The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Survey, Volume 30, Number 9, May 31, 1913
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Title: The Survey, Volume 30, Number 9, May 31, 1913
Author: Various
Editor: Paul Underwood Kellogg
Release date: March 23, 2026 [eBook #78287]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Survey Associates, 1913
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SURVEY, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 9, MAY 31, 1913 ***
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 9, May 31, 1913
THE COMMON WELFARE
CHILD LABOR LEGISLATION FIGHT IN PENNSYLVANIA
More children are employed in factories and mills under sixteen years of
age in Pennsylvania than in any other state. For years efforts have been
made to get better legislation to protect child workers, but every step
has been won only after a determined fight.
This year the Pennsylvania Child Labor Association and the National
Child Labor Committee have worked together to get a law that would
put Pennsylvania on a par with the more advanced industrial states.
The Walnut child labor bill drafted by the Pennsylvania Child Labor
Association and sponsored by the Republican State Committee is based upon
the uniform law adopted by the American Bar Association. The principal
new features of this act are that no child under sixteen is permitted
to work more than eight hours a day; all night work is prohibited for
children under sixteen, whereas at present glass factories are exempt;
provision is made for the regulation of street trading; and the age limit
for night messenger service is put at twenty-one years. The age at which
children may go to work still remains fourteen, but certain dangerous
occupations are prohibited for children under sixteen.
So powerful has been the pressure to eliminate important features of
the proposed law, that the Pennsylvania Child Labor Association has
felt compelled to appeal for popular support. Herschel H. Jones of the
National Child Labor Committee has spent most of the last two months
traveling throughout the state, holding public meetings and interesting
individually the influential people of the larger cities. With few
exceptions the newspapers have taken up the campaign enthusiastically.
The opposition has come chiefly from two industries. The textile
manufacturers complain that eight hours a day for children will
disorganize their plants and compel the discharge of those under sixteen.
This they assert would put them at a disadvantage with Massachusetts. In
the Legislature in Massachusetts they are saying the same thing about
Pennsylvania. The experience of New York, the largest manufacturing
state and the third in textile production where no child under sixteen
has been permitted to work before eight in the morning or after five
in the evening since 1907, does not bear out this claim. In both Ohio
and Illinois children are being used in certain industries in groups or
shifts so as to keep the maximum amount of machinery in operation the
full working time. The eight-hour provision in Illinois has been in force
since 1903; in Ohio since 1908.
In the textile industry alone in Pennsylvania there are over 15,000
children under sixteen. Of this number, two-thirds are girls.
Pennsylvania permits girls of fourteen and fifteen to work fifty-eight
hours a week, or longer than most states permit adult women to labor.
The glass manufacturers assert that they must have boys on the night
shifts else the men can not work. Advocates of the proposed law point out
that in Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey and every other glass manufacturing
state except West Virginia older boys and men are employed for the night
work.
In an investigation of glass factories in western Pennsylvania made by
Mr. Jones for the National Child Labor Committee in 1912 it was found
that in many towns large numbers of boys between sixteen and eighteen
were loafing until they grew big enough to work in the mines or coke
ovens. At the same time the glass factories were taking boys of fourteen
and using them on both night and day shifts.
Effort is being exerted to weaken the bill before it gets out of the
Judiciary Special Committee of the Senate. This committee held a public
hearing on May 14 on three important labor bills: the Bigger minimum wage
bill which establishes a board to determine on a minimum wage for women;
the Walnut woman’s bill drafted by the Consumers’ League and restricting
employment of women to nine hours a day and fifty hours a week; and the
Walnut child labor bill. Over 2,000 manufacturers came to Harrisburg for
this hearing. The State Federation of Labor came to Harrisburg in a body
to urge the passage of these bills.
In addition to the efforts to get better laws a step toward better
enforcement has been taken by the passage of the law which establishes a
new department of labor and industry. It resembles closely the law passed
by the New York Legislature this year. The Bureau of Factory Inspection
comes under the department. An industrial board is established to make
rules and regulations and the inspectors are graded and required to have
special qualifications.
NEW YORK CHARITIES IN CONFERENCE
Once more the May meetings of the New York City Conference of Charities
were divided between Manhattan, Brooklyn and the country. The Colored
Orphan Asylum at Riverdale was chosen this time for the final session.
Municipal needs was the first topic of discussion, and the speakers were
O. F. Lewis and Frederick C. Howe, chairman of the committee appointed
to study this subject. The latter dwelt particularly on the use of the
school as a center for leisure. Edward M. Bassett and George B. Ford,
lecturer on city planning at Columbia University, spoke on subways as a
factor in distributing the population of a city. Mr. Ford suggested as
a substitute for subways on some thoroughfares the noiseless elevated
railroads found in Paris and Berlin. These, he said, should be placed
only in the center of streets from 130 to 180 feet wide. Trees could be
planted on either side to screen the structures.
Families, public institutions and the sick were the subjects on the
following day. The chairman of the committee on families, Mrs. William
Grant Brown, recommended the removing of one great cause of family
pauperism by “following in the path already blazed by some of our western
states, and legally restraining the marriage of those mentally deficient,
delinquent or tainted by hereditary disease or crime.” One of the other
speakers, Porter R. Lee, gave a good illustration of overlapping in
relief work in a story of a poor woman in Chicago, who after receiving
her fourth consecutive visitor in one afternoon went to the nearest
settlement to express her gratitude because no one had called from there,
remarking: “There doesn’t seem to be anything for the poor to do but to
have office hours!”
On the live subject of widows’ pensions there was no discussion this year
beyond the statement in Mrs. Florence Kelley’s address, which was read in
her absence:
“Private charity having cut off public outdoor relief has never
been able to accomplish the task which it rashly undertook.
We have a monument to its failure—38,000 children in New York
state institutions paid for out of taxes because their natural
guardians have, through death or disability, failed to meet the
requirements which the law establishes for children in this
city. Few of these institutions are schools in the true sense.
They are in the main free municipal boarding-houses. They are
communist institutions in which the city attempts, chiefly
through the intervention of various religious sects, the task
of bringing up children away from their mothers, by wholesale,
out of the public funds.”
The discussion of public institutions centered around those for the sick.
Sidney E. Goldstein, chairman of the committee on this subject, dwelt
especially on the fact that while government, church and school are more
and more affected by the social movement, the hospital and dispensary are
as yet but dimly aware of the larger work that society can rightfully
expect of them. Mr. Goldstein questioned whether the dispensary is
organized and administered with the needs of the community foremost in
mind, and stated that the time is not distant when neither hospital nor
dispensary will be reception houses for the sick, experiment stations in
medicine or apprentice shops for medical students.
After care and the prevention of insanity were treated in a paper by
Everett S. Ellwood of the State Charities Aid Association. Fred M. Stein
of the Montefiore Home showed by statistics that the large percentage
of “graduates” of tuberculosis sanatoria die or become worse, and urged
after care of patients in their homes by social workers connected with
sanatoria as an essential part of the work of such institutions.
The session on the sick carried on the same themes. Louis C. Ager, chief
of the medical staff of the Brooklyn Home for Consumptives, showed
the inadequacy of present hospital facilities, especially those for
contagious diseases. Richard C. Cabot discussed the “efficiency and
deficiencies” of the hospitals and dispensaries, and Isabel Stewart of
Teachers College spoke of the social service work in the homes done by
these institutions, as a logical and necessary supplement to their indoor
work. She recommended courses on the “sociology” of disease as part of a
nurse’s training.
In her report for the Committee on Children Carolena M. Wood, president
of the Colored Orphan Asylum of Riverdale, called attention to the fact
that of the 25,000 city children in institutions, many are kept there
for years so as to be near their parents when often their parents show
no interest or are unsuitable because of health or morals to exercise
any influence over them. The committee advised that such children be
given a fresh start by being placed with families that can train them
to be worthy members of the future state, even though this involves the
dissolving of the family tie. Charles D. Hilles, president of the Board
of Managers of the New fork Juvenile Asylum, and Robert W. Hebberd spoke
on various aspects of education as a preparation for life. The report of
the Committee on Delinquency, read by Patrick A. Whitney, commissioner of
corrections, was an appeal for more and better institutions.
Throughout the sessions the subject of recreation came up, as when,
for instance, Mrs. Brown supplemented the usual recommendation for
recreational use of the school house by the suggestion that the armories
could be used as music centers. Ernest A. Coulter, formerly clerk of the
Children’s Court, held that the failure to provide opportunities for
play was largely the cause of juvenile delinquency.
One method of treatment of adult delinquency, the farm colony, was the
subject of a paper by Franklin H. Briggs, superintendent of the New York
Training School for Boys at Yorktown. Said Professor Briggs:
“The farm colony treatment substitutes an appeal to the best
that is in a delinquent. It seeks to develop self control in
the individual. It endeavors to build up, not break down, the
delinquent’s self respect. In large masses delinquents must do
the things which they are ordered to do, while in the small
group of the farm colony, the individuals are encouraged to do
things upon their own initiative. One most important feature of
farm colony life is the almost numberless healthful interests
with which it surrounds those for whom it cares.”
PROF. HENDERSON NOW HEADS CHICAGO’S UNITED CHARITIES
The United Charities of Chicago has made a strong rejoinder to the
persistent attacks of the “investigating” committee of the Illinois
Legislature which have included other philanthropic agencies and
institutions as well as prominent individuals. In an editorial, How Not
to Investigate, the Chicago _Evening Post_ describes the methods pursued
by this committee:
“A new standard of efficiency in judicial investigation has
been set by the Curran legislative committee now sitting in
judgment upon certain of Chicago’s charitable agencies which
have been selected as the object of its displeasure.
“It used to be that an inquiry the purpose of which was to
decide upon the social value of an institution or individual
was carried on by an impartial group to which the pros and cons
of evidence were submitted for its careful and conscientious
sifting. Due allowance had to be made for personal bias or
selfish motive of the witness, and care had to be used to make
a just decision. But we are learning that this is an outgrown
custom. The examiner of the future will know from the fullness
of his own personal knowledge the agency that is ineffective or
the individual that is guilty. This settled in advance, he will
summon before him whosoever is known to be at odds with the
condemned, and his vilifications will be solemnly taken down as
the findings of the examiner. The condemned, under this system,
stripped of counsel, will be brought in only to receive the
gibes of his inquisitor.
“This method may insure a remarkable number of convictions, but
are its results of any value?...
“Anyone who has followed the rise of social work as a
profession looks in vain for the introduction into the
examination of that sort of trained and expert testimony which
would lend to it some claim to the consideration of thoughtful
people.”
Accompanying the announcement of Prof. Charles R. Henderson’s election as
president of the United Charities of Chicago the directors in a signed
statement gave their answer to this method of attack. This defense
applies also to other institutions and individuals now under fire. The
value of the personal and social service rendered by modern philanthropy
and the economy of present methods are summarized in this statement:
“First as to money matters: It cost the United Charities last
year less than 2 per cent to collect $271,000.
