, but his nature craves action, and under these ever-present
influences he comes to believe that the perfect “good time” is sex
indulgence—and he will exercise all his ingenuity, when with a girl, to
attain his goal. No one, who is not in the confidences of young people,
has the least idea of the pressure thus brought to bear on girls. The
girl finds it necessary in order to hold a boy’s attention, with the
amusements and companionship that goes with it, to do as he wants; many
girls fall through their perfectly natural desire for healthful
recreation which they can get more plentifully by giving in—or through a
sentimental desire to retain the favor of boys who are satisfied with
nothing short of intercourse.
The ultimate remedy must be to put against this “prevailing spirit of
the times” a powerful combatting influence, which will establish in our
boys a high ideal of womanhood and marriage.
E. C. S.
Swissvale, Pa.
FREE ACRES COLONY
TO THE EDITOR:
Many persons interested in social betterment work, have written to me
enquiring about the Free Acres Colony at Berkeley Heights, N. J.
If you can get along without gas and a janitor and plumbing and a land
lord and other modern improvements, you can build your own one room
tent-shaped bungalow for $40 there, and make your own clothes and be as
respected as you are respectable. Later, you may make it your residence.
Any handy man or woman might make a living chopping wood, or gardening,
and so forth, and no one there will either give you anything or try to
take anything away from you; for in this co-operative land-ownership
there is no speculative element.
On a co-operative basis, Free Acres affords an opportunity to own a
rural home without having to buy land. But it is as secure as buying,
for the lease is a perpetual lease and can be transferred. At present it
is pioneering; there are no established industries there as yet, but
opportunity is open to anyone to establish them. You can lose yourself
in the woods which surround the farm, although it’s only twenty-seven
miles from the City Hall in New York.
BOLTON HALL.
New York City.
* * * * *
THE BALKAN WAR AND ARMENIA
TO THE EDITOR:
In 1908 when, after a revolution, Turkey proclaimed a constitutional
government someone had to pay the penalty for the disturbance. As usual
the Armenians paid it with the massacre of 25,000 Christians at Adana.
Now that the Turk is being driven out of Europe upon whom is his wrath
going to fall?
Greeks, Bulgarians, Servians and Roumanians all have served their time
under the Turkish rule of massacre and oppression but they were
fortunate. Geographical conditions helped them to free themselves. The
Armenians revolted, too, although isolated from Christian neighbors and
surrounded by ten Turks and Kurds to one Armenian.
The Armenian is the tiller of the land in Asia Minor. During the old
regime because of the systematic oppression, some of the Armenians had
to emigrate to earn a living. Others could not work their lands for the
government had sold their oxen for taxes. The lands of these
unfortunates, were grabbed by force by the Turks. For four years during
the constitutional government this question was before the Turkish
Parliament and was never settled. The Ottoman government can never
realize that the poverty of the public means the poverty of the
government.
Asiatic Turkey is blessed by fine agricultural land, yet Turkey instead
of exporting wheat has to import flour. During the war while I was in
Constantinople half of that city was without bread for a day and a half
on one occasion. The soldiers brought over from Asia Minor were without
food and they were plundering the bakeshops in the city.
In 1908 when Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the young Turks
invited all the Moslem population of these regions to migrate to Turkey
and promised them money and lands. Thousands responded but they were
disappointed and were saddled on the Christian population of Macedonia.
This started a natural hatred towards the Moslems, and when the war
started these immigrants wisely flew towards Asia Minor, the promised
land. The government is shipping them to Asia Minor and Armenia at the
rate of 1,500 a day. What will become of the Armenians on whom is
already saddled twice more than they can endure by the Asiatic horde of
Turks and Kurds?
The war was renewed because Turkey did not wish to have a few Mosques in
Adrianople under the Christian rule. Yet the Turk did not think anything
about the ancient churches in Asia Minor that were defiled and ruined by
the Moslem hordes, nor of the bodies of the clergy which were mutilated
in time of peace.
What kind of government can one expect from a race that has no such
thing as home and family in the civilized sense of domestic conduct,
laws, sincerity and happiness? And what kind of laws and ruling can be
expected for the infidel and subject race to the above government? Yet
Europe will content itself believing that the Turk will be good
hereafter and will enforce the traditionary promised reforms in Armenia.
Y. M. KAREKIN.
New York City.
THE SEATTLE CONFERENCE
TO THE EDITOR:
THE SURVEY of April 12 announced the appointment of the new committees
of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, stating that
pursuant to the recent amendment to the by-laws Frank Tucker, the
president of the conference had requested the committees to begin their
work immediately. It was pointed out in your article that the Committee
on Organization has been in many respects the keystone of the national
conference and that its duties have been difficult and arduous.
