The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Survey, Volume XXX, Number 1, April 5,
1913, by Various
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Title: The Survey, Volume XXX, Number 1, April 5, 1913
Author: Various
Editor: Paul Underwood Kellogg
Release Date: September 2, 2013 [EBook #43625]
Language: English
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THE SURVEY
Volume XXX, Number 1, Apr 5, 1913
THE COMMON WELFARE
RESPONSE TO FLOOD CALLS
For the first time in the history of our great disasters, the country's
machinery for relief has been found ready to move with that precision
and efficiency which only careful previous organization could make
possible. In the flood and tornado stricken regions of the Mississippi
valley the Red Cross has given splendid evidence of the effectiveness of
its scheme of organization and of its methods as worked out on the basis
of experience at San Francisco, and as tested by the Minnesota and
Michigan forest fires, the Cherry mine disaster, and the Mississippi
Floods of last year.
Utilizing the largest and ablest charity organization societies which
serve as "institutional members," a force of executives and trained
workers was instantly deployed. With foreknowledge of just what to do
and how to do it, and without friction, these men and women have
reinforced the spontaneous response to emergency of citizens and
officials in the stricken communities.
Omaha's tornado had scarcely died down when Eugene T. Lies of the
Chicago United Charities was on his way to the city. Ernest P. Bicknell,
director of the National Red Cross, had reached Chicago, en route to
Omaha, when news of the Ohio floods turned him back. The same news
summoned Edward T. Devine from New York. It was Mr. Devine who organized
the Red Cross relief work at San Francisco, following the earthquake and
fire of 1908. Mr. Bicknell established headquarters at Columbus, itself
badly in the grip of the waters. At Dayton Mr. Devine, C. M. Hubbard of
the St. Louis Provident Association and T. J. Edmonds of the Cincinnati
Associated Charities concentrated their services.
When Cincinnati and its vicinity needed help, Mr. Edmonds returned to
his home city. The Omaha situation by this time could spare Mr. Lies for
Dayton. To Piqua, Sidney and other Ohio and Indiana flood points went
James F. Jackson of the Cleveland Associated Charities and other workers
from various organizations. The news from the Ohio and other floods
almost swamped that of an isolated disaster in Alabama where a tornado
devastated the town of Lower Peachtree. To handle the relief at this
point the Red Cross dispatched William M. McGrath of the Birmingham
Associated Charities, who had seen service a year ago in the Mississippi
floods.
To work under the direction of these executives, agents have been
drafted from the staffs of charitable organizations scattered throughout
the entire middle West, and even as far east as New York. Close
co-operation was at once established between this force, hastily
organized local committees and various branches of federal and state
government service. In Ohio the resources, equipment and staffs of the
army, the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, the life-saving
service, the militia, the naval militia, and state departments of public
health, have all been applied promptly to the problem of emergency
relief. Governor Cox of Ohio, as ex-officio chairman of the Ohio Red
Cross State Commission, did much to assure this early co-operation.
Following the first work of rescue and relief, sanitation looms up as
one of the gravest problems of the Indiana and Ohio valleys. Immediately
upon the arrival of the secretary of war at Dayton a sanitary officer
was appointed, who divided the city into sixteen districts, each in
charge of a district sanitary officer. Each of these selected his own
staff from among local physicians and volunteer physicians from other
cities. Red Cross nurses in considerable numbers were early supplied.
Instructions in brief form have been sent broadcast over the city giving
definite directions to the inhabitants for the safeguarding of health.
The sewer and water systems are being reopened as rapidly as possible.
Early this week the expectation was that, although the dead in the city
would not total 200, it would be necessary to feed many thousands of
people for a week and several thousand for several weeks. The Dayton
situation, though more severe, was typical of what was to be found in
other stricken towns.
The extent of the Omaha disaster is already reported in statistics which
are said to be complete and accurate. The summary includes: 115 lives
lost; 322 seriously injured; at least 1,000 slightly injured; 822 houses
destroyed: 2,100 houses partially wrecked; property loss estimated at
$7,500,000; 733 families being fed in relief stations (March 30); 59
dead; 150 injured and $1,000,000 property loss in surrounding towns.
Efforts are being made by the real estate exchange to prevent the
raising of rents. The plans suggested for rebuilding include a county
bond issue of $1,000,000 and the securing of other money from the
packing and railroad companies to be loaned without interest.
President Wilson's call to the nation for relief, and the quick action
of governors and mayors in rallying their states and cities, started
emergency supplies and funds for supplementing the tents, blankets and
rations which the army and militia had rushed into the field. The
National Cash Register Company, whose undamaged factories in Dayton were
of great value in providing shelter and space for relief administration,
secured through its officers in other cities supplies and money which
were promptly forwarded. The company officials did much to systematize
the local relief, and department heads assumed charge of different
divisions of the work. Organization charts and diagrams were printed at
the factory so that the people of the city could act intelligently.
Early this week the relief funds were reported to have reached $408,000
in New York, $300,000 in Chicago, $105,000 in Boston, and varying sums
in other cities. Most of the money was contributed through the Red
Cross. Contributions received at its Washington headquarters totalled
$816,000, with New York first, Massachusetts second and Illinois third
in size of contributions.
Some small gifts were as significant as the larger ones. A young man who
appeared to be a poorly paid clerk came to the Red Cross office in New
York at the noon hour last Friday and pulled from his pocket a five
dollar and a one dollar bill. The person in charge asked him if he was
not giving more than his share, and suggested that he keep the one
dollar hill. "No," said he, "I've kept some small change for carfare and
lunch, and tomorrow's pay day." One letter accompanying a small
contribution read:
"Just one short year ago, when the ill-fated Titanic deprived me of
mine all, the Red Cross Society lost not a moment in coming to my
aid. Through you I now wish to give my 'widow's mite' to help the
stricken ones in the West, and I only wish I could make it a
thousand times as much."
Emergency supplies and funds have been prompt and abundant, but the
extensive work ahead of lifting household and community life out of
desolation justifies and requires a very large fund. For, as Mr. Devine,
with the San Francisco catastrophe in the background of his experience,
telegraphed after reaching Dayton: "The disaster is appalling even if
the loss of life is less than it was feared."
Spontaneous contributions through a variety of channels are usually
sufficient for immediate needs, and the Red Cross is following its
customary policy of reserving as much of its funds as possible for
permanent rehabilitation. When a disaster comes in any part of the
country the nearest "institutional members" of the Red Cross at once
dispatch trained members of their staffs to the scene. Each organization
has an "emergency box" containing, convenient for carrying, an equipment
including detailed printed instructions, record cards, Red Cross flag,
expense sheets, vouchers, etc. The use of this equipment, especially the
uniform record cards, which have been carefully prepared on the basis of
the San Francisco experience, means that help is not lost or wasted, but
gets to the people who need it most. Even more important, it means that
help is given not merely to keep victims of the disaster from starvation
and exposure during the weeks immediately following, but to afford a
reasonable lift on the road to the recovery of the standard of living
maintained before the disaster.
A RELIEF SURVEY BY THE SAGE FOUNDATION
This emphasis on rehabilitation is the message of a report[1] which, by
a coincidence, was on the press for the Russell Sage Foundation when
news of tornado and flood came from the middle West. It is the first
comprehensive review of emergent relief work following great disasters.
It is based on the San Francisco experience and put forth as a "book of
ready reference for use on occasions of special emergency."
[1] San Francisco Relief Survey. By Charles J. O'Connor. Francis H.
McLean and others. Survey Associates, Inc., for the Russell Sage
Foundation. To be published April 18, the seventh anniversary of the San
Francisco earthquake. Price postpaid $3.50. Orders for delivery on
publication day may be sent to THE SURVEY.
The volume presents a study of the organization and methods of relief
following the San Francisco earthquake and fire, made for the Foundation
by a group of people who held responsible positions in connection with
the relief work. It is to appear on April 18, the seventh anniversary of
the disaster.
For the assistance of those in the middle West upon whom heavy
responsibilities came so suddenly, the Sage Foundation sent out post
haste advance copies of the first two sections of the report as a
practical handbook to charity organizations in and near the stricken
regions.
The Relief Survey is divided into six parts: Organization and Emergency
Period; Rehabilitation: Business Rehabilitation; Housing Rehabilitation;
After Care; The Aged and Infirm. Some of the prime points emphasized for
the "Organization and Emergency Period" are the following:
1. The recognition of the American National Red Cross, with its
permanent organization, its governmental status, and its direct
accountability to Congress for all expenditures, as the proper
national agency through which relief funds for great disasters
should be collected and administered; thus securing unity of
effort, certainty of policy, and a center about which all local
relief agencies may rally.
2. The importance of postponing the appointment of sub-committees
until a strong central committee has been able to determine general
policies and methods of procedure. The hasty organization of
sub-committees at San Francisco resulted in much unnecessary
overlapping effort and some friction when committees got in each
other's way. The relief forces were not united until a whole week
after the disaster, and after unfortunate difficulty and
bitterness.
3. The desirability of contributions, especially those in kind,
being sent without restrictions, as only the local organization is
able to measure relative needs at different periods of the work. At
San Francisco much pitifully needless restrictions imposed by those
who sent funds or supplies from distant states. The delays in
securing authority for the wise use of these contributions were
well-nigh intolerable. The only safe course lies in placing
implicit trust in an efficient and recognized director of relief
such as the Red Cross is in a position to furnish.
4. The value of utilizing for emergency administration a body so
highly organized and so efficient as the United States Army, to
take charge of camps, and to bring to points of distribution the
supplies required for those in need of food and clothing.
5. The wisdom of reducing the bread line and the camp population as
quickly as possible after the disaster so that the relief resources
may be conserved to meet the primary need of rehabilitation. The
care used in emergency expenditures means much in husbanding
resources so that permanent rehabilitation may be efficient and
thorough.
6. The need of establishing a central bureau of information to
serve from the beginning of the relief work as a clearing house, to
prevent confusion and waste through duplication of effort.
7. The necessity of utilizing the centers of emergency distribution
for the later rehabilitation work of district communities and corps
of visitors.
8. The necessity of incorporation for any relief organization that
has to deal with so large a disaster.
9. The possibility of a strict audit of all relief in cash sent to
a relief organization. The impossibility of an equally strict
accounting for relief in kind, because of the many leaks and the
difficulties attendant upon hurried distribution. Care in this
direction is assured if the Red Cross is fully utilized.
Nothing can take the place, the editors of the Relief Survey testify, of
the spirit and devotion of the local committees. At San Francisco the
citizens showed splendid self-reliance and faith in the future, which
enabled them to rebound from fortune's sudden blow, and show what
sustained and co-operative effort can achieve. But the most important
factor, especially for permanent rehabilitation, in so great and complex
a relief problem is a trained staff. This the American Red Cross,
through the co-operation of charity organization societies throughout
the country, is constantly prepared to bring together on short notice.
Mr. Bicknell represented the Red Cross at San Francisco after Mr.
Devine's departure, and was thus unusually well equipped to plan the
methods which the Red Cross has devised for emergency use.
SOCIAL LEGISLATION AND THE EXTRA SESSION
An open letter was sent to President Wilson this week with over
forty-five signatures, urging the importance of a group of social
measures which were neither voted down nor passed at the last session of
Congress. In the opinion of the signers, among whom are included some of
the Democratic leaders who have been foremost in social reform, this
overhanging social legislation should be definitely acted upon at the
extra session. The movement to this end was encouraged by the positions
taken by President Wilson in his inaugural address.
The letter is the outgrowth of a meeting of men and women interested in
social legislation held last week in New York at the call of Edward T.
Devine as associate editor of The Survey. The signatures to the document
are those of individuals solely. The particular measures will be urged
at the forthcoming Congress by such national organizations as the
American Association for Labor Legislation, National Consumers League,
National Committee for Mental Hygiene, National Child Labor Committee,
the American Prison Labor Association and the Gloucester Fisherman's
Institute. While each organization is committed only to the measures in
its own field, all of them have a common interest in seeing that the
extra session takes up social legislation in addition to the tariff and
currency. The letter follows:
THE PRESIDENT,
The White House,
Washington. D. C.
_Dear Mr. President:_--
On the eve of the convening of the Sixty-Third Congress in special
session, the undersigned desire to bring to your attention certain
bills of importance which have received the favorable consideration
of the last Congress, but which, owing to various reasons, failed
of affirmative action.
Nothing could set more vividly before the country the urgency of
such measures than the words of your inaugural address, in which
you pointed out the need for perfecting the means by which the
government may be put at the service of humanity in safeguarding
the health of the nation, the health of its men and its women and
its children, as well as their rights in the struggle for
existence. The country has been stirred by your declaration:
"This is no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is
justice, not pity. These are matters of justice. There can be no
equality of opportunity, the first essential of justice in the
body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in
their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great
industrial and social processes which they cannot alter,
control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it
does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent
parts."
The undersigned are aware that the time and energy of Congress will
be largely expended upon the revision of the revenue and currency
statutes. Without in any way meaning to minimize the importance of
these subjects, we wish to lay emphasis upon what we believe to be
the necessity for the passage of certain other measures directly
affecting the health and happiness of hundreds of thousands of
citizens. The legislative proposals which we present to you are not
new; several of them have met with little open opposition; some
have been passed by one house of Congress; others by both; all have
been prepared by experts and are based upon tried principles
already embodied either in the federal laws, in the laws of the
various states, or in the laws of other nations. An example is the
bill which aims to compensate workingmen employed in interstate
commerce for accidents to life and limb. Another is the eight-hour
bill for women in the District of Columbia, which was lost through
an accident in the closing hours of the last Congress.
The measures which had not passed when Congress adjourned and which
are herewith advocated are as follows. It is the principles
underlying these several bills rather than the specific provisions
of any measure that we wish to be understood as urging upon the
attention of the President and Congress:
Providing compensation for federal employees suffering injury or
occupational diseases in the course of their employment.
Providing compensation for employees in interstate commerce
suffering injury in the course of their employment.
Harmonizing conflicting court decisions in different states by
giving the state itself the right of appeal to the Supreme Court
of the United States.
Establishing the eight-hour day for women employed in certain
occupations in the District of Columbia.
Co-ordinating the federal health activities and strengthening
the public health service.
Providing in the immigration act for mental examination of
immigrants by alienists; safeguarding the welfare of immigrants
at sea by detailing American medical officers and matrons to
immigrant-carrying ships.
Providing a hospital ship for American deep-sea fishermen.
Providing for the betterment of the conditions of American
seamen.
Establishing a commission to investigate jails and the
correction of first offenders.
Abolishing the contract convict labor system by restricting
interstate commerce in prison-made goods.
Legislation giving effect to the principles underlying such
proposals as these would constitute, we believe, an important step
in the accomplishment of the forward-looking purposes which you
have placed before the American people.
Caroline B. Alexander
Frederic Almy
Louise de Koven Bowen
Louis D. Brandeis
Howard S. Braucher
Allen T. Burns
Charles C. Burlingham
Richard C. Cabot
Richard S. Childs
John R. Commons
Charles R. Crane
Edward T. Devine
Abram J. Elkus
H. D. W. English
Livingston Farrand
Homer Folks
Ernst Freund
John M. Glenn
Josephine Goldmark
T. J. Keenan
Florence Kelley
Howard A. Kelly
Arthur P. Kellogg
Paul U. Kellogg
John A. Kingsbury
Constance D. Leupp
Samuel McCune Lindsay
Charles S. Macfarland
W. N. McNair
Charles E. Merriam
Adelbert Moot
Henry Morgenthau
Frances Perkins
Charles R. Richards
Margaret Drier Robins
W. L. Russell
Thomas W. Salmon
Henry R. Seager
Thomas A. Storey
Graham Taylor
Graham Romeyn Taylor
Lillian D. Wald
James R. West
W. F. Willoughby
Stephen S. Wise
Robert A. Woods
COMPULSORY MINIMUM WAGE LAW IN OREGON
Oregon's minimum wage law,[2] which was recently signed by Governor
West, is the first one in America to have a compulsory clause. Failure
to pay the rate of wages fixed and in the method provided by the law is
punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. In Massachusetts, the first
state to establish minimum wage boards, the only penalty is the
publication of the names of offending employers in four newspapers in
the county where their industries are located.
[2] See Minimum Wage Legislation by Florence Kelley, on page 9 of this
issue.