“We employ no solicitors and pay no commissions.
“A summary of the divisions of our expenditures for the year is
as follows: 76 per cent for direct assistance, 10 per cent for
administration salaries, 14 per cent for provision of relief
centers and equipment plus $1,000 payment on land at Algonquin.
“Of the 76 per cent for direct assistance in the various
departments 62 per cent went for material aid in cash,
groceries, etc. This does not include approximately $20,000
worth of such aid which it is estimated our visitors secured
from relatives, friends, etc., and which does not show on our
books.
“The remainder of the expenditures for relief was for such
personal services (to mention only a few) as led to the
securing of employment, to the reconciliation with relatives,
to the keeping of families together, to the saving of lives
through instructions in the care of babies and procuring
of expert medical and nursing aid, to the developing of
competency, ambition, and a sense of responsibility in people
who showed tendencies toward pauperism and crime. If the
economic value of restoring all the poor to self-support, who
were restored through the ministrations of our employes, could
be computed, it would mount into hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
“We have included under administration also the salaries of
the general superintendent, the general district secretary,
and the nine district superintendents—persons of the highest
qualifications and of long practical experience, who train and
direct the daily work of many younger agents, labor constantly
to secure prompt and harmonious charitable action throughout
the city, and encourage and guide the benevolent impulses of
hundreds of kind volunteers.
“Strictly speaking the cost of such service is no more
‘administration expense’ than the salaries of superintendents
and assistant superintendents of school who do not teach, but
who improve the efficiency of all teachers under them.
“The average salary of our workers is $684 per year (123 out
of 156 receiving less than $900), while the average salary of
the county relief department is $1,332 per year. Every one of
our employes is carefully selected and most of them specially
trained for their duties....
“The United Charities is putting at the disposal of the
community the services of 750 volunteers, in many different
capacities, in addition to its paid staff.”
Professor Henderson’s acceptance of the presidency and the removal of
the central office from the old outgrown building, to an entire floor
in the advantageously located new Federal Life Insurance Building, 163
N. Michigan Avenue, is expected to effect a new era of progress in the
Chicago United Charities under the superintendency of Eugene T. Lies.
THE STRIKE OF THE JERSEY SILK WEAVERS
The strike of silk workers in Paterson, N. J., which was chronicled in
THE SURVEY of April 19, is still in progress. There has been very little
breaking away on the part of the strikers, nor have the manufacturers on
the other hand made any serious attempt to bring in strike breakers. The
entire industry in this city of silk manufacturers has been practically
at a standstill for three months.
Recently there have been some indications on both sides of a willingness
to compromise. A number of the important mills have made direct
overtures to their employes, and one small mill has actually effected
a settlement and is in operation. In some of the outlying New Jersey
towns where the Paterson strike has been duplicated on a smaller scale,
temporary settlements, pending an agreement in Paterson, have been made
including an eight-hour day, an increase in wages and non-recognition of
the Industrial Workers of the World. In Paterson efforts to bring the
manufacturers and the strike committee together have continued without
avail. The most recent move was the appointment by Mayor Andrew McBride
of a committee of twenty-five citizens with John W. Griggs, formerly
attorney general of the United States, as chairman.
The grand jury, some weeks ago, returned indictments against the strike
leaders, William D. Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca and
Patrick Quinlan, charging Haywood with unlawful assemblage and the
others with inciting to riot. On May 7 the trials began, and, it having
been agreed that the defendants should be tried separately, the case of
Patrick Quinlan was the first to go before the jury. Quinlan was charged
with having urged the strikers on the first day of the strike to go to
the mills and get the remaining workers out and with using physical
violence to accomplish that end. The jury reported on May 10 that they
were unable to agree and were dismissed. Two days later, a new jury was
secured and Quinlan’s second trial followed. Before the week was out, he
was found guilty by this second jury on a charge of inciting to riot. It
has been announced that sentence will not be pronounced upon him until
after the trials of the other leaders. The maximum sentence which could
be pronounced in this case is said to be seven years in the penitentiary.
The conviction of Quinlan has stirred up bitterness among the strikers.
Their feeling against the police, upon whose testimony alone Quinlan was
convicted, has run especially high. The week following the trial, some
plain-clothes detectives and a court stenographer attending a meeting of
the strikers in Turn Hall were threatened with summary violence if they
did not leave. That evening the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners
of the city of Paterson decided to close Turn and Helvetia Halls, the
two meeting places of the strikers. Information received from the city
authorities of Paterson is to the effect that the strikers will not be
permitted to hold meetings in any hall in Paterson, but that they may
hold out-of-door meetings on private property if they can secure the
consent of the owners. Strike meetings, meanwhile, are being held in
Haledon, a borough adjoining Paterson, where the Socialist mayor stands
for “free speech.”
The trials of the other strike leaders have been delayed pending an
appeal on the part of the strikers’ counsel to have a jury selected
from outside Passaic county, because of the present feeling against
the Industrial Workers of the World. On May 22 this appeal was granted
by Justice Minturn, who decided that at the present time it would be
impossible to secure a fair trial from a jury made up of citizens of the
community.
Many arrests have been made by the police recently on account of the
picketing of the Price mill, where a settlement has been made. Although
the strikers on the picket line were not guilty of any violence
eighty-five of them were arrested on Monday, May 19, and fifty-seven on
the following day. Some of them were charged with disorderly conduct and
were sentenced by Recorder Carroll to a fine of $5 or ten days in jail.
Others were charged with unlawful assemblage and were held for action by
the grand jury.
CITY PLANNING AS A CIVIC ASSET
GRAHAM ROMEYN TAYLOR
That the city planning idea has gotten beyond the experts and has
“arrived” in the mind of the average citizen became evident at the Fifth
National Conference on City Planning, held in Chicago May 5-7. The
delegates, representing seventy or eighty cities and towns and a score of
different states, included not only students and experts but real estate
operators and business men. City planning as a civic asset was shown to
have gained recognition when twelve important cities made earnest appeals
for the conference next May.
It is significant that this new grip of the idea on the country
accompanied an important shift of emphasis—from spectacular and elaborate
schemes for reconstructing the heart of the city to practical details
of city building. As Dr. Werner Hegemann of Berlin, whose stimulating
contribution from European city planning proved a distinct feature of the
conference, put it: “City planning should not be primarily for attracting
the traveler, but for the people who live in the city. The spectacular
captured our imaginations; we must turn the resultant impulse into the
work of planning the every day living conditions of city dwellers.”
“Psychologically it is quite justifiable,” said George B. Ford, “that
American city planning began with the ‘City Beautiful.’ The ‘City
Scientific’ would never have aroused such enthusiasm. However, after
floundering around for a number of years we have now got our perspective
and a sense of the proportion of things, and we know that considerations
of health, convenience and efficiency are of fundamental importance.”
The emphasis on guiding the normal growth of cities was shown
particularly in the report of the committee which has been at work a
year on plans for the development of a typical tract on the outskirts of
a growing city, and also in the discussion of transportation problems.
The committee started with certain “given conditions.” The tract was
assumed to be four miles from the center of a city having a population of
500,000; land cost was put at $2,500 an acre; costs of sewers and other
fundamental improvements were fixed on the basis of business experience;
and the topography, country roads, railroads and rapid transit lines were
mapped. The development was assumed to be for a factory population. The
committee presented nine plans prepared by nine groups of participants
and these were accompanied by detailed figures covering all costs,
interest on capital, profits and selling prices. In this careful
attention to costs and financing of the development, the work of the
committee has an especial value beyond the city planning competition
of the Chicago City Club which also concerned the development of a
residential tract in an outlying portion of the city. The prize plans in
this competition were shown to the conference when it visited the Chicago
City Club.
“No city can afford to build subways”—this was the bomb thrown into the
discussion of transportation. And there was a surprising consensus of
opinion that American cities have gone subway-mad. This point of view
came out at a discussion at which the leading paper, written by Milo R.
Maltbie of the New York Public Service Commission, was read and commented
on by E. P. Goodrich, consulting engineer of the Borough of Manhattan.
Henry C. Wright of New York showed graphically that subways are
predicated upon extreme congestion. The high cost of construction as
compared with other methods of rapid transit does not warrant investment
unless heavy traffic is assured by crowded tenements of three to four
stories or more in height throughout the region served by the subway. He
strongly recommended elevated structures or rapid transit lines running
in open cuts, except in the most crowded down town sections of large
cities. This point of view was reinforced by Dr. Hegemann who cited the
experience with subways in English and continental as well as American
cities.
Cheap land values and the consequent possibility of low rents were shown
to depend upon cheap, though rapid and good and ramifying transportation.
Without this factor it is impossible to secure a wholesome spread of city
population.
How to pay the costs of the local improvements which city planning
suggests received special attention in a paper by George E. Kessler, upon
the development of parks in Kansas City. The system of local assessments
was shown to secure practically all the results which could be obtained
through the use of “excess condemnation,” with less trouble and with
better co-operation on the part of all citizens, including real estate
men who so often object to excess condemnation. The success of the Kansas
City method was attested by a leading real estate man of that city, J. C.
Nichols, who said that despite the fact that park boulevards and similar
local improvements are almost entirely paid by local assessments, the
property owners who have to foot the bills are now the first to demand
these improvements.
Whether through modification of systems of local assessment or
through the direct application of excess condemnation, the principle
of financing improvements through the increase in value of the areas
benefiting was felt by all to be an essential in accomplishing the
realization of city plans. Two points in this connection were much
discussed—first, the distance to which local assessment should go back
from the improvements and the proportion in which it should diminish;
and second, the question of paying locally for improvements in outlying
unimproved land. The conference seemed to feel in regard to the first
point that it is impossible to make any hard and fast rule and that each
case could be decided on its own merits. With regard to the second point,
opinion seemed to be that the local assessment should be paid in small
installments over a long period and that a much larger portion should be
assessed on the city as a whole than in the case of improvements in the
built-up sections.
An important paper by Edward M. Bassett of New York discussed the legal
powers which a city should have to enable it to carry out city planning
successfully. He particularly sought to show the necessity for removing
the legal wrappings which retard a city from applying the principle of
“excess condemnation.” Some of his illustrations of the way a real estate
speculator can secure the values which ought to accrue to the whole city
were most striking. In the Bronx, he said, a speculator obtained an award
for a house lying in the way of a newly opened street, whereupon he
moved it to the center of another street soon to be opened. He obtained
another award, and so far as the law is concerned he may continue the
process with each new street opened. The exercise of the police power was
also shown by Mr. Bassett to be of the utmost importance in establishing
regulations for public health and safety, and in dealing with such
matters as the limitation of the height of buildings.
The National City Planning Conference, as its name implies, is not so
much a convention for propaganda as a gathering of students. Each session
was devoted to but one or two papers, of which advance copies were in the
hands of delegates. There was thus opportunity for careful discussion.
