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Title: The Survey, Volume 30, Number 24, Sep 13, 1913
Author: Various
Editor: Paul Underwood Kellogg
Release date: December 15, 2023 [eBook #72425]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Survey Associates, 1913
Credits: credits names: Carol Brown, 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 24, SEP 13, 1913 ***
The Survey,
Volume 30, Number 24,
September 13, 1913
THE COMMON WELFARE
=THE BINGHAMTON FIRE AND ENCLOSED STAIRWAYS=
After many conferences and two days of public hearings on the enclosure
of factory stairways, following the Binghamton fire--and backed by the
attorney-general’s opinion in regard to the scope of its powers--the
industrial board of the New York Department of Labor has adopted rules
and regulations for the enclosure of stairways in factories of four
stories or under. On account of the vital importance of exits, their
rules are quoted in full:
Regulation No. 1. In all factory buildings less than
five stories in height in which more than twenty-five
persons are employed above the ground floor, or in which,
regardless of the number of persons employed, articles,
goods, wares, merchandise or products of combustible
material are stored, packed, manufactured or in the
process of manufacture, all interior stairways serving as
required means of exit, and the landings, platforms, and
passageways connected therewith, shall be enclosed on all
sides by partitions of fire-resisting material extending
continuously from the basement. Where the stairway extends
to the top floor of the building such partitions shall
extend to three feet above the roof. All openings in such
partitions shall be provided with self-closing doors
constructed of fire-resisting material, except where such
openings are in the exterior wall of the building. The
bottom of the enclosure shall be of fireproof material
at least four inches thick, unless the fire-resisting
partitions extend to the cellar bottom.
Such enclosure of stairways shall not be required in
factory buildings in which there is an exterior enclosed
fireproof stairway or a horizontal exit serving as a
required means of exit, as defined in Section 79f,
Subdivisions 8 and 9 of the labor law. Where approved
automatic sprinklers are installed throughout such
buildings, such enclosure of stairways shall not be
required unless more than eighty persons are employed above
the ground floor.
Regulation No. 2. In all factory buildings no articles
or wares of a combustible nature shall be kept or stored
inside the limits of any stairway enclosure, or unenclosed
stairway, or on the landings, platforms, or passageways
connected therewith, nor shall such articles or wares be
kept or stored under any stairway unless such stairway and
any partitions or doors thereunder are constructed of, or
covered with, incombustible material.
Both rules become effective October 1, 1913. The labor law specifically
provides for the enclosure of stairways in buildings over four stories.
The attorney-general’s opinion was asked by the Industrial Board in
this case, for the purpose of determining at the beginning of its work
the question of its powers not only in relation to matters not covered
by legislation but also to those covered in part by law. The essential
part of the opinion follows:
“It seems to me to be entirely beyond question that the
industrial board has power to adopt rules and regulations
upon subjects of which the statute already treats. The
statute itself makes mandatory provisions for many
safeguards and then makes provisions that additional
safeguards may be required by the industrial board. There
is nothing in the letter of the statute nor in its manifest
intent to confine the jurisdiction of the industrial board
to such few subjects only as are not expressly legislated
upon by the statute itself. Such an extensive limitation
upon its powers would be manifestly absurd and far foreign
to the evident purpose of the Legislature in enacting
additional legislation for the protection of the lives and
health of employes in factories.”
The attorney-general’s opinion further states that the legislation does
not offend any constitutional provisions.
=SANITARY SURVEY OF THE OHIO=
The Public Health Service, under the direction of Surgeon-General
Rupert Blue, has undertaken a “sanitary survey” of the streams which
feed into the Ohio river. It is proposed to test the waters of these
streams in order to determine scientifically to what distances the
contamination of sewage is carried by flowing water. The object of the
survey is to establish standards of pollution beyond which no community
will be permitted by the federal government to trespass in dumping
sewage into streams.
This is the first time that the federal government has ventured to
invade the local police powers of municipalities, except in times of
great extremity, such as during the yellow fever epidemics along the
gulf coast.
The survey of the Ohio Valley will probably result in the erection
by the government of “purification plants.” It has been suggested
that such legislation will be deemed constitutional under the law
prohibiting the transportation of disease germs in interstate commerce.
=OREGON COMMISSION AS STRIKE ADJUSTER=
The Industrial Welfare Commission which was created by the last
Legislature to determine and enforce reasonable wages, hours and
conditions of work among women and minor employes in Oregon began work
June 3 with Bertha Moores representing the employes, Amedee Smith, a
retired manufacturer, representing the employers and Edwin V. O’Hara,
chairman of the committee of the Consumers’ League which secured
the passage of the act, representing the public and chairman of the
commission. Caroline J. Gleason, whose investigation of the wages and
conditions of women workers in Oregon furnished the chief data in the
campaign which resulted in the passage of the law under which the
commission operates, is paid secretary.
At the beginning of its work the commission was asked to adjust a
strike among the women employes of the Oregon Packing Company at
Portland, which employs about 200 girls and women during the summer
season. It had no power to make a legal ruling effective in less
than 90 days and by that time the packing season would be over for
this summer, so its office could be one of conciliation merely.
Investigation revealed that with the piece rate in force a large number
of the workers were earning as low as fifty to ninety cents a day.
The commission succeeded in getting the company to sign an agreement
pending the setting of a legal minimum, which fixed one dollar a day as
a minimum for all workers except those “old or crippled” who may secure
a special permit. Piece rate prices were re-arranged so that the worker
of “average ordinary ability” would earn $1 a day, thus enabling the
better workers to make more.
Two “conferences” of nine members each have been organized by
the commission, one to consider questions relating to mercantile
establishments, the other to deal with factory problems. The commission
is engaged in forming conferences to deal with laundries, telephone
companies and hotels and restaurants.
Interesting recommendations have been made by the conferences already
established. The mercantile conference reported that forty dollars a
month is required for the decent maintenance of women workers in that
occupation. The factory conference has recommended $8.60 a week pay as
a minimum for factory workers, and a nine-hour work day. The present
legal maximum is ten hours a day. Investigation has shown that one-half
of the department store girls receive less than forty dollars a month
at present and about the same proportion of factory girls get less than
$8.60 a week. If the commission, after holding a public hearing as
provided by law, decides to enforce these recommendations, its decision
will directly affect the wages of fully one-half the women workers in
department stores and factories in Portland.
The commission has authority to regulate the employment of minors
without calling a conference, though it holds the usual public hearing.
It favors restricting night work of girls under eighteen in all
industries, its chief opponents being the department stores.
=NEW METHODS IN MOTION PICTURES=
Motion pictures are bringing the scenes and events of distant lands and
even of other ages vividly to the eyes. The Durbar, the coronation,
the Scott antarctic expedition, the story of “Quo Vadis,” as shown by
the “movies,” not to mention a thousand and one travel subjects from
a railway trip in the Andes to street scenes in China, are playing a
growing part in popular education. Films are being used increasingly
to spread information and enlist public co-operation in the struggle
against tuberculosis, dirty milk, flies and other menaces to health.
And now, as described in THE SURVEY of September 6, Mr. Edison himself
is enlisted in the problem of adapting motion pictures to school
training.
All this development of course hangs on improvement in the mechanism
by which motion pictures are projected on the screen. A new method is
announced designed to eliminate all flicker which is clearly one of the
serious problems in its strain upon children’s eyes. The inventor of
the machine, called the vanoscope, is Lewis C. Van Riper and he essays
to show continuous action by having each picture dissolve into the
next instead of projecting a series of entirely distinct pictures on
the screen. Col. S. S. McClure has been so impressed with the especial
adaptability of this new method for educational purposes, that he is
now on a trip to Europe to gain what he can for its wide use in this
field.
In the prevalent method of motion picture projection, the film movement
is in the nature of a series of quick jerks, each taking about one-half
of the time given to each picture. Nearly 50 per cent of the time is
taken up in moving the pictures forward and 50 per cent in projecting
them upon the screen. Hence the flicker and the chance of eye strain.
The principle underlying this present method of projection is that the
persistence of vision in the human eye is about one-tenth of a second.
It has been found that a speed in projection of from 16 to 17 pictures
per second is necessary to enable the eyes to retain the image of one
picture until the next is projected upon the screen and to overcome or
partially overcome annoyance to the eyes caused by the intervals. This
is the rate of projection now used throughout the world on all standard
machines for monochrome pictures and photographs for such use have had
to be taken at a speed of at least 16 per second in order to appear
natural.
Some of the advantages claimed for the new method are that there are
no intervals between successive pictures, but each succeeding picture
dissolves into the one preceding it in exact proportion as the volume
of light shifts from one to the other; that there is no flicker; and
less danger of fire because the projecting light does not reach the
film directly, but is reflected by the mirrors; and that the front
seats in an assembly room would be made as desirable as any other seats.
=BOSTON CONFERENCE ON ILLEGITIMACY=
Perhaps in no field of social work are the factors less adjusted, the
issues more baffling, than in that relating to unmarried mothers. It
has become not only desirable, but positively imperative, to a wise
pulling together for the workers in Boston dealing with problems
related to illegitimacy to unite in some sort of permanent group for
free discussion of aims and means.
The Conference of Workers on Problems of Illegitimacy which was
organized in Boston last year has had a fruitful year of discussion.
Each month some general question has been up for consideration,
the question always being precipitated by the detailed story of
some puzzling specific case. In this way have been thrashed out the
following questions:
What shall we do with unmarried mothers who are unfitted for housework?
Is it ever advisable to separate the child from a normal mother?
Is institutional or private care best for a pregnant girl and under
what circumstances is each preferable?
What shall we do with pregnant girls from other states or countries?
The conference was pretty fully agreed upon the policies of treatment
that follow.
It is advisable to keep mother and child together where possible if the
mother is in any way capable of bringing up the child. In cases where
the mother is unfitted for domestic service it may be decidedly wiser
to place her where she is happier and more efficient, in a factory, for
instance. But even here financial responsibility for the baby, and at
least weekly visits to the child, should be insisted upon.