Under the revised by-laws the duties of this committee are simplified.
It is no longer obliged to make its report within a few days of its
appointment. There are, however, certain disadvantages in the new plan
from the point of view of members of the conference who desire to have a
voice in its organization. Under the old plan, in spite of the fact that
the committee was thrown into the turmoil of conference politics, the
active members of the conference were all there and had an opportunity
to be heard by the Committee on Organization. Under the new plan the
committee is expected to have its work practically done by the time the
conference meets. Unless the committee adopts a procedure which is
democratic it may properly be open to the charge of making conference
politics worse instead of better.
As chairman of the committee, therefore, I desire to announce through
the columns of THE SURVEY that it is the desire of Mr. Tucker and
myself, in which I am sure the members of the committee concur, that all
interested members of the National Conference of Charities and
Correction will have ample opportunity to express their views in
reference to matters with which the Committee on Organization is
concerned. There will be a number of open meetings both before and after
reaching Seattle at which all those interested in the conference will be
welcome.
It is my desire that this committee shall truly represent the wishes of
the conference with reference to all matters of organization. Inasmuch
as the president is anxious that this committee shall have a tentative
report ready soon after the conference opens in Seattle I wish to urge
all readers of THE SURVEY who are interested in the national conference
to submit their suggestions as early as possible. We especially want
your suggestions regarding the following:
1. Topics for discussion.
2. The names of the committees.
3. The membership of the committees, the committee chairmen and
vice-chairmen.
The following dates have been set for open meeting: Friday, May 16;
Tuesday, May 27; Friday, June 13.
These meetings will be held at 4 P. M., in Room 214, United Charities
Building, 105 East 22nd Street, New York city. Kindly put the dates on
your calendar. If you cannot come send your suggestions to the
undersigned at the above address.
JOHN A. KINGSBURY.
[Chairman Committee on Organization, National Conference of Charities
and Correction.]
New York City.
ANOTHER CASE OF RED TAPE
TO THE EDITOR:
During the year 1912, the Domestic Relations Court of Brooklyn,
established in 1910, disbursed through the Department of Charities,
which maintains a branch office in the court building, $101,660.45. That
amount was made up of small payments ranging from $1 to $10, which the
delinquent husband and father was ordered by the court to pay toward the
support of his wife and children.
The method of disbursing the money is crude and archaic. The women are
paid in cash at the cashier’s office in the court, thus necessitating
the expenditure of time and carfare. The office of the cashier in the
Brooklyn court is open from 9 A. M. until 3 P. M., except Saturday and
Monday. Saturday the office closes at noon. On Monday only is there an
evening session from 7 P. M. to 10 P. M. In Manhattan conditions are
worse, for there banking hours are closely observed, and there is no
evening session, though many of the women work during the day.
Collection of the week’s money thus involved the loss of a half day’s
work.
Mrs. A made nine trips to collect a total of $8, and from that must be
deducted at least ninety cents for carfare, loss of time not being
considered. Mrs. B is very old. Mrs. C is an invalid, Mrs. D has a very
young child and four older children to look after. Mrs. E lives a long
distance from the court. Her carfare is always twenty cents and
frequently it is necessary for her to take the two youngest children
with her. Mrs. F works during the day and goes to school at night. These
are only a few of the many reasons why the present plan of payment
should be abandoned.
Philadelphia disburses about $200,000 a year on cases of this kind. The
money is paid by checks sent by mail. We are informed that no case of
fraud has occurred. Chicago has a similar system that works equally
well.
It was not to be expected that the originators of the Domestic Relations
Court idea would construct a perfect machine, and efforts are being made
to correct this defect by an order to the effect that any woman who can
prove to the satisfaction of the Department of Charities that it is a
great hardship for her to go to the court, can have her money sent by
mail. Unfortunately, there is a lot of red tape in some of our city
departments and often it is very hard to prove things to their
satisfaction; so it is to be hoped that this order, which is a step in
the right direction, will soon be stretched into a big, manly stride,
long enough to cover all cases.
CLYDE N. WHITE.
[Brooklyn Bureau of Charities.]
Brooklyn, N. Y.
HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS
TO THE EDITOR:
In your issue of April 19 the splendid article on The Housing Problem As
It Affects Girls, by the president of the Chelsea House, has greatly
interested me. May I add a few words on the subject and the names of
other cities where such houses are already started or are under
consideration?
There is a splendid though small Girls Friendly Lodge in Washington, D.
C. In Cincinnati the Anna Louise Home accommodates about 150 girls, and
Bishop Frances of Indiana has converted his spacious school
Knickerbocker Hall in Indianapolis into a boarding home for young girls.
This, I suppose, is the most complete and pretentious house of its kind.