The papers were characterized not so much by inspirational flights as by
a hard-headed, common-sense attention to every-day facts and conditions,
and the “humdrum human mechanism,” to quote Chairman Frederick Law
Olmsted, “by which city plan visions are to be realized.” Mr. Olmsted’s
address on A City Planning Program dealt with such prosaic things as the
system of records whereby a city should know all the essential facts
about its sewers, conduits and sub-surface pipes, its poles and wires,
gutters, pavement, car lines, and character of buildings. He emphasized
the importance of topographical, social, economic and legal surveys, and
showed how a municipality’s future city planning “office” should have an
equipment of such information and a co-operative relation with all the
agencies, public and private, whose activities affect the problems and
efforts of city planning.
A similar point of view was displayed in the paper by George B. Ford on
The City Scientific. He discussed the various types of surveys which
should be undertaken and showed how a body of data can be secured,
so as to reduce such matters as street widening and extension and
transportation almost to an exact science. He advocated a program survey
which would lay out in order of urgency the matters which the local
commission should undertake. Especially he urged that it is futile
to attempt to get planning results from one expert but that at least
three—representing the engineering and economic side, the aesthetic
side and the social side—should work together harmoniously, calling in
specialists along particular lines.
The organization and functions of a city planning commission was a
subject on which there was much discussion, following a paper by Mayor
William A. Magee of Pittsburgh.
The Chicago plan appropriately came in for consideration, and at the
banquet a toast was drunk to the memory of Daniel H. Burnham, a fine
portrait of whom appeared back of the speakers’ table. Charles H. Wacker,
chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, told of the efforts, methods
and experience in rallying the whole citizenship of Chicago, even to
the education of the school children through a manual on the plan. He
referred to the wonderful civic spirit which reached a high tide when the
western metropolis gave to the nation the glorious beauty of the World’s
Fair “White City”; and he expressed the firm faith that around the vision
of the Chicago plan the people would again rise to a practical idealism
expressed in a nobler conception of what their city might become. At a
previous session Edward H. Bennett, who was associated with Mr. Burnham
in the designing of the Chicago plan, discussed various aspects of a
newer interest in the scientific study of such elements as transportation
and housing.
Faith in the civic idealism of the average man and woman, as expressed
by Mr. Wacker, was a note which well followed a noteworthy address by
Lawson Purdy. Rarely does the economic and the spiritual blend as it did
when he showed that so material a thing as land value becomes, when we
try to distribute it equitably and for the community welfare, the vehicle
for a larger brotherhood of neighbors and citizens. And in discussing
the relation of the public rights to the liberty of the individual, he
brought it all to the test of the law of love, so well expressed—and the
reference went straight to the hearts of those who treasure the memories
of personal friendship with one of the most lovable “people’s men” of our
generation—by Sam Jones, the “Golden Rule” mayor of Toledo.
EDITORIAL GRIST
THE GUARANTEE OF SECURITY
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
Church of the Messiah, New York
Amid such a confusion of “chance and change” as seems to be
characteristic of our age in the various phases of its social life, it
is not surprising perhaps to find that many persons, not over—given to
timidity on ordinary occasions, are genuinely disturbed at the course
which events are taking; and are asking of the agitators and reformers of
the time, in terms more and more insistent, what guarantee they have to
offer that their words and works do not spell destruction for the whole
existing fabric of civilization.
Those of us who feel the thrill of the new movement of social
transformation, and hail the advent of the new day with an exultation
which leaves little place in our hearts for any regrets for the passing
of the old, do not always realize, I imagine, how numerous are the
revolutions of ancient custom which are involved in the demands which
are being pressed upon every hand, and therefore fail to recognize the
fears for the security of the nation, which are latent in many noble
and devoted hearts. What with the indefinite extension of the machinery
of our democracy by such devices as the initiative, the referendum
and the recall, which may well seem subversive of that whole form of
representative government which is at the bottom of our constitutional
system; the multiplying assaults upon the integrity and authority of
our courts, which have so long been regarded as the very bulwark of our
institutions; the call for the active interference of the state with the
administration of industry in such matters as workmen’s compensation,
the eight-hour day for women and children, the minimum wage, etc.; the
rapidly growing sentiment of our people in favor of the socialization of
the resources of nature and of the public; regulation, if not ownership,
of all means of production and distribution—the whole great movement, in
a word, for an unfettered democracy upon the one hand and an unlimited
social control upon the other—what with all these startling innovations
sweeping down upon us at once, it is not surprising that many an earnest
soul is wondering as to what the outcome of it all is to be and is
seeking rather vainly for any evidence that these cures, which are being
offered for our ills, do not mean the dissolution rather than the healing
of the patient.
What guarantee can you give us, amid the utter chaos in which we are
involved, that there is any real security for the future?
What assurance can you offer that this flood of reform, which is
certainly destined to “bear [us] far,” will not break its bonds and thus
sweep us to destruction?
What reasons can you present for believing that we may safely try these
untested schemes of political and industrial revolution, and still have
anything left of this great republic, which was founded in the blood and
tears of the fathers, and was strengthened and extended by the undaunted
labors of four generations of valiant sons? Is there anything which may
even partially persuade us that this new movement really involves “the
strength and stability of the times?”
These are the questions which are being asked today by many a restless
heart, and they are questions which challenge a respectful answer.
There are some of us (of whom I beg to be counted one!) who find our all
sufficient reply to these inquiries in our abounding faith in humanity.
We believe that in a country where illiteracy is at a minimum, general
education on the increase, caste barriers unknown, freedom of speech,
press and assembly granted and practiced, religious liberty everywhere
enjoyed, the people can be trusted to control their own affairs. This
does not mean that the voice of the people is necessarily the voice of
God in all places and under all conditions. But it does mean that the
people, if given the privilege of responsibility and a due opportunity
for self-knowledge and self-instruction, will quite as often decide for
the right as for the wrong; and that in the latter case will learn from
their experience of error the certain way of avoiding similar blunders
in the future. Thus, by the very practice of their freedom do the people
grow in wisdom and virtue. Thus, by the very fact of its operation does
democracy perfect itself, as water purifies itself. Thus does the voice
of the people become in course of time as if it were the voice of God.
Which is all we mean by the ancient maxim that the cure for the ills of
democracy is more democracy! It is such a faith in the people that gives
to many of us, amid the political and industrial transformations of the
time, the guarantee of security which must be had, and for any guarantee
beyond this pledge of faith, we see no need.
It is obvious, however, that, to many minds, moral faith of any kind
can give no guarantee of things material. Blind trust in human nature
means nothing when we are talking about such matters as governments and
economic systems. We must have something more tangible than this is the
cry, if we are to believe that the new social movements of the age are
anything more than so many heedless attacks upon the integrity of our
civilization.
To this demand I am confident that a satisfactory answer can be given;
and I find this answer, not in the field of ideals, but in the field
of method. The guarantee of security, amid the chaos about us, is to
be found in the method of action characteristic of the true social
reformer of the times, which is nothing less than the method of exact
science. Visionaries, dreamers, agitators, blind propagandists, there
are a-plenty in the social field today, and many are they who follow
whithersoever they lead. But the reformer who really counts as an
influence at this moment, and therefore may be regarded as typical of
effective social progress, is nothing more, and certainly is nothing
less, than a scientist who makes society his laboratory and who follows
therein the expert’s well-approved methods of observation and experiment.
The social leader of this new age is primarily an investigator, and only
secondarily a reformer. His first demand is for facts; and only when
these are gathered in sufficient numbers, are classified and tabulated
and compared, and then at last made to tell their tale, does he draw his
inferences, formulate his doctrines and lay down his program of reform.
There is much of the prophet in the true sociologist—much of the poet,
much of the humanitarian and lover of mankind. These qualities must never
disappear, if the social movement is to remain wholesome, idealistic and
thus genuinely beneficent. But at bottom, at least for the present, must
be the scientist as the perpetual guarantee of sanity and safety.
What Darwin did with his barnacles and earth-worms; what De Vries did
with his evening-primroses; what Professor Loeb is doing with his
sea-urchins, and Dr. Carrel with his transplanted organs and revivified
tissues; all this is the true social worker doing more and more with his
tenement dwellers, child laborers, factory women, tuberculosis victims,
immigrants, white slaves, and so on indefinitely through the social
groups. More and more we have work which is primarily scientific, and
which may fittingly be ranked, from the standpoint of scientific method,
with any of the researches of the biologists, zoologists or astronomers
of modern times. Well does a recent writer declare, “In recent years,
this [altruistic] spirit, which began in a humanistic sentiment and
hardly developed beyond the limits of kindliness, has become so infused
with exact knowledge of social conditions ... that it has assumed the
dignity of a scientific pursuit.”
Here now is the guarantee of security for which so many cautious persons
of our time are vainly seeking. So long as we look upon the new moral
and political movements, which are so characteristic of our age, as mere
agitations, we may feel alarm for the future. It is when we look closer,
and see that, behind the agitation for change, there is the accuracy,
precision, and certainty of the scientific method, that we may feel that
“all is well.”
TEACHING SOCIOLOGY IN NORTH DAKOTA
ALEXANDER JOHNSON
The _Quarterly Journal_ of the University of North Dakota has recently
published a reprint of an article by Professor Gillette of the Department
of Sociology which is an extremely useful and interesting document.
The state has a board of control which administers its state
institutions, but like most such boards, pays little or no attention to
the county and municipal charities and correction nor to the voluntary
philanthropic agencies. To remedy this defect of the state government,
the Department of Sociology of the university compiled a most valuable
report on Poor Relief and Jails, and that report was spread broadcast in
the form of a reprint.
Professor Gillette describes his experience on beginning as follows:
“The first endeavors to obtain information in a new state
relative to such subjects as this paper treats are likely to
prove far from satisfactory because of the non-existence of
published information. Two years ago, after vainly endeavoring
to obtain information on the state as a whole relative to the
general subjects of poor-relief and conditions of jails, I
began a personal investigation into those matters.
“Whenever I found myself in a county seat, I collected such
facts as the county offices held, inspected the jails, visited
the poor farms where they were accessible, and inquired into
the workings of the poor-relief system. In this manner,
seventeen counties were investigated. Eight counties were
visited in connection with the occasional lectures I was
called on to give in the state. Information from the other
nine counties was obtained by means of field work which very
meager departmental funds enabled me to make. It is one of the
traditional conditions, which still persists in educational
institutions that are supposed to foster research, that
departments which use mechanical instruments to carry on
experiment are given thousands of dollars, while departments
whose field of research lies in the world outside are denied
any investigative funds or given a mere pittance. I expected,
therefore, to be able to report on conditions in those
seventeen counties only.
“As an illustration of the inchoate conditions which may
obtain in a civilized society it may be well to recount that
while investigating the sixteenth county I fairly stumbled
into evidence that, filed in the archives of the statehouse
at Bismarck, lay unpublished data on the cost of poor-relief
and to a less extent the cost of supporting the state insane
and feeble-minded for all the counties of the state. For it
appeared that county auditors and treasurers are required to
file what is called Auditor and Treasurer’s Annual Report to
the State Examiner of North Dakota. Correspondence with the
state examiner’s office caused the compilation of such data
as existed relative to the other thirty-one counties of the
state. I give this experience to illustrate the need there
is for gathering and publishing state-wide information on
matters pertaining to the backward classes we know as paupers,
criminals, and defectives.”