It is desirable to send back to the states or countries from which
they come girls who arrive here pregnant in order that each section
may develop care for its own unmarried mothers. Although this may mean
old-fashioned care in the individual case because of the lack of modern
agencies and institutions in places from which the girls come, it is
one of the means of making localities that are not equipped to deal
with such situations more alert to their responsibility.
It is difficult to determine in what cases individual care or
institutional care is wise. Particularly wayward girls often need the
discipline of an institution, while the more innocent type are not
helped by association with those they are sure to be brought in contact
with, even in institutions that take only first offenders.
Wherever there are not very positive reasons to the contrary, it is of
great importance to tell a girl’s family of her approaching confinement
in order to enlist their co-operation and to enable the girl to have
the most natural and helpful relationships possible at a time when
she needs every constructive influence to build up courage for her
life ordeal and determination to keep her child and give it every
opportunity within her power. Her family ought to be, and if properly
approached and dealt with, often is, the social worker’s greatest asset
in this effort.
It was discovered that little provision, other than that in almshouses,
is made for people who have had cases of venereal disease, as the
good private institutions caring for prospective mothers exclude, and
naturally, such cases.
The Conference have also discussed at each meeting various aspects
of the greatest single cause of illegitimacy--feeble-mindedness.
They have tried to formulate more definitely the indicia of the high
grade feeble-minded cases, and to determine more clearly the relation
of the social worker’s investigation and history to the doctor’s
analysis. They have debated the desirability of domestic service under
supervision for these defective girls. The high grade feeble-minded
girls if cared for in an institution probably cost the state more
than the same girls doing domestic service, even allowing for the
immense amount of surveillance necessary on the part of the visitor to
keep them out of harm’s way. Neither institutions nor philanthropic
agencies have enough equipment adequately to deal with this class of
delinquents. The conference has faced the question of segregation
in institutions and of sterilization as a means of preventing a
continuance of this evil in future generations. They have asked whether
it was ever safe to return a feeble-minded girl to the community.
While agreeing that marriage of feeble-minded persons ought not to be
permitted, they have not reached a final conclusion as to the best
means of prevention.
A committee has been appointed to make an investigation of the causes
other than feeble-mindedness that are at the root of illegitimacy. This
committee has already done valuable work as a by-product of its main
purpose in suggesting important points which agencies are apt to omit
in their histories, and in aiding in a greater standardization of work.
A full report is expected of this committee next year.
Study groups are being organized to take up the questions of
legislation, venereal disease, the efficiency and range of existing
institutions, public opinion, feeble-mindedness and statistics. Any
further information about the Boston Conference may be had from the
secretary, Mrs. Stanley King, 295 Beacon Street.
=PROBING
FOR PEACE=
[Illustration:
_Minor in St. Louis Post-Dispatch._
“What have you got against me?”
“Nothing. But our masters have ordered us to fight.”]
The investigational method has proved of such demonstrated worth in
all-American situations--whether of civic conditions or strikes--that
its application to the peace movement will be watched with interest.
The reference is of course to the appointment by the International
Peace Endowment, through Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia
University, acting director of the endowment, of an international
commission of inquiry into the Balkan war. The first move toward this
is said to have come from Bulgarians who in consequence of attacks on
them by the Greek and Servian press demanded a public inquiry into the
extent and responsibility for atrocities committed during the war.
The New York _Evening Post_ calls the proposed work of the commission
a “diagnosis of war,” and congratulates the peace movement on the
greatest opportunity that has been presented it to win the world’s
serious attention to the nature and implications of war. The topics of
investigation include the responsibility for the outbreak of war, the
economic waste caused by it and the truth about the outrages committed
by non-combatants. Of these, the last appeals most strongly to the
popular imagination, but the first, the responsible cause, is, in the
opinion of the _Post_, the most fundamental. The main point of attack
on war by peace advocates says the _Post_ “lies in the direction of
ascertaining who or what is responsible for war. Is it being fought
for a worthy cause, or is it being fought because certain leaders or
certain interests desire war? It makes all the difference in the world
whether the mangled bodies on the hillsides in Thrace and Macedonia
are the price paid for the liberation of the Balkans from Turkish
misrule, or whether those dead bodies and shattered limbs are incidents
in the ambitions of a king or a commander-in-chief, and a testimonial
to the skill of travelling salesmen from the gun factories at Essen and
Creusot.”
[Illustration:
_Cesare in New York Sun._
THE WORLD IS OVERCROWDED AND OVERARMED.--_London Economist._]
A list of names has been suggested as members of the commission, but
the final make-up will not be known until the meeting to discuss the
work of the commission which is to be held soon in Paris. The proposed
membership includes:
Prof. John D. Prince, of Columbia University, representing
the United States.
Francis W. Hirst, editor of the _London Economist_,
representing Great Britain.
Baron d’Estournelles de Constant, senator and president
of the French parliamentary group favoring international
arbitration, representing France.
Prof. Philipp Zorn, of Bonn University, representing
Germany.
Prof. Paul N. Milukoff, editor and leader of the
Constitutional-Democrats in the Russian Duma, representing
Russia.
Prof. Heinrich Lammasch, of the University of Vienna,
well known as a jurist, representing Austria-Hungary.
=PEACE IN WEST VIRGINIA=
The West Virginia coal strike, which lasted sixteen months, and was
marked by the violence and bitterness of a civil war, has come to an
end, and contracts have been signed on both Paint and Cabin creeks.
The Paint creek agreement, which was signed on July 24, accords full
recognition to the United Mine Workers, and grants practically all
their demands, including the check-off; that is, the deduction in the
office from the miner’s wages of his union dues and the payment of them
to the union officials. On Cabin creek the agreement signed on July 29
did not grant recognition to the unions, but it is stated in the _Coal
Age_ that by the change from the long ton to the short ton the miners
have secured an increase in wages, amounting to about 12 per cent. They
have gained also the nine-hour day, a semi-monthly pay, the right to
employ check weighmen and to trade where they please. The Paint creek
contract is to run until March 31, 1914, while that of Cabin creek is
to continue a year longer, coming to an end April 1, 1915. The _Coal
Age_ sums up the cost of the bitter struggle, now ended, as follows:
“Thirteen lives were lost in the insurrection. The cost in
money was as follows:
Operators loss in business $2,000,000; Loss to the miners
in wages $1,500,000; Cost to the tax payers of the State
$400,000; Additional cost to the tax payers of Kanawha
County $100,000; Cost to the United Mine Workers collected
by the check-off, a forced levy on the miners of Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio and Western Pennsylvania $602,000; Property
destroyed $10,000. This makes a total of $4,612,000.”
BUSINESS IS LIFE: A SURVEY
OF NEGRO PROGRESS
WM. ANTHONY AERY
Negro farmers, bankers, merchants, contractors, cotton brokers,
insurance men, real estate dealers, social service workers, town and
community builders, caterers, engineers, undertakers, educators--these
men, representing the entire country and especially the South, told
at the recent session of the National Negro Business League held in
Philadelphia, with eloquence torn of simplicity and hard experience
in the school of life, thrilling stories of success won through
struggle, persistence, and good-will toward their white neighbors. The
Philadelphia meetings furnished abundant proof of the statement that
quality and service count in business and that men buy good products
and efficient service without regard to color or race.
“Forward to the land!” In thundering tones did this command and
entreaty ring out through the Academy of Music to the thousands of
Negroes who had assembled to hear Booker T. Washington deliver his
annual address to the league. There are some 200,000,000 acres of
unused and unoccupied land in this country. Will the American Negro,
especially the city Negro, acquire his share through hard work and
thrift? Will young Negroes quit the poolrooms with their debasing
effects and march into usefulness and comfort on the land? Will the
Negro seek the signs of civilization--the automobile and the dress
suit--and miss civilization as it is represented in the home and the
bank account? Will the Negro forego some pleasures today so as to
enjoy richer treasures tomorrow? Will the Negro allow others to think
and plan for him instead of thinking and planning for himself? These
vital questions of business and of life itself were put squarely to
the thoughtful Negroes who had come great distances at their own
expense and in many cases at considerable sacrifice of time and money.
They also reached some of the city Negroes who had come out of mere
curiosity to hear Mr. Washington urge a return to the Negro’s richest
opportunity--the land.
Mr. Washington is far-sighted enough, however, to see the need of
better Negro business enterprises. There is, indeed, according to his
opinion, room in this country, without conflicting with the interests
of white people, for 900,000 more Negro farms; 1,000 sawmills; 1,000
brickyards; 4,000 grocery stores; 2,000 dry goods stores; 1,500 shoe
stores; 1,500 millinery shops; 1,000 drug stores and 90 banks.
Successful “demonstrations”--human interest stories--were a conspicuous
feature of the sessions.
The organization of a $100,000 old-line legal-reserve insurance
company by Negroes, headed by H. T. Perry, and its heroic struggle
during five years to secure the paid-in capital, was told simply and
dramatically by H. H. Pace. It shows what can be done in the South.
Perry’s experience in Atlanta should put fresh courage into the hearts
of ambitious Negroes who really want to give their people better
stores, better banks, better insurance companies, better hotels, and
better country life. The story of Perry’s defeat in collecting the
paid-in capital, required by the Georgia law for the starting of the
Standard Life Insurance Company of Atlanta, followed by his victory,
through hard work and faith, emphasizes the importance of teaching men
to act co-operatively when they wish to do big things. This story will
long be remembered by the delegates and their friends, for it contains
real “education for life, in life and by life,” as Dr. Wallace Buttrick
has phrased the thought--the underlying aim of Hampton and Tuskegee.
Another interesting event of the past year, in the Negro business
world, has been the opening of the $100,000 cotton-oil mill at Mound
Bayou, Miss., a Negro town which was founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery,
an ex-slave of Joseph Davis, brother of Jefferson Davis. This Negro
enterprise shows what Negroes can do when they pull together and turn
their disadvantages into advantages.