It has a gymnasium, swimming pool, almost entirely single rooms, and
will accommodate nearly one hundred girls. In Louisville besides the
Girls Friendly Inn, there is the Business Woman’s Club which meets the
needs of a better paid class of young women, and the Monfort Home which
like the Inn meets the needs of a girl earning a more moderate wage.
I have had letters from all parts of the country asking questions
relative to starting such homes, and know that the subject is under
consideration in Denver; Watertown, N. Y.; Lexington, Ky.; Minneapolis;
Memphis; and Mobile.
The cherished hope I believe of all such houses should be to make them
self supporting. No self respecting girl wishes to be even a partial
object of charity. From the starting of the Girls Friendly Inn we have
aimed to make the house self supporting, and with the exception of the
interest on the mortgage, the house mother’s salary and coal, the weekly
income meets all the expenditures. As soon as we can enlarge the house
it will be entirely self supporting. I find this a great help, in
securing the co-operation of the girls and in preventing waste in light,
water and so on. The dominating thought is to make the inn a normal home
and with this in view there are almost no rules. No one but those close
to the young working girl knows what it means to her to be able to
entertain her “gentlemen friends” in a quiet and home-like living room
or to be able to give a party or entertain her Sunday School class in an
attractive room.
The problem of sickness is an important one. Girls must often struggle
along half sick because they can not afford a doctor or medicine or
because they are afraid of losing their position. The inn has an endowed
bed in the Norton Infirmary, and the services of some of our best
physicians, also a discount of 25 per cent on all drugs and
prescriptions. I find a word from the house mother is always received
kindly by the employer and in my experience of eighteen months I have
never had a girl lose her work on account of sickness.
JOSEPHINE M. KERMM.
[Housemother Girls’ Friendly Inn.]
Louisville.
SOCIAL ETHICS
TO THE EDITOR:
The following is a remarkable illustration of the advance in our
conception of social obligations to unfortunates:
The president (of the Chicago Medical Society, December 13, 1867)
“appointed a committee to consider the wisdom of the members of the
society signing a petition requesting that the physician who was then
imprisoned (Dr. Mudd) for caring for the wounds of Lincoln’s assassin
should be released. The members of the society were of various
opinions in regard to the ethical position of the unfortunate
doctor.”[2]
Footnote 2:
Chicago Medical Recorder, April, 1913, p. 238.
JULIA I. FELSENTHAL.
Chicago.
THE BACK FENCE
TO THE EDITOR:
One of the greatest disfigurements to the landscape as one looks out the
back window of the average house is the row after row of unsightly
wooden fences which rigorously mark off each twenty-five or thirty feet
of land and constitute a barrier of exclusiveness very chilling in its
effect on one’s friendly disposition. Of course one does not want his
neighbor’s children to tramp unceremoniously over his little flower or
vegetable garden, but could not the same results he brought about by a
simple wire division covered with virginia creeper, grapes or clematis?
Think of the beauty of such an outlook, and the aesthetic humanizing
effect such a display of floral wealth would have on the minds of young
and old! It might possibly result also in breaking down some of that
proverbial coldness and hauteur which is said to characterize city
neighbors. Life is short at best and sufficiently lacking in familiarity
and cordiality to warrant some attempt to reform the wooden back fence
out of existence.
J. J. KELSO.
Toronto.
THE OTHER OTHER HALF
TO THE EDITOR:
“We want to know ‘how the other half lives.’” This was said fifteen
years ago, and we are saying it today. But it is the _other_ half that
we now have in mind. Library shelves are filled with books about the one
half. Sociologists have studied it; health officers have examined it;
sanitary boards have considered it; laws have been made to regulate it.
Juvenile courts, protective leagues, visiting nurses’ associations,
social settlements, charity organization societies, have been bringing
us day by day information as to how _that_ half lives. Now we want to
know how the _other_ half lives.
Recently there has been a great investigation of one special phase of
the life of the poor. Great business firms have been asked how certain
sums of their earnings were distributed as wages to the poor, and the
wage-earners have been asked what use they made of these wages. How much
do working girls receive and how much does a working girl need to live
decently? These are the questions that have been asked. “We want to know
more of the life of the working people,” has been the cry.
But wait. Now we want to know how the _other_ half lives: Society is a
whole, not a half. These great questions are questions of society, and
they can not be answered by investigating _half_ of society.
Yes, we want to know about the $2,000,000 that was paid in wages; to
whom it went, and how it was spent, but we also want to know about the
$7,000,000 that was paid in dividends. To whom did _it_ go, and how was
_it_ spent? How much did the dividend receivers need a week on which to
live? Were they judicious in their expenditures? These questions also
ought to be investigated by a commission.
What do we know about the occupations, the health, the morality, the
family life of the very rich?