The report shows many facts that needed airing, especially as to the
conditions of the jails, and the rapid increase (for such a young and
progressive state) of the amount of pauper relief.
“The cost of poor-relief in the state almost doubled in
the five-year period, increasing from $128,917.15 in 1907
to $240,469.80 in 1911. The total population of the state
in 1905 was 437,070; in 1910 it was 557,056. These figures
approximately represent the years ending June 30, 1906 and
1911. That is, while the population was gaining 32 per cent the
cost of maintaining the poor in the state enlarged 86.5 per
cent. _In that time the expenditure for that purpose grew 2.7
times as fast as the population._”
This it must be remembered is in a prohibition state, one in which
probably one-half of the prisoners in the jail are “piggers,” which
is the picturesque vernacular for people convicted of violating the
prohibition law, or “running a blind pig.” In one jail, of twenty-four
prisoners nineteen were “piggers.”
Most of the poor relief is “outdoor.” Only a few counties have poor
farms, some of these being far from satisfactory. The county aids all
poor and indigent who are in need according to laws of settlement, and
the county commissioners levy a tax to this end. The overseers “allow and
pay relief to needy persons of sound mind; also to poor parents of idiots
and helpless children an amount common in such cases.”
The provision to pay relief to parents of idiots and helpless children
reminds one of the celebrated relief by the state to the parents of
idiots in Kentucky, which has been described as an act “to promote the
propagation of idiots and imbeciles.” Since the report was issued, the
Legislature of North Dakota has been in session. Among the new laws is
one creating a state supervisory board to regulate the public relief of
the poor. This is based on Professor Gillette’s findings and is a copy of
the Indiana law on the subject, which Professor Gillette recommended as
being the best code of the kind in this country.
Next year the Department of Sociology will present a similar report on
the insane and feeble-minded. The University of North Dakota is only one
of several—Wisconsin, Minnesota and Texas might be mentioned—in which the
department of sociology is becoming an extremely practical and useful
thing for the state.
CRIMINAL TRAFFIC IN COCAINE
LOUIS C. AGER, M. D.
Brooklyn, N. Y.
We always have with us a considerable number of inhuman beings who
are willing to make capital out of the weaknesses and sins of their
neighbors. The illicit sale of cocaine is only one example of this fact.
Similar conditions have always existed in the abuse of opium products,
and the sale of alcohol to irresponsible persons has become so much a
part of our vaunted civilization that we find it difficult to realize
that this drug abuse dwarfs into insignificance all others combined.
We hear periodically of the “ether jag,” the “cologne drunk” and the
“coke fiend.” It is the novelty of these habits that makes them good
newspaper copy. The actual number of individuals addicted to these habits
is exceedingly small, and their economic value to the community is
practically nil. Normal, well balanced people do not acquire drug habits
of any kind and it is only those of extreme mental instability who take
to the more unusual practices.
Cocaine is at present receiving a large amount of advertising and its
sale is therefore being boosted. Unfortunately there are always a number
of people whose mental instability takes the form of having ready at
a moment’s notice a sure remedy for any social evil that may be under
discussion. Such people are fully as harmful to the community as the drug
users, and sooner or later a society will learn to ignore them.
What are the facts about the abuse of cocaine in this country, and what
ought to be done to eradicate the evil? Users of this drug are not
perhaps numerous, but the number has undoubtedly increased during the
past five years. It is generally accepted as a fact that the proportion
of mental deficients in our population is also on the increase and the
two naturally go hand in hand. It is also true that debased individuals
have lately made efforts to encourage the use of this drug habit for
their own financial benefit, and as a result cocaine has become more
widely known than ever before.
All this ought to be corrected, but legislation alone will not accomplish
it. Numerous bills were introduced into the recent New York Legislature
and at one time it looked as though the Walker bill would become a law—in
spite of the opposition of all reputable physicians and the fact that its
complicated provisions violated professional privilege.
The proposed federal law is a simple, sane regulation based upon the
internal revenue system. It provides graded licenses for the sale of the
habit-forming drugs, with a complete supervision of their distribution.
The purchase of a large amount by one individual would at once be
noticed and his disposal of it followed up. If his explanation were
not satisfactory his license could be revoked. It is to be hoped that
Congress will enact this law.
[Illustration] FINGER PRINTS [Illustration]
A BIT OF EVIDENCE
SCOTT NEARING
James Rawley had come to a parting of the ways. Time after time the court
had overlooked his truancy and misdoings, but James had taken the pitcher
once too often to the well, and the open doors of the state reform school
stared him grimly in the face.
“It will be best for him in the long run,” commented the judge. “Each
month of this wild life makes him a little less fit to keep his place in
the community. He has had his last chance.”
Yet there was one ray of hope, for James lived in and out of Boston,
which is fortunate in having the Newton Technical High School. Here let
me say, by way of explanation, that the Newton Technical High School
is a part of the school system presided over by F. E. Spaulding,[1] a
veritable wizard in the organization and direction of educational work.
Among his many “queer” ideas, Mr. Spaulding believes that children of
high school age should be in the high school, whether they have passed
their eight years of grade work or not. An absurd theory? Well, perhaps;
but the first year he put this theory into practice, Mr. Spaulding
transferred seventy fifteen-year-old boys and girls from the seventh and
eighth grades, where they had learned the art of failing, to the high
school building, where they were to be taught success.
Grouped in special classes, these “grade-floaters” devoted more than
half their time to technical work—cooking, sewing, shopwork and machine
work—and the remainder to academic subjects. So prepared more than
two-thirds of the youngsters entered the high school on probation in the
same class with their former seventh and eighth grade school-fellows, who
had spent all their time the previous year at academic work. Here was the
test—could these children who had been devoting three-fifths of their
time to technical activities keep pace with children from the regular
grades?
At the end of the first quarter, when the marks of all the pupils in the
school were analyzed, it was found that the 800 scholars had an average
of .54 of one failure for each pupil. The twenty-seven girls who were
promoted on probation had .17 of one failure each, only a third as many
as the school at large. Of the seventeen boys promoted on trial, only
one failed and in but one subject. The probationers had therefore made
records which were, as a whole, far superior to the records made by the
average pupils in the high school.
These facts, pretty generally known in educational circles in and around
Boston, led James’ custodians to propose to the judge that he give James
one more trial, this time in the Newton Technical High School. The judge
agreed to the suggestion, and James, a dismal eighth-grade failure,
entered the Newton Technical High School in one of the special transfer
classes.
James began life badly. His mother died when he was young, and his
father, a rather indifferent man, boarded the boy out during his early
years with an aunt. She first spoiled him through indulgence, and then,
inconsistently enough, hated him because he was spoiled. Growing up in
this uncongenial atmosphere, James became entirely uncontrollable. He was
disagreeable in the extreme, wild and unmanageable.
The people with whom James was boarding grew tired of his continued
truancy, and he was placed on a farm near Boston. There, too, he was
discontented, dissatisfied and disobedient. Time after time he ran away
to Boston. He went from bad to worse, falling in with vagrants, learning
their talk and their ways, acquiring a love for wandering, and a distaste
for regularity and direction. Taken into custody by the juvenile court
and placed on probation with a family outside of Boston, James again ran
away, mingling with a crowd of his old associates in Boston. It was at
this point that the court decided to send him to the reform school. Then
it was that an understanding friend took him in charge, found him a home
in Newton, and started his life anew in the Technical High School.
That was how the record stood a while ago. How does it stand now?
Promoted to the regular freshman class on trial, James has renewed his
interest in education and shows an entirely new trait. He does not
exactly dote on all his work, but he is doing it and doing it well. He
hated school before. The new deal is different, he even likes it at times.
He has found something to interest him. The boy was just bursting with
the need of expressing his self, his personality. The street gave his
worst half its chance. Now the better stuff that is in him is getting its
opportunity and he is taking it.
Good and evil are always contending for the boy as for the man, and the
function of education is to give the good the better chance. If there be
stale pedagogues who do not understand, let them take notice, for after
all the boy is the one to be considered.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See One Dollar in the Educational Market, THE SURVEY for May 24, 1913.
BOOKS
THE NECESSARY EVIL
By Charles Rann Kennedy Harper and Brothers. 110 pp. Price
$1.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.08.
THE BLINDNESS OF VIRTUE
By Cosmo Hamilton. George H. Doran Co. 127 pp. Price $1.00; by
mail of THE SURVEY $1.07.
Charles Rann Kennedy has again in The Necessary Evil given us a strong
though unpleasant play. It is an appeal to the young girl growing into
womanhood to consider what the desecration of that womanhood means, and
a demand that she refuse to allow herself to be sold either into the
prostitution of the street or that of a moneyed, loveless marriage.
John Heron, a composer, living in his music, his daughter and in the
memory of his wife, is a man apart from the problems of the day. His
daughter, just entering womanhood, has been for years an invalid, living
in her father’s music and her books.
We meet them on her birthday. They are waiting for her brother’s return
from the outside world in celebration of the day. The girl, filled
with wonder at the beauty of life, with thankfulness for her recovered
health, stands looking out of the window while her father plays Brahms’
Intermezzo Op. 118, No. 6. A woman passing in the street attracted by the
music looks up and their eyes meet. In the woman’s eyes is the misery
of all the fallen women since the creation, and it seems to the girl to
carry a direct appeal for help. The music stops, and to her questioning
the father tells her of her mother’s life of sacrifice for these erring
sisters and of her death from a broken heart. It is the girl’s first
knowledge of evil. Just here her brother comes.
In her joy over his return the woman is forgotten, but while they are at
the birthday supper the woman comes in with her message of the misery of
the lives of her lost sisters; her plea for a union between man and woman
that is mental and spiritual, beyond the physical, and her demand for the
love and pity of the girl’s innocence for her companions.
Were this scene handled by any less masterly hand than Mr. Kennedy’s it
would be impossible; but in his messenger we find again that same note
of mysticism that has characterized his other plays. We cannot, however,
but sympathize with the girl’s brother in his indignation that his sister
should have the veil so ruthlessly torn from her eyes. Surely we can
teach our girls the sanctity and beauty of marriage without taking away
their joy in living.
Approach the problem, however, from whatever road we will, it always
comes back to the one fundamental question—What right have parents to let
their children grow to manhood or womanhood without the knowledge that is
their right?
During the past few seasons we have had many plays on sex problems. Some
of them have been strong, virile, excellently written, from both an
acting and a literary point of view, but they have failed to waken in
their hearers any sense of personal responsibility towards the problem
presented. This is due mainly to the fact that they have dealt with
unusual situations or a too sordid group. The average listener feels
sorry for the victim with the same impersonal feeling that is aroused by
the reading of similar horrors in the daily press.