The Oregon law applies only to women and children. It prohibits their
employment in any occupation in which the sanitary or other conditions
are detrimental to health or morals, or for wages "which are inadequate
to supply the necessary cost of living and maintain them in health." It
likewise forbids the employment of minors "for unreasonable low wages."
An Industrial Welfare Commission is created to determine minimum wages,
maximum hours and standard conditions of labor.
The commission is authorized to call a conference of representatives of
the employers, the employees and the general public to investigate and
make recommendations as to the minimum wage to be paid in a given
industry. If the commission approves these recommendations they become
obligatory. The powers of the Oregon commission to determine hours and
conditions of health and morals are more extensive than those delegated
to an industrial commission by the legislature of any other state. The
members of the commission are to be appointed by the governor.
The successful campaign for this law and the drafting of the bill itself
was based upon an extensive investigation conducted by the Social Survey
Committee of the Oregon Consumers' League. Wages, work conditions, and
cost of living were studied in Portland and elsewhere throughout the
state. The inquiry was directed by a trained investigator, Caroline J.
Gleason of Minneapolis, formerly a student of the Chicago School of
Civics and Philanthropy. The work was started in August 1912 and the
information covered 7603 women wage earners in Portland and 1133
throughout the rest of the state. Wage statistics were tabulated for
4523, and are particularly valuable in the cast of the department stores
which placed their pay rolls at the disposal of the survey committee.
Generous co-operation from committees in twenty-five counties of the
state was secured.
In the drafting of the bill the experience of the Massachusetts Minimum
Wage Board was studied. Legal advice was secured and the
constitutionality of the measure is upheld in an opinion by the attorney
general of the state.
Social workers from Washington and California have been in touch with
the investigation and the preparation of the bill. They have arranged to
have bills drawn up on the same lines introduced as soon as the
legislatures of their own states convene. The passage of the same
measure by the three coast states is regarded by the social workers in
each as a desirable and important piece of uniform legislation for an
area in which industrial conditions and problems are similar.
The Social Survey Committee in its report gives the principles and facts
which form the basis of the demand for the legislation as follows:
1. Each industry should provide for the livelihood of the workers
employed in it. An industry which does not do so is parasitic. The
well-being of society demands that wage-earning women shall not be
required to subsidize from their earnings the industry in which
they are employed.
2. Owing to the lack of organisation among women workers and the
secrecy with which their wage schedules are guarded, there are
absolutely no standards of wages among them. Their wages are
determined for the most part by the will of the employer without
reference to efficiency or length of service on the part of the
worker. This condition is radically unjust.
3. The wages paid to women workers in most occupations are
miserably inadequate to meet the cost of living at the lowest
standards consistent with the maintenance of the health and morals
of the workers. Nearly three-fifths of the women employed in
industries in Portland receive less than $10 a week, which is the
minimum weekly wage that ought to be offered to any self-supporting
woman wage-earner in this city.
4. The present conditions of labor for women in many industries are
shown by this report to be gravely detrimental to their health; and
since most women wage earners are potential mothers, the future
health of the race is menaced by these unsanitary conditions.
A NEW FEDERAL AGENCY FOR SETTLING STRIKES
An important power vested in Secretary Wilson of the new federal
Department of Labor, which has hitherto practically escaped attention,
gives to him the right assumed by President Roosevelt, when he initiated
the machinery for settling the coal strike of 1902. The provision
referred to in the law creating the department reads as follows:
"That the secretary of labor shall have power to act as mediator
and to appoint commissioners of conciliation in labor disputes
whenever in his judgment the interests of industrial peace may
require it to be done."
Speaking of this section Secretary Wilson gave this interview to the
_Washington Post_:
"The secretary of labor, by the terms of the act creating the new
department, is empowered to act as mediator in disputes between
labor and employers. The policy to which I shall adhere during my
administration will be to do all I can to bring labor and capital
together in mutual conferences, so that they may settle their own
differences."
It has been pointed out that this power can be invoked at the will of
the secretary. In this way he can bring public attention to bear upon
any labor dispute which he believes warrants his official notice. Mr.
Wilson has as yet given no indication as to how frequently he expects to
use this power. Attention has also been called to the fact that this
section may have an important effect upon the Erdman Act for settling
transportation strikes.
FINGER PRINTS
TEN CENTS
KATHARINE ANTHONY
It was in a small restaurant in the downtown business district. The girl
who came in and sat down opposite me at the "table for ladies" was
clearly "office help." She could not have been more than sixteen, and in
the boyish-looking brown velvet hat that she wore she appeared scarcely
that. Her manner had little of the self-assertiveness so commonly seen
in the young girl wage-earner.
"How much is the veg'tubble soup?" she asked the waiter in a confiding
tone.
"Ten cents," he said.
The price appeared satisfactory and the waiter went away with his very
brief order. While the young girl waited, she caught my eye.
"It's cold today," she remarked, with a winning smile and an air of
taking me into her confidence as she had done with the waiter.
"A bit chilly, yes."
"He don't let me down to dinner till so late," she continued, "sometimes
half-past one. You get hungry, and then you get over being hungry, and
then you don't want nothing when you do go down. You know?"
Yes, I recognized the experience.
"The office where I used to work, we went out to dinner right at twelve
every day."
"What keeps you so late now?"
"I guess he just forgets to let me down. He forgets to go out himself, I
think."
The waiter brought the soup, a watery looking fluid in which floated a
tomato and an onion in partial dissolution. He placed beside the plate a
dingy blue check which bore in large print 10c.
"When I'm there a month, I'm going to ask him to let me down every day
at a regular hour," she went on. "I'm only there a week now, so I
wouldn't ask him yet."
She tasted the soup, but it was apparently not to her liking, or else,
as she had said, her appetite had gone when the first feeling of hunger
had passed. She glanced at the dirty blue check which committed her to
her choice for better or worse, and then tried another spoonful of soup.
"I used to take a cup of coffee and a Charlotte 'roosh' every day, but
my mother said I'd starve. She told me I'd got to have soup, it was more
stren'thening."
"She was quite right, of course."
"But what's the use of ordering it if you can't eat it after all?"
She regarded the plate disconsolately. A little rallying induced her to
make another effort. Then she gave it up entirely.
"I wonder what my mother would say if she could see me now!"
"I wonder!"
Taking two nickels from her small rusty bag, she rose, leaving the plate
of cold soup almost untouched. She said good-by with her peculiarly
friendly little smile, deposited the blue check and the two nickels at
the cash counter, and went back to her afternoon's work.
WILLIAM, A MODERN DRAMA[3]
[3] Drawn from the records of the Juvenile Protective Association,
Chicago.
The curtain is about to fall upon a human drama as full of complicating
agencies and dramatic ironies as the most exacting either of Greeks or
of moderns could require.
The dramatis personae are: a colored youth of twenty-two years; his aged
mother (the father disappeared while the youth was still a child in
Kansas); a friend who failed him and then too late repented; a partner;
a dishonest clerk; a lawyer of similar type; and a judge according to
the letter of the law. The acts are only three and brief.
Act I shows William at work for a large firm in Missouri at $9 a week.
He manages to live on $3, sending $6 to his mother. He could not write;
she could not read. But the weekly money order became the tryst of
mother and son, and by it she knew that all was well with him. Among his
fellow workmen was one, also a William, who seemed friendly and like
William I, anxious to live economically. The two Williams shared a room,
and all went well for about three months.
One pay day, William II borrowed from William I the $6 that should go to
the mother, but only for a day or so, to be returned surely before the
end of the week. But the man disappeared, and with him vanished the
money. Then William I went to the little clothes press, and not having a
suit of his own, took one of William II's, and pawned it for $6, and
sent the money to his mother according to his word. That night,
repentant but penniless, William II returned. He expressed himself as
well pleased with what had been done with his suit, satisfied to have
the money raised by any means possible. So the two, reconciled, slept.
But William II rising early in the morning, went for an officer, and
charging his room-mate with theft, had him arrested.
"He slep' with me all night there, and in the mawnin he don' have me
arrested!"--thus William I mourned his false friend.
So Act I closes with our hero in the penitentiary, locked in for two
years. But William II's repentance bore a late fruit. During the two
years, he sent out of his own money each week the $6 to the mother of
his friend, that she might never know the truth.
* * * * *
Act II shows William working in different places, and for short times,
as is the fate of "jail-birds." At last in company with George he opens
a restaurant, and prospers, and is popular. Then his evil fate overtakes
him. Invited to be door-keeper at a dance one night, he left George in
charge of the restaurant. George apparently went out on business of his
own, and presently the clerk followed his example, donning for the time
a coat of William's. But the clerk needed money; there was none in the
pockets of the coat; and so, at a convenient corner, he waylaid a
Chinese, relieved him of has funds, and left William's coat by way of
compensation. Easily identified by the coat and papers in its pockets,
William was as easily arrested--and as easily sentenced. The trial was a
farce. A lawyer was appointed by the court. This lawyer took his
client's indictment papers, ignored his client, called no witnesses,
heard the sentence, and drew his fee.
William appealed to the Pardon Board. But at the time of this appeal,
neither George nor the other door-keeper at that dance could be found to
prove an alibi for William. The board asked: "have you ever been in
prison before?" Alas for William! He could not say no; the board would
not listen to his version and investigate the facts. His own
truthfulness condemned him, and he was sent up on a five years'
sentence.
* * * * *
The setting of Act III is the penitentiary. Falsely accused, without
opportunity to prove his innocence, neglected by the lawyer paid to
defend him, William, being only a Negro, toiled faithfully in a stone
quarry, accumulating a reputation undesirable in the eyes of the world
and the law. One day his foot was injured by the crusher. Then after
months of stone dust, his lungs became infected. But at last word of his
case reached the Juvenile Protective Association, and presently
successful proof of his innocence of all connection with the attack on
the Chinese was secured, and William was paroled from prison.
How far he may recover from the injuries received during this
imprisonment remains to be seen. How much of opportunity to work and
support himself and the aged mother society will offer an injured Negro
with two prison records is a grave question. But the matter may be
settled by the quiet falling of the curtain upon the sad little drama of
the life of William.--S.
EDITORIAL GRIST
JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN 1837-1913
Mr. Morgan was for seventeen years treasurer of the Charity Organization
Society of the City of New York which founded THE SURVEY and under which
it was published until the fall of 1912. When, in 1907, the parent
society launched Charities Publication Committee in order "to give
national scope and breadth" to the magazine, Mr. Morgan was one of
fifteen guarantors who gave $1,000 each the initial year to promote its
educational work. Last summer he gave $250, the sum asked from him,
toward the clearance of an overhanging deficit, in advance of the
institution of the Survey Associates as an independent and co-operative
under-taking.
The public's chief concern in Mr. Morgan's great activities has been the
play of his powerful individuality in the rapid reconstruction of the
"mass of wrecked corporations which blocked the path of American
finance" following the panic of 1893, and in "heading the forces of
conservatism in the great business emergency" of 1907; his part as the
"immense constructive genius" throughout the period of expansion in
America's "large creative activities."
The "economic necessity or value of the enormous industrial
combinations" shaped at his hands will, in the words of the New York
_Evening Post_, "be the crux of later historical controversy over the
great career now ended"; and the same is true of the ultimate effects on
the working life of the people of his instrumentality in extending the
country's railroads, in improving its banking, and in projecting its
facilities for the manufacture of large staples.
Said Major Henry L. Higginson, New England's foremost philanthropist and
financier, in commenting on Mr. Morgan's death: "To make a great fortune
is little; to be a great citizen is much." THE SURVEY will, in an early
issue, publish an appreciation of other phases of Mr. Morgan's trenchant
personality by an associate in the fields of art and philanthropy.
Here, one circumstance which concerns this magazine closely may be set
down. The Pittsburgh Survey was made at a period of restlessness and
irritation in many high quarters, following a succession of
investigations and exposures. The period was also one of sensitiveness
among every day people lest the organs of publicity might be controlled
by invisible influences. _Charities and the Commons_ (as THE SURVEY was
then called) bore Mr. Morgan's name as treasurer on its contents page
while its staff was delving into the Pittsburgh district. The Pittsburgh
Survey was conceived not for the purpose of internal counsel and report,
but for the purpose of spreading before the public the facts as to life
and labor in the region, where the two greatest individual fortunes in
history had been made by Mr. Morgan's contemporaries, where he had in
turn become the dominant factor, and where social tendencies observable
everywhere had "actually, because of the high industrial development and
the great industrial activity, had the opportunity to give tangible
proof of their real character and their inevitable goal."
It must remain for Mr. Morgan's business associates to say how much
affirmative concern he had given or came to give to the working
conditions in those industries in which he controlled vast holdings, or
to such far-reaching reforms as the safety campaign. But the staff of
the Pittsburgh Survey can bear witness that no word of admonition ever
reached them, no trace of pressure to minimize or gloss over or reserve
for private consumption the human outcroppings of a thousand million
dollar corporation. The situation did not change after our first
strictures as to the seven-day week, the twelve-hour day, work accidents
and the like had been spread broadcast. If they reached Mr. Morgan's
ears, he was willing to let this left hand of philanthropic inquiry take
the exact social measure of what had been done or left undone in the
fiscal and industrial enterprises in which he was the master
entrepreneur.
MR. WEST'S ARTICLE[4] PROTESTED
[4] See Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines on page 37 of this
issue.
NIGHT LETTER
CHARLESTON, W. VA.,
March 30, 1912.
"Owing to delayed trains, did not reach home nor receive your
telegram of Friday until last night. West manuscript received and
read this morning. Am directed to renew protest against its
publication as contrary to facts in most important particulars and
most unfair in attitude and spirit. An article published in your
journal on a matter so important should be prepared by one of your
own staff from facts gathered by your own investigator. Am
authorized to place in your hands immediately five hundred dollars,
being amount estimated by you as necessary to cover expense of
special examination and article, and urge you in justice and
fairness to accept and use it for the purpose. It is impossible to
prepare an answer to the West article and have it in your hands
tomorrow, nor is one-fifth the space given West article sufficient
for an adequate reply thereto. If you decline to make your own
investigation and report, it is submitted that justice requires
that time be given so that West article and reply may appear in
same issue and space equal to article be given for reply. If you
refuse this I respectfully ask the publication of this protest with
Mr. West's paper."
[Signed] NEIL ROBINSON.
[Secretary West Virginia Mining Association.]
* * * * *
In line with the general practice of THE SURVEY when an article makes
major charges against an institution or industry--a copy of Mr. West's
manuscript was sent on March 20 to the secretary of the West Virginia
Mining Association, with a request that he indicate any points which
"seem to you in error."
On March 26 THE SURVEY received a letter from Mr. Robinson, who called
in person the day following to protest against the publication of the
article as unfair, and not of the calibre expected of THE SURVEY by the
public. He also offered us every facility if we would make an
independent staff investigation. We stated that such a staff inquiry in
the West Virginia field was beyond our means, that we had exercised due
care in selecting Mr. West as a non-combatant observer, and that the
manuscript had stood the test of criticism in various quarters. Further,
we stated that if Mr. Robinson could there and then dislodge the major
statements of fact in the article, we would surely not publish it;
otherwise, we would hold two pages of the same issue of THE SURVEY open
until Monday of this week for a statement in rebuttal.
In the interval a galley proof of the article was sent Mr. Robinson
containing revisions to cover minor points of criticism made by him and
other critics. Later issues of THE SURVEY are open to the West Virginia
operators for a full reply; and the findings of a federal inquiry which
would resourcefully and dispassionately cover the ground would, of
course, be handled at length.
Y. M. C. A. GROWTH
The Young Men's Christian Association began in 1851, sixty-two years
ago. The property value in plant and equipment, increased in the first
ten years of the twentieth century more than in all the previous fifty
years; the membership doubled, a tremendous growth.
Y. M. C. A. 1900 1910
Associations 1,439 2,017
Buildings 359 700
Property value $20,000,000 $70,000,000
Membership 252,000 500,000
Annual current outlay $2,900,000 $7,163,000
Will the next decade show a like growth for organized charity with
proper effort?
THE TOWN CONSTABLE
J. J. KELSO
The town constable is one of the most important links in the chain of
social service, and yet he is seldom taken into consideration by the
active workers for social betterment.
A town constable was recently held up to public censure at a church
meeting for failure to wipe out certain well-known evils. When asked
about it the next day his reply was: "The law is being enforced in this
town just as far as the people will stand for." His idea, you see, was
that observance of law was a matter of education, of moral backing, and
without this strong, sustaining support, one man, even with a badge and
a club, could not go beyond a certain point.