If we are suspicious that the home life of the children of Mrs.
Zambrowski of Mulberry street is not all that could be desired, we send
a juvenile court officer to investigate. If there is evidence that the
father is not honestly employed, if there is disease in the household,
some officer is on hand to see what is the matter. What do we know of
the home life of the Van Astor children? Is Mr. Van Astor an industrious
bread earner? Are the home conditions of the Van Astor children morally
healthful?
We want to know more about these excursions to Europe. Are they always
cultural? We want to know more about the life of Mrs. Astorbilt in her
Paris home. We want to know more about the employment conditions of the
“Four Hundred.” Perhaps a law should be made in the interests of health
limiting the number of continuous hours spent in certain social
activities. We want to know more about the lives of boys and girls in
wealthy boarding-schools. We desire to find out just how a working girl
spends $8 a week, but we also wish to learn just how the dividend
receiver spends $800 a week. The poor need visiting housekeepers to
instruct them, but may not the wealthy need visiting home-keepers?
The unexplored continent of sociology is the life of the wealthy. It is
to the interest of the health and well-being of society that a careful
and dispassionate study be made of this subject.
CLARENCE D. BLACHLY.
Chicago.
A CALL FOR LEADERSHIP
TO THE EDITOR:
There is a widespread opinion among social and industrial workers that
the unequal conditions existing in human society are going to be
levelled: that equality of opportunity and the more equitable
distribution of the necessities of life are to be accomplished by a
system of “passing it on.” In this way, the social burden, instead of
resting where it does now, on the lowest stratum of the population, will
be placed on broad shoulders better able to bear the load.
Do not such solutions as employers’ liability, workmen’s compensation,
the minimum wage, reduced hours of employment and better occupational
conditions all mean an increase in the cost of producing the necessaries
of life? Do they not tend to make more grave one of the vital problems
of the hour?
There seems to be a feeling abroad, of which many are possessed, that
there is somewhere a great fund of capital on hand, which only needs
equitable distribution to allow all now engaged in industry to live in
comfort, with only a moderate amount of exertion.
This is the result, probably, of seeing large rows of figures, stated as
the wealth controlled by financial institutions, or in the possession of
individuals. Most of these figures refer to pieces of paper, either
evidences of debt, or titles to ownership of lands, factories or other
tools of trade. Not one of these is available for furnishing the
necessities of life, _without human labor_ applied at the right time and
place under competent direction.
There is produced, by direction, foresight and toil, in any given year,
hardly more of any stated necessity of life than the current needs of
the people. It is probably true also that it is the thrift of the few;
the foresight of the so-called capitalist; the enterprise of the
manufacturer, builder or railroad man, the wise ventures of the merchant
and trader; that keep up the present standard of wages and living—low
though it may be in comparison with our wishes or ideals.
A large number of those engaged in business enterprises fail to succeed
at all. The profit of the more successful, though often imposing,
averages a very small percentage counting both good and bad years. It is
easily turned into a loss, by dull times, trade changes, or careless
management.
To quote Ray Stannard Baker (not writing in behalf of the mill owner) in
his article on the Lawrence strike: “If one were to divide all the
surplus of profit in the textile mills today—figure it out for yourself!
It would increase their wages and improve their living conditions almost
inappreciably.”[3]
Footnote 3:
The Revolutioners Strike. _American Magazine_, May, 1912.
So it is evident that if employment is to continue and a larger share is
to be given to those who perform the manual labor, while at the same
time the conditions under which they work are to be improved, some means
must be devised whereby the present margin of profit can be increased.
Otherwise those who plan and carry on these industrial undertakings will
be discouraged.
Of course many believe that capital, or business enterprise, has had too
much attention already. Now that the capitalist “class” (mostly made up
of men formerly poor) has shown the way to the accumulation of wealth,
they think it is simply necessary for “society” or “the workers” to do
the same thing themselves, and pocket the results. But how this is to be
done has not yet been shown.
How can the employer treat his working force more generously, without
the fear of insolvency staring him in the face, when the books are
balanced for the year?
One of the most hopeful solutions was promised in the new “efficiency”
discoveries. These seemed to indicate that a larger output by the worker
could bring about a greater reward for himself, together with a
corresponding increased profit for the employer.
But, so far, the attitude of “labor” seems to be opposed to anything
like an increase either of efficiency or production. Reduction of hours
and minimum of output, seem to be favored. The false idea is that more
“work” is thereby created, although the amount of the absolute
necessaries of life which their labor produces is thereby curtailed.
Their idea is that they do not get their share of the “wealth” they
already produce; that a constantly increasing mass of it is kept out of
their reach. They wish to seize part of it, not by earning, but by
taking it from the present recipients.