But this is not so in Cosmo Hamilton’s strong play—The Blindness of
Virtue. The scene is laid in the vicarage of a small rural parish outside
of London—but it might as truly be outside of New York. The Reverend
Harry Pemberton and his wife, lovable examples of the broad human element
of the church, in their zeal to do their duty by God’s unfortunate
children are leaving to a very lonely life their one child, a girl just
reaching womanhood, anxious to try her wings, to be doing, to be helping,
but sheltered by her parents from any conflict with the world and its
problems.
Into this household comes young Archie Graham, sent down by his father,
the minister of education, to read with the vicar. Archie is given
a thoroughly bad character by this father, who has been too busy
legislating for the education of the masses to have had time to help in
the development of his motherless son.
By the second act a charming love interest has developed between the boy
who, under the warmth of the vicar’s trust and companionship, has grown
every inch a man, and the girl—unconscious on her part, realized on his
as something to be worthy of.
In this act, Mary Ann Lemmins, a village girl, who was lost eight months
previous, comes to see the vicar.
_The Vicar_: “Why didn’t he marry you, Mary Ann?”
_Mary Ann_: “’E ’a got a wife. I was to blame fer this, ’e
said. Me knowing nothing—’e explained it all right to me—Me
knowing nothing, and what it all meant—brought it about. If I’d
a bin told when I was old enough to understand I should a sent
him away ’e says, double quick, and saved ’im and me and the
little one. ’E says as how if we was taught to think, and knew
as much as the man, there’d be very little of this ’ere trouble
fer us. It’s the mother first, ’e says, and then us, who is ter
blame.”
With his eyes opened to what a parent’s responsibilities should be, the
vicar calls his wife and begs that she give Effie the knowledge which
would protect her. The mother brings every old-time argument behind which
false modesty has hidden for years to prove that Effie should not be
told. “Girls must learn for themselves. My mother never told me.” Only
when he insists that if she does not tell Effie he will, does she agree
to do so that night. She delays, however, and a few mornings later the
father finds Effie in Archie’s bedroom, quite innocently come to hear
of his trip to London the previous day. The vicar, refusing to believe
that his daughter, knowing what he thinks her mother has told her, could
have come to the room voluntarily, accuses the boy of having enticed her
there. A violent quarrel between the two men ends the act. But in the
last act the vicar learns that the young people have acted innocently,
and it all ends happily.
The play is beautifully written, the characters so human, so lovable,
that one feels grateful to Mr. Hamilton for having introduced us to them.
It is by far the strongest and most convincing appeal for sex education
that has yet been written for the stage. One cannot imagine any parent
who has been blind to his duty, as had been the vicar, not crying with
him, “My child might have been Mary Ann.”
The Blindness of Virtue should do much good. It might be considered the
cause to effect as shown in Brieux’ Damaged Goods.
OLIVE CROSBY.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR VOCATIONAL TRAINING IN BOSTON
The Women’s Municipal League of Boston. 300 pp.
Some excitement has been aroused in the ranks of those who are interested
in vocational guidance to youths by the conclusion of several students
of the subject that young people between fourteen and sixteen need to be
guided into further training rather than into gainful occupations. If
this conclusion be correct a distinct service will be rendered by listing
and analyzing existing opportunities for vocational training. Without
committing itself to either point of view, the Women’s Municipal League
of Boston has pioneered by compiling a handbook of such opportunities in
that city.
For the purposes of this book vocational training is defined as “any
education the controlling purpose of which is to fit for profitable
employment.” It is obvious that in any attempt to analyze and
discriminate among agencies offering vocational education, the value
of the work will be determined largely by the manner in which it is
conducted. The investigations for this treatise were done mainly by
students from Harvard, Radcliffe and Wellesley Colleges, from the School
for Social Workers, and from Boston University. Their work, says the
preface, was closely supervised. A tentative chart made from the written
reports of the students was subjected to the comparative scrutiny of the
heads of all the schools concerned. Before the final charts were made
conferences were held with experts in each type of education listed.
Besides an alphabetical list of 292 subjects taught in vocational schools
and classes in Boston, the book contains classified information regarding
professional schools, commercial schools, industrial schools and schools
for training in the household arts. Both public and private schools are
included. Among industrial schools are included pre-vocational, manual
training, trade, technical and other improvement schools. With regard
to each school the book tells briefly its purpose, courses, admission
requirements, tuition, season, and what the school undertakes in the way
of placing its students.
A supplement lists organized opportunities for training for the
physically handicapped in Massachusetts, opportunities for vocational
training in settlements and other social centers and organized
opportunities for finding employment.
WINTHROP D. LANE.
SOCIALISM SUMMED UP
By MORRIS HILLQUIT. The H. K. Fly Co. 110 pp. Price $1.00; by
mail of THE SURVEY $1.06.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIALISM
By ALLAN L. BENSON. B. W. Huebsch. 188 pp. Price $1.00; by mail
of THE SURVEY $1.10.
SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE
By SAMUEL P. ORTH. Henry Holt. 352 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of
THE SURVEY $1.62.
MY LIFE
By AUGUST BEBEL. The University of Chicago Press. 343 pp. Price
$2.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $2.14.
FURTHER REMINISCENCES
By H. M. HYNDMAN. The Macmillan Co. 545 pp. Price $5.00; by
mail of THE SURVEY $5.20.
THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM
By WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING. The Macmillan Co. 406 pp. Price
$1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.63.
The chapters of Mr. Hillquit’s summary of the principles of Socialism
and the industrial conditions, which, in his opinion, make its coming
inevitable, appeared in the _Metropolitan Magazine_. As its name
indicates, this little book of 110 pages makes no original contributions
to the subject; in it one of the best known of American Socialists
presents in a style which, though dry, is easy to understand, the
forces that have made Socialists; their aims; the program of practical
reform through legislation favored by the party; something of the
accomplishments of international Socialism; and a short resume of its
history in America. Socialism, as presented by Mr. Hillquit, is a purely
political movement. The best presentation of its immediate aims and its
methods of accomplishing them is given in the chapter entitled Political
Program.
* * * * *
Mr. Benson’s book, The Truth About Socialism, covers the same ground as
Mr. Hillquit’s and was written originally for _Pearson’s Magazine_. It is
more picturesque and readable in style, as Mr. Benson is magazine writer
even before Socialist, and deals with the subject less methodically.
An introductory chapter covers the general principles of Socialism and
succeeding chapters deal with the objections to Socialism. Further
chapters take up its bearing on the vital questions of the day and
contrast the radical and the Socialist plans of meeting these problems.
As for the practical method of attaining the industrial commonwealth,
Mr. Benson appears to favor compensation for industries taken over by
the government and the payment to employes in these industries of wages
commensurate with their services.
Neither Mr. Hillquit’s nor Mr. Benson’s book are intended to cover the
subject thoroughly or to do more than is the legitimate function of
magazine articles—to arouse the reader’s interest so that he will himself
attempt to learn more.
* * * * *
Mr. Orth in Socialism and Democracy in Europe, has presented a good
review of the accomplishments of international Socialism under the
dominance of an opportunist parliamentarian policy. He has well presented
the relations, conscious and unconscious, of the practical evolutionary
Socialism of today with the radical or liberal movements of the various
European countries. The mass of facts which he has gathered together
into small compass bear careful study. They cover the development of
radicalism, political Socialism and syndicalism in France; of the
co-operative and political sides of the Belgian Socialist movement as
well as their frequent use of the direct action of the general strike
to gain political rights; the development of the German Socialist
movement in the political field and the German trade union movement;
and the history of the Independent Labor Party and of the liberalism of
Lloyd-George in England.
Such a book as Mr. Orth’s tends to confirm the more inflexible theorists
of the class struggle in their contention that Socialism should, if it is
to retain its separate existence as a revolutionary movement, be able to
suggest the rough outlines of an industrial commonwealth of the future
which shall be convincingly different from the bureaucratic “Socialistic”
state toward which Mr. Orth evidently believes the Socialist and radical
movements of the various European countries are moving. Constructive
Socialism has, up to this time, meant the outlining of the successive
steps in a program looking toward the Socialist state. Now that many of
the “immediate demands” of Socialist platforms have been taken over by
other parties, the next step for Socialists is to show what is the social
structure toward which they are working.
* * * * *
In My Life, the first volume of his autobiography, August Bebel, the most
prominent figure in the German Socialist movement, covers in Germany
practically the same period that the first volume of H. M. Hyndman’s
reminiscences, reviewed on this page, covers in England. It stops in
1878 with the beginning of the persecution of Socialists and with reform
legislation by the government, dictated by the ideas of the Socialist
Lasalle and prompted partly by the fear of Socialism, then at their
height.
Autobiography is not history, but it throws an invaluable sidelight
on history. Supplemented by the compact review of the history of that
period of German Socialism in Professor Orth’s book. Bebel’s life
becomes absorbingly interesting. It tells of his own development, of
his practical work in the non-Socialist German labor movement and of
his conversion to Socialism. Last of all comes his subsequent part
in the struggle between the opportunist Socialism of Lasalle and the
revolutionary Socialism of Marx, ending in that compromise between
the two wings in 1875 which made the modern German movement. Equally
interesting is the story of the first acts of Bismarck’s bitter
persecution of Socialism, which had much to do with bringing these two
wings together and which gave its greatest impetus to the growth of the
party’s membership in Germany.
Some of the details of the persecution are worth repeating. In 1878 two
attempts were made on the emperor’s life. Neither was by a Socialist
but they were used, nevertheless, as an excuse for persecution. The
first effort to suppress Socialism by legislation was a failure, but the
government found other means of making it undesirable to belong to the
party. Under laws of _lese majeste_ and other laws, in the first half of
1878 the prison sentences of Socialists arrested in a certain section of
North Germany amounted to 500 or 600 years. Bebel gives the following
general account of conditions:
“Thousands and thousands of workers who were known to be Social
Democrats were summarily dismissed. The newspapers published in
their advertisement columns declarations signed by working-men
who engaged themselves for the future not to join any Socialist
organization, not to buy or read Social-Democratic papers,
not to pay contributions for Social-Democratic purposes. This
terrorism on the part of the employers became so violent that
our papers advised members to sign anything they were asked to
sign, but afterwards to do as they liked, because, in face of
such terrorism, they were not bound to keep such pledges. This
terrorism even went farther; patriotic houseowners gave notice
to their Social-Democratic tenants, and restaurant-keepers who
for years had been only too glad to have Social-Democrats for
their customers asked them to keep off their premises.”
The pre-Socialist period of Bebel’s life is no less interesting than his
part in the movement. His vivid account of the bitter poverty of his
childhood—the days when his “highest ambition was to be able to eat his
fill of bread and butter”—is almost enough to account for his subsequent
development into a revolutionary Socialist. Throughout almost the whole
period covered by this volume, indeed, Bebel combined a bitter struggle
for the livelihood of his family with a keen and unrelenting fight to
establish a state of society which should do away with poverty.