The idea got into another constable's head once that his duty was to
carry out the law, no matter what people thought about it, and to his
great surprise it was not long before his resignation was insisted upon.
He did splendid service and really frightened law-breakers, so much so
that they got busy in bringing about his downfall. Where were the good
people? Entirely missing. Here and there a man under his breath would
give the official a word of faint praise, but in the council church
members allowed themselves to be made the tools for his destruction.
"Well meaning, but lacking in judgment" was the decision; "rash, hasty,
ill-advised," and so he had to go in disgrace, while the law-breakers
smiled quietly and continued on in the old way. Public meetings in that
town still continue to denounce the well-known evils, indifferent to the
fate of the officer who thought he had all the forces of good at his
back.
Still another constable, whom I know well, told me privately that he
started out in the same way, but got a hint that he could not hold his
situation and, having a young family to support, he concluded it would
be the part of wisdom to let well enough alone, especially as the men
who counselled him were church leaders, who ought to know the sentiment
of the town on moral questions.
Some towns have a high moral tone largely because of the good influence
of the head of the police department. Others are on a low plane of moral
observance because the constable is indifferent, if not indeed hostile,
to advance measures. Lack of encouragement and appreciation is often the
secret of this indifference.
Visiting a town on one occasion to take part in a meeting on social
reform, I asked the constable who happened to be at the station if he
knew Rev. S. Thomas Strother. "No."
"Well, do you know Rev. Milton Smoot?"
Receiving another negative, I enquired in surprise, "Why surely you are
acquainted with the preachers of your town?"
"No," he said, in a surly tone, "they have no use for the likes of me."
Here was a man, specially appointed guardian of the town and invested
with the high dignity of safeguarding the lives, morals and property of
the community, whose mental attitude toward the better element was
evidently one of hostility. The explanation given me later was that he
was a recent appointee, only there a month, and there was not sufficient
time to get acquainted. "Well," I replied, "if I had been you people I
would have gotten up a banquet and given him such a welcome as would
hearten him in his great work for years to come." It is all in the way
you look at these things.
At a large church gathering on social welfare I took occasion to exalt
the office of constable and to praise the man who held that office. He
was at the back of the hall and I could see was greatly surprised at
this recognition. He came to me afterwards and earnestly expressed his
thanks. "No one has given me that much encouragement before," he said,
"and it will help me a great deal, especially as I want the young
fellows of the town to know I am their friend and not their enemy."
Social and church workers, let the town constable know that he is
appreciated, let him feel that good work is recognized, that if he is
attacked because of fearless discharge of his duty, he will have behind
him an unflinching body of men who will make his trouble theirs and
fight for a righteous cause as well as talk at church meetings.
MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION
FLORENCE KELLEY
Secretary National Consumers' League
Governor West of Oregon has signed a bill creating a Minimum Wage
Commission. Oregon thus follows Massachusetts in this new field of
industrial legislation. Minimum wage bills have been introduced in the
legislatures of California, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The New York Factory Investigating Commission will doubtless be
continued and empowered to investigate wages.
The Oregon law and all the pending bills have one characteristic in
common: they are alarmingly undemocratic. They fail to afford to
American employees in underpaid industries those democratic safeguards
which characterize English and Australian legislation. They apply to
women, oblivious of the fact that wives and daughters work because their
man breadwinner does not earn enough to support the family. These laws
and bills ignore the youth and shifting nature of the working force in
the underpaid industries which is so largely made up of young girls.
They need the moral support of their men fellow-workers in negotiating
about wages.
In America the governor appoints the commission, and the commission
selects the wage board. The board determines the lowest wage and the
women and girls take what they get. The recipients of the wages are not
allowed to elect representatives to the boards. They are, in fact, not
represented at all. The Kansas bill was killed by the legislature. It
substituted "an adjuster" for commission and boards.
If these other ill-considered bills become laws, it will be the work of
years to remodel them on more democratic lines, and on wise and just
principles in the light of the experience of Australia and England.
"THE HAND OF THE POTTER TREMBLES"
SOLON DE LEON
To lead poisoning among lead smelters, white lead workers and painters,
we have grown accustomed. Now comes the revelation of wide-spread
plumbism, or "potters' palsy," among workers in the potteries.
Trenton, New Jersey, the third largest pottery center in the country,
has recently been the scene of a brief study conducted by the American
Association for Labor Legislation. Brief as was the study it revealed
many cases of this disease.
One case was that of a fifteen-year-old orphan, as dipper's helper in a
pottery. He handles cups and saucers after they have received their coat
of glaze and before they are taken to the kiln. He gets his hands
covered with glaze. There are no washing facilities at the plant where
he works. When visited at home he had spots of white lead over the front
of his shirt. After nine months as dipper's helper he began to complain
of general ill health, with pains in the stomach. He worked
interruptedly for another month, and finally came down with an attack of
acute and excruciatingly painful poisoning which required a week's
hospital treatment.
A young girl, now married and a mother, worked in a tile plant for six
years, the last three of which she was a dipper. Within three months
after starting the latter work she suffered a typical violent lead colic
attack, accompanied by nausea and digestive derangements. The attack
lasted a week, and was followed by three more at intervals of several
months.
A former glost kiln-man of forty-five had worked in the Trenton
potteries continuously for upwards of twenty years. Five years ago he
was stricken with complete double wrist-drop and for two years was
totally incapacitated.
Another practically useless pair of hands belongs to a workman
forty-nine years old. Lead poisoning crippled him and deprived him of
his trade at the age of thirty-three. He used to be a "ground layer."
That is, he rubbed lead colors with a short brush into the surfaces to
be decorated. In the course of fifteen years he had eight or ten severe
attacks. In the last one, sixteen years ago, both arms were paralyzed.
For two years he had to be clothed and fed. Now his arms have recovered
their flexibility, but his hands still hang shrivelled and powerless to
open or straighten themselves. For a livelihood he has been forced to
take up an unskilled job requiring no manual work, but seven days' labor
a week.
A color mixer in a tile works began after ten years to suffer from
cramps in the stomach, nausea and biliousness. A number of physicians
told him it was lead colic. He grew steadily worse, and four years later
he died. The death certificate gives pulmonary tuberculosis as the
cause, but the physicians on the case agreed in stating that lead formed
at least a considerable complication.
So run the records of a few of the cases.
There are about 21,000 potters, the makers and enamelers of iron
sanitary ware in the United States. Of these, 2,500 or over 10 per cent
are declared by Dr. Alice Hamilton in her report to the United States
government to be exposed in the regular course of their work to the risk
of lead poisoning. Within two years 510 cases of poisoning were found.
It is now generally accepted that the one word "cleanliness" sums up the
requirements for the abolition of such occurrences. Yet the workshops in
the pottery and allied industries are at present almost without
exception run with utter disregard of this fundamental consideration.
They are as a rule dusty, ill-ventilated and poorly lighted. Washing
facilities are almost unknown.
In New Jersey and in seven other states the legislatures have now
pending before them the aptly christened "cleanliness bill," drafted by
the Association for Labor Legislation after careful study to counteract
just these conditions. The proposed measure establishes strict sanitary
provisions in potteries and all works making or handling lead salts. It
takes a leaf from successful English and German legislation by
establishing "duties of employees" as well as "duties of employers," and
by fixing a fine for failure to comply. The bill has passed the lower
house in Missouri, and has been reported favorably by the lower house
committee to which it was referred in Ohio and in New Jersey. A similar
law has been in force in Illinois for two years with excellent results.
Many progressive manufacturers admit the wisdom of these regulations and
will not oppose them. Others are actively in favor.
[Illustration: WHY IS THE PAUPER]
SUGGESTIVE FACTS AS TO CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF DESTITUTION REVEALED BY
A STUDY OF A MID-WESTERN ALMSHOUSE[5]
[5] In taking the rather exhaustive social histories of the 200 inmates
of the Sangamon County Poor Farm, I was assisted by Mary Humphrey and
Mary Johnson, without whose intelligent and enthusiastic co-operation
this preliminary study could not have been made.
GEORGE THOMAS PALMER, M. D.
SUPERINTENDENT HEALTH DEPARTMENT, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.
Drawings by Alfred S. Harkness
Poorhouse it was, this mid-western abode of unfortunates, regardless of
the resolution of the Conference of Charities and Correction
recommending that it and its host of fellows be known as "county homes."
[Illustration]
This particular poorhouse was comfortably perched upon a hill,
surrounded by elms and oaks and walnuts, overlooking a land of plenty--a
"prosperous-looking" poorhouse it was with well-bred Holstein cows
wading knee-deep in clover on land worth $250 an acre. The verdant
pastures, the fields of grain, the white fences, the silo and the barns,
the splendid old brick house, might have belonged to a delightful
country estate so apparently did they bespeak good farm management. Good
order and spick-and-spanness also characterized broad veranda and hall,
the living rooms of the superintendent, and almost might the same terms
have been applied to the dwelling place of the inmates.
This, seemingly, was no place to come for the ugly story of
destitution--for the revolting facts which force us, almost against our
wills, to paint our picture in glaring yellow. But the destitution was
there. You could see it in the expression, the gait and the posture of
the inmates; you could smell it in the unmistakable smell of poverty and
you could feel it in the indefinable something which grips you and
oppresses you in an institution of this kind.
It was a poorhouse and nothing but a poorhouse--a good poorhouse, if
there is such a thing, but a poorhouse none the less. Like thousands of
similar institutions, it stood ready to receive the individual when he
strikes the very bottom of the toboggan slide of life, to house him and
to feed him humanely enough, but with the saving of dimes and nickels
regarded as the cardinal virtue of efficient management. It was an
"asylum of poverty"--no more what such an institution might be than the
lunatic asylum of twenty years ago is like the hospital for the insane
of the present day. Like thousands of others, it was one of those places
where we receive the unfortunate; where we label him a pauper; where we
tolerate his presence until death reduces the county expense or until he
goes out into the world again not a whit better off, physically,
mentally or morally, on account of his association with us.
We had come to the place for the purpose of ascertaining to what extent
tuberculosis prevailed among the two hundred inmates and to ascertain
the degree of protection afforded these unfortunates against infection
from the disease. As our work progressed this question came to me more
and more insistently: "Why are these men and women dependents? What, if
anything, could be learned if they were permitted to tell their own
stories of misfortune?"
[Illustration]
Social history blanks were prepared, and two intelligent young women
were set at the task of supplementing physical examinations with a
series of questions relative to the past lives of the inmates. Due
allowance was made for natural exaggeration when a person told of the
glories of his past, and like allowance was made for the faulty memory
which had lost its record of personal faults, vices and dissipations. As
far as possible the reliability of the story was determined by checking
up with certain definite and obtainable facts.
At the outset of the work, a wave of fear spread over the place born of
the belief that we were cataloging the inmates to send them to an
"asylum"; but when this was quieted, the history taking was uneventful.
Eliminating those who were mentally incapable of being interviewed, we
were able to prepare 137 quite complete records. Of those interviewed,
32 were women and 105 men. Practically all the women, incidentally, were
there on account of insanity, drug addiction or actual illness. There
were 131 white inmates, 5 Negroes and one who claimed to be an Indian.
Sixty-nine were single, that is 60 per cent of the males and but 27 per
cent of the females. Nineteen had living husbands or wives and 47 were
widowed. Of those who had married, 42 had married once only; 13 stated
that they had married twice and 4 that they had married three times or
more.
[Illustration]
To the penny-wise county official it is of practical interest to note
that 34 of the inmates, or about 25 per cent, had living children and
that even casual inquiry showed many instances in which the children
were financially able to take care of these unfortunates, as the laws of
Illinois provide that they shall do.
Thirty of the inmates were born in Illinois; 36 in the United States
outside of Illinois; while Ireland and Germany came next with 21
representatives each. There was no Jew in the almshouse.
Three of the inmates admitted that their parents had been dependent upon
public charity; 24 admitted alcoholism or drug addiction on the part of
their parents; 4 were the children of the insane and one was the
daughter of a criminal. The fathers of 106 came from laboring and
agricultural classes, while the fathers of 6 were professional men.
[Illustration]
Nineteen of the inmates had had no education whatever; 12 claimed to be
able to read and write but had never gone to school; 4 had attended
school less than one year; 15 had attended less than five years; 71
claimed a complete "common school" education and 7 had gone to high
school or college. Four had been compelled to earn a living under ten
years of age; 12 from ten to twelve years; 41 from twelve to fifteen
years and 31 had begun work between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one
years.
With this showing, the question naturally arises: Is there any
connection between lack of education, child labor and the poorhouse?
One of the male inmates had been a pharmacist, one a civil engineer; 28
had learned trades and 53 were laborers. Of the females, 17 were house
servants and one a teacher.
To ascertain something of the past financial condition, we inquired as
to the highest wage each had made, the amount he had inherited and the
greatest amount he had ever accumulated. Six had never made more than
$10 to $20 per month; 21 had made from $20 to $50 per month and 28
claimed to have made over $100 per month. Fourteen had inherited
property worth less than $500; 11 had inherited from $500 to $1,000; 5
from $1,000 to $5,000, and one had inherited from $5,000 to $10,000.
Thirty-five of the inmates had never accumulated as much as $500 at any
one time; 22 had possessed from $500 to $1,000; 20 had owned from $1,000
to $5,000; 7 from $5,000 to $10,000, and four had had over $10,000.
[Illustration]
As to their habits, vices and dependence, 88 were users of alcohol and
35 of these had been heavy drinkers. Four females and one male were
addicted to drugs. Thirty-nine had been arrested once, and four more
than once. The causes of arrest were drunkenness and disorderly conduct
22; vagrancy 10; theft 1; assault 4 and participation in a strike 1. Two
of the inmates had been in other almshouses; 7 had occupied beds in
charity hospitals; 2 had grown up from orphan asylums and 4 had been
helped by lodges and unions. Many had received county orders before
coming to the almshouse.
What light such data as the foregoing, if collected in large numbers of
similar institutions, would throw upon the underlying causes of
destitution, is, of course, speculative. It seems to me, however, that
they might give us a more intelligent idea of the connection between
pauperism and the marriage of the unfit; lack of education; child labor;
lack of trade or definite vocation; poor mentality; lack of religious
influence; divorce or failure to marry; alcohol and drugs; vice and
preventable disease.
If these remote influences lie beyond the imaginative possibilities of
the average almshouse superintendent and county official, there were
certain other facts brought out in this study which should appeal to the
most practical and hard-headed. These facts seem to point the way to the
rehabilitation of the unfortunate; the way of placing him on his feet
again. They also point directly to the reduction in the almshouse
population and the consequent decrease in public expense.
Getting at the direct causes of dependence, it was found that old age
was the chief factor, 47 of the inmates being over 70 years of age. This
number of dependents, incidentally, could be materially reduced by
tracing out near relatives legally responsible for their care.
[Illustration]
Drugs and alcohol were responsible for 25 dependencies--a less
encouraging group until we have intelligent public treatment for these
cases. Twenty-five of the inmates were crippled while 18 were there on
account of general illness. Doubtless many of these cases would be
amenable to treatment if properly studied and diagnosed.
Six were victims of advanced tuberculosis, and it may be assumed that
the nature of the illness was unrecognized as the patients were housed
in dormitories with the uninfected. There were unquestionably other
tuberculosis cases undiagnosed who were not only losing their chance of
cure; but were exposing and infecting others. I am impressed,
incidentally, that almshouses, with their armies of transients going to
the crowded, unventilated quarters of the poor, are very considerable
spreaders of tuberculosis.
The insane, feeble-minded and epileptic aggregated perhaps 50--an
almshouse population which should be and must be decreased by more
adequate state provision for these afflicted.
Syphilis was responsible for 3 dependencies, and probably many more
would respond to the Wassermann test and could be restored to health by
specific treatment.
The 4 blind and aged inmates might be made to see by simple cataract
operations.
Many of the inmates expressed the wish that they might be restored to
health that they could go out into the world again upon their own
resources. But 58 replied, when asked what they wanted to do in the
future, that they wanted to stay where they were, under the friendly
roof of the poorhouse.
This does not imply hopeless pauperism, however. Sick, neglected, weak
and despondent--of course, they want to stay in some place, even in the
poorhouse, where they are not eternally ordered to move on by the
police; viewed with suspicion or fear by self-respecting citizens or in
constant danger of arrest for vagrancy. Such forlorn men not
infrequently commit petty crimes to guarantee their being housed in jail
during a cold winter.
