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Title: The Survey, Volume 30, Number 4, Apr 26, 1913
Author: Various
Editor: Paul Underwood Kellogg
Release date: June 23, 2024 [eBook #73899]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Survey Associates, 1913
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Brian Wilson, 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 4, APR 26, 1913 ***
The Survey
Volume XXX
No. 4
WITH INDEX
NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
105 EAST 22D STREET
THE COMMON WELFARE
REHABILITATION WORK AT DAYTON
If the immediate adoption of comprehensive, carefully considered plans,
and the unification of all important resources of relief can accomplish
it, the Red Cross work in the flooded district of Ohio will mean
rehabilitation at every stage rather than merely the distribution of
supplies. This is the end toward which the efforts of Mr. Bicknell and
his associates have been directed. The state and local authorities
readily grasped the idea, and showed a real sympathy with its aim.
First of all, the Red Cross has itself received in direct contributions
at Washington the sum of $1,750,000. Much the larger part of this was,
of course, contributed with the appalling disaster at Dayton in view,
though from the beginning it was recognized that there were serious
needs elsewhere in Ohio, in Indiana and other states. The Ohio
authorities received in contributions $611,632, and it was decided by
the governor and the flood commission which he appointed, to expend this
also through the Red Cross. Finally, the Dayton citizens’ relief
committee, appointed by the governor and presided over by John H.
Patterson, who had taken complete charge of the situation even while the
river was overflowing the levees and inundating the town, has been
receiving donations directly. It has been selected as the channel
through which Red Cross funds available are to be disbursed.
While Edward T. Devine and Eugene T. Lies went to Dayton originally for
the Washington Headquarters of the Red Cross, they also are doing their
work under the authority and with appropriations from the local
committee. They are assisted by Amelia N. Sears, secretary of Woman’s
City Club, Chicago, who took part in the San Francisco rehabilitation
work; Rose J. McHugh, secretary of Funds to Parents Committee, Chicago;
Ada H. Rankin and Johanne Bojesen of the New York Charity Organization
Society, who helped in the relief of the victims of the Triangle shirt
waist fire and the Titanic disaster; Grace O. Edwards of the Chicago
United Charities; Edna E. Hatfield, probation officer, Indiana Harbor,
Ind.; Edith S. Reider, general secretary, Associated Charities,
Evanston, Ill.; Helen Zegar of the Compulsory Education Department,
Chicago, who was in special charge of the relief of Polish and other
immigrant families at the time of the Cherry Mine disaster. These Red
Cross agents are in turn aided by a corps of local citizens, especially
principals and teachers in the public schools, members of spontaneously
organized local committees, and others.
There is no longer talk of plans for rehabilitation, for rehabilitation
is in actual process. The careful Red Cross registration which was begun
before the end of the week in which the disaster occurred, is proceeding
rapidly. Four thousand families had been registered and the
supplementary visits largely completed at the end of two weeks. On the
basis of this registration, furniture is being provided, assistance in
repairing houses and cash donations of moderate amounts, and other
measures taken. All of these are intended to be a distinct step, even if
in some instances not a very long one, towards the restoration of
ordinary family life.
Among the measures which have been adopted in the rehabilitation stage,
as distinct from the emergent distribution of supplies, are the
following:
Houses which were occupied by owners of limited means and which were
comparatively slightly injured are being repaired by gangs of carpenters
who work in one section of the city after another. The work mainly
consists of putting frame houses on their foundations, moving them back
across the street, or doing such other things as an owner unaided cannot
do, but which a gang of half a dozen men, some of whom are skilled
carpenters can do in half a day or a day. This service is not rendered
if the owner is in position to hire men to do it, or if the house is so
badly injured that it involves much labor and expense.
Owners of lots, whose houses have been entirely demolished, and who wish
to rebuild on the same site, are to be given an army pyramidal tent
equipped with cots and tent stove. These tents will be put up by a
hospital corps, under the direction of an army surgeon who will advise
where on the lot the tent should be pitched, see that sewer connection
or latrine is in order, and give instructions as to the use and care of
the tent, so that the investment of about $100 which the donation
represents may not be wasted.
The greatest immediate need after food and dry clothing, is for
furniture and mattresses to replenish the thousands of homes whose
furniture is utterly demolished, or so badly wrecked as to be
practically useless. The first impulse was to ship in large quantities
of furniture and give it away, or sell it at cost. Fortunately, a live
furniture man, the president, in fact, of the National Retail Furniture
Dealers’ Association, was encountered accidentally early in the
proceedings. He was asked whether the retail dealers of Dayton could not
handle this matter themselves. One large furniture house was entirely
destroyed, but twelve others remained. All were in the flooded district,
but all proved to be uninjured above the first floor. On the first floor
the more expensive kinds of furniture had usually been displayed. This
was all gone, either bodily out of the window—these were the more
fortunate—or in a hopeless mess of mud and wreckage in the building. The
less expensive kinds of beds, tables, chairs and dressers were largely
stored on the upper floors. It was, therefore, only a question of
cleaning out the first floor—getting the elevators into operation—often
a hard job in itself—and securing trucks or wagons for delivery. This
was a still harder job, for those that were not gone in the flood had
been impressed into military or relief service. But the retail dealers
held a meeting of their association, and agreed to handle the problem,
and later the department stores which carry furniture came into line. By
resolution they bound themselves not to increase prices. Requisitions
are therefore given after the Red Cross registration is completed, for
from $10 to $100 worth of furniture, according to the losses and
circumstances of the family, to be selected by the purchaser at any one
of a dozen stores from a list printed on the back of the requisition.
These orders are filled in the usual way by the dealer and already such
goods are being delivered.
Transportation from Dayton and other points for women, children and
disabled men has been given by the railways through to the real
destination after the usual inquiries and precautions familiar to those
who work under the national transportation agreement.
In the first few days refugees were carried free without question to
points in the vicinity of Dayton, but on the opening of the Red Cross
headquarters, this indiscriminate free travelling was at once replaced
by the other system.
The first considerable issue of cash and furniture orders was made on
April 9—about $10,000. Since that time the number of registered families
ready for decision has been so great that it taxes the energy of the
central office in spite of the excellent facilities at its disposal. In
some instances these grants will have to be only first installments on
account of a larger plan; in many others, and it is hoped the large
majority, it will be all that is necessary. In each envelope with
furniture order or check, Mr. Devine is inserting, over his signature, a
printed slip as follows:
“The Dayton Citizens’ Relief Committee and the American Red Cross beg
you to accept this expression of sympathy for your losses and
hardships and their best wishes for the speedy restoration of your
prosperity and accustomed manner of living.”
FLOOD PROBLEMS TACKLED BY DRAINAGE CONVENTION
The date of the Third National Drainage Congress which convened in St.
Louis April 10 to 12, seems almost to have been planned providentially.
Just as significance attached to a similar meeting in New Orleans at the
time of the Mississippi flood last year, the attention of this year’s
gathering was concentrated on the problems which the floods of the
central states have so insistently raised.
Important resolutions were passed in response to a suggestion from
President Wilson that Congress should formulate some plan for the
prevention of floods and their disastrous consequences. The resolutions
were addressed to the President and Congress. They urged that the
government, under the welfare clause of the constitution, should take
adequate measures to control the water resources of the country, and
continued:
“We respectfully petition the immediate consideration of adequate
provisions for flood control, for the regulation and control of stream
flow, and for the reclamation of swamp and overflow lands and arid
lands, and in furtherance thereof we pray that in your wisdom you
create a body which will put in effect at the earliest moment possible
such plans, in co-operation with the several states and the other
agencies, as will meet the needs of the several localities of the
United States, and we believe the most effectual and direct means will
be the establishment of a Department of Public Works with a secretary
in charge thereof who shall be a member of the President’s cabinet.
“Be it further resolved that the wide scope of the problem of flood
water control, affecting practically all the states of the Union, can
best be conducted under the immediate supervision of the President of
the United States in the exercise of such authority as is conferred
upon him by the Congress of the United States.”
Control and prevention of malarial diseases were the subject of another
important resolution. The prevalence of these diseases throughout the
country, especially in regions frequently flooded, was declared to be a
cause of “great disability, loss of earning capacity and a considerable
number of preventable deaths.” Since there are well established methods
of prevention, the Congress established a section on malaria with Dr.
Oscar Dowling of the Louisiana State Board of Health as president and
Dr. W. H. Deaderick of Little Rock, Ark., as secretary. It was resolved
further:
“That the several states be requested to appoint malarial commissions
and that the commission of the Southern Medical Association and other
duly authorized malarial commissions be invited to join in this
movement and that the co-operation of the federal government be
requested through the United States Public Health Service and the
Medical Departments of the army and navy.”
These efforts to combat malaria followed an important discussion of
National Drainage and National Health by Dr. William A. Evans, formerly
health commissioner of Chicago and now health editor of the Chicago
_Tribune_. He pointed out that the aftermath from floods was frequently
more serious than the disaster itself, and referred to the fact that in
the flood of a year ago on the Wabash River there occurred 400 cases of
typhoid fever at Peru, Ind., and 100 cases at Logansport, Ind. The main
burden of his talk related to the fact that with the drainage of low
lands malaria could be almost, if not entirely, extinguished. Malaria
was declared to be the cause of more disturbance and economic loss than
all the floods. It was estimated by Dr. Evans that the cost of malarial
fever in the United States was $160,000,000 per year. The notable
reduction in cases of malaria and deaths resulting therefrom in the
Panama Canal Zone since the American occupation was vividly pictured as
indicative of what scientific effort can accomplish.
PRESIDENT WILSON AND JERSEY LEGISLATION
Before its adjournment this month the Legislature in New Jersey finally
passed a grist of bills in the field of social legislation. A large
proportion, if not a majority, of these were pending when Woodrow Wilson
left the state house at Trenton, and, as often happens, especially in
the case of bills which carry appropriations, they came to a head during
the last three weeks of the session. Mrs. Alexander reviews the notable
part the governor-president had in their advancement.[1]
While no immediate steps were taken by the Legislature to relieve the
congestion at the state insane hospitals, a movement toward a serious
consideration of the whole subject of state care, custody and treatment
of mental defectives, including the insane, the epileptic and the
feeble-minded was inaugurated by a joint resolution providing $2,500 for
a commission to report before March 1, 1914.
The Legislature decided to continue the Prison Labor Commission. In a
general way the recommendations of this body were adopted. The Board of
Prison Inspectors insisted upon retaining the powers of administration
and control of the prisoners, leaving to the commission the power to
plan and direct operations. The Prison Labor Commission is authorized to
purchase a farm at an expense of $21,000. There is also $17,000
immediately available for stock, implements, buildings, fencing,
fixtures and furniture for this farm. The general appropriation bill
available next November provides $12,500 for the purchase of a quarry,
$3,500 for the expenses of the commission, and $12,000 for buildings and
furniture for the farm. The reformatory at Rahway has secured an
appropriation of $5,000 for a foundry building. This is the beginning of
a policy of trade school instruction. The output of the foundry is to be
sold to state use account.
The appropriations for the other state institutions provide for a
continuance of the research work going on in the several state
institutions. The new reformatory for women at Clinton receives $25,000
for a new cottage, the Jamesburg School for Boys $20,000 for a trade
school building, and the epileptic village at Skillman $55,000 to
complete a custodial building and $110,000 for future building.
Besides these appropriation measures New Jersey has enacted a widows’
pension law, which will be reviewed in a later issue of THE SURVEY, a
bill providing for summer agricultural schools, and a new parental
school act which permits their creation under the educational
authorities. Another measure which was passed is a new compulsory
attendance law calculated to fill the gap between the educational
authorities and those of the state labor department which went far to
nullify the effectiveness of the old law. “Add to this program,” writes
an enthusiastic New Jersey social worker, “a few odds and ends of laws
and you can see Jersey is still hitting up the pace.”
NATIONAL HEALTH BODIES PLAN TO WORK TOGETHER
At the call of the Council on Health and Public Instruction of the
American Medical Association, forty-seven representatives of volunteer
and philanthropic bodies interested in some special phase of the health
situation in this country met on April 12 at the headquarters of the
American Association for Labor Legislation in New York city.
Feeling that, with the multiplication of independent organizations,
there is danger of overlapping of function, interference in work,
duplication of effort and expense and lack of effective co-operation for
want of a common program of procedure, the American Medical Association
early in January addressed a letter to the executive officers of about
thirty of the more important national organizations suggesting a
conference to discuss a plan for co-operation. This proposal met with a
ready response. Among the bodies that were represented at the meeting
held in New York were the United States Public Health Service, the
National Committee on Mental Hygiene, the National Association for the
Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, the National Committee of One
Hundred on Health, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the Russell
Sage Foundation, the National Child Labor Committee, the Rockefeller
Sanitary Commission and the National Commission on Milk Standards. John
M. Glenn, director of the Russell Sage Foundation was chosen chairman of
the meeting and John B. Andrews, secretary of the American Association
for Labor Legislation, who with Dr. Frederick H. Green of the American
Medical Association had made many of the preliminary arrangements, acted
as secretary.
Among the suggestions discussed by the representatives of the various
agencies were the following:
1. A central national health organization, composed of one
representative (perhaps the executive officer) from each of the fifty
odd national health organizations in the United States.
2. An annual conference of this central organization in January at
which might be discussed one topic of paramount importance in the
health field, to the end that the work of the central organization
during the year be centered instead of scattered.
3. Establishment of a central bureau or clearing house with an
executive secretary and facilities for collecting and distributing
information relating to the work of the various health organizations
represented.
4. Provision of $10,000 to $20,000 for the expense of the central
bureau.
5. Appointment of a committee (of seven perhaps) to study and carry
forward the plans of the bureau of health organizations.
As a result of the discussion on these questions the following
resolutions were adopted:
RESOLVED, that it is the sense of this meeting that we should organize
as a conference, either independently of the American Public Health
Association or as a section thereof or of any other organization which
should later be decided, after investigation by a committee to be
appointed to work out details.
RESOLVED, that a committee consisting of fifteen members, of which
five shall constitute a quorum, shall be appointed by the chairman at
his convenience, to report at a subsequent meeting.