* * * * *
The second volume of the memoirs of that old warhorse of English
Socialism, H. M. Hyndman, is as delightfully readable as was the first,
published a year ago. It is not, like Bebel’s life, an orderly record of
his activities as a Socialist propagandist, for this is but one, though
the most important, side of Hyndman’s life. From the time he lost his
hereditary fortune because of his espousal of Socialism he has been a
hard working but unfortunately not a very successful business man and at
the same time an indefatigable Socialist agitator.
In his judgment of people and events he sometimes shows flashes of
insight; though he is by no means judicial but always dogmatic,
“opinionated,” and not infrequently wrong-headed. In his facts, though
he has a marvelous store of knowledge—frequently indeed, inside
information—he is often inaccurate.
In no affairs but those of America, however, are his facts fundamentally
wrong, and this complete and amusing ignorance of American affairs he
shares with a large part of the English press. Of those few American
Socialists whom he happens to know personally his characterizations are
interesting. Among them is William D. Haywood, who in his opinion is the
“most thorough-going and one of the most determined working-class leaders
I have ever met, and I have come across a good many.”
An illustration of Hyndman’s tendency to be “opinionated” is his
attitude toward the worldwide movement of which Haywood is the American
representative. “Syndicalism,” he says, “is scarcely worth criticizing,”
and his whole criticism of the philosophy of the new labor movement
runs in this vein. Nevertheless, he is appreciative of the personality
and influence of the leading exponent of syndicalism in England, Tom
Mann, whom he regards “as the boldest, most vehement, and most stirring
agitator and organiser” he has ever known.
In the great English strikes of the last two years Hyndman was evidently
less impressed than most observers by the solidarity of the workers, and
he even appears to criticize the democratic control of those strikes
which was their other distinguishing characteristic. Perhaps this is
because he himself has always been somewhat autocratic in his leadership
of the Social-Democratic federation, and thus tends to regard leaders as
unduly important.
Of late years Hyndman’s name has been associated with his struggle,
contrary to all Socialist precedent, for a large navy and a citizen army
to handle a possible German attack on England. His defense of this stand,
based largely on conditions existing at the time of the Franco-Prussian
war, is not entirely convincing, especially in view of the aggressive
action that the German Social Democracy has taken recently in preventing
warlike preparations on the part of Germany. In this connection his
appreciation of the leader of the German Social Democracy, who is the
subject of the German autobiography just reviewed, is well worth quoting.
“I have rarely met,” he says of Bebel, “any one who had done so much to
be proud of who was so simple and modest in his private conversation,
or who took so little upon himself in his every-day intercourse with
his fellows. His influence over his own party was obviously quite
unbounded. The voluntary respect paid to Bebel was in fact a tribute paid
through him to their own organization and themselves, of whom he was the
acknowledged representative.”
* * * * *
For the second time William English Walling has made a notable
contribution to the literature of Socialism. In his earlier book,
Socialism as It Is, he discussed the various and often contradictory
lines of thought and policy which have crept in and divided the Socialist
movement as organized in the political and economic fields. His
contention there was that the struggle of Socialism today is not against
capitalism but against bureaucratic State Socialism. Not the least
important thing he attempts in the present volume, The Larger Aspects of
Socialism, is to differentiate the philosophies underlying revolutionary
Socialism and State Socialism.
This volume, like the earlier books, is not based so much on Mr.
Walling’s own interpretation of “all the great modern forces, thought,
science, art, religion and humanity’s conquest of the universe,” as on
quotations from recognized authorities on these subjects. Mr. Walling
shows how all modern thought is tending toward a new philosophy of
civilization, without which political and economic Socialism could never
be attained. Socialism: a New Civilization is his subject. Throughout
all aspects of this subject he identifies the pragmatic philosophy with
Socialism. This identification he supports by quotations not only from
pragmatic but from the writings of the fathers of Socialism. Briefly
stated, this philosophy holds man to be, for human purposes, not for
purposes of abstract thought, the centre of the universe. Society in
its view is meant for the protection of man, so that each individual
shall be enabled not to “serve the state”—this is the State Socialist
philosophy—but to be free and to reach his own fullest development. The
various aspects of this idea Mr. Walling considers under the headings
science, evolution, biology, morality and various aspects of sex. What he
regards as the chief reactionary influences of the present civilization
he considers in chapters on religion, education and the abuse of history,
and he brings out strongly the charge that the class education of the
present day is the greatest of impediments to the new civilization, and
that the invasion of education—that is, the invasion of the minds of the
mass of the people—by the new ideas is necessary before Socialism can
prevail.
With the dominance of this new philosophy in all lines of human thought
Mr. Walling believes that for the first time human society, bent upon the
perfection of the individual, will be guided by other than involuntary
forces. It will be determined not by natural forces or by the brute force
of class rule, but by the creative intelligence of humanity exercised on
environment purposefully for the good of its members. “With socialism,”
he quotes Marx as saying, “real history begins.” For its contribution
of a new social philosophy he holds Socialism, not as it is generally
regarded, constructive of the future on the foundation of the past, but
rather creative of a future society which has nothing in common with the
past.
MARY BROWN SUMNER.
A SUNNY LIFE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF SAMUEL JUNE BARROWS
By ISABEL C. BARROWS. Little, Brown & Co. 323 pp. Price $1.50;
by mail of THE SURVEY $1.62.
This is the story of a rarely beautiful and many-sided life. It shows
us the little boy becoming a wage-earner at eight to help his widowed
mother; joining the church at fifteen and doing volunteer religious work
among the sailors on the docks, who mounted the boy on a barrel to talk
to them, and loved “the little barrel preacher”; becoming one of New
York’s best short-hand reporters; at twenty-one taking the city editor’s
place on the _Tribune_ during the regular editor’s vacation; marrying
at twenty-two; coming in close touch with great issues at the national
capital as private secretary to William H. Seward, secretary of state;
earning his way through the Harvard theological school by adventurous
trips with General Custer and others as correspondent for the New York
_Tribune_; pastor for four years of the historic First Congregational
(Unitarian) Church of Dorchester, Mass.; editor for sixteen years of the
_Christian Register_; congressman for one term, full of manifold service;
finally secretary, for ten years, of the New York Prison Association,
a leading penologist, securing important improvements in the laws, and
doing more than any other one man toward changing American prisons from
brutalizing dungeons to great reformatories.
The story of his life is vividly and lovingly told by the gifted wife
who was the close associate of his labors for forty-three years. The
book includes also extracts from his writings and letters; hymns that
he composed, words and music; and a number of memorial tributes. It is
enriched with sixteen photographs. This intimate narrative will have deep
interest for all who knew and loved Mr. Barrows.
Mr. Barrows fought many good fights, but kept his sweetness and serenity
through all. As Rabbi Wise said of him: “He was no man’s foe, but always
the foe of wrong.” His legislative successes were won by hard, clean work.
“An acquaintance said to him, ‘Mr. Barrows, if you want to
get that [probation] bill made into a law, you will have to
put your temperance scruples into your pocket and give the
newspaper men a champagne supper.’... That was not the method
of this hard-working total abstainer. Instead, he made eleven
trips to the capital that winter, interviewed personally
every member of the committees having the bill in charge,
convinced each one individually of its importance, converted
the governor, wrote editorials week after week for the leading
papers in New York, and so directed public intelligence and
sympathy that the bill was passed without a dissenting vote.”
He was wise enough to see that “the forces which develop
virtue are more potent in reducing crime than the forces which
suppress vice.”
He had a singular catholicity. As national prison commissioner, as
representative of the United States at the International Prison Congress
and the Interparliamentary Union for Arbitration, as a student of foreign
prisons and an attendant at many national and international gatherings,
he traveled widely and met all sorts and conditions of men, and he met
them all on the same simple human footing, from a king or president down
to the street gamins to whom he taught new games of jackstones while
waiting for a belated car. He had friends of all nationalities, and
carried a brotherly heart toward all races and colors. He knew a dozen
languages, and kept on learning fresh ones after he was sixty.
He was many-sided, not only in his accomplishments, but in his devotion
to good causes—peace, equal suffrage, temperance, social purity, kindness
to animals, and justice for the Indian, the Negro, the persecuted
Armenian, the Russian struggling for freedom. Full of talent, he “never
had time to make money”; and he was fortunate in having a wife as
variously gifted and unconventional as himself—one who could aid him in
every way, from making a complete suit of clothes for him when he was a
poor theological student, or carpentering a drawer to hold his music, to
taking his place at the editorial desk in his absence, and going, after
his death, to Paris as the representative of the United States government
to explain his plans for the great International Prison Congress of which
he was the president-elect. Never a rich man, he always led a rich life;
and this record of it will go on helping humanity long after he has
passed away from earth.
ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.
COMMUNICATIONS
WHO?
TO THE EDITOR:
(_On seeing the White Slave by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle._)
This is the man that sells women’s souls into hell fire. Who is the buyer?
LOUISE W. KNEELAND.
THE WHITE SLAVE
[_Concerning the reproduction, on the cover of the May magazine number of
THE SURVEY, of Miss Eberle’s sculpture of that name._]
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
I have to ask that you will remove my name and cancel my subscription to
your publication, THE SURVEY.
I was educated as an artist; have studied from the nude under Bonnat in
Paris, and am by no means “squeamish;” but I am altogether unwilling to
expose myself to the risk of having any such picture as appears upon the
cover of THE SURVEY for the week of May 3 sent into my home at the risk
of its being seen by my four sons, the eldest of whom is a Methodist
clergyman, and the three others of whom are under age.
I saw the statue of “a Gorilla carrying off a woman,” when it was first
exhibited and much criticized, even at the time, in Paris—when it was
first exhibited in the Paris salon.
The “idea” of this cover is, evidently, taken from that statue, but for
offensiveness this goes it 500 per cent better.
WOODBURY G. LANGDON.
Morristown, N. J.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
As a subscriber and one who highly appreciates the work of THE SURVEY,
permit me to express my surprise and criticism on the lack of good
judgment and good taste that permitted the design on the cover of the
number just out, May 3. In my opinion, the aims and purposes of such a
magazine as THE SURVEY in endeavoring to meet and counteract the evils
of the day are not furthered by such sensational eye pictures as this,
and moreover, it has the characteristics of brutality and indecency, I
am sure, from the point of view of a large number of your readers, and
might have the result of lessening their opinion of your good judgment
and taste in your manner of approaching this subject and others you are
dealing with. I will offer no excuse for thus expressing my opinion
sincerely, as I will assume that you desire to have such from your
subscribers and readers.
J. B. NOEL WYATT.
Baltimore.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
In addition to an unusually valuable list of articles, permit me to
thank you for the cover of the issue of May 3. The picture is profoundly
educational, and those who have had some dealing at close quarters see in
this picture of the White Slave a finished sermon on the subject.
RUDOLPH I. COFFEE.
[Member Pittsburgh Morals Commission and Rabbi.]