I am optimistic enough to believe that if the physical conditions of
each inmate were studied; if his ills were cured and he was made
stronger in body, he would be given courage, more ambition and more
purpose in life. To this extent pauperism is directly curable.
True, there are among the destitute those who are hopelessly
marked--branded by heredity; cursed by environment; wrecked by disease;
deficient in body and in mind, with little or nothing to work upon. By
the same token there are those in other branches of medicine who are
hopelessly sick--those who are beyond the reach of the surgeon's knife
or the physician's prescription. There are those among the insane who
give no ray of hope to the most enthusiastic alienist.
But when we progress to the point of classifying our paupers; of
studying intelligently the various causes of destitution; of endeavoring
to make our almshouses places of cure rather than mere asylums for the
victims of poverty, our percentage of "recoveries" will be surprisingly
high.
[Illustration]
The difference in methods between the modern insane hospital and the
almshouse is striking. A man is admitted to an institution for the
insane in a thoroughly irrational and excitable condition. His case is
studied and it is found that he has cerebral syphilis. Proper treatment
is instituted and, in all probability, the patient is returned to his
family cured and a useful member of society.
In another case, syphilis has rendered a man physically inefficient,
dissipated and despondent. He drifts to the poorhouse where he is
catalogued simply as a "pauper." The chances are that the cause of his
pauperism is not detected. If he announces it himself, he may receive
the hurried, occasional visit of a contract doctor. Even the drugs that
are given him may be crude and impure, bought by contract from the
lowest bidder. Little or no provision is made for his intelligent and
systematic treatment. He may be drugged with mercury until he is
salivated; he may be neglected until his open sores cause him to be
housed in the basement away from the other inmates. He is merely a
syphilitic pauper and the rough fare of the poorhouse is looked upon as
better than he deserves.
As a matter of fact, he is a sick man; sick of a curable disease and his
cure may restore him to useful citizenship and remove him from the
county expense.
Or again, there comes to the almshouse a man who is tired--a man who
will not work. Perhaps he is losing a little weight and he is known to
have been drinking more whiskey than he did when he worked harder. You
are tempted to compel him to work; to drive him to earn his meager board
and bed. The superintendent has no time to note that he has a little
fever at night or to see that he clears his throat from time to time.
Without physical examination, we have no way of knowing that we are
dealing with an incipient consumptive. The average superintendent knows
nothing of the deadly weariness of this disease; the weariness that
invades every muscle of the body; which makes work impossible; which
prompts men of higher moral fiber to drink whiskey or seek other
stimulation.
This "lazy devil" is begrudged our poorhouse food, when, as a matter of
fact, he ought to have, and at public expense, better food than we have
ever thought of giving him. With fresh air, milk, eggs, nourishing food,
intelligent treatment and perfect rest, this man can get well and resume
a place in the world. With ordinary almshouse care and almshouse fare,
we are signing his death warrant while we are guaranteeing his prolonged
dependence upon public charity.
We receive old men who have worked hard and who have made an honest
living before their eyesight failed and they became almost blind. We
label these men as paupers and do not stop to question if a simple
operation for cataract would not restore them to useful occupation.
The spirit of the average almshouse is illustrated in this--one Illinois
county has a contract with a dentist to pull the teeth of poor farm
inmates. There is no provision for saving teeth. If the inmate is
writhing with toothache, he must take his choice; lose a good tooth on
contract, or grin and bear the pain. The supervisors can see no reason
why a pauper should want to save his teeth or why he should be permitted
to do so. And yet a cheap filling would cost little more than the
primitive and mutilating operation of extraction.
These are mere instances of the obvious curative possibilities in the
almshouse--instances where the county's duties are so apparent, in which
the right and humane way is so clearly the cheap and economical way that
the matter should require no discussion. It is the line of direct cure
which the county, as a matter of sound administration, should make it
possible to carry out. It means first the careful physical examination
of every inmate of every almshouse, not by the medical man who bids
lowest to get the contract, but by the most capable diagnostician
available.
[Illustration]
But this is only the beginning. The big possibility is what the
almshouses of the nation can do to ascertain the more remote causes of
poverty and destitution, for, as in the case of the insane, when we know
the causes of destitution, we can carry out our most effective work
before the pauper becomes a pauper--before he comes slinking, wretched
and despondent, to the door of the county farm.
Tuberculosis will never be eradicated by merely treating the sick;
yellow fever could not have been stamped out by simply caring for the
afflicted; pauperism will never be materially affected by what we do
when the pauper has reached his last ditch. We must fight tuberculosis
by striking at its causes; we have already eliminated yellow fever by
the same sane process. We would have gone further in our battle against
pauperism, perhaps, were it not that pauperism is the only disease that
has never invaded the home of the rich. No multi-millionaire has ever
endowed a research laboratory for the study of destitution in memory of
a petted child struck dead by its poisonous fangs.
But every almshouse has its clinic in poverty and I am convinced that if
every inmate in every poorhouse throughout the nation could be made to
tell the story of how he came to be there; if every one could be
examined for physical and mental causes, and if all these data could be
gathered together in systematic form, a great stride would have been
made in formulating an intelligent campaign against dependence.
COMPENSATION FOR OCCUPATIONAL DISEASES
JOHN B. ANDREWS
SECRETARY AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR LABOR LEGISLATION
The introduction in Congress of a bill which extends the workmen's
compensation principle to embrace occupational diseases places before
the American people an entirely new range of problems in the field of
social insurance.
The federal government since 1908, and fifteen states during the past
two years, have recognized the wisdom and justice of the compensation
principle in dealing with the victims of industrial accidents. Now comes
the demand that the American people, through Congress, adopt exactly the
same principle in dealing with federal employees who are incapacitated
for work by occupational diseases.
What is the present situation?
"The government gives no compensation for lead poisoning because,
technically, it is not an accident, which is true, for under the
circumstances it is a dead certainty."
--This quotation from the report of an investigator for the New York
State Factory Investigating Commission is neither a playful nor an
exaggerated statement. On the contrary, we now have complete
confirmation of its truth in the official report and in the sober legal
phrase of the solicitor for the Department of Commerce and Labor.[6]
[6] Opinions of the Solicitor for the Department of Commerce and Labor
dealing with Workmen's Compensation. 1912.
It all came about in this way. A man named Schroeder went to work in the
federal navy yard at Brooklyn. One of our big war ships, the Ohio, came
to the dock and Schroeder was sent down into the water-tight
compartments called "coffer-dams" to burn off the old coat of paint in
preparation for a new. As a result of breathing the fumes of the lead
paint, Schroeder was incapacitated for work by acute lead poisoning. He
lost thirty-seven days on this account, and he applied to the government
for the payment of compensation equal to the wages he had lost.
This statement was made by the attorney for the United States
government:
"The question in this case is whether acute lead poisoning
contracted in the course of employment is an injury within the
meaning of the compensation act. If the inhalation of noxious gases
is a necessary incident to the workman's employment, there can be
nothing accidental in the injury resulting therefrom. This latter
consideration disposes of the present case....
"It cannot be said that these fumes were inhaled by accident. The
fumes were necessarily produced by the work he was engaged upon.
The inhalation of such fumes was to have been expected and probably
could not have been avoided. Lead poisoning, under the
circumstances, was the natural, if not the inevitable, result."
Schroeder got not one penny.
Aside from the fact that lead poisoning in this case was really
preventable; aside from the fact that several enlightened nations have
absolutely prohibited the use of poisonous lead paints for the interior
of their war ships, and aside from the fact that there was no one to
warn Schroeder of the dangerous nature of his occupation, there is one
big final reason why this decision of Uncle Sam's Attorney was even more
unfortunate than it was necessary. The financial cost of this
unnecessary case of acute lead poisoning, in addition to the personal
suffering, fell upon poor Schroeder. Most men will agree that such
financial losses should fall upon the employer. In this case the
employer was the nation, which means all of us, you and me.
We owe Schroeder something more than an apology. While the federal
government is publishing excellent reports on lead poisoning in the
factories of private employers and is translating and distributing in
fat volumes the workmen's compensation laws of European countries, can
the United States afford to do less than make provision for reasonably
safe work places in the government service? And can this country afford
to ignore the good example of these European laws which provide
compensation for such victims of occupational diseases?
A few months after the unfortunate Schroeder case a man named Hill was
employed at placing floor plates in the engine room of the war ship St.
Louis in the Puget Sound Navy Yard. Meantime, red and white lead paint
was being applied in the bilges of the vessel.
"As a result of this exposure to lead fumes, a sufficient amount of
lead was taken into claimant's system to produce 'toxic amblyopia,
both eyes,'"
which means
"disease of vision from imperfect sensation of the retina, without
organic lesion of the eye."
This disease incapacitated Hill on the thirteenth day after his first
exposure to the poison. The exposure lasted only seven days. Said the
solicitor:
"It is accordingly possible to refer the claimant's injury to an
event capable of being fixed in point of time. In the second place,
the injury to the claimant's eyes was neither reasonably to be
expected, nor the natural or inevitable consequence of the work he
personally was engaged upon. The injury must therefore be ascribed
to accident. The claimant's particular work had nothing to do with
the painting operations going on about him. His work as a ship
fitter related to the laying of places in the boiler room; the
painting was being done by others."
And this claim was approved.
But if, instead of Hill, one of the painters had been poisoned and
incapacitated by the fumes of lead paint, a similar claim would not have
been allowed by the solicitor. This is made perfectly clear by his
decision in the John Freiman case.
John was a laborer in the Boston Navy Yard, and it was his duty to scale
off lead-painted compartments on ships. He became incapacitated by "lead
poisoning contracted in the course of his employment," and his superior
officer certified that the injury was not due to negligence or
misconduct. After John had suffered several weeks as a result of
"painter's colic" and chronic lead poisoning, his claim was submitted.
It was necessary to decide whether the law applies to disease due to the
occupation. The solicitor declared:
"There is no such special provision made, and I can find nothing
which would, in my judgment, justify its application to a case of
lead poisoning or 'painter's colic.'"
The difficulties involved in legal technicalities become apparent. The
following story, verbatim from the government report (page 201), about
William Murray, who suffered with compressed air illness, strikingly
illustrates the point:
"The claimant in this case is a laborer employed by the Reclamation
Service, at Arizona shaft, Colorado River siphon. The claimant's
duties required him to work in compressed air. In consequence, he
was attacked with 'a severe case of bends,' which 'settled in
nearly all parts of the body.' When originally presented the claim
was disallowed on the ground that the bends is a disease, and
diseases contracted in the course of employment as distinguished
from injuries of an accidental nature are not within the operation
of the compensation act. A reconsideration of this action 'with a
view to the allowance of the claim, if the same is deemed to come
within the letter of the statute as it seems to come within its
spirit,' is now requested by the secretary of the interior, who
writes that a refusal to approve this claim may cause a number of
men to leave the work, as, on account of the bends, it is generally
regarded as very hazardous."
And the former decision was reversed!
The solicitor has passed upon other cases of occupational disease, with
some decidedly interesting results.
Mary A. Crellin was a folder of heavy paper at the Government Printing
Office. Continuous strain upon her fingers and wrist caused a
degeneration of the tendon sheath. A tumor or cystic growth developed.
Mary was obliged to have it surgically removed. Then she thought the
government, and not she, ought to stand the loss of wages due to her
incapacity. This attracted attention. Said the medical officer of the
Government Printing Office:
"This is the first case that I ever observed or noticed among
folders, until I examined a number of skilled female laborers
employed in this office upon the same vocation--that of folding
sheets of paper--of which five presented a similar condition, but
of such size as not to interfere with the manipulation of the
hand."
The solicitor decided that in this tendon degeneration there was "no
accidental element." It was "not due to injury." It was "due to
excessive use" in the service of Uncle Sam. Mary's claim was denied.
Another case--a plate printer, J. B. Irving, who was on the night force
in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. In the course of a night he
printed 900 sheets, and as he handled each sheet he looked for a few
seconds at a bright engraved plate which reflected into his eyes. One
night last March the bureau tried out some new electric lights, and
their use was continued three successive nights. Irving thereupon
stopped work, and the doctor diagnosed his case as "Retinitis
conjunctivitis, both eyes." He was unable to keep his eyes open in a
bright light. After investigation, the solicitor decided that in this
case compensation should be granted on the ground that the injury was
not anticipated, nor was it the result of any slow accumulation of
trifling injuries.
Sunstroke, which is known as a disease, is compensated under the act.
The straining of the ligaments about the wrist, known as "synovitis of
the wrist" and scheduled as a disease under the British act, has been
compensated. "Vaccinia" from vaccination is compensated. A long-standing
case of flat-foot was compensated, even though the use of a simple wedge
made the injured one better than before.
John Sheeran, who contracted pneumonia due to exposure at the Soo Canal,
was denied compensation. But J. B. Atkinson, who fell from a ladder and
continued to work 181 days thereafter, until typhoid fever took him off
within a week, "died by reason of his injury," because the fall "lowered
his vitality, ... which rendered him peculiarly susceptible to typhoid
infection, ... which resulted in his death."
The question may fairly be raised as to whether it is not a bit unfair
to an administrative official to place him under the embarrassment of
interpreting a statute so as to cover, for example, some but not all
cases of industrial lead poisoning. Would it not be much better plainly
to include occupational diseases in the law?
After more than four years of experience under the present law the
government recently published the first official report upon its
operation. Sixty-six closely printed pages of this report are devoted to
embarrassing questions which have arisen because of claims arising out
of occupational diseases. The administration in its awards has been as
liberal as could be expected under the unfortunate legislative
restrictions. The solicitor for the department has taken a keen interest
in its operation. He has been faithful and alert. One of his most urgent
recommendations for a change in the law is that it be extended to
embrace occupational diseases.
The present federal law is known as the Workmen's Compensation Act of
May 30, 1908, and is America's pioneer compensation law. It was a step
forward, but only a step. Fortunately, state legislatures have not
copied its main provisions, for they are totally inadequate. This
federal law applies to only about one-third of our 350,000 civilian
employees. It grants no relief for incapacity lasting less than fifteen
days, it makes no provision for medical treatment, and one year's wages
is the maximum benefit even for total blindness or death. In fact, the
present law is so deficient that its original sponsors now waste no
words in its defense, but frankly apologize for its shortcomings. "Not a
revision," says one in a position to know, "but a new law is needed."
The draft of a new law, prepared after months of careful investigation
of experience of this and all other compensation acts, and drafted with
infinite care at the instigation of the Association for Labor
Legislation, has been introduced in Congress by Senator Kern. Surely the
United States should now provide for its own government employees
incapacitated by industrial accidents and occupational diseases a system
of safety and sanitation coupled with compensation at least equivalent
to that furnished by the most progressive nations of the world. The bill
now before Congress offers this immediate opportunity.
Nor can the state legislatures longer ignore the injustice of this
arbitrary distinction between accidents and diseases due to the peculiar
conditions of employment.
In a pamphlet on Industrial Diseases and Occupational Standards,
published in May, 1910, the writer urged immediate consideration of this
problem, and said:
"No intelligent person can go far in the study of compensation for
industrial accidents without realizing that a logical consideration
of the facts must lead likewise to compensation for industrial
diseases."
Since then three momentous years have passed. One state after another is
preparing to meet this problem, which becomes steadily more pressing.
One of the three great national political parties now pledges itself to
work unceasingly in state and nation for trade disease compensation.
Wisconsin has the promise of relief in the political platform of the
present administration; Ohio, by recent constitutional amendment, is
prepared for action; Pennsylvania is following this example; several
states, including Massachusetts and Michigan, by a liberal
interpretation of present laws, are coquetting with the issue; New
Hampshire has boldly introduced specific legislation on the subject.[7]
[7] In 1912 the Association for Labor Legislation prepared, in
co-operation with the United States Bureau of Labor and the Library of
Congress, a critical bibliography on industrial diseases. Fifty printed
pages of titles were thus made available on this important subject.
European countries have published volumes on compensation for industrial
diseases, but, as far as can be learned, this is the first American
article under this title.
Leading countries of Europe have already taken this step. Great Britain
in her Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906, in addition to accidents,
included in the first schedule six diseases of occupation. That schedule
has been extended until it now includes no less than twenty-four
distinct maladies due to peculiar conditions of employment. Germany, as
a result of the experience of a quarter of a century, in her new
imperial code expressly has declared for similar action. Switzerland, in
her system accepted by referendum vote in February, 1912, makes like
provision for insurance against occupational diseases. The government of
Holland, in November, 1912, laid before Parliament a bill to regulate
the insurance of workmen against industrial diseases in connection with
the proposed sickness insurance.