WIDOWS PENSIONS IN MASSACHUSETTS
That the private charitable societies of Boston oppose the plan to
transfer to the state the care of deserving widows with dependent
children as an independent class is indicated by the hearings on the
various bills now before the Massachusetts Legislature. Four bills have
been introduced at this session. The first of these (House Bill No. 815)
provides:
“If the parent or parents of a dependent or neglected child are poor
and unable to properly care for the said child, but are otherwise
proper guardians, and it is for the welfare of such child to remain at
home, the juvenile court, the probate court, or, except in Boston, any
police, municipal or district court, may enter an order finding such
facts and fixing the amount of money necessary to enable the parent or
parents to properly care for such child, and thereupon it shall be the
duty of the county commissioners, or, in Suffolk County, the city
council of Boston, to pay to such parent or parents at such times and
as such order may designate the money so specified for the care of
such dependent or neglected child until the further order of the
court.”
The second bill (House Bill No. 1369), which is even shorter, restates
the general principles of the first bill without providing machinery for
carrying its provisions into effect. It reads as follows:
“Children whose parents are unable to support them shall not be placed
in state, county or municipal institutions, but if either parent, or
any relative or other suitable person, is maintaining a home, payment
shall be made to such parent or relative or other person for the
support therein of such children.”
House Bill No. 1366, the third proposed act, was prepared by
representatives of many of the principal charitable organizations of
Boston.
The bill does not so much state a new doctrine of relief for dependents
as define more clearly the duties of the local overseers of the poor and
more definitely chart their course in their work preliminary to granting
relief. The avowed purpose of the bill, in the language of its
proponents, “is to correlate the various public and private agencies of
the state into one co-operative relief system under the general control
and direction of the state Board of Charities and to use the local
overseers of the poor as the active disbursers of the relief granted.”
It is also made the duty of the overseers to the first instance to
determine whether the mother is “fit to bring up her children and that
the other members of the household and the surroundings of the home are
such as make for good character, and that aid is necessary.” If this
question is decided by the overseers in favor of the applicant they then
are charged with the further duty of investigating the financial
resources of the family and relatives, although the law does not clearly
state to what degree of consanguinity this inquiry shall extend. They
shall next inquire as to “individuals, societies or agencies who may be
interested therein.” If they have by good fortune found anyone who is
legally bound to support the mother and child, they are directed to
enforce the full legal liability of the obligation.
They are admonished to get the family to work if possible, and to secure
such relief as can be obtained from organizations and individuals. The
law adds, however, that none of these directions shall be construed “to
prevent said overseers from giving prompt and suitable temporary aid
pending compliance with the requirements of this section, when in their
opinion such aid is necessary, and cannot be obtained from other
sources.” The bill provides, therefore, that local overseers shall aid
such mothers and children as they deem worthy if they can find no one
else who can be forced or coaxed into doing it. The bill further
provides that the overseers shall follow up their initial activity by
visiting the recipients of aid at least once in three months and shall
keep a careful detailed account of the conditions found at each visit as
a part of their official records. It is made the duty of the State Board
of Charity to supervise the work done by the overseers and to report
thereon in its annual report to the state Legislature.
This bill was presented because of the report of the commission on the
support of dependent minor children of widowed mothers, and the measure
(House Bill No. 1770) proposed by the commission. The general court of
1912 created a commission to investigate the condition of widowed
mothers, provided $1,000 for its expenses, and ordered it to report at
the present session. The commission as appointed consisted of Robert F.
Foerster of the department of social ethics of Harvard University; David
F. Tilley of Boston, for many years a member of the Central Council of
the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and at present a member of the State
Board of Charity, and Clara Cahill Park of Wollaston, Mass.
The report of the commission and the arguments in support of its bill in
general were:
That the present system of outdoor relief is inadequate;
That frequent separation between the widowed mother and her children
occurs;
That the cause of the mother’s dependence is seldom purely local but a
matter in which the state in the large is concerned;
That therefore the state should grant the relief and not the locality
alone;
That while all needy mothers, whether widowed or not, are proper
subjects of the state’s bounty, yet widows are in a class which need a
different technique of relief.
The commission expressed its belief that widows’ families were the most
important single group in poverty and that they should be dealt with by
a method unhampered by the need of dealing with other cases. The
commission’s bill, it was argued, would further break up indiscriminate
relief, introducing state control and state standards for a great group
of dependents, continuing the process begun for the feeble-minded,
insane, blind and the like. The friends of the bill believed that the
state Board of Charity administered so much relief that widows would not
be adequately cared for by it. They urged that while House Bill No. 1366
in terms disclaimed any intention of regarding its proposed relief,
pauper aid, yet in fact it could not fail to be so regarded by possible
claimants. The commission called the aid it proposed giving subsidies
rather than pensions, as it regarded its aid as in no sense payments for
services rendered but assistance in rendering needed service to the
state.
The report of the commission was signed by Professor Foerster and Mrs.
Park. Mr. Tilley presented a minority report stating that he was fully
in accord with the desire of the commission to adequately assist widowed
mothers with dependent children, but that he felt that the report was
based upon insufficient evidence. He further believed that the present
machinery of relief was entirely adequate for the purpose desired.
The bill proposed by the commission provided for a permanent commission
of five, two of whom should be women, who should have authority to order
subsidies paid by the overseers of the poor, in such sums and manner as
the commission should decide. The commission is authorized by the bill
to make its investigations by its special field agents, and it is made
the duty of the overseers to visit the family at least once in every
four months and to report its condition to the commission. Two-thirds of
the amounts paid to families who have no settlement and one-third of the
amounts paid to all other families shall be repaid to the overseers by
the state Board of Charity. No relative other than those legally bound
to aid the family, and no private society shall be asked to contribute
any portion of the subsidy.
The commission by its bill provided a new state machine designed to
administer a specific pension or subsidy to a specific class of
dependents. The bill proposed by the opponents of the commission’s bill,
defined and enlarged the present relief machinery of each locality. The
purpose of the friends of each bill is unquestionably to render the same
service to the needy widow.
THE MASSACHUSETTS REPORT ON THE RELIEF OF WIDOWS
PORTER R. LEE
Massachusetts deserves credit for being the first state to preface
mothers’ pension legislation with a formal study of existing conditions.
The Legislature of 1912 authorized the appointment of a commission “to
investigate the question of the condition of widowed mothers within the
commonwealth having minor children dependent upon them for support,” and
to report to the succeeding Legislature “as to the advisability of
enacting legislation providing for payments by the commonwealth for the
purpose of maintaining such minor children in their homes.” The report
of the commission giving its findings and recommending legislation based
thereon has been published as is stated elsewhere in this issue,[2]
David F. Tilley, one of the members of the commission, dissenting from
the conclusions of the majority.
The success or failure of the mothers’ pension movement must depend
largely upon our ability to avoid the mistakes which have characterized
outdoor relief and other gratuitous payments to individuals from the
public treasury, and to read into the proposed remedy a new and
dignified meaning which outdoor relief has never had. It may be that
both these ends will be difficult to attain. Certainly they can only be
attained after the most careful study of the operation of outdoor
relief, both public and private, to ascertain to what extent it has
succeeded or failed and why. Such a study has long been necessary in the
interests of the poor and of efficient relief work. To be successful it
cannot be hasty, inexpensive or inexpert. Quite as important as this
study of outdoor relief will be a study of the conditions under which
children are admitted to institutions which must be undertaken with much
the same end in view.
Those who have felt the need of more facts before enacting mothers’
pension legislation have been much interested in the study which
Massachusetts has been making. If all the possibilities of such a study
were realized in this report, a good many of our stumbling blocks would
be removed. The existing outdoor relief machinery, public and private,
an analysis of its success or failure and a standard for future
procedure would all have been revealed.
The report of the Massachusetts commission, however, gives us very
little help. It is marked by evident earnestness of purpose; but its
conclusions are of little value because they represent in almost every
case inferences from inadequate data. To a large extent this is to be
charged to the commission’s inadequate resources; but whatever the
reason the report as it stands does not give us a model for other
states. It does not give us even a clear relation between the
commission’s own findings and their recommendations. Because the right
kind of an outdoor relief study is necessary and because the example of
Massachusetts is likely to be followed by other states, it is important
to subject this report to somewhat critical examination.
The commission’s method of study was five-fold:
1. A questionnaire to fifty-seven child helping societies and several
public departments caring for dependent children as to the
circumstances under which the children in their care were committed.
2. A questionnaire to various children’s agencies asking why children
are separated from their mothers in poverty.
3. A questionnaire to public and private relief agencies asking for
“the total income and the sources thereof, together with certain other
facts in each widow’s family receiving through it (the agency) regular
relief” for a definite period.
4. Special study of the Juvenile Court records of Boston and of the
results of a day nursery investigation.
5. A use of analogies, observations and “reasons of a non-statistical
kind” which suggest the desirability of legislation granting pensions
to mothers.
Methods 1 and 3 brought the statistics upon which the chief conclusions
of the report are based. But the commission itself by a series of
statements regarding their accuracy robs one of any confidence in the
results obtained. For example, these statements appear in the discussion
of the statistics received from relief agencies:
“Because of its small appropriation it [the commission] was enabled to
make a much less detailed and exact statistical study of the position
of these widows than would have been desirable.”
“The resources of your commission did not permit it to secure its
information by the personal visit of an investigator, hence the
information must be less accurate than it might otherwise have been.”
“The commissioners believe that despite the limited accuracy of some
of their relief statistics further study of the relief given by
charities is not necessary.”
Moreover, regarding the information gained from the children’s agencies
as to the causes for the removal of children from their homes, it may be
doubted whether these agencies are competent witnesses. The standard of
work done by the public agencies and many of the private agencies for
the care of children in Massachusetts is unusually high. It may be
doubted, however, whether any such agency after the most careful
preliminary inquiry is fully able to determine the real economic status
of a family which is usually a matter that requires long acquaintance.
Many of these societies receiving children who have been removed from
their mothers have very little first hand information as to the reason
for it. In fact, the report itself, in discussing the information
secured through this questionnaire regarding the insurance carried by
the families, states: “The fact that the children’s agencies failed to
answer this question in so many cases was undoubtedly because they did
not possess the information.” For the same reason it is doubtful if they
were competent witnesses on many other points calling for knowledge of
what happened before the children came into their care.
The statistics secured through method 3 are condemned even more
directly. After information had been secured through the questionnaire
to public and private relief agencies regarding 1,258 families, Mr.
Tilley of the commission arranged for a special study of one hundred of
these in their own homes by trained visitors in the service of the State
Board of Charity. These studies revealed conditions completely at
variance with those stated in the returns received from the agencies
themselves. The report itself comments: “It is clear that many records
previously received from the overseers, especially, but also from
others, were glaringly incorrect.”
It is hardly possible to put confidence in conclusions based upon data
whose inaccuracy is so clear. It does not become any more possible when
the inaccuracy is frankly conceded by those who reach the conclusions.
Another method of study used by the commission—the compilation of
analogies and other non-statistical reasons for proving its case—is
rendered impotent in much the same way. In a carefully developed
argument the report draws an analogy between the proposed subsidy scheme
for widows and the industrial accident compensation plan. “The situation
of dependents of men killed by industrial accident is scarcely
distinguishable from that of these widows.... Consequently, widows
through death of husbands by disease or other non-industrial cause
should be dealt with by a similar principle.”
After developing this analogy somewhat elaborately, however, the report
says: “The commission rejects the principle of payment by way of
indemnity of loss,” apparently abandoning the workmen’s compensation
analogy just after making it serviceable.
It would not be difficult to point out other traits which are fatal to
the report as a basis for scientific action, for example, its constant
introduction of important conclusions with such expressions as “it is
obvious,” “the inference is,” “it is not unlikely,” “so far as
information was obtainable” and “important inferences are possible.”
Moreover, when conclusions are based upon statistics compiled from
different sources by different persons with different standards and
possibly different interpretations of the questions asked, a report
giving these statistics and the conclusions reached should give also a
copy of the schedule used in gathering them. The report does not include
the commission’s schedule.
With the purpose of the commission to point the way to the adequate
assistance of widows most of us like Mr. Tilley, who submits a minority
report, are in complete accord. During recent years our enlarging
conceptions of social treatment have condemned utterly much of our
supposedly efficient work in family and individual reconstruction. There
is a widespread conviction of sin in this matter and an earnest
searching for the remedy. The mothers’ pension movement is no doubt a
result of this; but the conviction of sin and the earnest search are
true of many to whom mothers’ pensions seem a remedy of doubtful
immediate value.
If we have failed in our relief work, the children of the widow are not
the only ones who have suffered. Upon the children of disabled fathers,
of incompetent and neglectful parents, of all those tragic families who
fall outside the commission’s category of “worthy,” our sins are visited
still more heavily. The commission was charged only with the duty of
studying the condition of widows; but it seems to have taken some note
of families of other types. We read: “Consistently, widows through death
of husbands by disease or other industrial cause ... deserve an utterly
different kind of treatment from that accorded to the lazy and
shiftless, the victims of drink, gambling or other dissipation or
persons in transitory or emergency destitution. The commission does not
believe that the same persons who administer the general poor law should
alone determine the aid for worthy widows. Administration of such aid is
sufficiently complicated, difficult and frequent to deserve separate
care.” It might be noted incidentally that the cause of a husband’s
death is not always a satisfactory test of a wife’s moral habits, and
that “widows through death of husbands by disease, etc.” are not
infrequently of the unsatisfactory type described by the commission. But
a still more important comment is the following from Mr. Pear of Boston:
“It is well understood by social workers that those whom your
correspondent terms the incompetent, and willingly leaves to the care of
overseers of the poor are really in need of the most skillful
ministration. They too have children. To assume that they may well be
left to officials considered incapable of caring for respectable widows
is evidence of a complacency which social workers cannot share.”
The report of the commission gives us much that suggests the fact of our
failure to provide adequately or helpfully for the families of widows, a
fact of which we had already become conscious. What we need, however, is
not so much evidence of the fact of failure as a clear understanding of
why we have failed. Why have public outdoor relief and private charity
conceived in as deep an interest in the destitute widow as any mother’s
subsidy program, failed to satisfy either the widow or the charitable or
society at large?