Pittsburgh.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
For the enclosed, please send me a copy of your issue of May 3, with the
White Slave picture on cover.
Allow me to congratulate you for giving that group just the prominent
place you did.
[REV.] ELIOT WHITE.
Rahway, N. J.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
As a regular subscriber, reader and admirer of your magazine and its
valued work, I must earnestly protest against the outside cover of your
May 3 issue. With several boys in my family, the only way I could lay
the issue on my library table was _after_ tearing off the cover, which
is certainly glaringly offensive. We oppose (or should do so) indecent
bill-board, newspaper advertising, etc., and therefore should not offend
ourselves, _no matter what the motive_. Trust thee will be guarded for
the future.
WILLIAM HAGER.
Lancaster, Pa.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
As friends of THE SURVEY and of what it stands for, allow us to write our
protest against placing such a subject as the White Slave on the outside
cover of your issue of May 3, Vol. XXX, No. 5.
The publication of such a subject, treated in a sensational way with
a conspicuous background, on the cover of any magazine seems to us
ill-advised, and especially so on one which finds its way into private
houses where decency and modesty are inculcated.
As your paper is to a certain degree technical, intended to be read
chiefly by social workers who are cognizant of these conditions, the
_inside_ of its covers is excusable, but its _outside_, open to the
observation of all, young and old, should to our minds be severely
censured.
Please bring up this matter before your board of Survey Associates.
L. E. OPDYCKE and
EDITH OPDYCKE.
New York.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
Thank you for the frontispiece on THE SURVEY of May 3. The beast carrying
the woman did effective service in the Atlanta campaign, but this
picture of a low human brute hawking into slavery a poor little immature
girl will, I believe, be yet more effective in rousing the sluggish
consciences of our American people. If it is art to use the pencil or the
graver’s tool to portray sin in such a manner as to apply the lash to
conscience, then I prefer this, under the existing dreadful conditions
of tolerance of vice, to the Venus de Milo, and I thank the courageous
artist who so consecrates her talents to the highest possible service of
humanity.
A picture of this kind will do more to instruct my daughters and my sons
as to the dangers which surround them and their obligations to help the
down-trodden daughters of the poor than many arguments. Thank God we have
brought these reptiles out into the open where we can handle them with
due violence, and we can now place the responsibility where it belongs—on
our churches.
Can you loan me the original to make a lantern slide to use in my public
talks on vice?
HOWARD A. KELLY, M. D.
Baltimore.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
I cannot forbear making a protest against the horrible and suggestive
picture, which you have printed on the cover of your issue of May 3,
Vol. XXX, No. 5. It is a picture calculated to suggest ideas which the
whole country nowadays is trying to suppress. Teaching young people the
facts of life is one thing—doubtless necessary. Making public the fact
that there are people wicked enough to pander to vicious men is also, I
am sure, necessary for efforts to suppress this traffic; but it is very
demoralizing to send out broadcast and publicly such pictures as this.
It shows that the familiar speaking and writing of this white slave—so
called—traffic has blunted the judgment as to fitness and decency that
this picture is displayed in this public way.
Miss Robins’ book, My Little Sister, is a true picture doubtless. She
seems to affirm so with great confidence, but it will do more harm than
good I fear in arousing evil thoughts and an unwholesome curiosity in
the minds of young people in whose hands it falls. Published first in a
reputable magazine, and then hawked about in trains, etc., recommended in
your magazine, which claims to be devoted to the improvement of morals,
it will do a great deal of harm. At the rate you are going on in freedom
of speech and discussion of filth which should not even be named when
young and inexperienced people can hear, you will soon be advising a
moving picture of what goes on in the dens of vice in order to teach
young people what they should _not_ do.... This artist must have allowed
her imagination to go deep into the haunts of vice before she made this
statue.
—— ——
Newport, R. I.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
I do wish to express my extreme regret that you should have made public
such a picture as appears on the cover of your issue of May 3. It ought
never in my opinion to have been allowed to pass through the mail.
The readers of THE SURVEY do not need any such reminder of the horrors of
the white slave traffic, and to others, especially to young people and
indifferent persons who are likely to pick up the magazine at random,
such a picture with its unmistakable suggestions cannot fail to be
demoralizing.
I find that other readers of THE SURVEY here hold the same opinion.
—— ——
Newport, R. I.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
As a subscriber to THE SURVEY and as one who has always tried to further
its influence and increase its circulation, I beg to gravely remonstrate
against your cover design of the issue of May 3.
Had you seen fit to place this most loathsome picture within the pages of
your magazine, it would possibly have served a sufficient purpose, but to
place it where it cannot fail to be seen by innocent children makes this
issue unfit to appear in any home and appears to be, therefore, not only
an instance of bad taste, but of bad morals.
Such lurid and outrageous efforts to excite the hysterical side of public
opinion, pitifully defeat their aims and appear to be most unworthy of
THE SURVEY’s standards.
LUCIA H. K. SHERMAN.
San Francisco.
* * * * *
TO THE EDITOR:
Kindly send to us C. O. D., twenty-five copies of THE SURVEY, cover page
of which contains the cut of a figure portraying the white slave traffic.
The date and number cannot be furnished as the magazine has been loaned
and we do not know to whom it was given.
We hope to secure, from the distribution of this issue among the ladies
who are interested in social service, quite a number of subscriptions.
JOHN L. GREEN.
[Superintendent Mississippi Children’s Home Society.]
Jackson, Miss.
* * * * *
One or two of these protests are so unrestrained that the temptation is
strong to reply without mincing matters. Others are so moderate that they
must provoke the respect of people who hold different opinions. In the
same way we trust that those who break with the editor of THE SURVEY on
the reproduction of Miss Eberle’s statue, or on its use as a cover, will
regard that use as a considered act.
Unquestionably there is a cleavage of judgment in the matter of public
education as to the social evil and its prevention. It is not THE
SURVEY’S purpose to overemphasize the vice situation. But it is a part of
our regular service in the field of preventive social measures to keep
our readers thoroughly alive to the movements to protect girls and boys
from ruin and disease, for that, as we see it, is of the very essence of
the present discussion of commercialized prostitution.
In Miss Eberle’s statuette, the White Slave, and in Elizabeth Robins’
book, My Little Sister, art and literature have this spring added fire
and conviction to the abolition movement against prostitution—that
“twin of slavery, as old and outrageous as slavery itself and even more
persistent,” to use Miss Addams’ phrase.
So we printed a photograph of the White Slave on our cover as a challenge
to public conscience searching. And we printed a review of My Little
Sister, in which Mrs. Laidlaw brought out the American aspects of the
story of the sheltered little English girl who was kidnapped.
In the same issue was a ringing report of how the newly enfranchised
women of San Francisco forced a reluctant Legislature to pass a bill
which will close the notorious “red light district.” More than that,
these women of the California Civic League and the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union are caring for the helpless girls thrown out of the
segregated district, befriending them and putting them on their feet
again. It was the kind of story that led a subscriber to write the other
day: “Every time I read an issue of THE SURVEY I feel like getting right
up and _doing_ something worth while for somebody.”
On another page, A. Leo Weil, the militant president of the Pittsburgh
Voters League, entered a plea for a special body of men in every city to
deal with vice. And a physician in a New York village told how the local
doctors, aghast at the amount of social disease among the young people of
their little community—their own sons among the rest—banded together to
wipe it out.
Up to the time of going to press it had been expected that Mr. Kneeland’s
incisive analysis of commercialized prostitution in New York, made for
the Bureau of Social Hygiene, would have been released by the Century
Company by May 3, so that his findings could be added to this group of
articles.[2] All this was in THE SURVEY’S spirit of facing hard facts
for the sake of the future, and in line with its editorial policy with
respect to this special subject: i.e. of banking up material rather than
stringing it along.
Here, then, in a field to which THE SURVEY bears special obligation,
at a time when we were handling a group of articles interpretative of
that obligation, was a piece of sculpture with the same message—with a
thought-compelling quality which “linked it as a social force,” as Miss
Merriman rightly pointed out, “with, say, the dispassionate but terrible
report of the Chicago Vice Commission.”
Of course, the strength in such a challenge to public
conscience-searching lies in its exceptionalness—repetition would dull
its edge. There is no prospect of another such cover in the months ahead;
we know of no “sermon in stone” of like calibre. For the same reason,
when such an exceptional work does appear, our course is clear: we should
bring it out.
Those moralists who feel that the work was suggestive read into it
something which is not there. It is not unclean.
Those artists who have criticised the group on the ground that the
woman’s figure alone should have been done—that, in other words, the
sculptor should have abstracted all the pathos and beauty possible from
the situation, but not the horror—miss its social message.
Those parents who protest against it as opening a dark world to sheltered
members of their households must make the same protest against the
sermon which would do more than skim the surface of the moral needs of a
community; against the general periodical which would broach these things
in ways specific enough to be helpful; against the play like Damaged
Goods, which puts the consequences of evil living in human terms; for
in all these audiences are there likely to be young people. And after
all, in all these fields, we are not at this stage faced with the choice
between home education and public education, but of rousing the home.
While the leaders in sex hygiene are bound to have a difficult task on
their hands in restraining unscientific and slap-dash agencies who assume
to give public instruction, the fact remains that the larger and most
difficult task of those leaders is still that of arousing the public, a
general and wide-spread process of education both as to the things that
should be known and as to the need for knowing them. The reason for this
is that the old policies of reticence have failed—failed so far that
not only has America contributed nothing to the solution of a world-old
problem, but has imported new commercialized phases of it and let them
become rampant, to bring destruction and disease to thousands.
At such a juncture THE SURVEY must give respectful hearing to those
whose outlook is personal, but must draw its counsels rather from those
who bring larger measure of social experience to the question—from
superintendents of orphanages,[3] who know what the old policies of
ignorance have cost in the lives of boys and girls; from neurologists,
who see the after consequences of that same ignorance; from reformatory
heads; from educators; from physicians.
Without the fact of commercialized vice such a searching piece of work
as Miss Eberle’s would lack truth; without the added fact that such vice
exists, not merely because of the greed and lust of men, but because
of the inertia, the reticence, the acceptance of things as they are by
people who, if they aroused themselves, could put an end to it, it would
lack occasion.
If such conditions exist, then it has blazing truth and insistent
occasion and like Nast’s cartoons it may well be looked back upon as
a crashing social force breaking through the crusts of toleration and
neglect.
If such conditions exist—if they exist because the public does not
know, or knowing, does not act; if the public’s ignorance or inaction
is due in whole or in part to the benumbing effects of these same
policies on journalism, on the church, and on the other channels of
enlightenment—then it is the part of THE SURVEY of all journals, standing
as it does midway between the doctor, the social investigator, the
criminologist and the general public, to bring out the truth and to bring
it out in ways that will strike fire.