Nineteen years ago, J. H. Blodgett began his up-hill climb with $1.10
in his pocket and a suit of underwear in a paper bag. Further, he was
arrested as a tramp for wearing a straw hat in winter time. Today, he
owns 121 houses in Jacksonville, Fla., having a rental value of $2,500
a month. Blodgett got his start as a railroad window washer at $1.05
a day. He and his wife worked hard, saved their money, and finally
built their own home. He declares that there is no excuse for young,
able-bodied Negroes to waste their time in hotel work at $20 to $30 a
month and tips when they can grow tomatoes in Florida at $1,000 an acre.
What is a correct formula for success on the farm? Henry Kelley, of
Belen, Miss., who has been hard at work since 1873 and is now worth
some $50,000 offers a reasonable one: “Industry, economy, education.”
Kelley started out independently in 1886 with 520 acres of land which
he cleared as quickly as he could. He built a home, and by degrees
established a good business in cotton ginning, grist milling, and log
sawing. Then he began to build tenant houses and to deal with his own
people in the spirit of the Golden Rule. Today, he works 1,750 acres
and has fifty tenants. His payroll ranges from $800 to $1,000 a month
and he has work for his hands “from January through December.” He
produces about 500 bales of cotton each season. He has no trouble, on
account of his color, in doing business. His Mississippi white friends,
he says, have always been good to him. Kelley is a hard worker still.
His day--and that of his hands--is “from sun to sun.”
J. T. Kirklin, of Columbia, Mo., started in 1873 as a handy boy on the
State University farm and received thirty cents a day. Out of his own
wages he had to board himself. He was glad to keep his job because he
was learning how to farm scientifically. In 1903 he began to take first
prizes, in competition with white farmers, for his fine strawberries,
carrots, watermelons, and garden truck. His first market wagon was
an ordinary wheelbarrow. Later he bought two buggy wheels and made a
wagon--a push cart. While some of his own people were laughing at his
crude outfit, Kirklin was saving his money and improving his small
truck garden. Today he is worth $20,000 and is a quiet and respected
citizen.
Has the Negro building contractor who knows his business a fair chance
to succeed in the South? B. L. Windham, of the contracting firm of
Windham Brothers, Birmingham, Ala., declares that efficiency and not
color determines the kind of work that Negroes receive. His firm has
built a $100,000 apartment house for white people in Birmingham, Ala.
It employs, on an average, 100 people--all Negroes--throughout the year
to handle some $300,000 worth of contracts. The business of this firm
of Negro contractors has grown from $50,000 in 1903 to $265,000 for
seven months in 1913 and is carried on from the Mason and Dixon line to
the Gulf of Mexico.
The annual meetings of the Negro Business League give some striking
stories of Negro success and progress to men and women who need courage
and inspiration for their work. Other stories could be cited to show
that the Negro who applies himself to business and refrains from
whining wins the patronage and good will not only of his own people
but also of the white people. Courage, initiative, and persistence are
indeed required for the task of establishing any business.
The resolutions, adopted at the final session of the league, summarized
the progress of the Negro during fifty years of freedom. Ten million
American Negroes now pay taxes on over $700,000,000 worth of property
and own 20,000,000 acres of land (that is, about 31,000 square miles).
They own 63 banks, capitalized at $2,600,000 and doing an annual
business of $20,000,000. Today there are Negro business leagues in
twelve states.
Facts of Negro progress need to be better understood by white and black
people. One of the best sources of information is the Negro Year Book,
edited by Monroe N. Work of Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.
CIVICS
THE CHILD WELFARE EXHIBIT THROUGH
THE CHILDREN’S EYES
MAY AYRES
This spring, ten-year-old Ralph in one of the Rochester public schools
wrote a letter to his teacher:
“Do you know what the Child’s Welfare Exhibit is for? Well,
if you do not know what it is for, I will tell you. It is
for the child to know better and try and keep the house
clean, for a dirty house is a terrible house to live in.
And most every disease comes from a dirty house--especially
tuberculosis. Because we found out over at the armory that
when you get tuberculosis it keeps eating at your lungs,
and only fresh air will kill tuberculosis.”
Ralph had been to the Child Welfare Exhibit and come away with one
important truth thoroughly impressed upon him. The exhibit was held
during the second week in April. Everyone helped, and as their part
the public and parochial schools offered their children as living
demonstrations of Rochester school work. There were dances, drills, and
games every afternoon and evening. Children sang together, and other
children formed small classes of sewing, carpentry, electric wiring,
cooking, rug weaving, drawing, etc., and worked steadily under the
direction of teachers. The school children of Rochester were constantly
in touch with the exhibit; they were given special holidays in which
to see it; and their interest was keen. The following week those in
the upper grades were asked to write letters telling about what they
remembered.
Some 553 of these letters were examined for the purpose of ascertaining
first, the most effective form of presentation for exhibit material,
and second, the degree to which children understand and remember the
lessons which different exhibits are designed to teach. In making the
tabulation, only those letters were used which were written by the
children themselves, without outside help. Several had to be discarded
because they showed evidences of suggestions and corrections from the
teacher. Every reference to an exhibit feature was counted, even where
the child spoke of the same thing more than once.
The most popular feature among the children were the entertainments
each afternoon and evening. These consisted of dances, drills, games,
and chorus singing by the children themselves. Sarah, of the eighth
grade, writes:
“Of all the good sights that I have seen and heard, I truly
think the exhibit was one of the best. The one particular
thing that interested me so much was the dancing which I
don’t think could have been any better,”
while Charlotte ungrammatically adds,
“I think it was a splendid idea to have these
entertainments, and I am sure it done the people good.”
The school children not only joined in dances and drills, but with
the help of their teachers formed classes which worked and recited as
living exhibits. All the children found the classes interesting. Says
little Michael Ettiopia:
“I saw manual training. They were making desks to sell
them. Many people bought them for their children to get
learned to write and read. I saw some girls they were
making candy, and I asked if they would sell the candy.
They said ‘No, little boy, we don’t sell candy.’ So the
people could see how to make candy.”
Particular attention was paid to the work of the boys from the “Shop
School.” There was a class in electric wiring where the children loved
to watch the work. Here is a paragraph from nine-year-old Raymond’s
description:
“There was a boy with a electric light on the front of a
box, to batteries in it, and a switch on the back. When I
saw this I said to him, ‘I wired up a electric light down
cellar and it turned on up by the cellar door.’ He said
‘Did you?’ and I said ‘Yes, sir.’”
The children were quick to recognize the ability of others, in such
expressions as:
“The dresses they had were elegant, and everything they
did was grand. Not one boy or girl made a mistake. It was
perfect.”
One twelve-year-old reports:
“There was a booth where the children of the Industrial
School had the things they sewed. There were dresses and
sacks and not a girl over 13 years made them. It goes to
show what some girls can do.”
The most impressive single exhibit seems to have been that of the tidy
and untidy home, which received 8 per cent of the 3,123 references. The
moving picture show and the library received 6 per cent each, and the
dairy, playground, and market 3 per cent.
The moving pictures appealed strongly to children in the fourth,
fifth and sixth grades; they are mentioned only half as frequently by
those in the seventh and eighth. The other exhibit features received
practically the same amount of attention from children in all different
grades.
Many children devoted two pages or more to a description of the
bedrooms and kitchens in the tidy and untidy home. Here is an account
given by a ten-year-old girl in the fourth grade:
“Then in a corner opposite that it showed how dirty people
keep their houses. The bedroom had dirty old clothes on
the bed which was half made. The kitchen was all dirty and
dusty, and there was a can of tomato emptied out in the
dishpan with wet dripping greasy rags right above them and
dripping into them. And the table cloth was all dirty and
mussed up, and there was some sour sauerkraut and cabbage
mixed together and cooked an hour or two too long. The
coffee was the strongest I have ever seen in my life, and I
don’t believe I shall ever see any more as strong as that
as long as I live, and there was not any milk for it, and
the pickles were mouldy enough to kill any child, and the
sausage was terrible.”
The same child goes on to describe the clean and dirty dairy.
“It showed how your milkman’s dairy should be, and how
dirty some of them were. The dirty dairy was all full of
cobwebs and there was straw and mud in the pails and a cat
was lapping the milk right out of the pails and the cows
were all muddy and dirty. But the clean dairy was lovely
and the barn was all pure white and the cows were the
cleanest I have ever seen and the milk was all rich and
creamy and clean because the pail was all covered over on
the top and the yard was all covered with green grass and
it all was just as clean and neat as it could be.”
Twelve-year-old Meta draws a lesson from the homes and the dairy. She
says:
“The Child Welfare Exhibit is to show the fathers and
mothers how to bring up their boys and girls so that they
will make good citizens. If the citizens of a city or town
are good citizens, the town will be a good city or town.
You would hardly think a dirty house would have anything to
do with the future citizens, but it has. If a boy or girl
has a dirty home he also will be dirty not only in body
but in mind also. (Dirty in mind means a mind with which
you cannot think clear.) ... You must also have good food
because if your food is food which does not nourish you
right, your mind will not be good.”
The clean and dirty markets held a peculiar fascination for the
children, and there are vivid accounts of the cat that was “walking
over the meat and licking the meat” and the “cow’s head with a disease
that made it all lumpy, lying in the corner, with the blood dripping
out.” As Helen remarks:
“In the good store the store keeper was dressed in white,
the food all looked clean and in a nice glass case. In the
bad store the cat was on the counter and the celery and
lettuce was all dried up, and the rest is too disgusting to
tell about.”
Finally, we have this manly confession from an eleven-year-old boy:
“I think the child welfare exhibit was a very nice thing,
for it teaches you something, at least it did me. The
things that taught me the most was about the good and bad
rooms, for I have a bad room; and so did the good and bad
stores do me good.”