The failure has rarely been due to lack of aggregate resources. Nobody
familiar with the enormous totals spent for relief, public and private,
could doubt that. It must lie somewhere in the quality of the service
which brings relief with it. To determine just where it does lie calls
for a study requiring money, time and the sure touch of somebody who
knows what to look for. The mothers’ pension schemes which the various
states have worked out give us very little that is new or of higher
promise in the service that goes with relief. The subsidy plan that
follows the study of the Massachusetts commission is no exception.
Few institutions have been subject to more criticism than public outdoor
relief. No institution has been under fire so long with so little real
effort to find out what makes it criticizable. It may well be that
public assistance in some form is indispensable in this country and will
be made to yield the results we seek. If so, its administration must be
revolutionized. Giving existing outdoor relief officials new duties and
responsibility to a new authority for part of their work, which is an
important part of the proposal resulting from the Massachusetts report,
will not revolutionize it. Nor will the giving of new names to old
practices not otherwise shorn of the defects which popularize the new
name do so. Again and again we have started with a clear call to do
justice to the widow. Every time we try to translate our zeal into
legislation we come square up against our outdoor relief machinery. Some
one of these United States has a golden opportunity to make a study
which will point the way to justice not only for the widow and her
children but for every other person, old or young, who through our
stupidity or his own fault, or both, finds himself forced to seek
assistance. But the Massachusetts report does not point the way.
[Illustration: CALL TO MASS MEETING IN ARABIC]
THE LADINO SPEAKERS
MARY BROWN SUMNER
For four years New York has had a steadily growing colony of Castilian
speaking Oriental Jews. The major part of them speak a Spanish dialect
known as Ladino, but use Hebrew characters in writing. Knowing no
English, they have lived in isolation, the largest group between Essex,
Rivington, Christie and Canal streets. The rest are east of Lenox avenue
in about twenty blocks north of 100th street.
The biggest step toward the Americanization of this group, which now
numbers 15,000 and is not yet too large or scattered to be handled by a
group plan, was the calling at the University Settlement last month of a
mass meeting of the race. Here Joseph Gedalecia, manager of the Free
Employment Agency for the Handicapped established by the Jewish
community of New York, and president of the Federation of Oriental Jews,
and other speakers proposed plans for lectures on American institutions
and opportunities and suggested classes in English for the adults of the
race.
In 1492 or thereabouts persecutions drove from the shores of Spain the
Jewish merchants and scholars to whom the nation owed not a little of
its development. They were welcomed by the Mohammedans and settled both
in European Turkey and on the Asiatic coast. Most of the settlements of
refugees preserved their Castilian speech, and the Ladino dialect, which
they use today, is only slightly mixed with Greek or Bulgarian or
Turkish or Arabic words, according to the section of the Turkish empire
in which they happened to settle.
[Illustration:
THE CALL IN LADINO
]
ATTENTION BROTHERS AND SISTERS!
It is high time for us to come together and discuss ways and means to
improve our conditions. Most of our people come to this country from
Turkey and the Orient not altogether prepared for the struggle for
existence that awaits them. A good many remain idle, or their work is
intermittent, and others, again, work in surroundings not conducive to
good health, nor is the remuneration sufficient to enable them to earn a
decent livelihood, resulting in time in poverty, and in some cases our
people are obliged to live in congested surroundings with disastrous
effect on their health, and some are becoming tubercular. A good many of
our children do not attend religious school and roam the streets without
having religious training or the ideals of our religion inculcated in
them, which may prove disastrous to Judaism and good citizenship. No
central bureau of information for our people is available when they are
in need of advice of any kind.
Therefore we appeal to you for the sake of yourself, your families and
your children, as well as for the sake of Israel and your country, to
attend a mass meeting which our federation has arranged to be held on
Sunday, March 16, at the University Settlement where leaders of our
community and other prominent men will discuss the issues affecting your
interests.
_Don’t fail to attend_ and urge your friends to do the same.
FEDERATION OF ORIENTAL JEWS OF AMERICA,
Joseph Gedalecia, President. A. J. AMATEAU, Secretary.
These Spanish Jews preserved their standing as merchants, artisans or
even small semi-professionals. In some towns, notably Salonika, they
came to form the bulk of the population. They were seldom persecuted as
they had no suppressed nationalism to defend against an invader. They
never sank to the level of the native peasantry. Though materially
comfortable, their intellectual development stagnated, under Turkish
discouragement of education, until the young Turk movement of a few
years ago. This was accompanied by a spread of popular education and
with it knowledge that there was a world outside their own particular
corner of the Orient. Ambition and a desire to see the world stimulated
an Oriental Jewish migration which is largely responsible for their
presence in New York city. It is almost the only Jewish migration to
America that was not due to poverty or persecution. The Spanish Jews
chose America as their place of pilgrimage in the face of the fact that
the Spanish government has recently sent representatives to Turkey for
the purpose of inducing them to return to Spain, an evidence that that
country believes them to have qualities that would be an asset to the
country of their choice.
The present westward migration of the Spanish Jew had less to offer than
their migration eastward five hundred years ago. In New York their
isolation has been complete, for the Yiddish speaking East Side Jew does
not understand them any better than does the American, and rather
despises their lack of intellectual attainments.
In physical equipment these people are superior to the Russian Jew; they
have strong, handsome physiques. The men have drifted to day labor
rather than to the unwholesome work of the garment trades. The girls
alone are in these trades; it is said, indeed, that they have usurped
the whole of the East Side kimono work from the Russians. Free from the
weakening effect of European persecution, the Ladino-speaking Jews have
shown even in their short and handicapped history in America so far, a
daring business sense which enables them to point to half a dozen
American millionaires of their race. The Russian Jew among his million
immigrants can point to scarcely more.
It is to give scope to these native abilities by adapting them to
American conditions that Mr. Gedalecia and other leaders of the race
have for four years been working up to the mass meeting of last month.
This was held under the auspices of the Federation of Oriental Jews, a
union of eighteen benefit societies which the Spanish and Portuguese
Sisterhood and the North American Civic League for Immigrants were
largely instrumental in forming about three years ago. Night classes for
Ladino Jews have been opened in two public schools. Intensive work has
been done by the Industrial Removal Office, also, in distributing
individuals in other parts of the country besides New York or sending
them to Panama, Central and South America and the Philippines, where
their antique Spanish dialect survives and where, without the handicap
of language, in more than one case, beginning as peddlers, they have
become merchants. Many of those who have succeeded in business import
their goods from the United States, thus becoming a medium of bringing
about business relations between this country and its Latin-American
neighbors.
THE COMMISSIONER OF CHARITIES IN OKLAHOMA
ALEXANDER JOHNSON
Secretary National Conference of Charities and Correction
The fourth report of the commissioner of charities of the new state of
Oklahoma is an interesting document and much of the work reported is
unique for it is work not done in a similar way or not done at all in
any other state.
The plan of having a single commissioner do work ordinarily done by a
secretary and a board exists only in two states—New Jersey and Oklahoma.
In Oklahoma the work has been developed along some lines that are
intensely interesting, although it seems doubtful whether the conditions
anywhere else will lead to this plan being copied.
When Indian Territory became a part of Oklahoma, the lands were allotted
in severalty to the Indians of the various tribes. Much of the land is
almost worthless, but there is a great deal that is valuable because of
the presence of oil, deposits of asphalt, building stone, coal, etc.,
while a large part of the old Indian Territory is among the best
agricultural land of the state.
The temptation to exploit these Indian lands, to purchase them from the
Indians at a tenth of their value, has been somewhat offset by the
action of the United States government. But among the Indians were a
large number of orphans. Their land has been cared for by guardians,
some of whom have succeeded in getting themselves appointed, with
motives anything but benevolent toward their wards.
[Illustration:
KATE BARNARD
The Oklahoma charities commissioner whose administration has secured
the return of a million dollars to Indian orphans under incompetent
or dishonest guardians.
]
The legal department conducted under Kate Barnard, the commissioner, by
Dr. J. H. Stolper, has taken up a vast number of Indian orphan cases.
The results have been positively surprising. The legal department has
not failed in one single case. The entire amount of money wrested from
incompetent or dishonest guardians and returned to orphans has been
nearly $950,000. The value of the land is not stated but it is probably
several times as much as that of the actual cash returned. The number of
minors represented in the report is 1,373 and the number of cases 1,361.
These were tried out in thirty-six different county courts. The cost of
handling this enormous amount of legal work as well as all the legal
work in the office was less than $6,000 which covers the salary of the
general attorney, that of one stenographer and the necessary travelling
expenses.
The commissioner suggests that, as there seems to be some difficulty in
appropriating sufficient money for the support of her office, she should
be allowed to charge a uniform fee of $5 for each case of the kind which
is undertaken, that fee going to the support of the Department of
Charities and Correction. At present no fees are charged from any of the
minors.
Beside acting as next friend of orphan children, the general attorney of
the commission has been for a year or more acting as public defender. It
seemed to the Legislature that there was as much need of a public
defender as of a public prosecutor and accordingly, at the last
Legislature a law was passed creating the office. This the governor
vetoed, but his veto was not in time to defeat the bill. However, the
question of the salary was not taken up and Dr. Stolper, attorney for
the commissioner, was appointed public defender and has been doing the
work. A number of interesting instances of miscarriage of justice which
the public defender has been able to remedy are given in the report.
The report gives the usual account of inspection of institutions both
state and county and shows that the commissioner with her very limited
office and inspection force was able to do much more work than would be
expected. On the whole it seems as though the plan of a single headed
commission is a success in the state of Oklahoma.
FEDERAL QUARANTINE AT NEW YORK
THOMAS W. SALMON, M. D.
Attention has again been directed to the unsatisfactory conditions which
prevail in the administration of quarantine inspection at the port of
New York by the report of a special committee of the New York Academy of
Medicine.
This report, which was recently made public, strongly advocated the
national control of quarantine from “the point of view of convenience,
efficiency and uniformity of administration, economy and law.” The
subject aroused discussion in the newspapers a few weeks ago because the
chairman of Governor Sulzer’s commission for the investigation of state
departments urged the transfer of this function to the federal
government.
In the discussion of this recommendation, several important points have
been overlooked. For example, there is some significance in the
discrepancy between the large sums spent by New York on the quarantine
station, which protects the country at large, and the small amount
expended for the State Health Department, upon which rests the
protection of the citizens of the state. Doubtless, as has been pointed
out, the fees charged steamship companies can be increased so that the
state will not be required to make any annual appropriations for the
maintenance of the quarantine station but the health officer of the port
has asked for an appropriation of about $1,800,000 for needed repairs
and improvements. About $180,000 is appropriated for the State
Department of Health each year. This constitutes practically all the
money spent by the state for the protection of the health of its
9,000,000 citizens. Out of it must be paid all salaries and expenses of
administration, the cost of collecting vital statistics, maintaining
laboratories for research and for the production of diphtheria
antitoxin, the control of epidemics, the inspection of water supplies
and, in short, all the work in the prevention of disease in which the
state is engaged. If the Legislature grants the $1,800,000 which the
health officer of the port requests, it will give him an amount equal to
that expended during ten years for safeguarding the health of those
residing in the state.
Closely related to this aspect of the question is the fact, which has
received little attention, that some of the largest immigrant-carrying
lines do not enter New York at all but dock at Hoboken and Jersey City.
Last year more than 36 per cent. of all the passengers who arrived at
this port from Europe landed in New Jersey. The following table shows
the passengers brought during 1912 by steamship lines having docks at
Hoboken and Jersey City:
STEAMSHIP LINES CABIN STEERAGE TOTAL
North German Lloyd 51,920 118,803 170,723
Hamburg American 38,033 98,043 136,076
Holland American 18,611 33,877 52,488
Scandinavian American 5,265 13,064 18,329
Lloyd Sabaudo 652 7,119 7,771
──────────────────────────────────────────────
114,481 270,906 385,387
Less than 30 per cent. of the immigrants who arrived at this port during
the year remained in this state, a large proportion landing in New
Jersey, being examined at Ellis Island and going west by one of the
railroad lines terminating at Jersey City. They were distributed over a
wide area and it cannot be denied that it is chiefly for the protection
of distant states that New York’s expensive quarantine is maintained.
Much has been said about the advantages to commerce of the state control
of quarantine at the port of New York. If $300,000 are collected during
1913 in fees from steamship companies, the amount will equal the
earnings on $7,500,000 of invested capital. In other words, an amount of
capital which would purchase ten large freighters must be set aside to
meet the quarantine dues at this port for one year. If ten such vessels
were tied up at one of the piers in this city for a year, as an object
lesson, we would not hear very much about the advantages to commerce
which local control of quarantine insures.
The tax rate in the Borough of Manhattan for 1911 was 1.72248. At such a
rate it would be necessary to tax $17,000,000 of capital to raise
$300,000 a year. This means that a tax equal to that rate on real estate
in the Borough of Manhattan has to be levied on $17,000,000 of the
capital of steamship companies to pay for a quarantine station, the cost
of which should be borne by the country which it protects.
Another phase of the question which has not been touched upon is the
relation between quarantine and the medical control of immigration. At
ports where the United States Public Health Service administers the
quarantine law and conducts the medical inspection of immigrants, the
two functions are performed under conditions making each more efficient
and also reducing interference with commerce to a minimum. The medical
inspection of immigrants at Ellis Island, which is performed by medical
officers of the United States Public Health Service, constitutes the
second line of quarantine defense and not a few cases of small-pox and
typhus fever which have escaped observation at the state quarantine
station have been detected in the medical examination at Ellis Island.
If both functions were performed by the Public Health Service at this
port the work could be carried on much more effectively and with benefit
to the immigrant—a factor which no one seems to have considered. When
cases of scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria and the other contagious
diseases of childhood were taken off vessels at the state quarantine
station, children died without their mothers, who were detained at Ellis
Island, even being able to visit them once during their illness. At the
same time a magnificent new group of hospitals for contagious diseases
remained idle at Ellis Island. No better example of the danger and
inutility of divided control could be found than this.
WILSON LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY
CAROLINE B. ALEXANDER
Hoboken, N. J.
In attempting a review of the social legislation passed in New Jersey
during the administration of Woodrow Wilson, it is difficult to
disentangle his share in its accomplishment. It is also difficult to
distinguish between purely political measures and those which would be
of special interest to social workers.