If under such promptings THE SURVEY uses the White Slave, then it should
use it in such a way as to cleave through to the widest circle of its
audience. Hence the cover. Probably in all his long pastorate, Henry Ward
Beecher was never more criticized than when he emphasized the auction of
two fugitive slave girls at the Broadway Tabernacle. Those who in his day
were shocked at what they felt to be sensationalism and the desecration
of God’s temple have given way in the passage of time to those who see
that the desecration was mankind’s in the toleration of slavery itself.
Dr. Abbott in his life of Beecher says:
“He believed that thousands who would regard with apathy if not
complacency the slave system at a distance, would regard with
abhorrence the reform of an individual slave girl to a life of
enforced sin and shame....
“He said: ‘The very men who give counsel and zeal and money
_against_ the unseen slave of the South irresistibly pity the
particular fugitive whom they may _see_ running through the
North.’
“Had he been inclined to defend his method from those who
criticized it as sensational, he might have referred them to
the methods used by the Hebrew prophets, who taught so often
and so effectually by dramatic object-lessons.”
New times bring new needs.
Miss Eberle has modeled the auction block of a new slavery.
In the Brooklyn _Eagle_ of April 21 appeared a powerful sermon by Dr.
Hillis from Dr. Beecher’s old pulpit on social diseases and heredity,
in which such strong language as the following was used in speaking of
the “conspiracy of silence”: “It is a guilty, cruel, dastardly, damnable
silence on the part of preacher, teacher and parent.”—Ed.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See Rockefeller Report on Commercialized Vice. THE SURVEY, May 24, p.
257.
[3] See Post-graduates of the Hired Man, by R. R. Reeder, superintendent
of New York Orphanage, Hastings on Hudson, who is the educator and foster
father to 250 boys and girls. THE SURVEY, March 8, p. 816.
THE PATERSON STRIKE
TO THE EDITOR:
For a number of years I have been a reader and subscriber of THE SURVEY
and it both shocks and pains me to find that THE SURVEY has apparently
taken a biased view of the strike here in Paterson. I understand that
several SURVEY investigators have been to Paterson before preparing
the news items on pages 81-82 and 83 in your issue of April 19. These
investigators did not call upon those in our city to whom it seems to me
they should naturally have turned, the Charity Organization Society. If
they had, they would not have made some of the glaring and ill-advised
statements contained in your editorial.
They would have been better posted as to the type of looms which they
have called multiple or automatic looms throughout the article. Both
names so far as applied to silk are erroneous. All broad silk looms with
few exceptions are supplied with either side or center filling stop
motions. This stops the loom when the thread in the shuttle breaks. This
has been common for years and does not constitute an automatic loom. Some
looms have been equipped with warp stop motions, stopping the loom when a
warp end breaks. This does not constitute an automatic loom. An automatic
loom is one in which either the shuttle, which has already been filled
with new thread, or quill or bobbin changes automatically. It would also
very likely be equipped with both warp and filling stop motions. Such
looms as last mentioned have never proven satisfactory on silk.
In the article you make certain statements but have not made them
clearly. As your paper is read by many charitable and philanthropic
people, it is hardly fair to the charitable and philanthropic people of
Paterson to have such statements as you have made concerning Paterson
go forth to the world without objections on our part. You have not made
clear the meaning of the three and four loom system. The word system, as
used here, has an arbitrary meaning and means one weaver to three or four
looms. You state that Paterson is “importing” the four loom system. This
is not true because there is nothing to import.
You further made a statement that competition between Pennsylvania and
New Jersey is over. This is not so, it is just as keen today as ever. You
further make a statement that great factories are equipped with automatic
looms in Pennsylvania, four of these looms being operated by one boy or
girl.[4] Can you name a single mill where this is so? I have been fifteen
years calling on the silk mills and I have yet to learn of an automatic
loom being used to weave silk or where four looms are operated by a boy
or girl. You further make a statement that weavers are required to tend
three looms. I think this is wrong. There is no question but that they
could operate three to four looms of their own free will, but there is no
compulsion about it.[5]
In quoting from the _Paterson Evening News_ you infer that an additional
strain is placed on a weaver in taking care of three or four looms. If
this is so, it remains to be proven. I have talked about this with a
number of weavers and they state that they have not noticed this fact,
if it is one. You further imply that it will change the character of
work in Paterson if the three and four loom system is put in operation.
I think this is a mis-apprehension because only about 40 per cent of the
looms of Paterson, of which there are about 16,000 would be affected in
any way by this so-called three and four loom system. As you quoted, in
a statement made by the silk manufacturers, only a percentage of these
would be affected because many plain looms have jacquards mounted over
them and the manufacturers have never attempted to run more than two
looms of this nature to one weaver, nor does the so-called three and four
loom system reduce the wages. I know of one mill in this town that is in
operation today despite the fact of the strike where sixteen looms are
being operated by three weavers. One of these weavers in this particular
mill has been operating four looms since last October and her earnings
have averaged over $75 every two weeks.
Further along you say the multiple looms are large and equipped with
automatic devices and can only be installed in large mills. This is
absolutely incorrect. There is nothing to prevent a small mill from using
any loom that is now manufactured. The smaller mill, in only a few cases,
has so far taken over jacquard weaving which is the most intricate of all
the weaving, and requires the most skill, and as intimated, is largely
confined to the large factories. The smaller mills are mostly equipped
with plain looms. Quite a few of these are mills running three to four
looms to a weaver.
In making your contrast of the average wages paid in Paterson and the
average paid in Pennsylvania, have you been fair? According to the
reports which I have, the weavers of Paterson earn on an average about
$12.55 a week and I am afraid in taking your Pennsylvania average you
included all classes of textile workers, including the very low paid help
in throwing mills, so cutting the average Pennsylvania wage down.[6]
The employers have not refused to confer with their employes except
that they have rightly refused to treat with the Industrial Workers of
the World agitators towards this settlement. You have not made clear
the doctrines or propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World whom
you have called Industrial Socialists. The Socialists as you know have
repudiated Haywood. Your statements in regard to the arrest of William D.
Haywood and his subsequent release when arrested on March 30 are correct.
I sincerely hope that you will immediately send other investigators
to Paterson who will call on the Charity Organization Society and the
ministers who formed the committee invited to the aldermanic meeting,
Rev. A. H. Stein, Rev. D. S. Hamilton, Rev. W. C. Snodgrass, Rev. J. F.
Shaw and Dr. Jones. I would also suggest some of the business men of the
town whose stores you could enter along Main street or Market street.
I would suggest William Wieda; John C. Mason, Quackenbush & Co.; A. P.
Van Saun, Van Dyk Furniture Co.; Ex-Judge Francis Scott; Ex-Judge James
Inglis; John W. Ferguson; H. H. Parmelee; Hamilton Trust Co.; Edward T.
Bell, First National Bank; and Wm. H. Blauvelt, Second National Bank.
I would suggest that you call attention to the articles in The Survey of
May 4, 1912 and April 6, 1912 telling about the Industrial Workers of the
World. I am also enclosing an article written by Lincoln Steffens in the
Globe and Commercial Advertiser of March 29, 1912.
Will you kindly publish this letter in fairness not only to Paterson but
to the “things” THE SURVEY stands for, as your news items contain so many
technical errors which have a vital bearing to a certain extent on this
strike?
W. L. KINKEAD.
[Secretary Central Charities Committee.]
Paterson, N. J.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] See Note A below.
[5] See Note B below.
[6] See Note C below.
* * * * *
[THE SURVEY is more than willing to accept Mr. Kinkead’s corrections
as to looms and textile processes, for his business is mill machinery.
It does not quite agree with him, however, as to the importance of the
matter, since the technical terms were incidental merely to the subject
of the strike.
Three points in Mr. Kinkead’s letter should perhaps be footnoted:
A. The three and four loom systems are now in use in
Pennsylvania. The federal report on the Condition of Woman
and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, says: “In
Pennsylvania, where the broad silks manufactured are of the
plainer grades, not requiring the skill, efficiency and
attention given to the higher grades made in Paterson, woman
and child weavers have the field practically to themselves.”
B. Mr. Kinkead would certainly not wish to maintain that,
when the change is made from a two to a four loom system, the
earnings of weavers, who preferred to stick to two looms, would
not be cut. If you cut a chair caner’s wage from ten to eight
cents a chair, there is no compulsion for him to make more
chairs than before; but he does if he has a family hanging on
his earnings. The silk manufacturer who, when he makes the
change, pays a weaver more than before if he will work four
looms instead of two, and less than before if he continues to
work two is merely dodging if he claims there is no compulsion
about it.
C. A more accurate analysis of the government figures would
give the average wage of Paterson weavers as $11.80 instead of
$11.69; that of the Pennsylvania weavers as $6.99 instead of
$6.56. The error that Mr. Kinkead suggests was, however, not
made.
As a matter of fact, such a staff inquiry as Mr. Kinkead suggests has
been in progress and in the June magazine number THE SURVEY will publish
an article by John A. Fitch.—Ed.]
JOTTINGS
DRAMATIZING THE PATERSON STRIKE
Seizing on the suggestion that some master of pageantry ought to give
symbolic expression to the mass strike, a leader of the Paterson strike
proposed that the silk workers should themselves present to the public
the meaning of its chief incidents. Within a few days Madison Square
Garden had been rented for June 7, and large committees, composed in no
small degree of volunteers from the 10,000 silk strikers in New York
city, were at work on the details of the arrangements.
A pageant of six episodes has been planned by John Reed, a magazine
writer who was himself arrested on the Paterson picket line a few weeks
ago.
The episodes, as interpreted by the pageant committee, divide themselves
into two groups: the one representing the struggle of the strikers
against economic and legal tyranny; the other, the democratic government
of the strike by the workers.
Brief titles of the episodes are: The Mills Alive—The People Dead—The
Strike; The Mills Dead—The People Alive—The Picket Line and Arrests;
Forty Pickets before an Irresponsible Judge; The Strike Victim’s Funeral;
The Striking Mothers Send their Children to Strike Mothers in New York;
The Legislature of the Strikers in Helvetia Hall Passes the Eight Hour
Law. The strike leaders, in this last scene, will give propaganda
speeches addressed to the audience. Their speeches are to be the only
monologues in the performance.
A thousand strikers will march from Paterson to New York to take part in
the pageant. The music will be furnished by their mass singing and by
their bands which now play at all large strike meetings. Both the actors
and singers are being trained by John Reed.
CITY FATHERS TO FOREGATHER
At Binghamton on June 5-7 the mayors and other municipal officials of
New York state are to hold their fourth annual conference. Each of the
forty-eight mayors is to tell in five minutes what is the greatest
problem of his city.
VACANT LOT GARDENING IN TORONTO
Toronto has joined the ranks of the cities in which there is an active
vacant lot gardening movement. Over thirty parcels of vacant land in
the business section of the city have been loaned to the Playgrounds
Association and prepared for gardening by the Plowmen’s Association of
York Township.
Early in this month the actual tilling began and the start of the new
venture was celebrated by a dinner to the plowmen on the evening of that
day. Seeds and implements have been promised so that the children will
have everything necessary for successful gardening.
May 31, 1913
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