[Illustration: DOUBLE WRIST-DROP
Hands of workman paralyzed for sixteen years as result of lead
poisoning. Five of his fellow workmen were killed by lead poisoning
before they were forty. Victims of lead poisoning are not compensated
under American laws because technically an occupational disease is "not
an injury."]
The arguments used so effectively by advocates of compensation for
accidents, and now so generally accepted by all men, apply with even
greater force in the consideration of relief for the victims of
occupational diseases. No one will doubt, for example, that placing the
financial cost of lead poisoning upon the lead industry will promote
greater cleanliness in the lead trades. It will pay to clean up. A
considerable part of the money now paid to employers' liability
companies and to ambulance chasers could, under a just system of
compensation, go where it belongs--to the injured workman or his family.
Expensive, annoying, and unsatisfactory litigation could be reduced to a
minimum. Information concerning special danger points in industry would
be automatically pointed out to the factory inspectors in a manner both
prompt and sure. Unnecessary occupational diseases would then be
prevented, and that is the real problem.
The principle is admitted that workmen should be compensated for
injuries by accident arising out of their employment. It is only
consistent that incapacity caused by diseases due to the employment
should also be included. Some diseases are, in the ordinary use of the
term, accidental. But many people work where trade diseases of an
insidious nature are contracted and where there is constant risk of
illness on that account. These diseases are as serious as accidents.
There is no social justification for drawing an arbitrary line of
distinction--the principle of compensation is no longer in an
experimental stage. A compensation law should include, says Sir Thomas
Oliver, the leading English authority on the subject, "industrial
diseases, the consequences of which may be immediate or remote, and
which are often more severe than accidents."
It must be admitted that even our discredited system of employers'
liability has afforded occasional relief to the victims of accidents.
But even this uncertain and irregular protection, poor as it is, has in
most instances been denied to workers exposed to the creeping horror of
industrial disease. The exact occupational cause of the affliction is,
of course, more difficult to prove. The employee is thus placed at still
greater disadvantage in dealing with his employer. American judges,
basing their opinions on outgrown decisions of the British House of
Lords, have declared that "industrial injuries" include only those
afflictions of an accidental nature whose cause can be ascribed to a
definite point of time, and have thus almost universally barred even
from the occasional and expensive relief of employers' liability the
victims of such typical maladies as the match maker's "phossy jaw," the
lead worker's "wrist-drop" and painter's colic, the boiler maker's
deafness, the glass worker's cataract, the potter's palsy, the hatter's
shakes, and the compressed air worker's bends.
The public has not yet forgotten pitiful cases where match
manufacturers, through the work of their attorneys, were able to deny
all financial relief to their victims of "phossy jaw." And there are
cases now pending in the courts where men totally blinded by the fumes
of wood alcohol have year after year sued in vain for some financial
relief from brewery companies which employed them to varnish the inside
of beer vats.
Occasionally, however, large awards have been made. But they, as in the
case of damage suits arising out of accidents, encourage further
expensive litigation. One case of wood alcohol poisoning in Ohio (Joseph
Frank _vs._ The Herancourt Brewing Co., 82 O. S., 424) is now a matter
of record. The Supreme Court compelled the employer to pay $12,500, with
interest and costs, aggregating over $15,000.
"After five years of litigation, six hearings in three different
courts, including two trips to the Supreme Court, printing of
several thousand pages of record testimony and briefs, taking
voluminous depositions in different parts of the country involving
great expense, during which the injured workman--in this instance
rendered blind--was totally unable to support his wife and family,
the wife being obliged to work at nights in downtown cafes,
scrubbing floors after midnight, in order to provide scant food for
herself and babies while the latter slept."
This verdict is of peculiar interest, according to the well-known
Cincinnati law firm which prosecuted the case, because it is the first
instance so far as they have been able to ascertain in which there has
been a recovery from injuries resulting from the poisonous influence of
wood alcohol.
But do not be misled by this rare case. And do not hastily conclude that
the new state insurance law in Ohio has rendered justice in such cases
more certain, for the contrary is true. A victim of industrial lead
poisoning appealed to the state board under that law, and the attorney
general, on October 26, 1912, ruled that disability due to lead
poisoning was an occupational disease and "not an injury" under the act.
Similar decisions have been made by the Washington State Insurance
Department.
In fact, with the exception of occasional instances in two or three
states, where claims have been paid by employers without protest, the
victims of occupational diseases in America are still practically
without relief.
THE SOCIAL AIM IN GOVERNMENT
SAMUEL McCUNE LINDSAY
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL LEGISLATION, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
"This not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster,
not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts
wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call
upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great
trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all
patriotic, all forward-looking men to my side. God helping me, I
will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me!"
--Thus spoke the President of the United States in his inaugural
address. Legislation in nation and state, giving expression to the will
of the people and often to their aspirations, is supposed, in theory at
least, to emanate from the representatives of the people. In European
governments there is usually a privileged initiative on the part of the
executive branch of the government or the administrative officers who
represent the electoral majority, that is, "the government of the day."
Thus the government bills in the British Parliament are the only ones
sure of full consideration. In American legislatures a somewhat similar
role is played by the President and the governors of the states in their
legislative programs as outlined in the messages they send in accordance
with constitutional prerogative or command. As party leaders they voice
the dominant wishes of the voters and interpret public opinion; as chief
executives they exercise great power over the legislatures in compelling
compliance with the people's mandates.
A comparison and study of the subject-matter of President Wilson's
inaugural and the inaugurals or messages of thirty-five governors
opening legislative sessions since January 1 of this year, shows the
great influence of the progressive forces of the nation which were
victorious in all parties and in all of the states at the polls in
November. A more confident note, new in most cases, is struck in all
these pronouncements. It is the social spirit and the social conscience
in every community that seeks and demands a new adjustment of law and
government to human needs, and for the people, a new freedom.
President Wilson voices this new feeling best.
"Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government
may be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health
of the nation, the health of its men and its women and its
children, as well as their rights in the struggle for existence.
This no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is justice,
not pity. These are matters of justice. There can be no equality of
opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if
men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their
very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social
processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.
Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or
damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep
sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and
laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are
powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the
very business of justice and legal efficiency.
"These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the
others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected,
fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This
is the high enterprise of the new day; to lift everything that
concerns our life as a nation to the light that shines from the
hearth-fire of every man's conscience and vision of the right. It
is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is
inconceivable that we should do it in ignorance of the facts as
they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall
deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified,
not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon;
and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit
of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and
knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of
excursions whither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice,
shall always be our motto.
"And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The nation has
been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the
knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often
debauched and made an instrument of evil. The feelings with which
we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our
heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice
and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. We
know our task to be no mere task of politics, but a task which
shall search us through and through, whether we be able to
understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be
indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure
heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high
course of action."
Governor Cox of Ohio, speaking for a state that had just made many
fundamental changes in its organic law by adopting the recommendations,
almost in their entirety, of a constitutional convention, says:
"Progressive government, so called, which means in its correct
understanding, constructive work, along the lines pointed out by
the lamps of experience and the higher moral vision of advanced
civilization, is now on trial in our state. Every constitutional
facility has been provided for an upward step and Ohio, because of
the useful part it has played in the affairs of the country, is at
this hour in the eye of the nation.
"The state has the resources, human and material, to make a
thorough test of the principle of an enlarged social justice,
through government, and the results of our labors will extend
beyond state borders. A thorough appreciation, therefore, of the
stupendous responsibility before you, and full recognition of the
probable insidious resistance to be encountered, will add
immeasurably to your equipment to meet the emergency. If I sense
with any degree of accuracy the state of public mind, I am correct
in the belief that a vast preponderance of the people of all
classes have faith both in the wisdom and the certain results of a
constructive progressive program of government. Let us in full
understanding of the consequences of our acts maintain this measure
of public confidence and encourage the faith of those who are
honestly skeptical because of the apprehension generated in their
minds by a third class, which may be unconsciously prompted by
sordid impulses developed by unbroken preferences of government.
"No fair-minded person will dispute the logic nor question the
equity of any plan which contemplates legislative action entirely
within the limitations of suffrage endorsement. If the legislature,
in the passage of a single law, runs counter to public desire or
interest, the people through the referendum have the means to undo
it. No greater safeguard can be devised by the genius of man, and
to question either the moral or practical phase of this
arrangement, is to admit unsoundness in the theory of a republic.
In other days changes in government such as are made necessary
everywhere by our industrial and social conditions, would have been
wrought by riot and revolution. Now they are accomplished through
peaceful evolution. He must be indeed a man of unfortunate
temperamental qualities who does not find in this a circumstance
that thrills every patriotic fiber in his being."
Governor Sulzer of New York, in similar vein, says, speaking of the
proposed amendment to the constitution of the United States, providing
for the popular election of senators:
"I favor this change in the federal constitution, as I shall every
other change that will restore the government to the control of the
people. I want the people, in fact as well as in theory, to rule
this great republic and the government at all times to be
responsive to their just demands."
Again, in speaking of the value of human life and its conservation,
Governor Sulzer says:
"If Americans would excel other nations in commerce, in
manufacture, in science, in intellectual growth, and in all other
humane attainments, we must first possess a people physically and
mentally sound. Any achievement that is purchased at the continued
sacrifice of human life does not advance our material resources,
but detracts from the wealth of the state. The leaders of our
civilization now realize these fundamental truths, and the
statesmen, the scientists, and the humanitarians are endeavoring
more and more to protect human life and to secure to each
individual not only the right to life, but the right to decent
standards of living.
"We have had to change old customs and repeal antiquated laws. We
must now convince employers that any industry that saps the
vitality and destroys the initiative of the workers is detrimental
to the interests of the state and menaces the general welfare of
the government. We must try to work out practical legislation that
will apply our social ideals and our views of industrial progress
to secure for our men, women and children the greatest possible
reserve of physical and mental force.
"I hold it to be self-evident that no industry has the right to
sacrifice human life for its profit, but that just as each industry
must reckon in its cost of production the material waste, so it
should also count as a part of the cost of production the human
waste which it employs.... No business has an inalienable right to
child labor. No industry has a right to rob the state of that which
constitutes its greatest wealth. No commerce that depends on child
labor for its success has a right to exist. Let us do what we can
to protect the children of the state and preserve their fundamental
rights.... Human life is infinitely more valuable than the profit
of material things. The state for its own preservation has the
right to demand the use of safer and more hygienic methods, even if
at greater cost of production to the employer. Occupational
diseases should be studied, and the results of careful
investigation embodied in laws to safeguard the health and lives of
the workers."
Governor Craig of North Carolina, another Democrat, but from the more
conservative southland, strikes the same note, when he says:
"We have not realized the moral benefits that should have resulted
from modern progress. Avarice has been stimulated; hope and
opportunity have been denied; antagonism and resentment have been
generated. All classes have suffered. We realize the conditions;
the injustice has been uncovered. It cannot stand in the clear,
calm and resolute gaze of the American people. They are determined
that our law shall be based upon a higher conception of social
obligation and that our civilization shall mean a higher social
life. They have put their hands to the plow and will not look
back."
Let me quote from one more Democratic governor, this time a voice from
the far West. Governor Hunt of Arizona says:
"Recent political events of national magnitude and world-wide
importance clearly prove the people's awakening to their
necessities, their duties and responsibilities. The overwhelming
triumph of militant progressive democracy and the simultaneous
springing into prominent existence of another great party founded
upon and professing the championship of those cardinal principles
of popular government which have long been synonymous with
progressive democracy, discloses a miraculous growth of progressive
conviction, a well-nigh unanimous determination on the part of the
people to assume full control of the government which, while over
them, is rightfully of and for them, marks a leading epoch in the
history of the world's advancement."
The National Progressive Party could scarcely have hoped to accomplish
more than to bring such sentiments and these high aims to the fore, in
the officially announced purposes of their late antagonists who were the
victors in the recent elections. When we remember, however, the
initiative and responsibility in legislation which the chief executive
in nation and state has come to have in our system, the fact that the
above quoted passages are typical of all the governors' messages is
doubly significant. It warrants us in believing that the hour has struck
when the things for which the social workers of the country have striven
will become vital in the organization of American society.
More detailed examination of the recommendations of the governors shows
some interesting tendencies. If the advice of the governors is followed
some system of workmen's compensation will supplement or supersede our
antiquated and unsocial system of employers' liability. This is the
subject upon which public opinion seems to have most definitely
crystallized. No less than twenty-one governors make definite favorable
recommendations, and in three cases (Arizona, California and Oregon) a
state system of insurance is advocated. If all of these states were
added to those that already have passed adequate compensation laws, the
system of workmen's compensation would be extended practically over all
of the industrial area of the United States. This result seems
inevitable, although the work may not be completed in this legislative
year.
Next to workmen's compensation in point of popularity seems to be the
necessity for a public utilities law, or a public service commission, or
the extension of the powers of state supervisory authorities over public
service corporations. This is a subject of positive recommendation on
the part of fourteen governors. In an equal number of states the pending
amendment to the United States constitution providing for the popular or
direct election of Senators receives a favorable recommendation, while
in the other states the governors transmit the amendment without comment
for appropriate action by the legislature. The Kentucky Blue Sky Law, or
some similar provision for state supervision of investment proposals and
securities offered for public subscription, is the subject of comment
and positive recommendation in eleven states.
In an equal number of commonwealths important recommendations are made
with respect to increasing the powers of their labor departments,
including factory inspection and other provisions for the enforcement of
the labor laws. Several governors express a desire for a much more
serious recognition of the state's duties in its relations to labor,
especially that of women and children. In some instances--notably Ohio,
where an industrial commission is proposed, Wisconsin, whose industrial
commission, already the model for several other states, is to have
increased powers, and New York, for which an industrial commission is
also proposed--such recommendations are far-reaching and would mean a
practical reorganization of this department of state activity. The
governor of Rhode Island recommends the adoption of a fifty-four hour
law to harmonize with recent legislation in New York and Massachusetts.
In North Carolina a stronger child labor law is urged, and in Wyoming
the prohibition of the employment of boys under sixteen in mines. This
would bring Wyoming up to the standard already adopted in the leading
mining states.
Popular government still has need of better agencies for expression, and
numerous reforms in the organization of state governments are proposed.
Restlessness under antiquated constitutional limitations is manifest
everywhere. President Wilson in his last message as governor of New
Jersey, voiced this feeling in strong language. He said:
"I urge upon you very earnestly indeed the need and demand for a
Constitutional Convention. The powers of corrupt control have a
numerous and abiding advantage under our constitutional
arrangements as they stand. We shall not be free from them until we
get a different system of representation and a different system of
official responsibility. I hope that this question will be taken up
by the legislature at once and a constitutional convention arranged
for without delay, in which the new forces of our day may speak and
may have a chance to establish their ascendancy over the rule of
machines and bosses."
Similarly a constitutional convention is urged or numerous
constitutional amendments are proposed in six other states. The short
ballot is advocated in six; the initiative, referendum and recall as a
means of extending the control of the people over their legislation is
recommended in nine states, in most of which a constitutional amendment
would be necessary; and the adoption of rules to carry out a
constitutional amendment already passed is recommended in Idaho. A
larger measure of home rule for cities is urged by the governors of six
states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and
Missouri). The United States constitutional amendment providing for the
income tax is urged for favorable adoption in three states. An amendment
to the state constitution providing for woman suffrage is favorably
recommended in five states (New York, Pennsylvania, Montana, Nevada and
Iowa), and the immediate extension of suffrage to women in municipal
affairs by the governor of Connecticut. Direct Primaries are still an
issue in two states (New York and Tennessee). The need for stronger
corrupt practices acts is presented in three states. Three governors
also declare for a direct presidential preference primary (Iowa,
Minnesota and Wyoming), while ballot reform is advocated in three states
(Maine, Michigan and Wyoming).
Better legislative methods and the establishment of a legislative
reference, research and drafting bureau are proposed in four states
(Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio and Oklahoma). The governor of Arizona asks
for an anti-lobbying statute. The fiscal policy of the state is a matter
of some comment in practically every message, and in five states
measures for taxation reform are proposed. In five states, including one
of the previous group, the governors recommend an increase of
inheritance taxes or the establishment of an inheritance tax where it
does not already exist.