Measures for better primaries and corrupt practices acts had been
introduced several times while he was still president of Princeton
University. The Employers’ Liability Act was recommended by a commission
named by his predecessor, Governor Fort. The Consumer’s League and
Federation of Women’s Clubs had been working for a long time to improve
laws relating to the hours and condition of women and children in
industry. At the same time, no one who has been in touch with the
marvelous change which has brought New Jersey to the first rank of
progressive states can fail to realize that in practically one session
of the Legislature the astounding insight, force and influence of one
man achieved what might otherwise have taken years to accomplish. It
must be remembered that almost all the important Wilson legislation was
passed by the Legislature of 1911, when the House was Democratic. The
Senate, although Republican, was brought into line by the governor. The
session of 1912, when both Houses were Republican, produced little
important legislation, and the Legislature of this year up to the time
when President Wilson resigned to assume his duties at Washington passed
but one important measure—that regulating the trusts incorporated in New
Jersey. The jury reform bill is still under discussion and will be the
subject of a special session of the Legislature in May.
I shall attempt to give a list of the laws primarily relating to social
legislation, but the great reforms which will always be associated with
Wilson’s name, although specifically political in their nature, must
have a vast influence on the whole structure of the state. If our
politics become cleaner, inefficiency and graft must gradually disappear
and the citizens will grow to feel that they can trust their
representatives with larger and larger sums to be used for the relief
and care of the wards of the state.
Among these laws perhaps the most important are the following:
Limitation of the working hours of women to sixty a week, the first
regulation of any kind for New Jersey women in industry; appropriation
for the first time for the Woman’s Reformatory which was urged in
Governor Wilson’s message to the legislature of 1911; standardization
of trained nursing; establishment under the State Board of Education
of special classes for children three years below the normal and also
special classes for blind children; provision for the punishment of
any person controlling a public place of amusement who permits the
admission of children under eighteen years without a parent or
guardian, and for any adult who encourages juvenile delinquency;
passage of an act requiring that no pawnbroker shall receive any
article from any person under the age of eighteen years; prohibition
of furnishing cigarettes or tobacco to minors; provision for parental
schools or house of detention for juvenile offenders; appointment of a
special county judge for juvenile and domestic relation cases;
enactment of an act placing New Jersey in the front rank in the
campaign against tuberculosis; prohibition of the use of common
drinking cups; establishment of free dental clinics; regulation of
moving picture shows; employment of prison labor on roads; enactment
of a comprehensive and scientific poor law; regulation of weights and
measures; passage of an indeterminate sentence act; abolition of
contract labor in all prisons and reformatories.
In addition to this legislation, it may be interesting to mention the
appointment of commissions on prison labor, employers’ liability, city
government, public expenditures, ameliorating the condition of the blind
and playgrounds in all cities and villages. Governor Wilson also made
several excellent appointments with entire disregard of politics,
particularly those of his commissioner of education and his commissioner
of charities and corrections. For the first position he brought Dr.
Calvin Kendall from Indiana, and for the second he named Joseph P.
Byers. Excellent appointments were also made to the boards of managers
of the various state institutions.
Governor Wilson with his wife and daughter made a tour of inspection of
all our state institutions, which in contrast to the usual perfunctory
governor’s visit, was most valuable in bringing him in touch with the
superintendents and with the various problems at the different
institutions.
PERSONALS
Francis Greenwood Peabody, Plummer professor of Christian morals in
Harvard University, recently retired from its faculty after service
extending over a generation.
To the observant public he is known chiefly as author of several works
on social ethics, such as The Approach to the Social Question and Jesus
Christ and the Social Question or as a preacher and speaker whose
inspiring thoughts are clothed in remarkably well chosen words. At
Harvard he was a college preacher, and had a leading part in changing
the religious exercises of the College Chapel so that attendance was
voluntary instead of required, and there were ministrations from
clergymen of different denominations. He helped to place the divinity
school on a board basis.
His chief work in the academic world was the significant one of
beginning and developing systematic instruction in the application of
principles of ethics to pressing social problems. Just thirty-three
years ago he began a course of lectures on that subject in the divinity
school of Harvard. Four years later it was made a general university
course for advanced students. In this said Mr. Peabody, there is “a new
opportunity in university instruction. With us it has been quite without
precedent. It summons the young men who have been imbued with the
principles of political economy and of philosophy, to the practical
application of those studies.”
That course at Harvard, with the instruction begun at Cornell in 1884 by
Frank B. Sanborn, under President White, was the beginning of academic
work in this country, specialized and practical, in that field, and at
Harvard it has continued, a systematic development. It is within the
division of Philosophy. This means no lack of appreciation of the
economic forces in society, but it points to the broad highway to
solving vital problems though the field of ethics. This teaching so won
the confidence of a generous donor, prominent alike in business and
philanthropy, that the erection of Emerson Hall was made possible, with
ample quarters for the Department of Social Ethics. Thus Mr. Peabody
leaves the department which he has built up on the solid ground of
continuity.
Among the hundreds of young men who have taken Mr. Peabody’s general
course and his seminary courses, many have been helped by him to be
better citizens and neighbors. Not a few have carried stimulus caught
from him into professional life in social service the country over.
The recent and really remarkable activity of Harvard students in social
service, centering at Phillips Brooks House, was largely founded and
fostered by Mr. Peabody. He has been identified with Prospect Union from
its opening in 1891: a piece of university extension, in whose evening
classes the teachers are college students and the students are all sorts
and conditions of men from mercantile and industrial life in Cambridge.
Long ago, he helped to start co-operative stores, a method of bringing
forward democracy and thrift—which is none the less sound because many
persons were not ready for it. He urged the trial in Massachusetts
cities, under local option, of the foreign system of government
administration of the sale of liquor—to which worse systems may yet
bring us.
He was a leading founder of the Associated Charities of Cambridge. In
these and many other ways he has brought the knowledge of a college
professor, with warm interest, into the affairs of the community.
JEFFREY R. BRACKETT.
* * * * *
The social survey is gaining recognition as an instrument for community
advance so rapidly that the new Department of Surveys and Exhibits of
the Russell Sage Foundation, which was established last October, has
found it necessary to increase its staff. The work of the department
during its first three months has been largely advisory—defining surveys
by specific illustrations, outlining the steps for selecting a
representative committee to back a survey or an exhibit, assisting in
the choice of subjects to be covered and estimating probable costs. The
increase in the staff will facilitate an extension of this service and
make more field work possible. The new members of the staff are Zenas L.
Potter of New York and Franz Schneider, Jr., of Boston.
Mr. Potter is a graduate of the University of Minnesota where he
specialized in administration of governmental problems. This was
followed by a year’s graduate work at Columbia in economics and social
economy, where he received the Toppan prize for the best work in
constitutional law. After leaving Columbia he was field secretary of the
New York Child Labor Committee for two years. He investigated the work
conditions of children in the state, and in 1912 directed the cannery
investigation for the New York State Factory Investigating Commission.
The findings of this inquiry are being used in the campaign for better
laws regulating child labor conditions in New York state.
Mr. Schneider, while taking courses leading to his bachelor’s and
master’s degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave
special attention to subjects in the field of public health and
sanitation. Since 1910 he has taught in the institute, and will leave
the position of research associate in the sanitary research laboratories
to join the Department of Surveys and Exhibits. In the summer of 1911 he
was employed in Kansas on special investigations into the bacteriology
of the egg-packing industry, and during the summer of 1912 on an
investigation into the fundamental principles of ventilation. For the
last year he has helped edit the _American Journal of Public Health_ and
at present is health officer of Wellesley, Mass. The latter work is part
of a plan which is being worked out with Prof. E. B. Phelps, also of the
institute, to build up an organization to operate the Board of Health
work of small towns in the neighborhood of Boston. The aim is to give
these towns a service comparable to that of the large cities, a service
which they alone could not afford.
* * * * *
A young sanitary inspector in a mid-western city had his suspicions of a
new milk company. He never seemed to be able to catch the wagon as it
drove into town, so one day he jumped on his bicycle and rode out to the
farm to get a sample. The man was not there, and his wife said that they
had no milk left on the place that morning. The inspector’s suspicions
were more than ever aroused, and he made a search of ice boxes and
cooling places, only to find no milk. It is a very easy thing for milk
to disappear when an inspector turns in at the gate. Nothing daunted,
therefore, he pulled down a pail from its peg, marched out to the
pasture, cornered a cow, milked her, and, sample in hand, rode back to
the city triumphant.
The health commissioner is wonderfully proud of this spirit of
not-to-be-balkedness in his inspector. He has the makings in him of a
master of public health. But the commissioner felt obliged to explain to
his assistant with as sober a face as he could muster, that up to date
in that part of the commonwealth they had not hitherto arrested a single
cow for putting formaldehyde in her milk or for diluting it.
* * * * *
Childhood’s Bill of Rights, printed some time ago in THE SURVEY[3], has
developed an ever widening influence. One enthusiastic friend sent it
during the past Christmas season to some forty foreign lands. V. H.
Lockwood, author of the bill, is a busy Indianapolis attorney but he
finds time for social service whether called upon to act as judge _pro
tem_ of the juvenile court, as the vice-president of the Children’s Aid
Association, or on a committee of the State Conference of Charities. His
special interest just now is the work of the vice committee of the
Indianapolis Church Federation.
Mr. Lockwood, long ago, became interested in the juvenile court. He was
frequently consulted by Judge Stubbs, the first juvenile court judge in
Indiana, and for several years was one of his substitutes on the bench.
Out of this experience grew the Bill of Rights which was jotted down in
his notebook years ago. From it grew also the Children’s Aid
Association, which Mr. Lockwood helped to organize for the purpose of
saving children from being taken into court. He has also co-operated in
drafting several of Indiana’s laws for the safeguarding of children,
particularly those having to do with the juvenile court, contributory
delinquency, the licensing of maternity hospitals and children’s
institutions, and child labor.
[Illustration:
MRS. V. H. LOCKWOOD
]
To Mrs. Lockwood, however, is due most of the credit in connection with
Indiana’s child labor law. She has for several years been secretary of
the State Child Labor Committee and has been active in other welfare
work. Two years spent under the direction of the National Child Labor
Committee in investigating conditions in Indiana armed her with facts
which were used effectively before the two legislatures which considered
the child labor bill. The first attempt met with defeat, but the next
session passed the present law. Between the two sessions Mrs. Lockwood
traveled over the state, working to educate the people through the clubs
and schools. She is one of the lecturers of the Indiana Federation of
Clubs, and takes a part in many branches of social welfare work in
Indianapolis.
* * * * *
A Sunny Life: The biography of Samuel June Barrows, is the title of a
volume which Little, Brown and Company are to bring out in April. The
author is Mrs. Barrows. Readers of THE SURVEY who knew the former
president of the International Prison Congress, but who had only
glimpses of his remarkable experiences as editor, congressman, minister,
digger of Greek temples, and follower of Custer on the plains, will look
forward to this record of the man by his comrade and fellow worker of
fifty years.
* * * * *
Floyd J. Miller, who has been in newspaper work for six years, has left
the staff of the Detroit _Free Press_ to become financial secretary of
the Detroit Associated Charities.
TREND
From the pages of John Gower, a correspondent of the New York _Evening
Post_ takes the following passage, in the hope that the trials of a
housekeeper in the fifteenth century may bring consolation to the
householder of today. Says the worthy Gower:
Man is so constituted as to require above all else food and drink. So
it is no wonder if I speak of victualers, whose principle it is to
deceive and to practice fraud. I will begin, as an instance, with the
tavern-keeper and his wine-cellar.... If his red or white wine loses
its proper color, he mixes it freely to procure the proper shade....
If I stop in to fill my flask, he gives me of his best wine to taste,
and then fills my flask with some cheap stuff. He pretends to have any
foreign vintage that one desires, but under divers names he draws ten
kinds from the same barrel.... The poor people complain with reason
that their beer is made from an inferior quality of grain, while good
beer is almost as dear as wine. If you give an order for beer to be
delivered at the house, the inn-keeper will send a good quality once
or twice until he gets your trade, and then he sends worse at the same
price.... Every one in the city is complaining of the short-weight
loaves the bakers sell, and wheat is stored with the intention to
boost the price of bread.... Whether you buy at wholesale or retail,
you have to pay the butcher twice the right price for beef and lamb.
Lean beef is fattened by larding it, but the skewers are left in and
ruin the carver’s knife.... To fetch their price, butchers often hold
back meat until it is bad, when they try to sell it rather than cast
it to the dogs.... Poulterers sell as fresh game what has been killed
ten days before(!)... For my own part, I can dispense with partridges,
pheasants, and plovers. But capons and geese are almost as high
nowadays as hens.
Yet, if all those of whom I have spoken agreed to be fair and just,
there would still be unfairness in the world. For even laborers are
unfair, and will not willingly subject themselves to what is
reasonable, claiming high wages for little work; they want five or six
shillings for the work they formerly did for two. In old times
workingmen did not expect to eat wheat bread, but were satisfied with
coarser bread and with water to drink, regarding cheese and milk as a
treat. I cannot find one servant of that sort now in the market (_i.
e._, intelligence office!). They are all extravagant in their dress,
and it would be easier to satisfy two gentlemen than one such ill-bred
servant. They are neither faithful, polite, or well-behaved. Many are
too proud to serve like their fathers.... The fault lies with the
lethargy of the gentry, who pay no heed to this folly of the lower
classes; but, unless care be taken, these tares will soon spring up,
and the insurgence of these classes is to be feared like a flood or a
fire.
The trouble is that no one is satisfied with his own estate; lord,
prelate, commoner—each accuses the other. The lower classes blame the
gentleman and the townsman, and the upper classes blame the lower, and
all is in confusion.... The days prophesied by Hosea are come to pass,
when there shall be no wisdom in the earth. I know not if the fault
lie with laymen or churchmen, but all unite in the common cry: “the
times are bad, the times are bad.”
* * * * *
Annie Laws (_Kindergarten Review_) believes that she can trace the
social spirit of the kindergartner as an important factor in
stimulating, and in some cases, even initiating, many of the social
movements of today, among them playgrounds, social centers, vacation
schools, public libraries, mothers’ clubs and school and home gardens.