All the children saw the moving-picture show, which they take care to
tell us was a free show. The film dealing with the care of the teeth,
that telling the story of a boy’s camp, one vaguely described as “he
knocked his wife down and he knocked his children down, and they all
fought,” and the clean milk film received the most attention.
In the center of the armory a small playground was erected, and there
the older children took their little brothers and sisters. One of them
writes:
“One of the days when I was there a little girl was crying
as though her heart was broken, because she had to go home,
and her mother had to promise her she would bring her up
there the next day, so she would stop her crying because
she wanted to stay and play in the playground.”
The library proved a great attraction to the children. One after
another tells of “reading most of the afternoon, and when I got out
it was most night,” or of starting a book “which I came back the next
afternoon to finish. It was a book of engineers.” The general feeling
of the children is expressed by Sarah Sedita when she says:
“While looking around I could not express my joy, when I
went to see the library department and saw on a sign what
is to be in Rochester, which was no other than this--that
there is to be a public library and fifty other branches of
it at different places in the city. Although I have read
ever so many books, I could not help then to be overjoyed.”
Near the library was a booth showing the guns, cards, jimmies, daggers,
etc., taken away from small boys in the children’s court. There was
also a lurid collection of dime novels from the same source. Of these
Katherine writes:
“I was talking to Mr. Killip about the boys he had to
handle, and he was telling how some of them acted. It was
very interesting to see the things he had taken from boys
under sixteen years--the revolvers, dice, knives, books,
cartridges, and other things. Some little boys came along
and saw the books and one said, ‘Didn’t I tell you those
were good books? See, they got them here!’”
This booth and the explainers in charge--the explainers seem to have
done effective work in the Rochester exhibit--impressed the boys very
seriously. Moses states the case:
“When a child reads a novel he gets interested in them and
likes to buy more of them. After a boy reads a great deal
of these novels he gets so that he thinks he is the things
that he is reading about. And soon after that he starts to
murder.”
Tabulation was made showing the distribution of references among the
four main types of exhibit material--entertainments, models, motion
exhibits, and photographs, maps, diagrams, charts, etc. To reach
conclusive results, it would be necessary to secure the exact number
of exhibits shown in each of the four classes. We know, however, that
there were more photographs, cartoons, charts, maps, etc., in the
Rochester exhibit than numbers on the program, or different models, or
motion exhibits. Donald tells us--“There was charts of the teeth, mind,
nostrils, ears, throat, various organs, limbs, and feet.”
But most of the children who attended the exhibit have only a vague
memory of the photographs which lined the walls, and every reference
of this kind is capped by three references to the program numbers.
Models and motion exhibits receive practically the same amount of
attention in all the grades. The lower grades were more impressed by
the entertainments than the higher, and the higher were more impressed
by the photographs than the lower. The per cents for all the children
run: entertainment 35, models 28, motion exhibits 26, and photos, maps,
etc., 11.
There were 271 favorable comments and 44 unfavorable comments on
the exhibit. The favorable run from one little girl’s reiterated
exclamation of “Oh, it was grand!” to Ralph’s dignified statement:
“Thousands of people were taught by the clean and healthy
attitude of the building a great number of things. It was
probably the best move toward cleanness ever held in this
city.”
With a few exceptions, the unfavorable comments have to do with the
overcrowding, from which the children suffered greatly. As a natural
result of such a throng, the halls became stuffy, and there seemed to
be no adequate system of ventilation. One of the boys writes:
“There were imposing posters on the poor air system in the
tenement houses, but right there, where thousands of people
came daily, the air was so had that people who really
wanted to see the things stayed away.”
A twelve-year-old girl makes this scathing comment:
“At different booths they had pictures showing how to
prevent children from getting germs of disease. Then the
mothers take their children to a place like that. Saturday
night after I got in the Armory basement from dancing it
was so full of dust I could hardly breathe. Then we went
up stairs and mother said that the American mothers were
going crazy. The Child’s Welfare Exhibit is very fine, but
I think the Rochester mothers had better tone down and be
more careful of where they take their children. For it was
just full of germs down there, both up and down stairs.”
There were many general comments, and lessons drawn, such as “Many
people will say ‘Oh, I can’t afford milk, it’s too expensive.’ But this
is all foolish, as in the end milk is the cheapest and best of foods.”
An eleven-year-old girl writes:
“The thing that took my interest was the different cares
and diseases of the babies that they are apt to get when
they are neglected. And it will help me very much during
vacation, as I am going to take care of the baby.”
Finally comes this simple tribute to the success of the exhibit:
“When looking at the pictures of poor children and homes
and the condition of the homes, it seems hardly possible
that such conditions could exist in Rochester, but when you
get out of doors again your eyes are opened and you see
conditions that you never noticed before.”
The children speak frankly in their letters, often telling more about
themselves than they realize. There is something pathetic in the
following glimpse of home life which Maurice affords us:
“The good food and bad are almost what I take, but I don’t
drink coffee any more, and will not take it. My brother
used to have coffee every meal, but since my mother was
there he drinks no coffee but all milk and bread. Bread is
about the only good food there is, and I have had lately a
good appetite for it.”
One feels a throb of sympathy for the boy who says:
“We need something to make us stronger mentally, and
something to abolish the truant officer.”
Many of the children are quite sure that the exhibit was for the
instruction of the “lower classes” only, and have a pleasant feeling
of superiority as they speak of its influence. Says one with some
indignation:
“The thing impressed me as if the Italians and Germans
were having more done for them than the Americans and
respectable people.”
And finally ends a mournful letter with the conclusion many other
observers have reached before her:
“The impression of the whole exhibit on me was that it is
slow work.”
It is of course impossible to draw any hard and fast rules as to the
effect of exhibit material upon an adult audience from these letters of
school children. Certain things, however, are of enough significance
to warrant attention on the part of exhibitors. With the exception of
the moving picture exhibit all these different features were about
as interesting to the children in the seventh and eighth grades as
to those in the fourth, fifth and sixth. Difference in age seems to
have little to do with the strength of the impression received. The
fact that children acted in the entertainments and motion exhibits
probably accounts in part for their interest in these two forms of
exhibit material, but it cannot account for the high per cent of
attention paid to the tidy and untidy home, the moving pictures, the
library, the clean and dirty dairy, or the clean and dirty market.
Entertainments interested them most, models next, then motion exhibits,
and photographs least of all. Difference in age becomes a factor
when considering the type of material rather than the individual
exhibit, and we find interest in entertainments lessening, and that in
photographs and diagrams increasing towards the higher grades. Through
all the grades, however, models and motion exhibits receive very nearly
the same amount of attention, and together receive more than half of
all the references made. Among adults, it seems safe to assume that the
relative order of interest would be the same.
SOCIALIZING THE COUNTRYSIDE
MARY H. FISHER
A little over three years ago, in the spring of 1910, a newcomer to
the little town of Amenia, Dutchess County, New York, inspired perhaps
by the glorious sweep of the twenty-five acre field on his recently
acquired possessions, summoned to his home a handful of his neighbors
and laid before them the germ of an idea which a few weeks later was
to blossom into the full-blown Amenia Field Day. At the start, the
newcomer offered the community his field, his time, his assistance
in every way possible, and asked and obtained of them that spirit of
co-operation which has made Amenia Field Day stand for what it does
today. In 1910 the attendance was 3,000; each succeeding year, it has
increased; in 1913, it was 10,000, and 1914 will doubtless see it
bigger yet.
The Amenia idea has been described as “an experiment in co-operative
recreation”; a high-sounding phrase, which means simply that the people
of Amenia get together, plan together, work together to the end that
one day a year they may play together.
Simple though this idea is, it has not been an easy one to inspire in
the hearts of New York and Connecticut farmers (for Amenia is less than
three miles from the state line). The rural population is admittedly
composed for the most part of conservatives, unimpressionable, and
slow to arouse to anything which savors of innovation, and which does
not bring in its train anything of palpable, material benefit. For
generations past, they have had their county fairs, with concomitant
cattle and poultry exhibits, horse-racing, fakers, and side-shows of
rather more than a questionable nature. They have had farmers’ picnics,
for the most part small affairs, of purely local interest. But the
Amenia idea was conceived in a spirit bigger and broader, and, it is
believed, more truly democratic and more representative of what public
spirit in a rural community ought to be. To quote from the program
of the fourth annual Amenia Field Day, “The Amenia Field Day offers,
as a substitute for the commercialized fair, a free day of wholesome
enjoyment, supported by the united efforts of a whole community.
One day a year the people of Amenia invite the whole countryside to
such a day of clean and simple recreation, without gamblers, fakers,
intoxicating liquors, or vulgar sideshows. Admission to our festival is
free to all.”
This year, the committee strained every nerve towards including in the
day’s entertainment features that should take in everyone, young and
old, of both sexes. For boys, they planned a series of athletic events,
running and jumping contests, open to all comers, without limitation
save as to age. Prizes were generously donated by a leading citizen of
Amenia, but the committee is seriously considering doing away with all
prizes next year, except the simplest of silk badges, commemorative of
the event.
The scope of athletic sports, in which it is wise for girls to
participate, is so limited that this year for the first time
folk-dancing was instituted. The committee imported a teacher from the
Bureau of Recreation, Department of Parks, New York City, and entrusted
to her not merely the task of teaching the graceful and quaint dances,
that have been imported from over the seas, to the maidens of Dutchess
County, but the far more difficult task of organizing the classes,
of getting the girls to join, of persuading the mothers to allow
their daughters to join. Nowhere are social strata so well-defined,
nowhere religious and racial lines so closely drawn as in the country
community; nowhere are barriers of caste so hard to break down. To
level the ranks of prosperous and poor, to bring about harmony between
Catholic and Protestant elements, requires a very large measure of
diplomacy and tact, combined with human sympathy.