So we are brought back to the original issue. How can it be brought to
pass that the director of enterprise on capitalist, whose brains are the
creating power of the world’s wealth, shall be filled with an altruistic
spirit that he may spare and increase all benefits and comforts with his
manual helpers? And how, on the other hand, can we inspire the worker,
under his direction, with loyal energy to do all in _his_ power to
support and carry on the wealth-producing enterprise, each emulating
each with noble example and worthy sacrifice?
Here should come in the twin forces of education and religion.
Enlightenment will be of no avail without a moral basis. The
fundamentals of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule must have a
place in our great educational system which should teach men that there
is a higher element in life than the facts of science and material
things.
This new social adjustment, if it is to come peaceably and not through
anarchy, must find new and able leadership which does not resort to loud
protestations of devotion to one class combined with denunciation of
another, or to vague cries of “social justice,” or to illusory schemes
for levelling inequalities that are imbedded in human nature itself.
What is needed is a leadership founded in a love for mankind, wide as
the race, broad-minded, hopeful, strong and sane, to help the new
generation forward in progress that shall also be peace.
JOSEPH D. HOLMES.
New York.
MOTHERHOOD AND TEACHING
TO THE EDITOR:
“Motherhood and teaching”[4] was an issue in Minneapolis not long ago,
and the school board decided against the employment of married women.
The board was influenced according to report, by the fact that there
were poor teachers who married and this was a comfortable way to dispose
of them, regardless of the injustice to the good ones. I understand that
in Kansas there is a state law prohibiting the employment of married
women. Were this policy applied to men teachers it would be ridiculed.
Marriage is a strong factor in developing permanence of interest in the
vocation and in blending vocational interest with community interest.
Footnote 4:
See THE SURVEY, April 19, page 101.
The ability to teach is dependent upon qualities which are mental and
temperamental. The hours and the character of the work of a teacher are
such as are peculiarly adapted to the woman who may marry and who may
have children; and her fuller experience in life should make possible a
fuller understanding of the needs of childhood.
It is generally recognized that our schools have deteriorated. Would not
a very simple remedy be the employment of mothers as well as fathers?
Would not they understand better than others what the children need?
When education was in the home it was proper that mothers should be
teachers. With the socialization of education as of industry, a celibate
class has arisen to take the place of mothers. Mothers have become the
parasites of society, while constructive work in social service has
devolved upon a celibate class. We have reached the stage now when
society needs every possible constructive factor and the latent
possibilities for social work in the married woman should be encouraged
rather than discarded.
GRACE PUTNAM POLLARD.
[President Liberal Union of Minnesota.]
Minneapolis.
JOTTINGS
HOSPITAL SHIP FOR SEAMEN
Representative Gardner of Massachusetts has re-introduced his bill for
the creation of a hospital ship for the Gloucester fishermen. This bill
reached only the hearing stage in the House of Representatives during
the last session. All the witnesses who appeared before the house
Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries spoke for it.
INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE BILL
President Wilson has assured Andrew Furuseth, president of the
International Seamen’s Union, that the so-called involuntary servitude
bill will be enacted at the present session of Congress. No hearings
will probably be had, as Congress already has information on the subject
from various angles. This bill passed the House of Representatives at
the last session, but was so much altered by the Senate that the
President vetoed it. This measure is one of the list of fifteen measures
of social legislation the support of which was urged upon President
Wilson by a number of social workers.
SAFETY CAMPAIGN AMONG CHILDREN
A campaign has been inaugurated by the American Museum of Safety in
co-operation with the New York Board of Education to inculcate habits of
caution in school children. The basis of the campaign is daily class
room talks on safety by lecturers from the Museum of Safety and the
distribution of pamphlets containing “safety fairy tales.” A safety
league has been organized among the children, membership in which is
indicated by the wearing of a button. While the object of the league is
mostly to insure street safety the children are taught what to do in
case of fire. Some of the fundamental rules for the children are as
follows:
NEVER fail to look both ways for automobiles, trucks and trolley cars
before crossing a street. Keep eyes to the left until the middle
of the street is reached, then eyes to the right until the curb is
reached.
NEVER play any kind of a game in street where automobiles and heavy
trucks are constantly passing or in streets where trolley cars are
operating.
NEVER hitch on behind a trolley car, automobile or motor truck as you
may lose your footing and be thrown under the wheels.
NEVER run pushmobile races in the streets. A pushmobile is hard to
stop and may run in the way of an automobile, heavy truck or
trolley car coming in the opposite direction.
NEVER step from behind a trolley car without hesitating and looking as
another car may be coming from the other direction.
NEVER take chances.
CANAL WORKMEN UNPROTECTED
Because Congress failed to appropriate the necessary amount of funds,
President Wilson by an executive order has suspended the operation of
the workmen’s compensation scheme for federal employes in the Canal
Zone. This measure was put into effect on March 1 by President Taft.