The relation between the kindergarten and the big world outside the
kindergarten Miss Laws states as follows:
Some one has said that “the primary aim of the kindergarten is to
create a miniature world which shall be to the child a faithful
portrait of the greater world in its ideal aspects.”
If the kindergarten can bring to each and all of us its aid in helping
us to create for ourselves a miniature world, which shall be a
faithful portrait of the greater world in its ideal aspects; and if it
can aid in making us content to give to our communities the service
for which we are best fitted, and can teach us to so live that not so
much social efficiency as social reciprocity shall be our aim and
purpose, then we shall all agree to give to the kindergarten its true
place as one of the most valuable factors of social life and social
work of the present time, one worthy of our best thought and effort.
* * * * *
A CONTRAST
LAURA SIMMONS
Across the gloom a shadow flits; I glimpse a sodden face
Wherein the years of sin and toil and care have left their trace:
A wanton laugh—I mark no more, for yonder in the glow
One waiteth me—my love, my star! with welcoming, I know:
Tender and fine is she: withal so stately sweet and fair
My grateful heart thrills to Heaven, to see her standing there!
If this be Woman—pure, benign, Man’s blessed beacon-light,
Then—Christ! What that poor outcast soul that passed me in the night?
* * * * *
The following striking comparison is from The Road from Jerusalem to
Jericho (_Good Housekeeping_), a plea by Frances Duncan for votes for
women on the ground that woman is the ideal samaritan; man the priest
and the Levite who at the present time alone has the power, but lacks
the inclination, to stoop to care for the injured by righting social
wrongs, especially those affecting women. Miss Duncan tells of a
haunting drawing by Frederick Remington:
The central figure is that of a man who has been taken by a band of
Indians; four or five of his captors are about him, and you see the
relentless faces lit with the grim joy of capture. Around the man’s
neck a noose hangs loosely; about him he sees only the inexorable
faces, the wide stretches of the plains, the silences in which there
is no help. The man looks past the plains into the ghastly future that
is just ahead. The picture is called “Missing.”
In this country hardly a day goes by but in it is enacted a tragedy
worse than that of Remington’s picture; and it’s called by the same
name. Take up a paper almost any day in New York and you read of the
disappearance of a girl of fourteen or fifteen or sixteen, or of the
suicide of a girl who has been caught in the horrible undertow from
which, as far as society is concerned, there is no return. Within the
last year, on the various routes between New York and Chicago, no less
than nine hundred and sixty girls have disappeared.
* * * * *
THE UNDER DOGS
HORATIO WINSLOW in the _Coming Nation_
If I had not heard the bitter cry,
If I had not seen the bleeding feet—
I think I should echo the salving lie
That toil is jolly and chains are sweet.
If I had not walked the bedless night,
If I had not lived the mealless day—
I think I should censure the appetite
Of thieves that pilfer and fools that slay.
If I had not heard and seen and felt
And wept for lack of a pathway out—
Most like I should pat an expansive belt
And say nice things of the Russian knout.
* * * * *
A woman of philanthropic tendencies was paying a visit to a lower East
Side school. She was particularly interested in a group of poor pupils
and asked permission to question them.
“Children, which is the greatest of all virtues?”
No one answered.
“Now, think a little. What is it I am doing when I give up time and
pleasure to come and talk with you for your own good?”
A grimy hand went up in the rear of the room.
“Please, ma’am, youse are buttin’ in.”—_The Delineator._
* * * * *
The _Ladies Home Journal_ believes that, no less than factory and
commercial worker, the oldest of home workers—the “domestic”—should be
protected by standardization of wages, hours and living conditions. An
editorial in the March issue says:
There is today practically no standard of wages for domestic help. The
wages vary in different cities: in fact they vary in a city and a
neighboring suburb. One “employment agency” fixes one wage: another
settles on a different wage. There is no equitable fairness either to
mistress or servant. No one really knows what is fair. The same
haphazard system applies to hours of work. Neither employer nor
servant knows what constitutes a fair day’s work for a cook or a maid.
The whole question should be threshed out and adjusted to a standard
just as are other branches of labor. Whether the eight-hour idea can
be effectively worked out in the home is a question: more likely we
shall have to begin on a ten-hour-day basis and gradually adjust
ourselves to an eight-hour schedule with extra pay for extra hours.
Employer and helper should know exactly where each stands on both
questions of hours and wages. There is no further reason why,
gradually, the system of our servants living outside of our homes
should not be generally brought into vogue—the same as the working
women engaged in all business lines. It is now done in “flats” and
“apartments” where there is no room for servants’ quarters, and there
is really no reason why the system should not be followed in houses
where there is room. This would give a freedom of life to the servant
that she does not now have, and which lack of freedom, and hours of
her own and a life of her own, is the chief source of objection to
domestic service, while the employers’ gain would lie in the fact that
our homes could be smaller in proportion to the number of servants for
whom we must now have rooms. In other words there seems to be no
practical reason, except a blind adherence to custom, why the worker
in the home should not be placed on exactly the same basis as the
worker in the office, the store or the factory. That this idea is
destined to come in the future, and in the near future, admits of no
doubt. Of course it will take some time to consider all the phases of
the matter that make home service different from office or store
service. But we shall never solve the question of domestic service
until we first place it on a practical business basis.
* * * * *
In the library of Clark University the volumes of Charles Booth’s Life
and Labor of London are bound under the title A Survey of London.
BOOKS
THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY
By WARREN H. WILSON. The Pilgrim Press. 221 pp. Price $1.25; by mail
of THE SURVEY $1.35.
Because Dr. Wilson has made a clear and pointed statement of fundamental
conditions, the student of rural sociology is grateful for this book,
even though much of what it contains is obvious to him. Throughout, the
writer shows his belief that the rural population can be improved by a
socially actuated church. Although he believes that a country church
should be inspirational he makes clear the fact that the church cannot
succeed unless it enters into the whole life of the farm, economic and
otherwise. For instance, Dr. Wilson very properly insists that if a
farmer is producing but sixty bushels of potatoes on an acre of land
which should yield three hundred bushels he is guilty of a wrong that
should be denounced just as stridently as the doctrinal sins which have
so long occupied the attention of rural pastors. In the co-operation of
these activities rather than in actual union the writer sees promise of
a solution of many of the problems of the country church. He shows
clearly that people cannot be united in religion until they are united
in their social economy.
“The business of the church is to organize co-operative enterprises,
economic, social and educational, and ... to educate them in the
advantages of life together. Co-operation must become a gospel.”
This definition of the business of the church may seem rather heterodox,
coming from the head of a Presbyterian department, but the department of
which Dr. Wilson is the head has reached its widely recognized
effectiveness because it has been actuated by such aggressive common
sense as this.
That the volume is dedicated to Anna B. Taft, who has contributed so
largely to the success of the movement to reanimate country churches, is
indeed pleasant. Dr. Wilson adds to the value of the volume by giving
many definite instances of definite achievement in the redirection of
country life through the church’s activity.
The book is well named; it does present in an orderly fashion the
development of the country community. Dr. Wilson follows Professor Ross
of Purdue in his definition of the four types of farmers—the pioneer,
the land farmer, the exploiter, and the husbandman. The writer very
happily shows that in many communities the evolution has proceeded so
irregularly that all the four types of farmers are now living side by
side, and that their four sides may be contending for mastery. That the
pastor and the church ministering to the farmer of each type are
determined by that type is a clearly stated lesson that social workers
outside of rural communities might very well take to heart.
Some communities, Dr. Wilson recognizes, are exceptional. He apparently
agrees with Prof. T. N. Carver of Harvard that the best farmers in the
country are the Mormons, the Scotch Presbyterians, and the Pennsylvania
Germans. Each one of these peoples—for they are no less—has come to
agricultural prosperity because this agriculture has been built around
the church. The organization of the Mormons, for instance, is not only
efficient, but it revolves around the church. Dr. Wilson might very well
have gone further in this connection and called attention to the fact
that the leaders of the Latter Day Saints have made their people happy,
here and now, by realizing that all their wants—social, economic,
religious, political—were so closely interrelated that they must all be
taken care of by collective action.
As a clear and well-proportioned statement, characterized by ample
knowledge, careful statement and good temper, the book is valuable.
WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER.
CONSTRUCTIVE RURAL SOCIOLOGY
By JOHN M. GILLETTE. introduction by George E. Vincent, president of
the University of Minnesota. New York, Sturgis & Walton. 301 pp. Price
$1.60; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.75.
There can be no doubt that this work is constructive if we remember that
adequate information is the beginning of all sound construction. The
book is packed with information on all phases of rural life. Whether it
is sociology or not depends upon one’s point of view and one’s bringing
up. It may be economics. Among the eighteen chapters there are included
such topics as Rural and Urban Increase (IV), Improvement of
Agricultural Production (VII), Improving the Business Side of Farming
(VIII), and Rural and Social Institutions and Their Improvement (XV and
XVI). There are numerous tables and illustrations, including an
interesting map of a rural Methodist parish.
One of the most interesting chapters is entitled Social Aspects of Land
and Labor in the United States, though in the first paragraph the reader
is confronted with the statement that “The nation’s population is
ultimately determined by the amount of its arable land.” This is
doubtless a casual statement and ought not to be allowed to mar what is
otherwise an excellent chapter. Of course it is only the nation’s rural
population which is ultimately determined by its arable land. So long as
foreign markets hold out, there is no limit to the urban population
short of lack of building room. Or one might say that the population of
a nation which aims to be self-contained, or physically self-supporting
as distinct from commercially self-supporting, is limited by its arable
land. The reviewer does not remember to have seen so good a discussion
of the problem of agricultural labor as is found in this chapter.
Probably the most valuable chapter is the one on Rural Health and
Sanitation. The author outlines the problem and presents in systematic
order the dangers to rural health and the methods of safeguarding
against them. Under such heads as Water, Garbage and Sewage, Insects and
Animals, Foods, and Transmissible Diseases, he sets forth the chief
problems of farm sanitation, and emphasizes the need of co-operation in
neighborhood sanitation.
The book is a substantial contribution to the growing problem of rural
life and rural adjustment. The author shows a first hand knowledge of
the subject which he treats, and a wide familiarity with statistical and
other documentary sources of information. All sincere students owe him a
debt of gratitude.
T. N. CARVER.
STARVING AMERICA
By ALFRED W. MCCANN. F. M. Barton. 270 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of
THE SURVEY $1.61.
This is an adulterating age. The organized exploitation of the primary
wants of civilized mankind, the demand for products prepared for
immediate consumption, the stimulation of new desires by unprecedented
advertising campaigns, the conspicuous consumption of the rich and the
unreasoning imitation of the richer by the poorer, the ever lengthening
cycle of production from raw material to finished product, the fierce
competition among manufacturers and dispensers of goods, the rising cost
of living, and more than all, the amazing carelessness of the purchasing
public, especially with regard to articles of food and clothing, have
caused the adulterators to multiply and flourish and have developed
adulteration to a fine art.
The exposure of various forms of food impurities and adulterants,
harmless or criminal, is neither new nor unpublished. Few men in our
country are better known than Harvey Wiley, and Wiley in the popular
mind stands as the champion of pure food and the implacable foe of
fraudulent food distributors. No person who reads or listens but knows
something of Wiley and something of impure food supplies.
Mr. McCann, whose book under the sensational title of Starving America
has recently appeared, is no less valiant than Wiley in his promulgation
of pure-food propaganda. Almost unknown, unsupported by the scientific
training and the official standing which Wiley possesses, this dark
champion girds on his armor and heroically enters the lists, shouting,
“I’ll tell the truth if I die for it.” Of course there’s no danger of
his dying for it. Speaking logically, the conclusion seems to be that
the rest of us will die of starvation if we refuse to heed his speaking.
In general the book supports two theses:
First, that the mineral constituents of foods are much more important in
body building than food chemists and dietitians are aware; in fact, that
we are either literally starving ourselves and our children by
eliminating the ash from our bread, meat, potatoes, rice and other
foods, or we are rendering our bodies susceptible to disease—such as
tuberculosis—through failure to supply certain mineral defenses to the
tissues. The essential ashes, always present in food stuffs—vegetable or
animal—in their original raw state, are removed in the manufacture or in
the cooking. Wholesome nutritious whole wheat bread and unpolished rice
are set over against the insidious, emasculated, mineral-denuded white
bread and polished rice—real whited sepulchers, beautiful but deadly.
In the development of this thesis Mr. McCann presents some facts already
published and fully accepted, and an array of startling statements. Most
of his reasoning is, of course, deductive, because scientists have
little authentic data to offer on the effect of the various mineral
elements or the lack of them, much less on the most desirable methods of
introducing them into the human system. Though neither a university man,
nor a graduate chemist, it appears that the author has had exceptional
opportunities to study biochemistry as an amateur; and formerly, as
advertising agent of a large food industry he spent much time in the
food laboratory of the concern. Notwithstanding these qualifications,
which he fully sets forth in his preface, some of his conclusions, for
example the vital importance of ash in the system and the dire results
of our ordinary dietary, though analogically sound, fail to convince the
student and perhaps the layman.
On his second proposition, that an astonishing variety and an appalling
quantity of our foods are poisonously adulterated both legally and
criminally, the author stands on sure ground. Candies, ice-cream,
extracts, patent medicines, preservatives, coloring materials are
handled without reserve. The argument is supported almost wholly by old
material, rather familiar to the magazine reading public; but the
cumulative evidence, followed by a dissertation on the appalling and
preventable infant death rate gives strength and conviction to the
presentation.
The author is not merely destructive. He urges a campaign of education
through the public press and pleads for courses and demonstrations of
pure food stuffs and their effects in our schools and colleges. He has
formulated a practical dietary, a daily menu for a week, of simple,
wholesome food, based on the principles he has worked out, for children
three years of age and over. His own children have thrived wonderfully
on it. He describes in one of the most satisfactory chapters in the book
an ideal restaurant that appeals both to one’s common sense and to his
appetite.
On the whole the book is timely and deserves a wide reading. In the
endeavor to catch the public ear by the presentation of a lurid array of
facts under a sensational title I fear the author has overshot the mark.