For small children of both sexes, under mature leadership, were
arranged the games which city children for generations past have known
and loved, and in turn handed down to their smaller brothers and
sisters; games such as “cat and rat,” “farmer-in-the-dell,” etc.,
which for some inexplicable reason seem never to have penetrated the
school playgrounds of Dutchess County.
[Illustration: DANCING ON THE GREEN, FIELD DAY AT AMENIA, DUTCHESS
COUNTY, NEW YORK.]
On Field Day, August 19, for miles around Amenia, the holiday spirit
was in the air. Everybody with his wife and family, in automobile, farm
wagon, or on foot, took the road that led to Amenia Field; even those
who professed no interest in the events of the day, came “just to see
who was there!” Everybody brought lunchbaskets and spread the contents
under the trees, in true picnic style, since nothing but soft drinks
and sandwiches were sold on the grounds.
Throughout the day, a band of musicians played patriotic and popular
airs. The old folks gathered together contentedly in groups, listening
to the music, while keeping an admiring eye on the prowess of their
athletic sons, the grace of their daughters dancing on the sward. Young
and old participated in the grand march that took place immediately
after lunch-hour.
Afterwards, in a tent-covered auditorium, men and women of national
prominence addressed an attentive audience on subjects chosen for their
interest to a rural population. Suffragists, from Poughkeepsie and New
York, by way of propaganda, presented an open-air pageant portraying
the advance of women’s education in modern times. Meanwhile, a
demonstration of alfalfa-growing, under the supervision of the Dutchess
County Farm Bureau, and the State Department of Agriculture, was given
in a neighboring field. Enthusiastic “fans” of Dutchess County were
given an opportunity to cheer at a baseball game between two local
teams.
The day finished with a band concert held in the Post Office Square,
of Amenia, which had been decked with hundreds of lighted Chinese
lanterns, strung from adjoining buildings. The expense of this
concert, as of all the other features of the day, was met by popular
subscription. Everybody was invited, nobody solicited, to contribute,
according to his means.
On every program of Amenia Field Day has been printed these principles:
“You have got to make the country as attractive socially as
the city if you want to keep the young folks on the farms.
“There’s a good deal of work in the country, but most of
our boys and girls have forgotten how to play.
“Baseball is a splendid game, but it isn’t the only one.
Every healthy boy should be interested in at least half a
dozen others. Don’t merely watch others play games; play
them yourself.
“You can’t drink strong drink and be an athlete. Get your
boys interested in honest and healthy sports, and save them
from drink and dissipation.
“Contests and competitions are not the main thing. ‘The
strong compete and grow stronger; the weak look on and grow
weaker.’ The main thing is play. Learn the great lesson
that play is just as necessary for your sons as work.
“The community should help to run its own recreations. Its
festivals should be, not only for the people, but of and by
the people.”
MODEL HOUSING AS A COLLEGE COURSE
Some of the concrete results of the Tuskegee experiment in
reconstructing the interior of the Negro rural home, were told in THE
SURVEY of August 30. Paine College, Augusta, Ga., a school for Negroes,
supported for thirty years by southern white people, who feel that
the Negro question can only be solved when the white descendants of
slave owners set their hearts and heads to the task, is endeavoring to
experiment on the reconstruction of the Negro city home by change of
material environment If a $50,000 endowment can be raised the college
will put into effect a plan of housing designed to prove it profitable,
not only morally but financially, to provide the Negro an exterior
environment which shall make the task of educating him for life easier.
The scheme and the demand for better housing on which it is based is
described by Mrs. John D. Hammond, wife of and co-worker with the white
president of Paine College.
The whole plan is based upon the belief that the Negro is himself
eagerly striving for a decent living. The Negroes’ own fight,
individually, for better homes is said to be little short of heroic.
All through the South, in city and country, Negro-owned homes witness
to the increasing prosperity of a large class, and to the effort and
self-denial of thousands more, whose income would seem to many of us,
to put house-owning utterly out of the question.
But most Negroes belong to that economic class which, the world over,
pays the heaviest rent in proportion to its income and yields the
landlord the largest return on his investment, yet which receives in
return little which is compatible with health or decency.
This is the tragedy of the Negro slum. Nobody is trying to abolish it,
because nobody believes it can be done. We believe the Negro breeds
the slum--instead of the slum breeding many of the Negro’s defects.
Everywhere else people are re-creating the slum-dweller by abolishing
the slum. We make no effort, partly because, as yet, few of us know of
the widespread struggle for better housing the Negro is himself making.
What is needed, Mrs. Hammond believes, is an experiment station in
Negro housing in the South. When it is proven, as it surely can be,
that Negro day laborers and washerwomen can be decently housed at a
fair profit to the landlord, southern money will be invested in houses
of the right kind. But somebody must prove it, and advertise the proof
far and wide.
The plan by which Paine College hopes to prove it is, in brief, to buy
a city block of about six acres in Augusta, Ga., and build on four
acres little three-roomed houses, such as day-laborers and washerwomen
rent. The houses are to have a sink in every kitchen (water in the
house is to this class a luxury unknown), and a toilet, ample window
space, closets, and the porch so necessary to family comfort in a warm
climate. By building double houses, and four acres full of them at a
time, they can be put up for $850 per double house.[1] The rent would
be two dollars the room per month, the current rent for that district.
The lot for each family would be 20 x 105, which would afford a little
garden-space in the rear--a privilege highly esteemed by many of the
poorer Negroes, and one which, under the plan proposed, would be a
powerful aid in the upbuilding of home and family life.
Four acres of the six-acre block would give room for forty double
houses. The other two acres Mrs. Hammond designs to use as a playground
for the children, and a site for a community house. This house should
contain a kindergarten room and a room for boys’ clubs which could
be thrown together at night and used for the recreation and the
instruction of the grown people. It should have a room for cooking
classes, one for sewing classes, a few free baths for men and women;
and a small laundry and drying room, like those in the East End of
London, a small weekly payment for the use of which would relieve
the mothers from the heaviest of their drudgery, and set free much
of their time for home-making. It would also make possible a war of
extermination against the accumulations of trash about the ordinary
Negro home, where so many abominations are claimed to be necessary for
the sake of the pot and fire in the yard “to boil de clo’es.”
Rent would be collected on the Octavia Hill plan, with its concomitant
thrift clubs, mothers’, men’s, children’s, and home-improvement clubs,
and these clubs would do for the tenants just what it does elsewhere
for slum-dwellers of other races. They would, Mrs. Hammond believes,
be built up in character, the houses would be saved from the usual
degeneration of property rented to this economic class, a good return
would be realized on the investment, and the children ultimately turned
over to the community as self-respecting and law-abiding instead of
furnishing, as is inevitable under present conditions, their full quota
of paupers and criminals, to be carried by the taxpayers of the city.
Three rooms would be reserved for the Negro worker, who would not only
keep them as a model home, but would use them to train the girls in
housework. This would leave seventy-nine three-roomed homes for rent,
at six dollars each monthly, a yearly total of $5,688.00. This sum
would pay the salary of the social worker, who is a necessity to the
success of the plan, and yet yield 10 per cent gross on the investment,
though two acres of the land and the settlement house, representing
one-fifth of the sum invested would he unproductive from a commercial
point of view. This is on the basis of an expense of $9,000 for land,
$34,000 for forty double houses and $7,500 for the settlement house, a
total investment of $50,500.
Rentals from Negro property now yield a larger gross return than
this, as do rentals from similar property elsewhere; but the houses
deteriorate so rapidly from misuse that the landlord feels that only
an extraordinary profit while they last can insure him against actual
loss. A gross return of 10 per cent where the buildings suffered only
the depreciation caused by rational use would be as attractive to the
ordinary business man here as elsewhere.
Mrs. Hammond’s scheme would be considered part of the educational
system of Paine College. Good housing and good living as taught in the
settlement and practically applied in the model housing plan would
become a part of the school curriculum. The raising of the endowment
fund is the present problem of Paine College. The peculiarity of this,
as of all other Negro schools, is that the more students it has the
poorer it is. Few of the pupils can pay the full amount asked of them,
which is itself less than the actual cost of their board and tuition.
Some work is furnished them--in kitchen, laundry and household for
the girls, in grounds and garden for the boys--by which they partly
pay their way. The plan is to have the income from the model housing
endowment used to pay poor students for work done and so provide with
an education many whom the college is forced now to turn away.
The homes, playground and settlement would furnish a practical field
where young Negro women could be trained as social workers in order to
meet the growing demand from white people in several southern states
for trained Negroes to work among the poor of their own race.
[1] The houses would be of wood, as local conditions make
the expense of brick or cement prohibitive.
=BOYS’ “PETITION FOR INDEPENDENCE”=
A “Petition for Independence,” signed by representatives of the
boys and girls of Ithaca, expresses the principles of the Junior
Municipality organized in that city the latter part of June by William
R. George, director of the National Association of Junior Republics.
The object of the “municipality” is the practical training of younger
citizens in their rights and responsibilities by the formation of a
government of junior officials who shall act in matters of the public
welfare in co-operation with the city officials. Already the mayors of
Cortland, N. Y., and Jersey City have asked Mr. George to start like
organizations.
“We, the undersigned, being the youth of Ithaca, N. Y.,
between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, do respectfully
call to the attention of our elders that, although not of
age, we nevertheless feel we have reached the point where
we could and should actively participate in the government
of our city.
“We regard as merely a legal fiction the assumption that we
are infants in all matters relating to the government of
the community.
“We respectfully call attention to the fact that in time
of war boys between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one
are sent to the front to fight for their country and are
frequently as officers placed in positions of peculiar
responsibility and danger. Is it not self-evident that if
youths can thus honorably acquit themselves in time of war,
they could and should assume the less dangerous and onerous
responsibilities of peace?
“We find in the annals of history that from time immemorial
youths of our age have, when placed in positions of
trust, acquitted themselves creditably. Before the age of
twenty-one Alexander the Great was not only the ruler of
Macedon, but the dominant power in all Greece; Charles
James Fox became a member of the British Parliament before
he was of age, and the younger Pitt became Prime Minister
of Great Britain when he had scarcely passed his majority.