Pending action by Congress, the employes in the Canal Zone are protected
only by the Federal Liability Act.
Many advocates of the workmen’s compensation plan believe that President
Wilson before suspending its operation should first have asked Congress
for funds. They argue that in this way public attention could have been
called to the situation by means of a special message instead of through
the medium of an order which received practically no publicity.
The Canal Compensation Law is in the form of an executive order signed
by President Taft in the closing days of his administration. It was
drafted by officials of the government in co-operation with the
Legislative Drafting Fund of New York. Secretary of War Stimson, said of
it: “This measure for the first time brings the federal government
abreast of the most advanced thought and experience at a time when they
and their families are most in need of justice; namely, when they suffer
the hardships of injury or death inevitable in the course of modern
industrial undertakings.”
VIENNESE CHARITIES
The lack of centralization and co-operation between charitable agencies
in Vienna is responsible for much duplication of effort and much
charitable imposture. The situation is not improved by the many
entertainments given ostensibly to help the poor but in reality often
costing more than they take in. A movement is said to be on foot to
remedy this by the foundation of a charity organization society along
English and American lines.
GOMPERS CIRCULAR TO IMMIGRANT WORKERS
Although it scarcely hopes to succeed at the present session of
Congress, the American Federation of Labor has determined to start
efforts for the passage of restrictive immigration legislation, to
“start the ball rolling” so that at the next session the immigration
problem will be thoroughly discussed. Meanwhile the federation has sent
out to over half a million immigrant workers a circular signed by Samuel
Gompers, president of the Federation and Frank Morrison the secretary,
concerning the advantages of belonging to the union. The letter
concludes with this sentence:
“In writing to your friends in your native country advise them to
remain there until you, together with your fellow countrymen here,
have organized unions that will protect yourself and them against low
wages and long hours.”
This circular printed in twenty-one languages has gone to laborers in
the industrial districts of the East.
CORN CLUBS AND IDLE BOYS
A woman of keen observation writes of her hill town that what is needed
there is not more amusements, games, socials, but something to encourage
boys to become thorough and honest workmen; that the best workmen in the
village are foreign born; that the native-born boys and girls are
seekers after pleasure and ease, shunning work and giving scant heed to
the serious interests of life.
This has a familiar ring to it; but that there are appeals to arouse and
enlist the energy of country boys, witness the annual visit to
Washington of the champion corn growers recently. Thirty-five boys,
winners among 75,000 boys who raised corn on a single acre of land last
summer, and one little girl, leader among the girls’ canning clubs of
the country, were the guests of the government for a week, and bore
witness to the industry of the army of sturdy children who stayed at
home. The best record of the boy visitors was 207 bushels of corn to the
acre, or about eight times the average yield for the country. The girl
had raised a succession of tomatoes, beans, and turnips on her tenth of
an acre, sold some of it fresh and canned the rest, realizing $53.
MEDICAL INFORMATION BUREAU
A bureau of information has been opened at the New York Academy of
Medicine, under the direction of the Society for the Advancement of
Clinical Study in New York. The object of this bureau is to furnish
visitors in New York and the local profession information on medical
subjects, so as to make use of the large clinical opportunities which
heretofore have not been readily obtainable.
EDUCATION OF THE IMMIGRANT
The North American Civic League for Immigrants is arranging a public
conference on the Education of the Immigrant which is to be held at the
City College, New York, on May 16–17. President Finley of the college is
the chairman of the Committee on Arrangements and Clarence M. Abbott the
secretary. On Friday morning, May 16, Domestic Education for Immigrants,
the Immigrant in Labor Camps and Isolated Communities will be the
subjects for discussion. In the afternoon of the same day the Education
of the Immigrant Child will be the topic.
A large public meeting in the Great Hall of the college is scheduled for
the evening of May 16, at which addresses upon various subjects
connected with the education of the immigrant will be made by speakers
of national importance.
The final meeting on Saturday morning is to be on the Education of the
Immigrant Adult. District Superintendent Albert Shields will also lead a
symposium for principals and teachers upon the organization of evening
schools.
Those who are to serve as chairmen of the various meetings are Mrs. John
M. Glenn, Frances A. Kellor, William H. Maxwell and John H. Finley.
DESERTION AND DIVORCE
During the six years ending June 30, 1912, willful desertion was the
most common ground for divorce in California. Extreme cruelty was a
close second. These facts are taken from a report submitted by State
Labor Commissioner McLaughlin to Governor Johnson. The average
percentage of divorces to marriages for these six years was 12.9. About
50 per cent of the couples divorced were childless.
The large centers of population showed a much higher divorce rate than
did the state as a whole.