Thoughtful readers are likely to discount much that apparently has a
reasonable basis of scientific study merely because of the overstraining
after startling statement. The author’s style is not altogether
pleasing, nor does it always carry conviction nor inspire confidence in
the author. It is not a great book nor an epoch-making one, but it bears
the stamp of sincerity, provided one reads to the end, and calls
attention to a number of awful truths that should give us pause. The
keynote of progress is “light and enlightenment,” rather than
repression.
ALEXANDER E. CANCE.
THE THREE GIFTS OF LIFE
By NELLIE M. SMITH. Dodd, Mead & Co. 138 pp. Price $.50; by mail of
THE SURVEY $.56
The market is flooded with publications on education with reference to
sex, and most of them are the product of superficial or one-sided
knowledge and a ready pen. The emphasis is unduly put on disease because
most writers are so impressed by the results of ignorance that they find
it impossible to take the attitude of the normal, healthy individual
whom they are trying to reach.
Among this mass of material, there have been two or three books which
could be put into the hands of young girls, but even these should be
used with care. The large demand for a good book and our failure to meet
it has been a source of anxiety to all who have appreciated the dire
need which it voiced. Then came The Three Gifts of Life, which answers
the appeal for knowledge concerning the mysteries of reproduction,
showing the origin of life in plants, animals and human beings—not
detached as physiological fact but interwoven in ordinary experience.
The Three Gifts are the three attributes by which the different forms of
life progress: i.e., dependence, as illustrated by plants; instinct,
plus dependence, as shown by animals; choice, plus dependence and
instinct, which are given to every human being.
Throughout the interesting account of plant and animal reproduction,
Miss Smith is working through the law of progress to the girls’
responsibility in the life of the race, showing how the reproductive
instinct can be made into a race instinct by means of the gift of
choice. The one adverse criticism I should make is calling any gift of
the flowers “poor” even in comparison. When the marvels of plant and
animal life are being so wonderfully revealed, there is a singular
opportunity to communicate the thrill and zest which come from close
contact with Nature: there is nothing poor in the “scheme of things.”
The book does not warn girls against men’s companionship; it does not
describe the horrors of venereal diseases; it does not frighten them
into a fear of all mankind by giving the details of prostitution. It
does not prophesy changes which take place during the adolescent period,
so that attention will be concentrated on a whole new set of feelings
which may or may not appear. On the contrary, it is all positive and
sane, and is by far the best book we have for educational work with
girls.
MARION E. DODD.
EVE’S OTHER CHILDREN
By LUCILLE BALDWIN VAN SLYKE. Fred’k A. Stokes. 275 pp. Price $1.00;
by mail of THE SURVEY $1.10.
Mrs. Van Slyke has chosen as her special field of interest the Syrian
quarter of Brooklyn, and the result of her observations she has given us
in a short dozen of stories, grouped under the title, Eve’s Other
Children. With considerable skill and great charm, through the medium of
little Nazileh, she permits us to see into the mind of the Oriental
“within our gates.” Each tale illustrates some Syrian custom or legend
or characteristic, picturesquely trying to maintain itself in this
matter-of-fact “land of Brooklyn.”
Those looking for diversion will find it in these tales; those looking
for something deeper will find that also. While the association of the
Oriental with other immigrants is rather casually treated, the relation
between the Syrian population and the Americans with whom they come in
contact has been a matter of careful observation and thought on the part
of the writer. Between the lines, one feels her protest against the
current attitude toward this peculiarly sensitive alien. Teacher and
social worker, as well as the Tommy O’Brien’s and Geraldine Schmidt’s of
the neighborhood, constantly offend the little Syrians by referring to
them as “dagos.” Throughout these stories, like a plaintive refrain,
runs the explanation of little Nazileh: “Oxcuse—me, I ees not a dago—I
Syreean!”
To deal rightly with these children it is not enough to study only the
outward type. Not to blunder one must know the unique workings of their
minds, their superstitions, their strong racial traits. To illustrate:
Baby Antar has a new tooth, to Nazileh a most important event. A certain
native dish must be prepared to do the occasion justice. But she is so
poor and her mother works so hard! Suddenly Nazileh remembers that
“Teacher” has admired her Mashallah beads; she will give fifty cents for
them. Without them, the child is defenseless before the “evil eye,” but
a Syrian custom is at stake; she must not falter. The teacher buys them
gaily, without suspicion that she has taken from the frightened child
her most valued and valuable possession.
Nor is the philanthropist always understanding:
Nazileh’s most striking trait is her passionate love for her baby
brother. Two ladies stop her ramshackle perambulator in the street.
Antar has prickly heat. The ladies discuss ways and means; they talk of
“district tickets” and “transfer stubs.” Then the awful word
“Freshairfund” escapes them, and in a second two flying legs and four
wobbly wheels are all that are seen of Nazileh and her precious burden.
“That Freshairfun,” she gasps from a safe distance, “eet steal sweet
little babees from their homes. I weesh”—she stopped in delight at the
American oath she was about to utter—“I weesh a gosh on eet!”
It is a great pity to deal clumsily with the Oriental, for no one can
lay down this book without feeling that there are exquisite qualities
lurking in the Syrian quarter, qualities that we as a people need.
Nazileh, gay, sad, loving, poetic, mischievous little girl, always
courteous, never shrewd, seems to represent the best type of Syrian
child. We need her filial devotion, her deference to old age, her fine
hold on tradition in this rough and ready civilization of ours.
Evidently the high tide of immigration that washes in so many problems,
brings treasure also. How can we capture it?
With much that is beautiful and picturesque, the book leaves on our
minds also the impression of great hardship, of overwork and underpay,
of little children driven indoors out of the sunlight to ply a wearisome
trade; of young girls fighting for existence in the misery of the
sweat-shop.
But the author’s sympathetic understanding and charming interpretation
of Oriental ideas, scenes, and customs mitigate the somberness even of
the final tale, which gives the title to the book. The story is told by
Nazileh’s sad young mother arrayed in bright Oriental garb for the
Syrian Christmas, when the camel comes with gifts,—“And when Eve saw God
coming, she hid all her unsightly children in a dark cave and only her
pretty children were washed and dressed for God to see....” The lame,
the halt, the blind, and those pursued of poverty,—these are “Eve’s
Other Children.”
MARY BANNISTER WILLARD.
COMMUNICATIONS
TREAT BOTH ALIKE
TO THE EDITOR:
In most phases of life it is the little things that count. In the matter
of prostitution we have heard so much about the big things—the
inevitableness of it, because the man wants it, because the girl may
have more money than her pay-envelope brings her, and the necessity for
changing public opinion before any change in dealing with the situation
can become effective—that we have become well-nigh overwhelmed by the
magnitude of the evil. Yet, may we not expect shortly to gain public
approval for two small and difficult yet perfectly feasible changes of
method in handling the situation? These are my two suggestions:
1. When a house is raided, take all found in the house, women and men
and put their names on the police-blotter.
2. Then, examine these people for venereal disease. Restrain the
liberty of all the diseased, both women and men, till they are cured.
I am one of those heretics who are not particularly concerned with the
exact law covering the matter at the present time in any particular
place; it suffices me to know that not everywhere are these two
regulations in force; nor does declaring unconstitutional the ordinances
dealing with these things bother me. I am tremendously interested in
seeing that these ideas get across.
When the public has made these two suggestions part of its conviction of
the right way of doing things, then we will find the way to formulate
workable, constitutional regulations embodying these suggestions.
“They” tell us that it is an infringement of the liberty of the
individual when the women taken for soliciting or in houses are examined
for disease. Most certainly it is. And practically all the other laws on
our books curtail the liberty of the individual.
But, it is an infringement of the right of the community when men and
woman with venereal disease go about freely. The community is interested
in its own perpetuation. Therefore, it is interested that the
prospective and the actual husband shall be just as clean from disease
as the girl.
But, “they” say such handling of the situation does not meet the
economic objection; these suggestions do not even attempt to provide
more cash for the girl. Good, the suggestions do not solve the problem
for her; that is just the point. She must solve it for herself. That is
the only salvation worth having. Yet, not simply by herself and for
herself. She will probably fail, if she attempts it alone. But, joining
forces with other girls and working together, success will probably
follow and there will probably be a greater amount of cash in the
pay-envelope. That is worth most to the individual which is conquered
into the person, not received as gift.
Putting these suggestions into practice will diminish greatly the number
who “have to have it.” It will make sinning less popular.
MORGAN T. RILEY.
New York.
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION
TO THE EDITOR:
In your issue of March 22 there is a reference and quotation from the
statement of “Principles and Policies that Should Underlie State
Legislation for a State System of Vocational Education,” adopted at the
December meeting of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial
Education in Philadelphia, that tends to give a wrong impression of the
attitude of the society regarding the matter of dual control referred to
in Professor Dewey’s very clear and forcible article in the same
issue.[4]
It may be stated without reservation that the executive committee of the
society are unanimously of the belief that the best way to administer
the new provisions for industrial education rapidly being enacted into
laws in various states is by a state board of education which has all
forms of education under its control.
The committee that developed the statement, however, recognized that in
some states where no board of education exists and state control is
represented by a superintendent of instruction, it is possible that the
initial development of this new work may be best secured for a short
period by a separate board of control. This point of view is embodied in
a paragraph relating to state control in the statement of “principles
and policies,” as follows:
“Effective administrative control, on the part of the state, of both
vocational and general education, requires the existence of a State
Board possessing sufficient powers, effectively to supervise all forms
of education receiving financial aid from the state. Should such a
board not exist, in any state, or should it be found that an existing
board is unprepared to deal effectively with the establishment and
promotion of vocational education, then it is expedient that a special
administrative Board of Control for Vocational Education shall be
established until such time as a state board properly qualified to
deal with all forms of state-aided education shall exist.”
The feeling of the representative committee which formulated the
statement of “principles and policies” and which gave it careful
consideration and discussion at the meeting at Philadelphia, was that
such a separation of control while not desirable as a permanent
arrangement, might under some circumstances be of value in effectively
launching the new movement, might better secure a fair trial of new
methods, and better arouse public opinion to its consideration.
The paragraphs quoted in THE SURVEY do not relate to the matter of state
control, which is the point under discussion in Professor Dewey’s paper,
but to the question of separateness of instruction being accorded
vocational schools and classes. By separate organization in this
connection is meant a separate school organization. Separation to this
extent, it is safe to say, a great majority of teachers and other
educators who have been intimately connected with real work in
industrial education (not merely with manual training as an element in
the general course of study), thoroughly believe in as essential to
effective results in this field. Such separateness of organization as is
specified in the quoted paragraphs, is typified by the organization of
the Manhattan Trade Schools for Girls, by the New York Vocational School
for Boys, and by the various other vocational schools at Rochester,
Albany and Buffalo in this state, all of which are administered by
regular local school boards.
C. R. RICHARDS.
[Director Cooper Union.]
New York.
TODAY IT IS SPRING
TO THE EDITOR:
Today it is Spring and in office and in schools, we find ourselves
forgetting our work and leaning back to breathe the soft, warm air. Why
is it that the Spring fever fills every one’s veins, and we find
ourselves caring so little about the important interests upon which our
minds were fixed. Why do we turn to dreaming of fields and blue
distances and mornings when we discovered that some one was in love with
us. On such days as these, for a few moments, the school-teacher _must_
stop schooling, the trader _must_ stop trading, the reformer _must_ stop
reforming. What is the meaning of this? It is God’s holiday.
In these moments we learn one of the great lessons of life. After all,
it is the cosmic forces that make the world. We learn the great lesson
of trust. Little do our efforts accomplish to brighten and beautify the
world. But when the Spring comes, even in Mulberry street the children
sing and shout, and soft gray buds are ready to burst from the few trees
in Alton Park Place.
In these moments we learn the highest, best in life: that which comes
not from our own efforts but is the gift of God.
CLARENCE D. BLACHLY.
Chicago.
AN INVITATION FROM CUBA
TO THE EDITOR:
The Woman’s Club of Havana would be very grateful if when social workers
of the United States anticipate visiting our city they would kindly let
us know as we want to avail ourselves of any opportunity to get in touch
with their work.
Our club is young and working under unusual circumstances. It is
composed of Cubans and Americans. A cordial welcome and appreciative
hearing would be given to any one willing to help us by speaking before
the club.
We feel that all such courtesies not only strengthen the union between
our countries but make for the better understanding and development of
both.
IONE R. VAN GORDEN.
[Secretary Woman’s Club of Havana.]
SHOPPERS’ PUZZLE
In reading THE SURVEY of March 29, I was interested in the Shoppers’
Puzzle on page 913. It certainly seems unfair to people employed all
during the week in offices and factories to deprive them of their only
opportunity to do their shopping Saturday afternoons. On the other hand
while they are having their half holiday the clerks who wait on them are
deprived of the half holiday so much needed during the hot summer
months.
Would it not be possible, however, for the St. Louis Consumers’ League
to arrange with the heads of the department stores to give the customary
half holiday on some other day—say Thursday or Friday?
I was in England last June and there was a great deal of discussion in
the papers over the enforcement of a law compelling a weekly half
holiday in every line of business. In London business was suspended at 1
P. M. Saturday, but in Oxford we learned to our sorrow that the closing
day was Thursday.
One of our party being in need of a dentist one Thursday afternoon we
started out to find one about 2 o’clock. Not one was to be seen until
9:30 Friday morning, we were told. “The next best thing, we decided,
would be to consult a druggist or “chemist,” but there again we were met
with barred doors and drawn curtains. Finally appealing to a “bobby” we
were directed to a shop where we could ring a night bell and get some
attention. When we told the chemist that in America the drug stores were
always open even when other places of business were closed he said that
in England it was against the law. He also explained that the country
towns in England had the half holiday during the week as Saturday was
the country market day. In Winchester the closing day was Wednesday.
This is offered as one answer, though there may be better ones for this
modern industrial puzzle.
JEAN ALLISON.
Allentown, Pa.
THE RINGING OF THE BELL
TO THE EDITOR:
In your issue of March 15, 1913, you describe the ringing of a bell,
every five minutes, to indicate the unearned increment of $1,000 in New
York city real estate. This corresponds to a yearly increase of a little
over $106,000,000. As stated further on, however, the community takes
over $57,000,000 of this, directly, in taxes. It is perfectly true that
the industries of the city account for the increase in value. But, on
the other hand, the men who own and have built skyscrapers on the land
have made the space in which the community lives. The land area itself
is utterly inadequate for the business and living room of the community.