In short, there is abundant evidence both in the past and
the present that youth can and will rise to responsibility
when it is placed upon them.
“Such being the case, we do hereby resolve to accept
the suggestion of William R. George, the founder of the
Junior Republics, and the invitations of Mayor Reamer and
the Common Council and organize ourselves into a Junior
Municipality in order that we may at once actively serve
our city as junior citizens and thereby prepare ourselves
for more efficient citizenship as adults.
“We hereby pledge ourselves to assist in the enforcement of
all the laws and ordinances of the city, particularly those
directly relating to boys and girls and their interests.
“We further pledge ourselves that when elected to any
office in the Junior Municipality we will give our full
and faithful co-operation to the adult official holding
the corresponding office in the city government and will
discharge our duties solely with reference to the welfare
of the whole city.”
[Illustration: Spare the Slum and Spoil the Child.
+----------------------------------------+
| The doctrine of |
| |
| INFANT |
| DAMNATION |
| is thoroughly modern |
| |
| Go look at the children who need |
| playgrounds and you’ll believe it. |
| |
| How long will Cleveland, |
| sixth city, keep this article |
| in her city creed? |
+----------------------------------------+
Give them Playgrounds Instead!
_From the Cleveland Humane Society Bulletin_]
=WHAT ONE SMALL TOWN IS DOING=
Zona Gale in a pamphlet, Civic Improvement in the Little Towns, tells
how first the women and then the men and women of one small community
inaugurated an unusually successful campaign in the field of public
social service. This town is described as one of 6,000 inhabitants,
probably Portage, Wis., where Miss Gale lives.
In her opinion the civic problem of the small town is threefold: first
to get into touch with the current of new understanding that the
conservation of physical and moral life is largely economic; second, to
find practical ways of applying this understanding to the present and
future of the town; and third, to do all this with exceedingly little
money.
The Women’s Club called a meeting at the City Hall of all women
interested in town development. At this meeting the constitution of the
Wichita, Kan., Improvement Association was adopted and work mapped out
for five committees: sanitary, educational, art, children’s auxiliary,
and streets and alleys.
Among the concrete results obtained through the work of these
committees were the inauguration of a system of garbage disposal;
the grading and planting of a small park at the end of a bridge at
the turn in a river; the establishment of a rest room in the town
for farmers’ wives from the surrounding country, although owing to a
misunderstanding permission to use a small committee room in the City
Hall was revoked by the Town Council; the establishment of a charity
co-ordination committee; a town lecture course; public bath houses; a
sane Fourth, and medical and dental inspection of school children.
=PERSONALS=
The recent action of Congress and President Wilson, under the specific
encouragement of both railroad managers and employes, in placing
industrial mediation and arbitration on a wider and stronger basis, is
a long step toward the realization of a definite ideal which has been
cradled in the mind of Charles P. Neill, the former commissioner of
labor.
[Illustration: CHARLES P. NEILL]
Former President Roosevelt discovered Mr. Neill. Mr. Neill discovered
the Erdman Act, which platted a narrow pathway through the industrial
jungle in the United States. Congress put the Erdman Act on the statute
books, but Charles P. Neill placed it definitely in the imagination
of the American people and focused upon it the hope of the nation
for industrial peace. It is to Mr. Neill’s credit that he found and
took advantage of the possibilities of the Erdman Act in spite of its
limitations.
From 1898, when the Erdman Act was passed, to 1906, only a single
attempt was made to utilize its provisions in industrial warfare. That
attempt, which was in June, 1899, failed. Mr. Neill became commissioner
of labor in 1905. Within the five years, December, 1906, to January,
1912, the provisions of the law were invoked in nearly 60 interstate
commerce disputes. Between 1908 and 1912 there was but one period
as long as three months during which mediation was not sought in a
railroad dispute. The threatened strikes which were averted during
these five years involved over half a million miles of railroad and
163,000 railroad employes. These figures include duplicates since the
same railroad was sometimes involved more than once.
In all this work as mediator Mr. Neill enjoyed the unlimited confidence
of railroad managers, and employes alike. Whatever the bitterness, the
differences in codes of industrial ethics, and the misunderstandings
of fact which separated into bitter opposition the railroad managers
and their employes, there was no time when both parties failed to
give absolute confidence to Commissioner Neill and to rely with
unquestioning trust on his judgment, on his personal character, and
the practical wisdom of his suggestion. This extraordinary tribute
to him was primarily a tribute to his character, but it was earned
in part by the marvelous accuracy with which his imagination seized
situations and all their parts, and enabled him to talk the minutely
technical language of railroad operation. The rare assemblage of mental
and moral gifts which characterize Mr. Neill was fully recognized and
nothing clouded that recognition during his term of service. These
extraordinary features of his career will offer but little consolation
to the few lonely critics whose voices were recently heard in high
circles.
Mr. Neill was made commissioner of labor in 1905. He was re-appointed
in 1909. His third nomination was sent to the Senate by President Taft
in January, 1913. Confirmation was withheld because of the Democratic
policy toward President Taft’s nominations in general. Mr. Neill’s
name was sent back to the Senate by President Wilson but it was not
acted upon at the short session. It was again sent to the Senate at
its extraordinary session. Meantime Mr. Neill’s term of office had
expired, and on February 1 he surrendered his office. Confirmation was
delayed, apparently because certain southern Senators seemed to have
views of the humanities of industry which were not in accord with those
of Commissioner Neill. His appointment, however, was finally confirmed
and Mr. Neill resumed his office. After a few weeks of service he
resigned to take the position of director of welfare with the American
Smelting and Refining Company. He has taken charge of the welfare of
approximately 20,000 laboring men in the employ of this corporation.
The delay of the confirmation of Mr. Neill’s appointment brought forth
from the labor press generally, from the railroad managers of the
United States and from the American press generally, tributes to his
character, to his power, and to his achievements which have been rarely
equaled and more rarely exceeded in the industrial history of the
nation.
In addition to the annual reports and bulletins issued by the Bureau
while Mr. Neill was commissioner of labor, which publications
form a very valuable contribution to the literature dealing with
labor conditions, the bureau made a number of important special
investigations at the direction of Congress, the results of which are
embodied in various reports, notable among them are the Report of the
Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States (in
19 volumes), the Report on the Conditions of Employment in the Iron
and Steel Industry, and the Reports on the Strike at Bethlehem and
the Strike at Lawrence, Mass. Acting as special commissioner under
Roosevelt Mr. Neill investigated the packing house industry and the
Goldfield strike. In spite of the handicap under which he was placed
by his mediation work, Mr. Neill gave most careful supervision to the
planning and the executing of the work of the Bureau of Labor, and in
many cases tested the accuracy and completeness of work of his agents
by personally inspecting the fields in which they labored.
Mr. Neill was born in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1865. His college
education was obtained at Notre Dame University, at the University of
Texas, at Georgetown, and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
where he took his Ph.D. in 1897. He served as an instructor at Notre
Dame University from 1891 to 1894. He was professor of political
economy at the Catholic University from 1898 to 1905. While occupying
this position he prepared and installed an exhibit of the Catholic
charities of the United States at the St. Louis Exposition. He was
United States commissioner of labor from 1905 to 1913, vice-president
of the Board of Charities of the District of Columbia, 1900 to 1908;
assistant recorder of the Anthracite Strike Commission in 1902;
recorder of the Arbitration Board for the Birmingham strike in 1903;
member of the U. S. Immigration Commission, 1907 to 1910. As member of
the International Institute of Statistics, he has actively furthered
plans for the adoption of international standards for the compilation
of industrial statistics and has been active in working toward
international conventions to promote that end.
Nature, grace and environment conspired to prepare Mr. Neill for his
work. Ideals governed him from his early boyhood and gave him the
courage to overcome a typical range of obstacles in working them
out. Everything taught Mr. Neill. He had the rare capacity and the
temperament to profit by experience. His ideals of social service and
his Christian sympathies have been so powerful that nothing frightened
him and nothing side-tracked him from his path. There is no way of
knowing fully the pressure that was brought to bear upon him, or the
dust that was stirred up to obscure the practical ideals that governed
him in his work as an investigator of the industrial battlefield.
Whether in a congressional hearing where a none too kindly spirit
sometimes cropped out, or in protecting the accuracy and good faith of
his bureau reports, some of which aroused fierce antagonisms and were
subject to bitter attack, Mr. Neill displayed the same intelligent
fearlessness, the same restrained idealism and the same self reliance
which his friends have always noted and admired in him. He has had
severe academic training, yet he has remained a thoroughly practical
man. He is a brave and honest fighter, without any love of fighting for
its own sake.
A personal feature of Mr. Neill’s career remains to be noted. Under
the law he, as commissioner of labor, was associated with Judge Martin
A. Knapp in adjusting railway disputes. Originally Judge Knapp acted
in his capacity as chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
When he was transferred to the Court of Commerce a change in the
law was made, permitting the President to select as second mediator
any member of the Interstate Commerce Commission or of the Commerce
Court. In this manner it was possible to continue Judge Knapp in the
mediation work. Fortunately he remains to carry into the newer epoch
just entered upon, the splendid traditions of the work as developed
by himself and Mr. Neill. These two men worked together in a spirit
of mutual understanding and trust which made their mediation work a
happy experience for themselves, no less than for the railroads and
the employes. It is impossible to separate them in attributing credit
for the great results which have been achieved. Each has been most
gratified when the public honored the other. Both will be associated
in the discriminating memory of the nation as precursors of the era of
industrial peace for which the nation’s heart is longing.
WM. J. KIRBY.
* * * * *
Charles Stelzle, pioneer in church social service, who was the founder
and has for ten years been in charge of this phase of the work of the
Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, will leave that board on October
1. Mr. Stelzle plans to set up offices of his own as consulting
sociologist and efficiency engineer for national church organizations,
social service agencies and industrial enterprises.