Constructive and far-reaching measures are suggested pertaining to
public health. A decided awakening is noticeable in this field. Eight
governors recommend more or less definite reorganization of the public
health service and an extension of the powers of the public health
authorities, state and local. In one additional state (New York) the
governor has appointed an important commission. The results of its
labors will probably be enacted into law at this session of the
legislature. Pure food legislation and better protection of weights and
measures receive attention in two states each, as does the greater
restriction of the liquor traffic in two states. Special provision for
the care of tuberculous persons is mentioned in five states.
Another important and popular subject of recommendation, in which the
results of the last annual conference of governors are noticeable,
concerns the better care of prisoners--their employment in outdoor work
and opportunities for earning wages, part of which shall go to reimburse
the state for the cost of their maintenance and part to the support of
their dependent families. These matters are subjects of favorable
recommendation in nine states. The general reform of the criminal law,
especially the shortening of legal processes and the restriction of the
right to appeal, is urged in four states, including Iowa, in which the
governor recommends the abolition of grand juries.
A direct tax in support of higher education is urged in three states,
and provision for the wider use of school buildings as social centers in
the same number. Even more significant, the governors of two states
(North Carolina and Tennessee) urge state-wide compulsory education. In
four commonwealths co-operation with other states is proposed in
accordance with the recent recommendation of President Taft addressed to
the governors of several states. This urged an extension of rural
credits and the provision of some plan similar to the land banks in
foreign countries, to help the farmer get the necessary capital for a
better system of agriculture. Minimum wage laws are proposed in five
states. In two of these and one additional state public aid to dependent
widows and mothers with children is recommended.
Curiously enough, the reform of marriage laws and of those providing a
remedy for desertion and non-support, a subject reported upon by the
Uniform Law Commissioners, does not figure so largely in the governors'
recommendations as would be supposed. The uniform law commissioners have
proposed an excellent and very carefully worked out statute for uniform
marriage and marriage license laws. This receives only partial
endorsement at the hands of three governors, while stricter desertion
and non-support laws also have the endorsement of three governors.
Guarantee of bank deposits is proposed in three states and three of the
western states (Arizona, Missouri and Tennessee) have recommendations
for an extension of state authority, or the establishment of a state
department, to induce immigrants to settle within their borders. A
better regulation of prize-fighting is being agitated in Nevada. Its
prohibition, along with that of gambling, is strongly urged by the
governors of New Mexico and Oklahoma. The governor of Arizona asks for a
statute prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons, while the
governor of South Carolina asks the legislature to repeal the present
statute on this subject in that state.
Non-partisan election of judges is recommended in Idaho and
Pennsylvania, and the Kansas legislature is asked to petition for an
amendment to the constitution of the United States to provide for the
election of federal judges.
Better care of juvenile delinquents, state-wide supervision of moving
picture shows, stricter regulation of loan sharks, better inspection of
mines, and compulsory arbitration of labor disputes are each recommended
in at least one state.
Thirty-nine legislatures have already met this year, and some of them
have completed their legislative sessions. Two more will convene within
the next three months, making forty-one in all which will play a part
this year in the formulation of the statute law of the country. Our
statute law is already increasing in volume at a rate that has caused
some alarm. It is sorely in need of revision in many important
particulars. Statesmen and reformers alike desire earnestly that it be
undertaken with greater care and more painstaking labor in order that
our state laws may give better expression to the present standards of
conduct and to the needs of our own times.
THE SAND BED
CHARLES W. JEROME
I have a sand bed, and I play
There in the sand for half the day.
And mother comes, and sits by me;
And little sister likes to see
The many things I make of sand.
But she's too young to understand
About the houses and the hills
The mines and stores and flouring mills
And then I make believe, and say
My sand bed is the sunny bay;
These blocks are boats, and far away
They sail all night and sail all day,
And carry iron. When they return
They bring us coal that we may burn.
And now my sand bed is a farm.
This is the barn. Here, safe from harm,
My horses and my cows I keep.
These sheds are for the wooly sheep.
And there you see my piggies's pens.
This yard holds in the lively hens.
This is the garden, where I hoe
My plants; and here the flowers grow.
These sticks are pines, so straight, so tall
And dark. But these aren't half of all
The things I make each pleasant day
Out in the sand bed where I play.
[Illustration: MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA, IN 1842
A view of the town as it was before the "Gringo" came. Four years later
during the Mexican War Commodore Stockton captured Monterey and left
Walter Colton, a naval chaplain, in charge as Alcalde.]
A JUDGE LINDSEY OF THE "IDLE FORTIES"
LAURA B. EVERETT
Under the colorless title Three Years in California was published in
1850 the diary of Walter Colton, elected Alcalde of Monterey in 1846,
who, during his term of office presented what was, for that day, a
singular spectacle of tolerance, humanity and purity of administration.
He can, indeed, be reasonably compared with Judge Lindsey in the courage
and originality displayed in his dealings with the criminal cases
brought before him.
Colton's work in Monterey succeeded a period spent as editor of the
Philadelphia _North American_, and he established later _The
Californian_, the first newspaper published in California.
The office of the Alcalde combined administrative and judicial functions
and, not seldom, even legislative ones. Colton was oppressed by his
power and its responsibility. "Such absolute disposal of questions
affecting property and personal liberty," he observes, "never ought to
be confided to one man. There is not a judge on any bench in England or
the United States whose power is so absolute as that of the Alcalde of
Monterey." But he brought to his work in all its details an unflagging
zeal and constant personal attention which made his administration
unique in the history of the time.
In minor matters, where, as he says, "the Alcalde is himself the law,"
Colton devised methods of appealing to the better instincts of the
wrongdoer. "There is a string in every man's breast," he writes, "which,
if you can rightly touch, will 'discourse music.'" Colton, we see from
his diary, put a sensitive finger on this string in many a heart.
His ideas of punishment belong to the present. "It is difficult," he
says, "to discriminate between offences which flow from moral hardihood
and those which result in a measure from untoward circumstances. There
is a wide difference between the two; and an Alcalde under the Mexican
law has a large scope in which to exercise his sense of moral justice.
Better to err a furlong with mercy than a fathom with cruelty. Unmerited
punishment never yet reformed its subject; to suppose it is a libel on
the human soul."
The following extracts from his account of cases brought before him are
representative:
"A lad of fourteen years was brought before me today charged with
stealing a horse. The evidence of the larceny was conclusive, but
what punishment to inflict was the question. We have no house of
correction, and to sentence him to the ball and chain on the public
works, among hardened culprits, was to cut off all hope of
amendment and inflict an indelible stigma on the youth; so I sent
for the father, who had no good reputation himself, and placing a
riata in his hand, directed him to inflict twenty-four lashes on
his thieving boy. He proceeded as far as twelve, when I stopped
him; they were enough. They seemed inflicted by one attempting to
atone in this form for his own transgressions. 'Inflict the rest,
Soto, on your own evil example; if you had been upright yourself,
you might expect truth and honesty in your boy. You are more
responsible than this lad for his crime; you can never chastise him
into the right path, and continue yourself to travel in the
wrong.'"
"Today I remitted the sentence of my prison cook. He is a Mulatto,
a native of San Domingo; had drifted into California, was attached
in a subordinate capacity to Colonel Fremont's battalion; and while
the troops were quartered in town had robbed the drawer of a liquor
shop of two hundred dollars. For this offence I had sentenced him
to two years on the public works. Discovering early some reliable
traits about the fellow, ... I soon made him cook to the rest of
the prisoners, and allowed him the privilege of the town, so far as
his duties in that capacity were required.... I have trusted him
with money to purchase provisions, and he has faithfully accounted
for every shilling. He has always been kind and attentive to the
sick. For these faithful services I have remitted the remainder of
his sentence, which would have confined him nine months longer, and
have put him on a pay of thirty dollars per month as cook."
The Alcalde settled family difficulties of all varieties, from the case
of the grown son who struck his mother to that of the man who wanted a
divorce because of suspicions he entertained of his wife's conduct
during his absence in Mexico. The judge questioned the plaintiff
severely as to his own behavior during the stay in Mexico, and convinced
him that the wife, though indiscreet, was too good for him.
[Illustration: From "_Sea and Shore_"
WALTER COLTON
Alcalde of Monterey in 1846. The position combined administrative,
judicial and even legislative duties.]
After nearly six months as Alcalde, Colton writes:
"Of the women I have had to deal with here the washerwomen are the
most unmanageable. Two of them entered my office today as full of
fight as the feline antagonists of Kilkenny. It seems they had been
washing in one of the pools created by the recent showers, when one
had taken that part of the margin previously occupied by the other.
War offensive and defensive immediately commenced. One drew a knife
which had a blade two mortal inches in length, and the other a
sharp ivory bodkin. But what their weapons wanted in terror, their
ungentle anger supplied.
"At last one cried out: 'The Alcalde'; the other echoed it, and
both rushed to the office to have their difficulties settled. Their
stories ran together like two conflicting rivulets forced into the
same channel. When the tumult and bubble had a little subsided, I
began cautiously to angle for the truth--a difficult trout to catch
in such waters. But one darter after another was captured, till I
had enough to form some opinion of those that had escaped. These we
discussed till bitter feeling, like biting hunger, became appeased.
Both went away declaring either margin of the pool good enough, and
each urging on the other the first choice."
One deficiency which Colton had to supply was the absence of a
penitentiary system. To quote:
"There are no workhouses here, no buildings adapted to the purpose,
no tools and no trades. The custom has been to fine Spaniards and
whip Indians. The discrimination is unjust, and the punishment
ill-suited to the ends proposed. I have substituted labor, and now
have eight Indians, three Californians, and one Englishman at work
making adobes [sun-dried bricks]. They have all been sentenced for
stealing horses or bullocks. I have given them their task; each is
to make fifty adobes a day, and for all over this they are paid.
They make seventy-five, and for the additional twenty-five each one
gets as many cents. This is paid to them every Saturday night, and
they are allowed to get with it anything but rum. They are
comfortably lodged and fed by the government. I have appointed one
of their number captain. They work in the field; require no other
guard; not one of them has attempted to run away."
Later, Colton had to deal with runaways; two Mexicans each telling him
that the devil incited their flight, while one fellow who stayed behind
in a jail delivery explained that he would not be seen running from
Tophet in such company.
Of a convict who escaped and was brought back Colton says:
"If he will only stop stealing he may run to earth's utmost verge.
He is rather a hardened character, but if he has a good vein in him
I will try to find it. I always like to see a fellow get out of
trouble, and sometimes I half forget his crimes in his misfortunes.
This is not right, perhaps, in one situated as I am; but I cannot
help it."
[Illustration: THE FIRST PAPER PUBLISHED IN CALIFORNIA
It measured only about 8x12 inches. The paper was established by Walter
Colton who had had journalistic experience as editor of the Philadelphia
_North American_. This issue was published scarcely a month after the
American occupation.]
Colton decided that a new school house was necessary--"to be sixty feet
by thirty, two stories, with a handsome portico. The labor of the
convicts, the taxes on rum, and the banks of the gamblers must put it
up," he writes. "Some think my project impracticable; we shall
see,"--and he gives the following account of how some gamblers were made
to contribute to this enterprise:
"A nest of gamblers arrived in town yesterday, and last evening,
opened a Monte at the hotel."
After stationing a file of soldiers at the outer doors, Colton entered
to find no one, "save one Sonoranian, composedly smoking his cigarito. I
desired the honor of an introduction to his companions. At this moment a
feigned snore broke on my ear from a bed in the corner of the
apartment."
"'Ha! Dutre, is that you? Come, tumble up, and aid me in stirring
out the rest.' He pointed under the bed, where I discovered a
multitude of feet and legs radiating as from a common center."
"'Hallo there, friends--turn out.'... Their plight and discovery
threw them into a laugh at each other." He and his secretary found
others "in every imaginable position--some in the beds, some under
them, several in the closets, two in a hogshead, and one up a
chimney. Mr. R---- from Missouri--known here as the
'prairie-wolf'--I found between two bed-ticks, half smothered with
the feathers. He was the ringleader, and raises a Monte table
wherever he goes, as regularly as a whale comes to the surface to
blow. All shouted as he tumbled out from his ticks. Among the rest
I found the Alcalde of San Francisco, a gentleman of education and
refinement, who never plays himself, but who, on this occasion, had
come to witness the excitement. I gathered them all, some fifty in
number, into the large saloon, and told them the only speech I had
to make was in the shape of a fine of twenty dollars each. The more
astute began to demur on the plea of not guilty, as no cards and no
money had been discovered, and as for beds, a man had as good a
right to sleep under one as in it. I told them that was a matter of
taste, misfortune often made strange bedfellows, and the only way
to get out of the scrape was to pay up. Dr. W---- was the first to
plank down.
"'Come, my good fellows,' said the doctor, 'pay up, and no
grumbling: this money goes to build a school house, where I hope
our children will be taught better principles than they gather from
the examples of their fathers.'"
Of how the labor of the prisoners united with the money of gamblers to
build the needed school, he writes:
"One of the prisoners, an Englishman, ventured a criticism of the
stonework of another prisoner, which revealed the fact of his being
a stonecutter himself. I immediately set him at work at his old
trade. But he feigned utter ignorance of it, and spoiled several
blocks in making his feint good. I then ordered him into a deep
well where the water had given out, to drill and blast rocks....
Finding that the well was to be sunk some twenty feet deeper, ...
he requested that he might be permitted to try his chisel again.
Permission was given, and he is now shaping stones fit to be laid
in the walls of a cathedral. He was taken up for disorderly
conduct, and he is now at work on a school house, where the
principles of good order are the first things to be taught."
Colton gives an instance of trust justified on an occasion when, pressed
for funds, he created a "trusty."
"The most faithful and reliable guard that I have ever had over the
prisoners is himself a prisoner. He had been a lieutenant in the
Mexican army, and was sentenced, for a flagrant breach of the
peace, to the public works for one year. I determined to make an
experiment with this lieutenant; had him brought before me; ordered
the ball and chain to be taken from his leg, and placed a
double-barrelled gun, loaded and primed, in his hands.
"'Take that musket and proceed with the prisoners to the stone
quarry; return them to their cells before sunset, and report to
me.'
"'Your order, Señor Alcalde, shall be faithfully obeyed.'
"A constable reconnoitered and found all well. At sunset the
lieutenant entered the office, and reported the prisoners in their
cells, and all safe.
"'Very well, José, now make yourself safe, and that will do.' He
accordingly returned to his prison, and from that day to this has
been my most faithful and reliable guard."
"If there is anything on earth besides religion for which I would
die," Colton declares, "it is the right of trial by jury." And he
impanelled the first jury ever summoned in California. One-third
were Mexicans, one-third Californians, and the other third
Americans. The plaintiff spoke in English, the defendant in French,
the jury, save the Americans, Spanish--"and the witnesses all the
languages known to California."
"The inhabitants said it was what they liked--that there could be
no bribery in it--that the opinion of twelve honest men should set
the case forever at rest. And so it did, though neither party
completely triumphed." He gives the credit for the satisfactory
termination of this polyglot case to "the tact of Mr. Hartnell, the
interpreter, and the absence of young lawyers."
When Colton Hall, the first state capitol and the pride to this hour of
Old Monterey, was completed, Colton writes:
"The town hall on which I have been at work for more than a year is
at last finished. It is built of a white stone"--now a beautiful
deep cream--"quarried from a neighboring hill, and easily shaped.
The lower apartments are for schools, the hall over them--seventy
feet by thirty--is for public assemblies. It is not an edifice that
would attract any attention among public buildings in the United
States; but in California it is without a rival. It has been
erected out of the slender proceeds of town lots, the labor of
convicts, taxes on liquor shops, and fines on gamblers. The scheme
was regarded with incredulity by many; but the building is
finished, and the citizens have assembled in it and christened it
with my name, which will go down to posterity with the odor of
gamblers, convicts and tipplers. I leave it as an humble evidence
of what may be accomplished by rigidly adhering to one purpose, and
shrinking from no personal efforts necessary to its achievements. A
prison has also been built, and mainly through the labor of
convicts. Many a joke the rogues have cracked while constructing
their own cage; but have worked so diligently I shall feel
constrained to pardon out the less incorrigible."
[Illustration: COLTON HALL
The Capitol of California in 1849.]
[Illustration: THE RIVER ROAD, KEENE VALLEY, NEW YORK]
NEIGHBORLINESS AND A COUNTRY COMMUNITY
SARAH LOWRIE
With the growth of large cities in our country and the desertion of the
farms for the town, there has been a less observable but quite as
remarkable desertion of the city in favor of the country.