There does not seem to be any great injustice in leaving for the men who
have bought and improved and who manage this land, between 40 and 43 per
cent of the increase, especially as the increase is itself subject to an
increased assessment and progressive taxation.
Looking at the matter in another way, the owner of land in New York is
allowed a trifle over 1½ per cent a year interest on his investment.
Unless he makes a high rate of interest on the buildings, and the
general experience for most cities is that 5 per cent on a realty
investment is rather beyond the average, it does not appear that his
profits are usurious.
A comparatively small fraction of the great fortunes of the country is
invested in realty, and for the country as a whole real estate is the
safeguard of the poor but thrifty. To reduce rents below the average
interest on conservative investments is to discourage thrift and home
owning. Temporarily and to a small degree increase of land tax will
stimulate building and thereby, by disturbing the relation of supply and
demand, reduce rents. But this effect will last only until those who
hold unsalable land have made the best of a bad investment. No one will
continue to engage in any kind of a business beyond the point at which
it yields a return fairly equivalent to that obtainable in other lines.
It is almost an axiom that 4 per cent of the total cost of any kind of a
building must be allowed for taxes, insurance, repairs, depreciation,
&c. As much as 9 or 10 per cent of the investment must therefore be
charged in rentals, to equal even quiet investments which require very
little personal attention. In a small town or in suburbs, where the land
value is about $200 for a twenty-foot front lot, a cottage can be built,
with proper plumbing and lighting equipment, so as to represent a total
investment of somewhat less than $1,000. This corresponds to a yearly
rental of $90, or thereabouts. How far the enormously increased land
value can be counterbalanced by building on a large scale, but with
inevitably more expensive material, is a question to be carefully
considered. But the rental must be calculated on a business basis unless
the problem is solved by a frank reversion to charity.
While it is unfortunate that any one should be poor, it does not seem
strange that 30 per cent of the earnings of the very poor, in a city
where there is literally too little land for the inhabitants, should go
for a home. Rent nowadays often includes water, care of exterior of
premises, and sometimes heat and light. A generation ago 25 per cent,
without any of these extras, was considered a fair average for the
moderately well-to-do family.
A. L. BENEDICT, M.D.
[Editor _Buffalo Medical Journal_.]
Buffalo.
THE BABY GARDEN
TO THE EDITOR:
As long as most mothers were able to stay at home and personally care
for their babies, the care of children remained an individual matter.
But, present economic conditions which force so many young mothers to
earn a living away from their homes and babies, present this problem.
How shall these babies be adequately cared for, in their mother’s
absence?
The public nurseries are charitable institutions for the children of the
poor. The middle-class working women, who earn enough to pay a little
for the care of their babies, are not permitted to leave their little
ones in them. But, even if they are permitted to do so, no intelligent
mother would be willing to do so. For these nurseries attempt to
minister only to physical wants. Although the needs of the child at
infancy seem to be largely physical, we know, that from the day of its
birth, the infant is getting impressions and forming habits. The manner
in which we satisfy his needs, the habits which he forms under our care,
shape his future character,—and yet, the training of the so-called
trained nurses in charge of the average nursery, enables them to attend
to the physical needs only. We all realize the need of professionally
trained teachers for the kindergarten and school age. Is it not equally
important to have trained specialists at infancy, the most important
stage of Childhood?
Though the present day nurseries need improvement, their charges fare
better than those left at home, to the mercy of hired servants. The
collective work of an institution carries with it a sense of social
responsibility for those entrusted to its care. What sense of
responsibility can we expect from an ignorant hired servant? The
self-supporting mother of moderate means has no alternative. She must
either give up her work and sometimes deprive her family of the
necessities of existence or else abandon her babe to the hands of an
ignorant servant.
Women of means can hire trained specialists for their babies. The poor
are helped by settlement nurseries, but the intelligent self-supporting
mothers, such as school-teachers and journalists, are utterly helpless,
each groping blindly with her own individual problem that can no longer
be solved individually. These women, while compelled to do a man’s work,
never can have that singleness of mind that a man has while attending to
his business.
The problem faced by these mothers can be solved only by social
co-operative measures. The establishment of a new type of public nursery
to meet the demands of intelligent mothers is now under way. To
distinguish it from the prevailing nurseries it is to be called “the
baby garden.” The children are to be divided into the following groups
according to age: Infants of one year or less; babies from a year to two
years; those from two to four years. Only experts in baby culture
specially trained to meet the needs of each of these individual groups
are to be placed in charge. The baby garden will be surrounded by
open-air balconies so that the children may be out of doors the greater
part of the day. Mothers who are so tied up that they cannot go to the
doctor or the dentist or attend to their necessary shopping for the
family without dragging baby along, will be permitted to bring their
babies for a few hours each day.
It is hoped that in time such baby gardens will become either
self-supporting or public institutions. The plan here outlined has been
approved by a number of public-spirited people who have promised to
temporarily subsidize this baby garden provided fifty mothers endorse
the scheme by their readiness to enroll their babies. The amount to be
paid for the care of these babies will be decided at a meeting of the
mothers who endorse the plan. All who are interested may communicate
with me at 516 East 78th Street.
[MRS.] A. LEVITAS.
New York.
ILLUSTRATED IMMORALITY
TO THE EDITOR:
I want to get together a collection of pictures from which to make
slides for a lecture on illustrated immorality in its relation to our
people, to the city and to the state. Will you not publish this letter
asking for suggestions from your readers. To give an idea of my purpose
I have on my list the Laocoön, St. Michael and the Dragon and St.
George, Sir Galahad, Circe and the Swine, the triumphal march of
Bacchus, a picture published by the Chicago _Tribune_ last September
illustrating the tale of a white slave, and a most effective picture
used widely in Atlanta of a hideous monkey-man beast carrying the body
of a girl under one arm and a bludgeon in the other hand.
I want more symbolical pictures like these and I want also pictures
representing actual conditions in our cities, depicting perhaps the
temptations to the young. With the latter I would have to have some
exact information. I include, of course, the saloon in the scope of my
interests as I see no distinction between the twin evils, the saloon and
the bawdyhouse.
HOWARD A. KELLY, M.D.
Baltimore.
WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION: MR. JONES ANSWERED
TO THE EDITOR:
So it seems that my fellow “Socialist agitators” and I are leading
around by their noses such staid and proper citizens as are to be found
in the City Club of New York, the New York Federation of Labor and the
American Association for Labor Legislation.[5] And because some of us
are advocating here and now in New York that employers shall be
permitted self-insurance, mutual insurance or contribution to a state
managed fund, we are “seeking to destroy private business in all its
forms.” But F. Robertson Jones, who is one of those “employes of the
casualty companies who have their bread and butter at stake,” really
need not be so perturbed. No one really proposes “to transfer their jobs
to political appointees and to leave them out in the cold.” That is a
“pure figment of the imagination” to make use of Mr. Jones’ own
restrained language. There are many good men working for the state now
and there will be more when Mr. Jones and his fellow-employes are taken
over to apply to the public good the experience and knowledge gained in
private enterprises. And if public service is too contaminating, there
will still be the self insurers, and the mutuals in which those left
“out in the cold” may find ready employment. Let me hasten to add that I
do not make this statement “sneeringly” and that I hope a sober
consideration of it will carry conviction that if untrue, at least it is
not “unqualifiedly untrue.”
One example will do as well as a dozen to illustrate my point about the
attitude of the casualty companies toward “elective” acts. It is well
known that those companies opposed the New Jersey “elective” act at the
start. Seeing its tremendous advantages they then became active in its
support. As illustrating this point, I need only refer to the energy and
insistence with which the officers and counsel of various casualty
companies tried to put through, in the closing days of the session last
year in New York, a bill fashioned on the New Jersey model. A special
message from the governor and a special session of the Legislature were
talked of and only the uncompromising persistence of the State
Federation of Labor and the American Association for Labor Legislation
saved the employes of this state from something even worse than the New
Jersey act. The author of that proposed New York bill, when it emerged
from the conference called by certain casualty officials and attorneys
disowned it, it was so bad.
The Pennsylvania commission is an example of a commission advised by
more than casualty company _actuaries_. Of that act a commissioner from
another state writes: “The Pennsylvania act is calculated to turn the
employe over to the “Shylocks” and loan sharks in the liability
business. The report of the Pennsylvania commission outlines the most
abominable act that it has been my privilege to examine, and it fully
maintains the reputation of the state of Pennsylvania as being the
‘rotten borough’ of the world.”
No facts are quoted to prove that my statement as to the club feature is
“diametrically the opposite of the truth.” If the scheme does not work
out to the advantage of the casualty companies it would be interesting
to know why not. We would all agree that what the companies most desire
is that they shall get the employers, “or all large employers,” to “come
permanently under the compensation feature or to stay out
permanently”—exactly my point. Under such happy circumstances
prospective profits are beyond the dreams of avarice. Maybe the profits
have not been made yet, certainly I have not so stated, It is the
prospect which is so alluring, the profits so nearly within grasp which
are now slipping through their very fingers, because of these
“ill-advised enthusiasts” and other undesirable citizens.
And is it, then, “a purely gratuitous misstatement of the fact” that the
casualty companies opposed, tooth and nail, the Ohio compulsory act
which, by the way, does not give a monopoly to political boards? Do they
not oppose such an act here in New York today? Have they not opposed it
in Iowa, California and Washington?
As to the casualty companies having been most active “for a
constitutional amendment in New York,” so far as I have observed, that
activity has been very largely confined, as has that of certain lawyers,
to advocating such changes in the amendment as would defeat the whole
broad purpose of last year’s amendment. If listened to by the
Legislature these advocates would have put off for another three years
the much to be desired amendment to our constitution.
The objections to the fixing of rates by the insurance department are
two-fold. First, that that department is not “composed of officials
expert” in casualty insurance; second, that Senator Foley at the public
hearing at Albany, in order to meet the criticism of the American
Federation of Labor, proposed a state fund divorced from the state
insurance department. This was an important concession to labor and was
so intended. Labor and many others had fears of the state insurance
department, remembering the influence of the insurance interests before
Superintendent Emmett took charge and fearing their influence after his
retirement. That the “constitutional objections have been carefully
considered and that the overwhelming weight of opinion is that they are
not valid” is, as Mr. Jones would say, “a purely gratuitous misstatement
of the facts,” “a figment of the imagination,” if not, indeed, “a
gratuitous insult” to our intelligence. A few lawyers retained by the
casualty insurance companies may disagree with us, but that hardly makes
such a weight of opinion as to be overwhelming. As to bar associations,
all that is needed is to look up the clients of some of these
association committeemen. If what is wanted is a duly attested power of
attorney of the casualty companies, I must admit that I cannot produce
it.
If the Foley bill be studied with a little more care and with some
understanding of the lengths to which insurance agents will go and have
recently been going in Wisconsin, to misrepresent the state fund, the
statement about turning over the rich New York field may not appear as
such “nonsense.” It is to be remembered, too, that at the time the Foley
bill was introduced, the accompanying bill providing for the
organization of mutuals made such organization a matter of extreme
difficulty. This has been somewhat remedied lately, more or less at the
instigation, I fear, of the aforementioned enthusiasts and Socialists.
The men who were openly planning the rout of the casualty companies at
the time I wrote were the State Federation of Labor, of course. To that
valiant and determined host has now been added the American Association
for Labor Legislation, the Progressive Party in which ex-Superintendent
of Insurance Hotchkiss is so important a figure and Colonel Roosevelt.
PAUL KENNADAY.
New York.
JOTTINGS
PRUSSIAN COLONIZATION
Six million dollars will be spent by Prussia this year for the
cultivation and colonization of moor lands by farmers and agricultural
laborers. Part of the money will be used to provide cheap credit to
settlers.
GALSWORTHY ON THE EAST SIDE AGAIN
Because of its local appeal a performance of Galsworthy’s Strife is
being given by the Madison Square Church House at the Murray Hill
Lyceum, 160 East 34th Street, New York. [April 25.] The men and boys in
the cast have been trained by Jean Marcet and Inez Milholland. Members
of the Barnard College Dramatic Club take the female parts.
FROM MOTORS TO FORKED-STICKS
Modern progress and practices which savor of the middle ages sometimes
go hand in hand, says the _Engineering News_. A press dispatch from a
city in the Canadian Northwest states that the city council had voted to
buy a motor-driven chemical and hose wagon, and at the same meeting
decided to engage a water finder hailing from Hamiota to “make a
thorough investigation with his magnetic instrument of all possible
sources of water supply.”
SOCIAL SERVICE WORK FOR GIRLS
The Department of Social Service of the Girls Friendly Society offers a
well worked out program for practical study and work by an “associate”
of the department. The program begins, it may be said in passing, with a
recommendation to subscribe to THE SURVEY. Other general recommendations
are that the associate inform herself about social work, especially
among women and children; that she cooperate with established societies
and with such movements as that for early shopping; that she recommend
to her local group the circulation among the membership of copies of
state laws affecting women and children, and arrange for conferences on
social topics, both formal and informal.
The Girls Friendly Society has a membership of 44,000, in 700 locals
scattered throughout the country.
JEWISH FEDERATION IN DENVER
The Jewish Social Service Federation of Denver has been made a permanent
organization. It will work in the field covered by United Hebrew
Charities in other cities. It is primarily a federation for the
centralized collection of funds for Jewish societies.
The following organizations constitute the federation: Jewish Relief
Society, Jewish Ladies’ Aid Society, Denver Sheltering Home for Jewish
Children, Jewish Free Loan Society, Hachnosos Orchim Society,
philanthropic committee of the Council of Jewish Women, Ladies’ Shroud
Sewing Society and the Moas Chittim Society.
The beneficiaries of the federation include the National Jewish
Consumptives’ Hospital at Denver; the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief
Society at Denver; the Jewish Orphan Asylum at Cleveland, and the Sir
Moses Montefiore Kesher Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites at
Cleveland.
DETAINING THE DEFECTIVE DELINQUENT
The province of Ontario, Canada, is trying to provide a means for more
adequately handling the delinquent girl or woman who is also
feeble-minded or suffering from venereal disease. It is well known that
a third or a fourth of the boys and girls sent to reformatories are
mentally deficient, but in many places there is no legal treatment for
them except that of the reformatory which is designed for normal people.