The broader field which he proposes to cover on severing his connection
with purely denominational work Mr. Stelzle outlines as furnishing
“Expert service with reference to Sociological and Religious Surveys;
Exhibits; Social Service Campaigns and Conferences; Social and
Religious Work among Immigrant, Industrial, and Rural Populations;
Publicity, Educational, and Evangelistic Campaigns; Efficiency Methods
for Local Churches and National Organizations; General Industrial
Problems.”
[Illustration: CHARLES STELZLE]
Mr. Stelzle came to the church, when he was ordained minister about
eighteen years ago, as a worker who in his twelve years in the machine
shop had been made painfully conscious of the lack of understanding and
co-operation between the church and the workingmen. He organized the
Department of Church and Labor of the Presbyterian Church, and this
was subsequently expanded into the bureau from which he is resigning.
The Labor Temple in lower Second Avenue, New York, a religious labor
center which he organized a few years ago, has so evidently responded
to a need that the board has recently bought the property and put the
temple on a permanent basis. Labor Sunday, a nation-wide campaign for
temperance carried on through the trade unions and a press service
on social, religious and industrial topics which is used by 350 of
the principal labor papers, are other activities of the bureau. Mr.
Stelzle has served as arbitrator in many industrial disputes and has
established a permanent connection between the church and organized
labor through ministerial delegates to the trade unions.
In addition to this industrial work he was for a year executive
secretary of the Commission on Social Service of the Federal Council
of Churches, had charge of the social service features of one of the
Men and Religion Forward Movement teams and directed the surveys made
by the movement in seventy cities. He conducted the recent publicity
campaign for the Home Missions Council and the Council of Women for
Home Missions.
Mr. Stelzle’s successor in the bureau has not yet been appointed.
* * * * *
The appointment of Louis F. Post, founder and for fifteen years joint
editor with Alice Thatcher Post of _The Public_ and worker for many
public causes in Chicago, to the assistant secretaryship of the Federal
Department of Labor has been generally recognized, to use the words of
a fellow journalist, as something more than the dropping of a plum into
the gaping mouth of a hungry politician. Mr. Post is no politician and
was by no means hungry for the position, which he at first peremptorily
refused, feeling that he could not give up his work on _The Public_. He
consented only after pressure had been brought to bear upon him from
all sides and he had been brought to realize that a still larger duty
called him to the service of the nation.
The ideals which animated Mr. Post as editor and which he brings to his
work in the Department of Labor, he thus himself expresses in a recent
valedictory editorial:
“In citizenship it has been my object and that of my
editorial associates through all those years, to inculcate
a realization of the larger citizen, the civic whole, whose
voice, when conflicting selfishnesses cancel one another,
is in a very real sense ‘the voice of God.’ As single
taxers, we have worked with the purpose on the one hand of
lifting single taxers out of a cult and broadening them
with visions of the ever-pulsating world of men wherein
their cause must flourish if it is ever to fructify, and
on the other of disclosing to all readers with democratic
ideals the subtle power of this reform in democratizing
industry as well as politics. With more comprehensive
scope we have inculcated fundamental democracy as the
social principle of which every social reform is at best
but a practical application; and with scope still more
comprehensive we have identified democracy with that
element of the universal which exhibits the physical
phenomena of life as product, instead of producer, of those
faculties which some of us call ‘intellectual’ and others
‘spiritual.’”
* * * * *
James Mullenbach’s appointment as superintendent of the great
Cook County infirmary for the poor of Chicago at Oak Forest is as
creditable to President Alexander A. McCormick of the Board of County
Commissioners as it is to Mr. Mullenbach.
With his experience as settlement resident at Chicago Commons,
as superintendent of the Municipal Lodging House, as assistant
superintendent of the United Charities, as secretary of the Land,
Labor, and Immigration Officials’ Conference, and as the representative
of the social agencies reporting social legislation at the Illinois
Legislature, Mr. Mullenbach is regarded as the ideal head for the
greatest county institutions west of New York.
It is significant of the new times to find a college educated man who
rounded out his professional training on a fellowship in a German
University, being sought for and accepting a position, to which only a
political appointee has hitherto been appointed. No higher token of the
triumph of patriotism on partisanship has been registered in America
than this, and many another, achievement of Mr. McCormick in rescuing
the County of Cook from the spoils exploitation of his predecessor and
in establishing the efficient business management and the humane social
standards of his own administration.
* * * * *
The recent death of Edna P. Alter in a trolley wreck near Pasadena,
Cal., removes one of the younger workers in the field of organized
charity. Miss Alter knew every phase of work in the homes of the
poor for she entered the Hudson district of the New York Charity
Organization Society as district nurse in 1908, later rounded out her
preparation for the work of organized charity by a summer course in the
New York School of Philanthropy, and became assistant agent in that
district. In the fall of 1910 she rose to the responsible position of
secretary of the Associated Charities of Pasadena.
Leo G. MacLaughlin, president of that society, speaks of her work as
“sympathetic, kindly, warm-hearted and keenly intelligent. She was one
of the founders of the local Associated Charities and her work won
favorable attention over a wide area.”
* * * * *
A few years of school dental clinics have made “toothbrush drills” a
fairly familiar idea in many cities. It took the Toronto public nurses,
or rather their supervisor, Lina L. Rogers, to originate another drill
quite as unique and important.
Since last October the school children of Toronto, in squads of twenty
have practised daily “nose-blowing drills” and the effect on the
freshness of the atmosphere of the schoolrooms has been so noticeable
that the teachers have become assiduous in seeing to it that no child
comes to school unprovided with a pocket handkerchief. They often,
indeed, themselves order the drills without waiting for the coming of
the nurse. The effect of the drill is perceptible already on individual
children, in cases of catarrh, and the doctors predict that it will
have an appreciable effect in time in lessening adenoids and other
throat and nose affections.
It was Miss Rogers, who has recently become Mrs. W. E. Struthers, who,
when a nurse at the Henry Street Settlement in New York in 1902 was
chosen to demonstrate at the expense of the settlement in four local
schools the need of municipal school nurses. This she did with such
success that within a month the Department of Health took over the
financial responsibility and extended the work, making her supervisor.
With a subsequent seven years’ experience in this capacity she went to
Toronto in 1909, where she has done pioneer health work in the schools.
These are now fully equipped with school nurses and with dental care,
one of the four clinics now carried on in connection with the school
system having been equipped with a model outfit at the expense of the
enthusiastic nurses themselves.
[Illustration: MRS. W. E. STRUTHERS]
Besides nose-blowing drills Toronto has undertaken another departure
in school health work, in establishing a real open-air school, on the
model of the Forest School at Charlottenberg in Germany. To a private
park on the outskirts of Toronto, which has been loaned for this
purpose and equipped with shacks, fifty anaemic or delicate children
were taken for three months last winter by special trolley cars each
morning and not returned till twelve hours later, thus living and
learning in the open air. No tubercular children were taken, sanatorium
care being provided for them. Five meals are furnished, the trolley
service is given free by the street railway company, a nurse is in
attendance and three teachers, lessons are given for three and one-half
hours in the open air. There is a great deal of outdoor play, and
nose-blowing and toothbrush drills and a weekly bath form part of this
school course, as well as a two-hour nap each day. The experiment has
been so successful that the number of children will be increased next
year to one hundred and the school term lengthened to six months.
As wife of Dr. W. E. Struthers, chief medical inspector of the schools,
Mrs. Struthers will continue her interest in the physical care of
school children. She will also have the direction of the work until her
successor, not yet appointed, is broken in.
* * * * *
To make charity administration measure up to strict tests of business
efficiency--this has been the ideal that Howell Wright has put in
practice as superintendent of the Cleveland Associated Charities. He
has succeeded so well that Mayor Baker has recently appointed him
superintendent of the City Hospital, with instructions to use the same
methods there.
Mr. Wright has no medical training. He is a social worker with a
business twist. His new appointment illustrates the growing tendency
today to put at the head of great specialized institutions, men who
have a broad social outlook combined with executive power, but minus
specialized training.
[Illustration: HOWELL WRIGHT]
The City Hospital has been a bit too professional in the past. It
has looked very closely to its diagnosis and temperature charts and
instruments. But almost no thought has been given to the human and
social background of its patients, and patients “cured” of physical
ills have been turned out with all their social ills still festering,
the inevitable result being that they speedily returned to the City
Hospital to be “cured” again.
The hope is that Mr. Wright will make of the City Hospital a social
institution, looking backward and forward into causes and effects.
Since Mr. Wright received his master’s degree from Yale University
in 1907 he has served as special agent of the Massachusetts S. P. C.
C. and as general secretary of the Norwood Civic Association. During
the past year as superintendent of the Cleveland Associated Charities
his chief move has been the abandonment of the general employment
bureau for the unskilled, which had been conducted by the Associated
Charities since 1886. After a searching study of the charitable field
and a special study of such bureaus in other places it was decided
to transfer this work to the State Employment Bureau in the city and
the experiment has so far justified itself. Mr. Wright’s service has
also been notable in bringing into use simple records, centralized
purchasing and smoothly systematic office methods.
* * * * *
Sidney B. Bock, acting head resident of Pillsbury Settlement House,
Minneapolis, has been elected head resident of Neighborhood House in
Detroit, Michigan. This settlement is just completing a new building,
having been in rented quarters since its founding in 1909.
* * * * *
Berkeley G. Tobey, until recently secretary of the National Council Boy
Scouts of America, has become business manager of the Masses Publishing
Company.
COMMUNICATIONS
VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS
TO THE EDITOR:
Recently the writer noticed several communications in THE SURVEY, in
reference to the proposition of establishing a separate system of
vocational schools, distinct from the existing traditional public
school system.
As a reason for the establishment of this so-called “dual” system of
vocational education the claim is advanced that, since manual training
had been emasculated by being in contact with the public school, so
likewise would vocational and industrial education be emasculated if
these forms of education were to be carried on side by side with the
other schools under the old organization.