One would suppose that these two migrations would so balance each other
that neither the town nor the country would suffer by the exchange of
citizens. It would be reasonable to hope that going to the country would
bring just the right impetus needed by the stay-at-homes of each
community to brace them into new life.
But the thing has not worked out that way.
However much the shops and offices of the cities may have benefited by
the advent of the farmers' sons and daughters, and however much the real
estate agents and provision merchants of the country may have benefited
by the advent of the well-to-do towns-folk, the morale of the country
town, the ideals of the country people and the amalgamation of the
native men with their new neighbors into a better citizenship have not
prospered. Nor have the city institutions been able to replace the men
of affairs who, having ceased to use the city except as a means for
carrying on their business, have transferred their family and their
leisure interests into the country.
The city churches, the city philanthropies, and the civic improvement
organizations all tell the same tale: the rich men, the special
executive men, the professional men, once their actual business
engagements are over, turn their backs on the city with a sigh of relief
and depart country-wards for rest and enjoyment for the night, for the
week-end, and for the summer vacation. The city loses them, and they
gain the country. But it must not be supposed that the country in any
vital sense gains them. A man who has professedly moved from the town to
the country for rest and pleasure, and who observably needs both, feels
as free as a debutante to enjoy what is set before him in the way of
diversion, with no moral obligation toward his neighbors but that of
paying with a wry grin the outrageous prices levied upon all outsiders
by the genial natives.
Without quite meaning to, without indeed quite realizing it, the richer
men and women of this country, especially in our eastern states, have so
shifted the obligation of neighborliness that they have the air of being
transients everywhere and neighbors nowhere. Even their country places
are not theirs year in and year out for as long as a single generation.
We Americans like to change our minds and there is no telling what kind
of scenery or what style of architecture we may fancy next.
One hears a great deal about the unfaithfulness of the Irish cook who
may "up and leave" any day that she hears of a chance of "bettering
herself" elsewhere; but the mistress's unrest is nothing to the plight
of the farmer when one considers the lottery of the city folks. The
gamble of his crops and the weather is nothing to this other gamble. For
the farmer knows that no power under heaven can keep the city man
satisfied with his site, his house with five bathrooms, his fancy
chicken run, and his concrete garage if the whim should take his wife
that the environment was no longer a suitable one for the children.
There is no romance, therefore, to the farmer about either his potato
crop or his city neighbor. He knows it is not philanthropy that led the
city man to buy five acres of poor farm land at the highest notch price,
and that no desire for his company has urged the new comer to plant his
house on the other side of the back pasture. Being a sensible farmer he
makes what profit he can out of his potatoes and his city neighbor
before either crop has time to depreciate in value.
[Illustration: QUARTERS OF VISITING NURSE]
"What are you city people for, but to be skinned?" was the frank remark
of one of my nearest country neighbors one day, apropos of an outrageous
bit of sharp dealing on his part as property appraiser for that
district. It was not a flattering summing up of a relationship, nor did
its grim humor hide any more indulgent version of our economic value as
neighbors. In fact we were not, nor ever had been accepted by him and
his kind as neighbors. We were a crop. A crop more lucrative than his
potatoes, but from our arbitrary and unexpected demands, and the
shortness of our seasons, and the variation of our types a much more
"pernickery" crop to deal with. Perhaps I should have been flattered by
his frankness, but I was not! For the moment indeed, I even resolved to
deal no more with him or his, but on second thought I concluded that,
although he would be the loser of some $200, I would be out a
wash-woman, a chore boy, many dozens of fresh eggs, many quarts of milk,
a care-taker for the house during the winter, and an immunity from his
cows in my garden in the summer. In fact, I stood to lose double as much
as he, if peace of mind and leisure to enjoy my home could be computed
in hard cash. I concluded therefore that it would not pay to get mad.
But the remark rankled and in the end set this and that motive to work
in my mind until my brain and heart became fallow ground for the
cultivation of another sort of relationship than that of city folk and
native, buyer and seller, employer and employed, or even giver and
receiver. In the end we learned to be neighbors--he and I--not because
his ground adjoined mine, but because we both began to feel a common
civic interest in the same village and in the same country side, and
because in a very particular and picturesque sense we both shared in an
enterprise from which we both derived comfort and pleasure. The change
in me was greater than the change in him for he had always been
interested in the village life apart from his property, and apart from
his comfort, and during all the year. The bond that brought us together
was not the church, nor the library, nor the base-ball field--all
donations in times past of the summer people to the natives, but it was
the Neighborhood House, a donation from the country people and the
summer people alike, not to any particular class but to all the dwellers
in that mountain valley.
Of course, I realize that the particular Neighborhood House, which fits
so well the need of our valley, might not do for just any valley. For
instance, our valley in the Adirondacks has a scattered population of
nearly a thousand people with two villages about five miles apart, and
several little settlements here and there among the hills. In the larger
village there are perhaps one hundred children in the school. The
nearest hospital lies twenty-four miles across a mountain road, and
several hours by boat across Lake Champlain at Burlington, Vt. An
infirmary that could be used by the natives for long illnesses, and by
the city cottagers for emergency operations was vitally needed; so our
Neighborhood House has a sunny airy infirmary and a perfectly equipped
little operating room.
Our village and the country people and the lumber camps back in the
mountains can only depend on the services of two physicians, one of them
an old and feeble man. To supplement their visits and for emergency
calls for the summer visitors a district nurse was needed, so a
bed-room, bath-room, and pleasant sitting-room for such a nurse were
planned in the Neighborhood house to connect with the infirmary. To
supplement the somewhat limited primary grades in the village schools
and to provide occupation for restless little city children, a summer
kindergarten had been established and proved most successful, so on the
lower floor of the Neighborhood House a large, many-windowed room was
set apart to be used, not only for this purpose, but for adult classes
in domestic science, sewing, embroidery and dancing. There was no proper
room in the village for fairs, church suppers, glee clubs, rehearsals,
informal village meetings, etc. There was added, therefore, to this
large room a kitchen to be used in connection with it for such
entertainments and for cooking classes. There had been a successful
men's club in the village for years, but the women and girls had no
common meeting place and indeed no real center of interest outside their
homes. A woman's club room therefore was made an important part of our
Neighborhood House. It has an open fireplace, a store closet and
cupboards, a writing table, tea and game tables, comfortable chairs, and
a pretty color scheme, with prints and water colors on the wall,
oriental rugs on the hardwood floors, pleasant chintzes, books, and
flower bowls.
[Illustration: CORNER OF WOMEN'S CLUB]
Though the village women had been long accustomed to make extra
pin-money by selling eggs, maple sugar, balsam pillows, bread and cake,
and rag-carpet rugs, there has been no store where these things could be
ordered. We set apart one room in our Neighborhood House, therefore, for
a Village Exchange, which was open for three months in the summer.
During the winter months this pleasant little room was used by the boys
for a game room. There was no hotel or even boarding house in the
village for transient guests, which remained open throughout the winter;
so two guest rooms were set aside in our Neighborhood House to be used
by the strangers, lecturers, clergymen, visiting surgeons, and city
visitors who might pass that way during the late autumn and the winter
months.
Neither the village people nor the summer cottagers were well supplied
with sick room appliances, and among the poorer citizens of the valley
there was even a lack of necessary articles for confinement cases, while
crutches, invalid chairs, and wheel chairs were difficult to procure in
an emergency by rich and poor alike. So an emergency closet, stocked
with such things was set aside for general use in the Neighborhood
House. The rooms in the rest of the house were the house dining-room and
kitchen, the pantry, cool room, linen and store closet, the stewardess's
bed-room, and an up-stairs sleeping porch for the infirmary, and a
splendid attic. Outside the house were the wood shed, earth closet, tool
shed and ice house, an ample vegetable and fruit garden, a lawn space
for croquet and tether ball, a small flower and shrub garden, and wide
verandas.
The house was originally a boarding house, and the only additions which
had to be made to the original structure were the cellar, summer kitchen
and the sleeping porch. The total cost of these additions and of the
equipment and alterations including all gifts came to about $3,000. The
original purchase price of the property was $2500. The cost of
maintaining the house including the salary of the visiting nurse, the
wages of the stewardess, and all household expenses, as well as the
expenses of the summer school, extra service, etc., amount to about
$2,500 yearly. The income derived from patients in the infirmary,
transients boarding in the house, and out-patients' fees, exchange dues,
etc., amount to about $700 a year.
I suppose in different localities expenses of such an enterprise as the
Neighborhood House would be dealt with in a variety of ways. In our
valley a number of men and women bought the property and made the
fundamental improvements. An association was then formed comprising as
many of the citizens of the valley as cared to join. The annual dues for
each associate member were fixed at one dollar. To this association the
owners of the property leased the house and grounds for a period of
several years. The duties of the association were to pay the taxes and
maintain the property in good condition, and their privileges were to
use the property for the benefit of the members of the association and,
as they saw fit, for the general good of the community.
There were three kinds of memberships in the association:
Active members $ 1
Contributing members 10
Sustaining members 50
Through this means the annual income of the Neighborhood House
Association amounts to about $1,800, irrespective of the income derived
from the fees, etc., mentioned above. Without any great strain on any
one's purse, therefore, the house has been maintained by the association
without a deficit.
[Illustration: A HOMELIKE CORNER]
[Illustration: LOOKING INTO THE SCHOOL ROOM]
Towards the equipment of the house gifts were received to the amount of
$2,635.82. But besides these gifts of money, the village people
themselves donated both labor and building materials and furniture and
rugs. The summer kitchen, so far as labor was concerned, was the gift of
the village carpenters. The infirmary was furnished principally by the
women and the girls of the village who raised the money among
themselves. The farmers of the neighborhood donated wood, potatoes,
apples, etc., to the store closet. One man donated his weekly Sunday
paper, another the vines for the porches. One New York physician, whose
child had profited by the care of the visiting nurse, gave the sleeping
porch, three or four of the other physicians who had summer cottages
gave the surgical instruments for the operating room, the children of
the village brought plants for the garden, one old lady knitted
washcloths for the bath-room, the village house painter helped hang all
the pictures and the bracket-lamps, and the village artist helped raise
the money for the emergency closet by painting the scenery for the
benefit play. There was really a chance for every one to give to that
house, and with but few exceptions, every one did give, not only
willingly and generously, but eagerly and joyfully.
And because each in his or her way had had a share in making that house
a Neighborhood House, the valley people, natives and cottagers alike,
promptly and without any self-consciousness turned heartily in and used
the house. It had never occurred to most of us that the village had
needed such a house, indeed the woman whose beautiful thought it was,
had died a year before the Neighborhood House Association was so much as
spoken of; but once it stood there, warm and glowing with its happy life
that winter night of its opening, there was no question as to its
usefulness all day long, summer and winter, in most of our minds.
During the past year the visiting nurse has been occupied in and out of
the House over 2,600 hours and has treated fifty-four cases; the
infirmary has had seven patients with 160 hospital days; from the
emergency cupboard 300 loans have been made. The Women's Club has
eighty-two members and has met weekly for lectures and socials. The
Girls' Club with twenty-seven members has met once and sometimes twice
weekly. The Glee Club has held many rehearsals and gave a concert in
May. The sales from the exchange, open only in the summer, in two years
have amounted to about $900.00. The Village Improvement Committee has
held two farmers' institutes, has made progress in securing good side
walks, has planned for improved roads and tree planting, and has
arranged for a prize essay and oratorical contest by pupils of the
public school. During the past year there were about 5400 visits to the
house; the largest number of visits in one month was 1064 in December.
The question may well be asked, however: Who guides these clubs and
classes, who arranges for these parties, who welcomes these guests, who
sees to it that the house is clean and orderly, that the meals are
properly served, that the patients are well looked after, that the
stewardess is up to her work? Who is the hostess, and who, at the close
of the house's festivities, speeds the parting guest? It would have to
be a woman of tact and gentle blood, for the village people would not
brook so much power lodged in any one who was less or even quite one of
themselves. It would have to be a person who lived in the valley both
winter and summer and who thus understood the conditions of both the
summer and winter life. It would also require one who understood the
care of an infirmary, as well as the care of the house, who could devise
sick room diet, as well as substantial meals for transient guests.
Fortunately for our Neighborhood House we found such a woman in our
visiting nurse and after some experimenting on other lines, she was made
the head of the house. She is a social worker when she is not required
in the infirmary or for out-patients, and when these last demand all or
more than all of one nurse's time, an emergency nurse is procured who
works under the head of the house.
The fact that this head is a nurse has made our social worker the
confidant of many families to which another outsider would find but a
coolly polite welcome. The fact that she is a social worker makes her
interest in her cases widen to their families and remain after her
professional duties are no longer needed. Being the head of the house,
she can dictate as to the time of meals and the activities of the house
for the good of the infirmary patients, yet being the social worker, the
interest of the clubs and classes in the house are not needlessly
sacrificed to the whims of her patients. Her training as a nurse and her
experience has made her more executive than the ordinary young social
worker, but her authority as head of a house of so many interests and as
executive for so active and powerful an association, gives her prestige,
and with that prestige a power for self-development which utilizes the
best qualities she possesses. Moreover, in a country district such as
our valley, where sickness is the exception, a nurse who was confined to
her profession would have much idle time on her hands, and a social
worker who was solely a social worker might be discouraged as to the
slowness of the growth of her ideals in the minds of those about her.
For where people live twenty-five miles from the railroad, tomorrow is
always as good as today for beginning a new work. The women are, to say
the least, conservative, and the girls are shy about showing enthusiasm
for a new idea. The audiences for lectures arrive with sublime
dilatoriness, and the boys stay outside until they are quite sure that
what is going on inside is a roaring success.
Of course, the head of the house has a comprehending executive committee
behind her. Of course, too, each department of the Neighborhood House,
infirmary, summer school, exchange, clubs, etc., has its own committee
and chairman. Her responsibilities, also, are only those of a trusted
agent and all her reports are filed for the benefit of the Association,
so that while each department depends practically upon her, she in her
turn depends upon each committee and upon the executive committee and
above all upon the able president of that committee for her inspiration
and encouragement in carrying out her share of the usefulness of the
house. All these good things did not come the first night the house was
open. They are fruits of a happy growth. There have been many minor
difficulties and prejudices and some evils to overcome. The prejudices
died easiest, one of them, the fear that Neighborhood House provided for
needs that did not exist, went most quickly of all.
Last summer when an army officer from West Point lay convalescing in one
room, sharing his nurse with a little blind pauper baby, there was no
doubt as to the need of an infirmary for rich and poor. When the
exchange, which sold impartially the rag rug made by a guide's wife, the
oil painting of an artist, and the home-made candy of a school child,
and turned in $500 profits to its members, there was no doubt as to the
democratic practicability of the exchange. When the women came from the
Adirondack Club, and from the summer cottages to debate with the women
of the village on domestic science, there was no question as to the
success of the Woman's Club. And when the women of the church sewing
society came to count their gains from the country supper, and the
village Glee Club met to rehearse for its great concert, and the boys
invited the girls to their birthday suppers and the girls invited the
boys to their dancing classes, and the young married people of the
village invited last year's debutantes of far away cities to teach them
new figures and steps, and the clergymen who supplied the village church
and the lecturers sent by the government to answer the farmers'
questions about agriculture, all shared the hospitality of the house,
there remained no doubt in any one's mind as to its great usefulness to
the entire community.
As to whether it has made neighbors of us all in the spiritual sense--as
loving one another as we love ourselves--that has not become noticeable
to a degree which has affected the price of eggs! And yet I noticed with
a pleasant thrill at my heart last summer that when a woman, quite two
miles away from my cottage, came down from her porch with a loaf of
bread which she insisted upon my taking as a gift from her baking
because she knew the bakery was shut and that I was in a sudden stress,
she called me: "Neighbor!" "For goodness' sake!" said she. "Don't you
dare to pay me. You'd do the same for me, I just guess! Aren't we
neighbors?"
Yes, surely we are neighbors--we city folk and country folk! But it took
the Neighborhood House to teach us as a community the beginnings of the
art of neighborliness.
[Illustration: THE NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE IN WINTER]
A NEW MINISTER TO MINDS DISEASED
MICHAEL M. DAVIS, Jr.