An act now before the Ontario legislature provides that any female
between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five who has been sent to an
industrial refuge, which is a house of correction, and who is discovered
to be so feeble-minded that she can not take care of herself shall be
kept in the refuge until the medical officer, with the approval of the
inspector, orders her discharge. All girls found to have venereal
diseases, or to be suffering from contagious or dangerous illnesses, are
to be kept in the refuge until they have fully recovered.
CRIME AND ITS TREATMENT IN COLORADO
The wider resort to agricultural and manual labor as an educative and
reformative force for young and old alike in our correctional
institutions was urged at the Colorado Conference of Charities and
Correction. Coupled with this was a plea for employment in the open and
for training in useful pursuits. The institutions of Denver, it was
declared, need more land that these things may be done.
Thomas J. Tynan, warden of the state prison, recommended that the state
conduct a scientific farm and that it pay prisoners what their labor
produces. It is the opinion of Warden Tynan that economic conditions
affect the size of prison populations. For several years past there has
been a steady decrease, he said, in the number of inmates in his
penitentiary; this he ascribed to a general increase in prosperity. Men
who commit daring crimes, requiring courage, make the quickest and most
permanent reforms, he thinks, because they have the character to adhere
to newly made resolutions. From the fact that there are now only nine
women in the Colorado state prison and that the average heretofore has
been twenty-six, Warden Tynan argues a decrease in crime among women in
his state.
ANOTHER SPECIAL TRAIN TO SEATTLE
A special train from Chicago to the National Conference of Charities and
Correction to be held at Seattle July 5–12 is being planned by a group
of charity organization society workers. Others who wish to go, however,
will be welcome to join the party. If the number reaches one hundred, a
special train will be provided, leaving Chicago Sunday evening, June 29.
All day Wednesday will be spent at Banff and Laggan. The train will
remain on the tracks at Laggan, departing early Thursday morning to give
an all-day trip through the Canadian Rockies. The party will arrive in
Vancouver on Friday and proceed to Seattle by boat. The day’s sail down
Puget Sound will be broken by a stop of three hours at Victoria. Return
is possible by any route preferred.
The cost of the round trip from Chicago will be $63, not including
sleeper.
The committee arranging for this trip is Francis H. McLean, Eugene T.
Lies, Fred S. Hall and James Minnick. Those planning to travel with this
party should buy round trip tickets at their homes and arrange for
sleeper reservations through James Minnick, Chicago Tuberculosis
Institute, 10 South La Salle St., Chicago.
A WORKING MOTHER AND HER CHILDREN
When a mother has to work, what is she to do with her young children?
In co-operation with the Child Helping Department of the Russell Sage
Foundation, the Edison Company has produced a motion picture film which
is one answer to the question. The reply, as given in the _Kinetogram_,
a semi-monthly bulletin of moving picture news, is that “she should
board her baby with some mother who is capable of caring for and feeding
another child than her own.” The film is described as follows:
“In this picture the mother has twins, one she boards with a foster
mother and the other is put into an institution because the foster
mother will take only one. The mother of the twins is compelled to do
this because so handicapped she cannot get work. The work of the care of
infants in an institution is shown and the only fault to be found is
that the individual attention that an infant must have is lacking, owing
to the fact that a nurse in an asylum often has as many as fifteen
babies to care for alone. That is where the infant suffers. It is not,
however, due to any fault of the nurses but to conditions. In this case
the fostered child lives while the institution child does not. Seventy
per cent of asylum babies succumb while seventy out of a hundred live
where individual care is exercised.”
SEX HYGIENE IN YIDDISH
The first literature on sex hygiene to be published in this country in
Yiddish has been issued by the American Society for Sanitary and Moral
Prophylaxis, 105 West 40th Street. Through the generosity of a Hebrew
philanthropic organization in New York city the society has been able to
publish a Yiddish edition of its pamphlet on Health and the Hygiene of
Sex. This new booklet will be distributed through such organizations as
the Educational Alliance, the Hebrew Young Men’s Association, the Hebrew
Educational League and the Hebrew Sheltering Arms. An edition of 5,000
was printed, but in less than a week it was exhausted. Large orders have
been received for subsequent issues. As yet only local Hebrew charities
have been given this pamphlet for distribution.
The same pamphlet in English is being distributed to boys in preparatory
schools and colleges and through Y. M. C. A.’s and boys’ clubs all over
the country at the rate of a thousand topics a month.
The society hopes during the coming year to publish Italian and other
translations of its pamphlet and to issue new pamphlets for special
distribution among settlements and organizations dealing with uneducated
groups of boys and girls.
PREVENTION IN THE COUNTY
The spread of preventive measures from city and town to outlying county
and rural districts seems to be gaining headway. In Minnesota a county
conference of charities and correction was recently started and at
Cumberland, Md., a strong plea was made last month for a county-wide
charity organization society. Speaking before the Maryland Conference of
Charities and Correction, Margaret F. Byington, associate field
secretary, Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage
Foundation, told of the effective work that had been done by county
organizations in New York and New Jersey. She was met with the response
that the association of Cumberland would probably employ an additional
paid secretary in the near future to work entirely outside the city.
The last legislature authorized the establishment of a juvenile court
for Allegheny County, of which Cumberland is the county seat. One of the
discussions of the conference dealt with the difficulties surrounding
the work of such a court with a jurisdiction extending over some fifty
or sixty miles of territory.
As a result of the conference it is probable that a state-wide housing
law will be presented to the next legislature, that all acute cases of
insanity will be transferred from the local almshouses to the state
hospitals and that a branch of the Maryland Children’s Aid Society will
be established in Cumberland.
COMMUNITY MACHINERY IN THE SOUTH
Three distinct social agencies have been recently developed in
Birmingham, Ala., from one association, the Boys’ Club and Children’s
Aid Society. They are the Juvenile Court with its probation system, the
Children’s Aid Society and the Boys’ Club proper. The story of these
changes is expressive of the development of social organization in the
southern cities.
The parent society has for several years been one of Birmingham’s most
vigorous efforts toward the betterment of the conditions affecting child
life. In 1903 the Boys’ Club had just one room at the City Hall. By 1909
a New Year’s dinner and a summer camp had become regular features. Next
a special reading room and shower baths were added. Children’s aid work
was then undertaken more systematically. Two men and one woman devoted
themselves to the interests of dependent and neglected children.
Probation work was also introduced, and the club has twice moved to
larger quarters.
It was largely through the instrumentality of the Boys’ Club that the
Juvenile Court was established in October, 1912. Following the
suggestion of A. J. McKelway, southern secretary of the National Child
Labor Committee, in his article in the Birmingham number of THE SURVEY
[6] the functions of each of the three new social agencies have been
clearly defined. S. D. Murphy is the judge of the Juvenile Court and
Ralph S. Barrow is chief probation officer. The present superintendent
of the Boys’ Club is Burr Blackburn.
PROBATION WORK IN NEW YORK
That beginners in law-breaking will have the benefit of real rather than
nominal probation work is expected to be the result of the recent
establishment of a central probation bureau in the magistrate’s courts
in New York. Heretofore each probation officer has remained in court
while it was in session. His duty was to receive such cases of probation
and make such investigations as the magistrates ordered. This compelled
him to spend much time in court, where his duties were similar to those
of a warrant officer or a court attendant. His real work, which should
be that of looking up the history of law breakers and keeping closely in
touch with them, had to be done after court adjourned or on occasional
days assigned for the purpose.
Under the new system the probation officer will receive his cases and
assignments for investigation from the chief probation officer. He will
then be free to spend all his time in the field keeping in touch with
his probationers. Another advantage will be greater equalization of work
among officers. Formerly some officers have had as high as 150 cases,
while others have had fewer than twenty. Under the new arrangement the
chief probation officer will make all the assignments and will be able
to distribute the work more evenly. The existence of a central
headquarters will enable the officers to meet together and discuss their
problems and so work much more effectively as a team.
WOMEN PRISONERS IN NEW YORK
The problem of the arrested woman is one of the baffling difficulties
which the police of our large cities face. How New York handles one
phase of it is noted in the recent annual report of the Women’s Prison
Association of this city. Matrons are assigned to nineteen of the police
stations in Manhattan and the Bronx. Women arrested in any of the
fifty-two precincts in these boroughs are transferred to one of these
station houses.
In Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond the same plan is followed, for but ten
of the fifty-three station houses have matrons. Women offenders, after
being taken from the station house of the precinct in which they are
arrested, to the nearest station having a matron must be again
transferred to court. Of this the report says: “This dragging of women
from station house to station house is most demoralizing to prisoners,
officers and the general public.”
Of the nineteen precinct station houses to which matrons are assigned
only five, says the report, have properly ventilated and sanitary
prisons for either sex. In five of the police stations the report goes
on, the prisons for both sexes are in the same corridor, and men and
women can converse freely. To quote again: “From the fact that thousands
of prisoners and officers have been lodged in them for many years, 70
per cent of our station houses are unsanitary and can never be made
otherwise. Over 130,000 men and women prisoners in all stages of disease
and dirt pass through them yearly. Many are lodged for hours in their
prisons and leave behind them disease germs of every kind. Thus the
prisoner becomes not only a danger to his successor but may become a
prey to the condition of his or her predecessor.”
JUVENILE COURT NURSERY RHYMES
WILLIAM FRANKLIN ROSENBLUM[7]
SIX little culprits
Stood before Judge Ive;
One went to Lancaster
And then there were five.
FIVE little culprits
Robbed a candy store;
One went to Hudson Farm
And then there were four.
FOUR little culprits
Up for truancy;
One went to Boys’ School
And then there were three.
THREE little culprits,
Mighty bad ones too;
One was paroled to me
And then there were two.
TWO little culprits
Killed a dog for fun;
One got a “paddling,” friend,
And then there was one.
ONE little culprit,
Innocent was he;
Judge smiled and shook his hand,
And then he was free.
* * * * *
Now friends, this little rhyme
Would but a moral preach
To every man that has
A heart and soul to reach.
These little culprits six,
You see them every day.
’Tis not alone their due—
The penalty they pay.
The home, the church, the school—
They teach not wrong from right;
And when the child must choose
HIS is a sorry plight.
To him the wrong doth seem
But childish prank and fun,
And then we punish him
Though harm he meant to none.
Some few there are, ’tis true
By intuition bad
Exceptions to the rule
Unlike the normal lad.
But take them all as one—
The boy is born for good,
And if you teach aright
Will do the things he should.
Six little children, friend,
Were stamped with sign of shame;
All innocent they were
And ours alone the blame.
-----
Footnote 1:
See page 140 of this issue
Footnote 2:
See page 132 of this issue.
Footnote 3:
See THE SURVEY, December 14, 1912, p. 341.
Footnote 4:
See page 870 for Professor Dewey’s article; page 893 for the reference
to “principles and policies.”
Footnote 5:
See THE SURVEY, April 12, 1913, p. 72.
Footnote 6:
See THE SURVEY for January 6, 1912.
Footnote 7:
Director of male activities, Council Educational Alliance, Cleveland.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
NATIONAL COUNCIL
ROBERT W. DEFOREST, President.
JANE ADDAMS, Chicago.
ERNEST P. BICKNELL, Washington.
ROBERT S. BREWSTER, New York.
CHARLES M. CABOT, Boston
O. K. CUSHING, San Francisco.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, New York.
ARTHUR F. ESTABROOK, Boston
LEE K. FRANKEL, New York.
JOHN M. GLENN, New York.
WILLIAM GUGGENHEIM, New York.
WILLIAM E. HARMON, New York.
WILLIAM J. KERRY, Washington
JOSEPH LEE, Boston
V. EVERIT MACY, New York.
CHARLES D. NORTON, New York.
JULIAN W. MACK, Washington
SIMON N. PATTEN, Philadelphia
JULIUS ROSENWALD, Chicago
JACOB A. RIIS, New York
GRAHAM TAYLOR, Chicago
PAUL M. WARBURG, New York
ALFRED T. WHITE, Brooklyn
S. W. WOODWARD, Washington
FRANK TUCKER, Treasurer
ARTHUR F. KELLOGG, Secretary
THE NEW SEMESTER
With these April numbers, THE SURVEY enters the second volume of the
publication year 1912–13. Up to March 31, $13,531 of the $20,000
appealed for as necessary to carry on our educational work was in hand.
553 readers had enlisted as co-operating subscribers, out of the 800 we
had set as our year’s goal.
* * * * *
The caliber of issues and educational work in spring and summer depend
on our receipts and pledges for the next six months. Without capital
stock or credit, we must pay our bills as we go. If we wait until money
is actually in hand, the work of the staff will be cramped from week to
week, and opportunities for constructive work will have slipped past.
The April magazine number illustrated how we feel the “pinch” in this
direction. We had been unable to send a staff man to investigate the
West Virginia coal strike. We were obliged to decline an offer of $500
from one of the interested parties to the conflict to pay the expenses
of such a staff investigation.
* * * * *
It is not only in these larger undertakings, but in the every-week
craftmanship of issues—appearance, paper, size—that the cramp is felt.
If you have not renewed your last year’s contribution, send it now—or
send us word. If you have not joined in this co-operative enterprise,
now is the time to do it.
A BIT OF EVIDENCE
From Alexander Johnson, Secretary National Conference of Charities and
Correction
“On going, a couple of weeks ago, to the little village of Waterloo,
Ind., to lecture on the Care of the Feeble-minded, l was agreeably
surprised to find quite a large audience gathered to hear my lecture.
Miss ——, who had arranged the lecture, told me when I expressed my
surprise at the large audience: ‘You see we are getting quite
socially-minded in our little village. We have eight subscribers to THE
SURVEY here, and every copy is read by at least a dozen or fifteen
people. It is THE SURVEY that has done it for us.’”
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC. No. 563|
| 105 East 22d Street, New York City |
| |
| I enclose $10 as a co-operating subscription to the Survey Associates. |
| |
| Name........................................................ |
| |
| Address..................................................... |
| |
| Note: The $10 is to cover the renewal of my regular $2 subscription to |
| THE SURVEY, plus a contribution to the educational work of magazine |
| and National Council. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SURVEY, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4, APR 26, 1913 ***
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