The writer having seen the retarding effects of such a “dual” system
in one of our larger industrial cities, and Massachusetts having tried
and abandoned it, and since the writer is firmly convinced that such a
divided system of education will, before long, react injuriously upon
the social and ethical life of a state and her communities, and will
plague the industries with its uneconomic and unsocial consequences, he
is decidedly opposed to such a separated system of vocational schools.
It is a shrewd move to get entire control of the education of the
masses of industrial workers, a mentally narrowing, mind killing
education which, in its effects, would pull the intelligence of a
community down to a lower level, being re-enforced by the ossifying
influences of extreme specialization, which are noticeable in shop,
store and office in all our industrial centers even now.
Manufacturers and business men do not take kindly to the idea that
they should be made responsible for the mental, moral and aesthetic
development of their employes and under these circumstances industrial
education would soon degenerate into a feudal appendage of our
industrial system. Manufacturers, corporations and business men are
certainly entitled to a share in the management of our educational
system and industrial schools and it is highly desirable that they
should claim their share.
But they can accomplish all they need either as members of school
boards, or as advisory committees on industrial education.
As to the danger of vocational schools being emasculated there is
no such danger. No one who understands anything about the matter
expects to have vocational or industrial schools articulated with the
elementary or high schools in the manner manual training has been and
is articulated, but have these lower schools separate in just the same
manner as manual training high schools or technical high schools are
separate from the academic schools, yet are under the same organization
and management without any detriment to their usefulness.
It is true that, if specific industrial education is yoked together
with academic education in the high school, industrial education will
be emasculated. But then it is due to a managerial blunder of trying to
straddle two horses and there is no excuse to make such a managerial
mistake the pretext for the creation of an expensive separate system of
education. Manual training, as we understand it, was never emasculated
because neither by the originators, and the writer is one of them,
nor subsequently, was manual training in the elementary and high
school considered anything else but an adjunct to academic schools
for cultural purposes and down to the N. E. A. meeting at Boston
in 1903, Professor Woodward, the father of the American system of
manual training, disclaimed any other but cultural purpose for manual
training, without any distinct vocational aim.
At the above meeting Dean Woodward, in referring to the manual training
work done at St. Louis said: “The secondary school should enable a
boy to discover the world and find himself. I use the word ‘discover’
in the sense of uncover--that is lay bare--the problems, the demands,
the opportunities, the possibilities of the eternal world. A boy finds
himself when he has taken a correct inventory of his inherited and
acquired tastes and capacities”. While many friends of manual training
were disappointed in finding it did not revolutionize trade education,
it never intended to do that and therefore was not emasculated.
PAUL KREUZPOINTNER.
[Chairman Committee on Industrial Education, American
Foundryman’s Association.]
Altoona, Pa.
=THE I. W. W.: AN OUTLAW ORGANIZATION=
TO THE EDITOR:
I wish to express my hearty appreciation of John A. Fitch’s article in
THE SURVEY of June 7, on the I. W. W. It is illuminative. The I. W.
W. is the one organization that is both hated and feared by our most
eminent leaders in business, politics, and religion. There are good
reasons for this. The I. W. W. pays no homage to heroes and great men
of the past; it has little respect for the laws of the land, because
it believes these laws were made to keep them in bondage; and it
entirely ignores and repudiates the church, as it holds that the church
has always been an instrument to keep the people in ignorance and
subjection.
Small wonder it is that this “outlaw” organization receives the
contempt and anathemas of conventional, respectable people, who have
been taught that everything that makes civilization better than
barbarism, is due to the genius and greatness and goodness of a few
men, who in turn were but the instruments of Providence. The I. W. W.
tells its members to stop bowing the head and the knee to great men
and even to God, and to assert the right and power that is theirs, and
to depend on themselves alone for the establishment of a new system of
industry.
Sound and staid business, political and religious leaders are deeply
concerned with what seems to be the trend of thought and action on
the part of the “lower” classes. This trend appears to be decidedly
in the direction of the very principles and methods of the I. W. W.
The “better” class of people believe chaos and anarchy will result
if the principles and practices of the I. W. W. predominate; the I.
W.W. believe they will always be oppressed, and matters go from bad to
worse, if our method of doing business is not fundamentally changed.
They believe so fully in the justice of their cause that they willingly
accept the scorn, the contempt, the inhuman treatment inflicted on them
in jail and out, that is meted out mercilessly for their uncompromising
speech and attitude.
This bitter feeling of the “best” people toward the I. W. W., and the
dogged persistence of the I. W. W. in their revolutionary tactics,
constitute the most acute phase of what the Socialists call the class
struggle. This class war will continue till one side or the other
is victorious. One reason that the whole matter is so generally
misunderstood is that nearly all the newspapers distort and suppress
most of the news concerning the activity of the I. W. W.
Mr. Fitch’s article radiates light rather than heat.
A. E. HOUSE.
Spokane, Wash.
=RIGHT IDEAS ON INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS=
TO THE EDITOR:
I have read the various contributions to your symposium on the work
before the new Commission on Industrial Relations. In my opinion it
is the duty of the employer to provide the necessary safeguards and
protection for his employes, such for instance as good light and air,
sanitary surroundings, protection against fire and other dangers,
reasonable hours of labor, adequate wages, no child labor, facilities
for education and self-improvement, healthful living quarters,
opportunity for recreation, etc. These and other advantages should be
supplied under all circumstances, and there should be co-operation and
good feeling between employer and workingman. It seems to me quite
probable that the better results which would thus be obtained through
the greater efficiency of the employes would more than compensate the
employer for any extra outlays which he may have to make to provide
such protection, so that in the end it would cost him nothing. The
hearty co-operation and friendly spirit which would thus be engendered
between the employer and his workingmen would be apt to prevent
strikes and other troubles and would decidedly be to the interest of
both employer and employe. Any excuse that a manufacturer or other
employer of labor might make that if he had to provide this protection
to his employes he could not make his business pay seems to me similar
to the excuse of one who contemplates putting up a building but says
he cannot afford to make the necessary expenditures to provide for
the safety of those who will occupy it because with such extra cost
the income from the building would not be sufficient to pay a good
interest. If he cannot make it pay he should of course not undertake
it, but under all circumstances he must build safely. In the same
way an employer should see that his employes and workmen receive the
necessary protection and he should provide for their absolute safety
and do the right thing by them all the time.
ADOLPH LEWISOHN.
[President General Development Company.]
New York.
=ALCOHOLISM=
TO THE EDITOR:
I am greatly pleased to see on the cover page of THE SURVEY issue of
August 9, a copy of the first Municipal Poster against Alcoholism in
the United States. I have wondered in reading THE SURVEY, that so very
much attention was given to different phases of welfare by excellent
writers, and the subject of liquor business was not emphasized. It is
conceded to be the greatest economic problem of the age, and is the
cause of the need of charity organizations, police courts, etc. It
is estimated by scientific and prison boards that 75 per cent of the
insane, and a greater per cent of criminals, and defectives are now
at the mercy of the tax payers of the country as a result of liquor
drinking, and liquor heredity. Certainly with such a preponderance of
evidence against, and interest in, the subject of alcohol, it makes
us rejoice that THE SURVEY has decided to give a front page to the
publicity of municipality interest in this subject.
LUELLA F. MC WHURTER.
[President Indiana Federation of Clubs.]
Indianapolis.
=BIBLE STORY FILMS=
TO THE EDITOR:
While I was staying at Hull House, I saw in their theater a moving
picture of the life of Moses. The dial of time turned back, we all
became spectators of the events of that great life, almost as though
we had been his contemporaries. From the basket in the river to Sinai
and the golden calf, it was all there, vivid, true to the Bible story
and reverent in tone. I left the theater with much the same feeling as
though I had heard a great oratorio, and even today the picture which
ran its course in fifteen minutes is more vivid than the story which I
have read and taught from childhood.
At a lecture in the University of Chicago last summer, the pastor of a
Congregational Church in Madison, Wisconsin, came to me and said that
he would like to put the moving picture into his Sunday School room, if
I could tell him where he could get the films. All that I could say was
to get in touch with the film companies and endeavor to get the ones
that he wanted, but I knew that he would have trouble.
There are a considerable number of churches that have already
introduced the moving picture into their evening service or their
Sunday School. But the difficulty is the same everywhere, it is hard
to get films that are suitable. Undoubtedly all the Bible stories can
be taught more effectively through the moving picture than in any
other way. The church ought to teach its lessons by the most effective
means at hand, and many churches would be using the moving picture if
they could secure suitable films at a reasonable rate. Mr. Edison has
already made a good beginning on a series of films to illustrate the
work of the public school.
Inasmuch as the churches need a special type of films, why should not
the church federations ask the film companies to produce films of this
type and start a church exchange? The churches should indicate which
pictures they wanted and furnish Bible experts to supervise the making
of the films, so as to secure an accurate and reverent reproduction of
the stories. These films might then go out with the approval of the
federation like a Sunday School lesson leaf. The film companies would
be merely the printers of the material furnished them by the federation.
Besides the Bible stories the great morality and passion plays, like
Oberammergau, might well be given, and representations of the great
social movements, such as recreation, child labor, tuberculosis, and
the like, the films for which are largely available at the present time.
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| 484 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.= |
| SCHIEFFELIN & CO., |
| 170 William St. New York |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| =Ideal Window Ventilators.= |
| IDEAL VENTILATOR CO., |
| 120 Liberty St. New York |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| =Electrical Engineers and Contractors.= |
| BATEMAN & MILLER, |
| East 23d Street, New York City |
+-----------------------------------------------+
Transcriber’s Note
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
hyphenation in the text. These were left unchanged. Dialect, obsolete
and alternative spellings were left unchanged.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Those in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=. A
dozen misspelled words were corrected. One duplicated word was
removed. Footnote was moved to the end of the article. Final stops
missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added.
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