MASSACHUSETTS COMMISSION ON VICE
Governor Foss of Massachusetts on April 21 signed the bill recently
passed by the state legislature, providing for the appointment of a
commission of five persons, one of whom will be a woman, for the
investigation of commercialized vice in Massachusetts. Witnesses, papers
and documents may be summoned, and oaths given. The bill creating this
commission was the first measure reported out by the Committee on Social
Welfare.
Massachusetts is believed to be the first state to institute a formal
state-wide investigation by commission of prostitution in all its
phases.
TWO WAYS TO TEACH SEX HYGIENE
Two methods of teaching sex hygiene, the biological and the
physiological, and their adaptation to the needs of different groups,
will be the subject of three conferences to be held by the Society of
Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, at Hobart Hall, 416 Lafayette street,
New York city on the evenings of May 12, 19 and 26 at 8:15 P. M.
Dr. Mary Sutton Macy will present the physiological and Nellie M. Smith
the biological aspect. The third talk on the adaptability of these two
methods to different social groups, will be given by Harriet McD.
Daniels.
JAIL MEALS DECLARED FIT FOR DOGS
The establishment of four work farms for the prisoners now confined in
the county jails of California is urged upon the legislature by the
report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, just issued.
These jails, it is suggested, could then be used for holding persons
awaiting trial. As at present run they have correctly been called
primary schools in crime, says the report. They are declared to be
seriously overcrowded in winter, poorly ventilated and unclean. “The
meals,” says the report, “are served as one would feed his dog, and in
some of them the quality is not much better.” The prisoners herd
together, it is asserted, with nothing to do but study and plot crime.
If each of the four farms were large enough to furnish food and labor
for 500 prisoners, the report says, they would empty the jails. They
would be self-supporting, as well as much better for the prisoners,
declares the board.
BRUTALITY ALLEGED AT AUBURN
“Brutality, violation of the law, waste and general incompetency” have
been found in the New York state prison at Auburn by a special
investigator appointed by Governor Sulzer. The investigator, George W.
Blake, urges that the warden, George F. Benham, be removed as quickly as
possible. Equally serious are his accusations against the prison
physician, Dr. John Gerin, whom he describes as an autocrat. “Abundance
of evidence,” says the report, “shows that he is brutal in his treatment
of the sick, neglectful of their needs, and that he flagrantly violates
that section of the prison law which defines his duties.” Refractory
prisoners, the report goes on to say, have only two gills of water every
twenty-four hours. The doctor is said to have declared that this was
sufficient to maintain life. The punishment cells are described as being
perfectly dark and having four rows of iron rivet heads on the floor so
that it is impossible to lie down.
When Joseph H. Scott, former superintendent of the state prison
department, was recently removed under charges by Governor Sulzer, he
asserted that his dismissal was in reality a piece of vengeance because
he would not change the Auburn wardenship at the governor’s dictation.
So frequent have been the charges and counter-charges in the
administration of New York prisons recently, and so often is it asserted
that politics lies at their bottom that social workers are more and more
becoming loathe to pass judgment on the basis of one-man investigations.
PROBATION IN NEW YORK STATE
An increase of 48 per cent in the number of delinquents placed on
probation in New York state during the year ending September 30, 1912,
is shown in the preliminary edition of the sixth annual report of the
State Probation Commission recently transmitted to the legislature. Over
20,000 persons were under the oversight of probation officers during the
year, and of this number 14,687 were new cases.
A review of the five years’ growth of the system since the state
commission began in 1907 is contained in the report. During this period
the number of publicly salaried probation officers has risen from
thirty-five to 159 at the beginning of the present year. The number of
cities employing the system has grown from sixteen to thirty-eight; the
number of counties using it in felony cases from eleven to thirty-nine;
and the number of counties using it in town and village courts from two
to twenty-two. In spite of the marked extension of the system, however,
a map published in the report indicates that in thirteen of the
sixty-one counties in the state not a single person was placed on
probation during the past year. This is because the adoption of the
system and the appointment of probation officers is optional with the
local authorities.
The report makes special mention of the use of probation as a means of
collecting family support, restitution and instalment fines. While
practically nothing was collected by probation officers for these
purposes when the commission started its work five years ago, the
aggregate amount paid for these purposes by probationers in compliance
with court orders during the past year is estimated as in the
neighborhood of $300,000. According to the report, the domestic
relations courts of Buffalo, Manhattan and Brooklyn, the first courts of
this character to be established, were largely an outgrowth of the
probation system and depend to a great extent upon it for their
efficiency.
The volume contains a number of carefully prepared tables and charts.
CHILDREN’S COURT FOR ONTARIO COUNTY
Governor Sulzer of New York on April 11 approved two bills to give the
County Court of Ontario exclusive jurisdiction throughout the county
over cases of neglected and delinquent children, and concurrent
jurisdiction in certain offenses against children. The laws are almost
identical with the Monroe County Children’s Court Act of 1910, and make
Ontario County the second in the state to have a county children’s court
using a civil instead of a criminal procedure. The bills were framed by
the State Probation Commission at the request of County Judge Robert F.
Thompson and of the Board of Supervisors. A civil service examination
will be held in the near future for the purpose of securing a competent
probation officer for the court.
Two Social Tours
IN EUROPE
The pioneer party went last year. Its success will be increased this
year.
SAILINGS
June 26 to Copenhagen
June 28 to Hamburg
Several have already enrolled. Full information
DR. E. E. PRATT, 225 Fifth Ave., New York
ARE YOU GOING TO BOSTON?
Ladies going to Boston without male escort find the FRANKLIN SQUARE
HOUSE a delightful place to stop. A home hotel in the heart of Boston
for young women, with a transient department. Safe, comfortable,
convenient of access; reasonable. For particulars and prices address
Miss CASTINE C. SWANSON, Supt. 11 East Newton St., Boston.
SITUATIONS WANTED
KINDERGARTENER would appreciate Information regarding location for
private kindergarten or day nursery. German and English taught. Address
“Kindergartner,” c/o SURVEY.
* * * * *
EXPERIENCED, high-class executive and financial secretary wishes to make
change. National Organization preferred. Address 1112, Survey.
[Illustration: Let a DAVEY Tree Expert examine Your trees Now JOHN DAVEY
Father of Tree Surgery COPYRIGHT 1912]
Weak crotches in trees are the ones that split apart in the storms. Dead
limbs are the ones that fall—a menace to life and property. Trees with
cavities are the ones that the winds blow over. A fallen tree cannot be
replaced in your lifetime.
=The loss of trees is the price of neglect.=
You may think that your trees are sound—but do not trust to
guesswork—learn the truth through a Davey Tree Expert without cost or
obligation. If your trees need no treatment you want to know it—if they
do need treatment you ought to know it. =Let a Davey Tree Expert examine
your trees now.= Write for Booklet W.
=The Davey Tree Expert Co. Kent, Ohio=
BRANCH OFFICES: 225 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y., Phone: Madison Square
9546; Harvester Bldg., Chicago, Ill., Phone: Harrison 2666; New Birks
Bldg., Montreal, Can., Phone: Up Town 6726; Merchant’s Exch. Bldg.,
San Francisco, Cal. Telephone Connection.
=Accredited Representatives Available Everywhere—Men Without Credentials
Are Impostors.=
_Ready May 10th_
A SUNNY LIFE
The Biography of Samuel June Barrows
By Isabel C. Barrows
SAMUEL JUNE BARROWS, who at his death was one of the leading penologists
of the country, started his career as a reporter on a New York paper. In
turn, he became private secretary to William H. Seward, then Secretary
of State, minister, editor, congressman, and Secretary of the Prison
Association of New York. He was one of America’s best and typical
products, many sided and capable. This account is written by his wife
who more than anyone else understood and appreciated his rare and
lovable nature. Her volume is most delightfully written and the reader
will find this record of achievement a stimulating and uplifting work.
_Illustrated. $1.50 net; by mail $1.62_
LITTLE, BROWN & CO., BOSTON
HOUSES SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
=China and Glass.=
JAMES M. SHAW & CO.,
25 Duane St., New York
=Ready to Wear Garments.=
For Men, Women and Children—Wholesale
BROADWAY BARGAIN HOUSE,
676 Broadway, New York City
=Dry Goods.=
FREDERICK LOESER & CO.,
434 FULTON STREET, BROOKLYN, N. Y.
=Newspaper Clippings.=
HENRY ROMEIKE,
110–112 West 26th Street, New York
=House Furnishing Goods.=
C. H. & E. S. GOLDBERG,
West Broadway and Hudson Street, New York
=Hardware, Tools and Supplies.=
HAMMACHER. SCHLEMMER & CO.,
Fourth Ave., Thirteenth St., New York
=Groceries.=
SEEMAN BROS.,
Hudson and North Moore Sts., New York
=All Hospital Supplies.=
SCHLEFFELIN & CO,
170 William St. New York
=Ideal Window Ventilators.=
IDEAL VENTILATOR CO.
120 Liberty St. New York
=Electrical Engineers and Contractors.=
BATEMAN & MILLER,
145 East 23d Street, New York City
TYRREL PRINT, NEW YORK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 207, Added header “The Survey, Volume 30, Number 6, May 10, 1913”
2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
4. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
6. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SURVEY, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 6, MAY 10, 1913 ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