DIRECTOR BOSTON DISPENSARY
AND
MABEL R. WILSON
SOCIAL WORKER, MENTAL CLINIC, BOSTON DISPENSARY
Early last June Mrs. R., a rosy-cheeked, attractive Irish-American woman
of thirty years, came to the mental clinic of the Boston Dispensary in a
depressed and emotional condition. She was obsessed by the idea that
every one in the world had syphilis, and that she in particular was a
menace to her husband and their three young children. So firm was this
conviction that she had seriously contemplated suicide.
Four years previously Mrs. R. had shown distinct manifestations of
syphilis, and had received medical treatment. The infection the
physicians believed was accidental, and the husband and children had
proved, upon examination, to be free from any symptoms. For over a year
in Mrs. R.'s case Wassermann tests had indicated that the disease had
been cured; but the doctor's assurances were of no avail.
The blackness of this patient's depression had almost wrecked her home.
For months she had not prepared a single meal. The patience of her
relatives and friends and of the priest of her church--who considered
her what she looked, the picture of health--was entirely exhausted.
Ordinarily the income of the family was sufficient for self-support. Mr.
R., a bright, clean-looking young bar-tender, who was well thought of by
his employers, earned $18 a week. He had been making a desperate effort
to meet the extra expenses due to his wife's illness. The strain was
beginning to tell upon him, however, and the health of the children was
also falling below normal. The family lived in a five-room tenement in a
congested and undesirable neighborhood. Mrs. R. for this reason worried
constantly about the possible bad influences upon her two elder
children, who were just beginning to go to school.
Thus the mental clinic faced an acute situation. If it were not
effectively dealt with it would, at worst, terminate in suicide, and, at
best, in breaking up a promising family.
The facts just recited were, of course, not secured at the physician's
first interview with Mrs. R., but were in part gained by the social
worker in the clinic and at the home. It was apparent that the home
situation must be considered as well as the medical problem. There was
clearly a joint task for the social worker and the mental specialist.
Consultation led to the conclusion that the home arrangements would have
to be changed until Mrs. R. was able to undertake housekeeping again. A
long month of explanation and persuasion passed before the family,
friends, and priest were converted to a plan which involved the
temporary dissolution of the home. Consent was finally obtained, and the
children were placed by a children's agency. Probably most important of
all, the earnest co-operation of the patient herself was won. For four
months she reported at the clinic two or three times a week. After the
many interviews held with her by doctor and social worker, her
depression gradually cleared up, and she became ready to take up the
battle of life again.
As improvement grew more marked, the doctor advised that she should work
three hours each day outside her home. Three hours' work every day in a
good restaurant was secured. The benefit was so marked that after a
month the doctor suggested that the working time be doubled.
Mrs. R. now reports weekly to the clinic, but her depression has
disappeared. She is cheerful, interested in life, and is looking forward
to the re-establishment of her home this spring.
Recent conferences on mental hygiene have emphasized the fact that the
traditional conception of mental disease, raving insanity, is far behind
the times. We recognize today that there are in the community all
classes of mental disorders, from the maniac or imbecile to persons who
are "just a little queer," or who, like Mrs. R., have a definite and
curable obsession.
The time has also gone by when we associated the treatment of mental
disease with the straight-jacket. The hopelessly defective and insane
must indeed be segregated in institutions. But it is public economy to
diagnose and treat the great mass of incipient and curable cases of
mental disorder, since these, if uncared for, mean the wrecking of
lives, the breaking up of families, and material loss to the community.
The psychopathic clinic, or clinic for mental diseases, is an agency the
importance of which is now recognized by all who have given attention to
this field. Such clinics have usually been conducted in hospitals or
institutions which specialized in mental disorders. They have rarely
been managed as adjuncts of general hospitals or dispensaries. There is
a distinct place for them in this connection, however, for in this way
they catch patients who do not know that their troubles are really
symptoms of mental disease.
Mrs. R.'s case illustrates not only the service of such a mental clinic,
but also the two chief agents in achieving the service, the
physician--specialist in mental diseases--and his aide, the social
worker. Mrs. R.'s case belongs to one of three classes of mental disease
which such a clinic can benefit--the incipient type. The second class
comprises cases of mental defect which require diagnosis and
institutional care.
For example. Mrs. B., a middle-aged Irish woman, came to the clinic much
excited, fancying that people were locking her into her rooms. Among
other delusions she feared that she might injure her two children.
The doctor diagnosed her case as involutional insanity, and thought
that immediate arrangements were desirable for her entrance into an
insane hospital as a voluntary patient. Mrs. B. did not remember
her street number, and undoubtedly she would have been a "lost"
patient if the social worker had not taken her home. Arrangements
were made and carried out for a transfer to the insane hospital
that same afternoon, and a children's agency agreed to assume
supervision of the children during Mrs. B.'s absence. The help of a
friendly landlady was also enlisted.
Within three months Mrs. B. was discharged from the insane hospital
in excellent condition, with the understanding that she should
report regularly at the clinic. Her improvement continues. She is
at present earning good wages as a housekeeper and looks forward in
the future to a little store and the re-establishment of a home for
her children.
Another illustration of this type is Mr. D., a German forty-eight
years old, who has been in the United States twenty years.
* * * * *
Mr. D. became known at the dispensary through his wife, who had
been a patient. The man went on periodic "sprees" at this time,
apparently because his work as an order clerk had occasioned
considerable nervous strain. Temporary financial assistance and a
new job outside of Boston, seemed to put the man on his feet again;
and, with a happier home life, his wife's health improved.
In a short time, however, distinct symptoms of mental disorder
began to manifest themselves. Mr. D. talked much to himself, and
was haunted by doubt in everything that he did. If he put on his
hat he was forced to step in front of the mirror several times to
be sure that the hat was really on his head. After completing a
piece of work, he returned many times to make sure that it was
really done. Occasionally he remained at home in bed, because his
fellow workmen, noting his peculiar actions, had laughed at him.
Upon this basis a fear of meeting people grew up, and he shunned
every one. Once or twice he approached his wife threateningly. The
superintendent feared to keep him at the factory any longer, and
discharged him. After a careful medical examination, the prognosis
for the patient was not very favorable. A possible outcome was an
active and incurable form of insanity. It seemed necessary, in
order to have a reasonable hope of cure, that a radical change of
life be made.
Therefore, Mr. D. was induced to go as a volunteer patient to a
hospital for the insane. There he remained six months, during which
time, with the assistance of the Associated Charities, suitable
quarters and light work were found for his wife. Mr. D. was allowed
to visit her weekly, until she became ill with an attack of
Bright's disease, which, complicated by cardiac symptoms,
occasioned her death. This loss retarded Mr. D's. recovery; but, at
the end of six months the hospital considered him sufficiently
improved to be discharged to the dispensary for continued
observation.
At present, six months after his discharge, the situation is very
encouraging. Mr. D. is working most satisfactorily as a porter for
a large department store. He has secured an excellent room with
some old friends, has given up drinking, and, from his twelve
dollars a week, is paying back the advances made by the Associated
Charities. His "insanity of doubt" seems to have vanished, and his
outlook upon life is once more interested and hopeful.
Still another case is that of R., a boy of eleven years. He was born in
Russia, of Russian Jewish parentage and has been in the United States
six years:--
R.'s own story of his first visit to the mental clinic, was in a
manic condition and talked incoherently. A week before his
appearance at the dispensary the child had returned from school in
a much disturbed state. Since that day he had not been able to
sleep, and had manifested great nervous depression with
hallucinations and had attempted several times to jump from the
window.
R.'s own story to the physician was broken and confused. He talked
much of having been forced by his teacher to go down on his knees,
and insisted that his hair was on fire. He appeared a sensitive and
intelligent child.
Investigation revealed no history of mental disease throughout the
families of both father and mother. A home visit by the social
worker showed that the family of seven lived in a four room
tenement in a congested and noisy Jewish section. The father was a
tailor with an irregular income.
The boy was immediately sent to the psychopathic ward of the Boston
State Hospital, where the diagnosis of acute insanity was confirmed
and a week later R. was committed to the Danvers State Hospital. A
co-operative connection was established between the social worker
and the hospital physicians at Danvers who were in charge of the
case. After he had sufficiently recovered, the plan was made that
R. was to be placed in the country under the supervision of one of
the children's societies for a period of at least six months. Dr.
Mitchell, superintendent of the Danvers State Hospital, wrote in
approval of this arrangement.
The plan was carried out with most successful results. At the end
of six months he was released from the parole of Danvers State
Hospital and returned to his home to report once a month to the
mental clinic at the dispensary.
The social work in this case was not confined entirely to
arrangements for the boy, but extended to the preparation of the
family for his return, which involved moving to a less congested
neighborhood in a Jewish section of a Boston suburb. It was also
necessary to arrange for his attendance in an open air class, win
his teacher's interest and co-operation, and educate the father to
a realization of the need of discipline, the value of regular hours
for eating and sleeping, the desirability that the boy should sleep
alone, and the danger of exciting recreations.
R. has now been at his own home for twelve months. A recent entry
on the medical record states: "Patient in excellent physical and
mental condition."
The third class includes patients who have been discharged from insane
hospitals as cured, or as so much improved that they should be able to
maintain themselves and take part in family life again.
This work of after-care is extremely important. Many cases of mental
disease can be safely discharged from an insane hospital if there is
assurance that they will be properly followed up in their homes. Such
supervision requires the joint efforts of the physician and the social
worker.
Miss C., for instance, a woman of thirty-three years, was sent to the
clinic for after-care, by arrangement with the superintendent of the
insane hospital to which she had twice been sent for maniac-depressive
insanity. Her mother had also been a patient for years in the same
hospital. During the first weeks of her treatment at the clinic, she was
still nervous, complained of gnawing sensations in the back of her head,
and dreaded to ride in the street cars. When sitting, she constantly
pulled and twitched different parts of her clothing, beat upon the floor
with one foot, and kept one hand on her head, using the other one alone.
She lived with a married sister who was in comfortable circumstances,
and worked for her brother in an unprofitable little plumber's shop,
which he apparently kept mainly to afford employment for Miss C. and a
younger brother.
With this history it was plain that careful oversight and regular
clinical visits were necessary to prevent future attacks. Advice and
encouragement were given with the object of stimulating Miss C.'s normal
interests and of persuading her to return to wholesome companionship.
During the summer of 1912 it was decided to remove Miss C. entirely from
home associations, and a desirable position as housekeeper was secured
in the country. There she gained in weight and spirits, and acquired
valuable experience. She still comes regularly to the clinic, and the
medical and social prognosis seems favorable.
The value of organized social service in connection with the clinic for
mental diseases has been strikingly shown since its recent establishment
at the Boston Dispensary. In the department for mental diseases in this
institution, which is a large and long-established dispensary taking all
classes of diseases, a trained social worker was set at work in January,
1912. At the expiration of a year an efficiency test was made, comparing
the clinic during 1911, when the medical staff had no social worker to
assist them, with 1912, when she was at their service. The following
table summarizes this test:
Increase
1911 1912 Per Cent
New Patients 125 213 70
Old Patients no record 100 --
Visits by New Patients 388 909 134
Visits by All Patients 516 1568 203
Cured or Substantially
Improved 19% 22% 16
Cases Pending at End of
Year[8] 2% 22% 1000
Transferred to Other
Agencies 16% 49% 206
Patients Lost 27% 5.6% 90[9]
Relative Efficiency 43% 94% 118
[8] The increase of "cases pending" is due to the organized medical and
social follow-up work, whereby the patients are held at the clinic until
the physician feels that they may safely be discharged. Without this
service the cases do not "pend" because they are lost.
[9] Decrease.
The gist of these statistics is that, with the aid of a trained social
worker, it is possible to treat certain forms of mental disease
effectively in an out-patient clinic. The physician becomes able to keep
a grip upon all patients that he wants to hold. There is practically a
closed circle, and the results of treatment bear favorable comparison
with private work. It is not too much to say that such a clinic,
provided with a staff of interested mental specialists and with trained
social workers, can perform an important function in treating mental
disease and preventing its spread in the community.[10]
[10] The preventive work of the clinic takes place in two ways: first, by
diagnosing cases of mental defect that ought to have institutional care,
and in securing this care for them by placing them or inducing their
families to consent to place them in the proper Institution; second, by
the education of patients and their families in habits of life and
principles of mental hygiene which establish a home environment
favorable to the preservation of mental health.
The social worker at the Boston Dispensary works actually in the clinic.
Here she meets each new patient and takes a careful social history,
usually before the patient sees the physician. Often she is present when
the doctor interviews the patient, and always, after this interview, the
physician consults with the social worker. Then a plan of treatment is
made which includes the social as well as the medical factors of the
case. In a certain proportion of cases, home visits are not necessary.
The efforts of the social worker in the clinic itself are sufficient to
secure adequate treatment. Thus there appears a very important
classification of the kinds of social work required:
1. Patients presenting acute family problems of poverty, ignorance,
or undesirable home conditions and associations. These patients
require home visits and intensive social work. In the mental clinic
of the dispensary they constituted 48 per cent of the 141 patients.
2. Patients requiring a home visit simply for the purpose of
insuring the patient's return to the clinic--that is, cases in
which there were no complex home problems but in which it was
necessary to go to the home once in order to persuade the patient
to come back for treatment. This class at the Dispensary
constituted 20 per cent.
3. Patients to whom it was possible to give effective treatment by
clinical interviews only, without home visits. This class
constituted 32 per cent.
Inasmuch as the cost of the service per patient (estimating the time
taken by the social worker) is enormously greater in class one than it
is in class three, it is highly important to make this classification,
and to keep a close watch upon the proportion of the different types, so
that the cost of the work as a whole, with reference to its efficiency,
can be accurately estimated.
An efficiency study from this standpoint during 1912 leads to the
conclusion that the average cost per patient (the complete treatment of
a case) in class three is sixty cents; in class two, a dollar; in class
one, four dollars. The medical service is given gratuitously by the
physician. More extended studies in this and in other mental clinics
should be made in order to work out the cost figures more accurately.
There can be no doubt, however, that even if the cost of medical service
were added, it is cheaper to treat mental diseases in the early stages,
when patients can retain their places in the community, wholly or partly
self-supporting, than to let the disease reach a point where permanent
damage is done, and the insane hospital is the only resource.
That out-patient clinics should fill an important place in the new
nation-wide campaign for mental hygiene, there can be no doubt in the
mind of any one who has given attention to the matter. That organized
social service is not only a desirable accompaniment of such clinics,
but an essential condition of their efficiency, is a demonstrable and
measurable fact.
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST VIRGINIA COAL MINES
HAROLD E. WEST
[_The Survey has not had staff or means to send a special representative
to the West Virginia coal fields to make an intensive investigation of
the conditions in the strike area. That is the sort of social
interpretation we shall hope to perform with the growth of the slender
resources of the Survey Associates. We have done the next best
thing--viz., turned to the most promising newspaper source._
_It has been current gossip among journalists that the press of West
Virginia could not be relied upon to tell the truth about the situation
in the Kanawha Valley. Of the metropolitan newspapers which up to March
had had staff representatives in the field, the accounts of the
Baltimore Sun stood out. They did not mince matters in telling of the
brutal murder by the strikers of the mine guard Stringer; nor did they
hedge in publishing what was done by the Cabin Creek and Paint Creek
Colliery Companies. Mr. West was the representative the Sun had sent
into the field, and from him The Survey requested an article, only
stipulating that it be fair to both sides and tell not only the events
of the strike but the conditions back of them._
_"The article may seem unduly to favor the miners," wrote the Baltimore
Sun man in sending it in. "I went to West Virginia absolutely
unprejudiced, with the idea of telling the truth about the situation. I
found conditions I did not believe could exist in America, and I am no
novice in the newspaper game, having seen some pretty raw things in my
time. I told the truth about them, and am afraid I have gotten myself
disliked."_
_The fairness of the article is disputed by Neil Robinson, secretary of
the West Virginia Mining Association. His protest is published in the
forepart of the magazine._--Ed.]
For nearly a year a state of turmoil amounting in practical effects to a
civil war has existed in the coal fields of West Virginia. The situation
centers in the Kanawha Valley, hardly more than twenty miles from
Charleston, the capital of the state.
The military power of the state has been used with only temporary
effect; martial law has been declared and continues in force; the
governor of the state has been defied and denounced from the state house
steps and within his hearing; men and women have been thrown into prison
and are still there for espousing the cause of the miners, and the grim
hillsides of the canons in which the mines are situated are dotted with
the graves of men who have been arrayed against one another in this
conflict between capital and labor.
Of course, there have been errors and excesses on both sides. The men in
the mines are not angels by any means, and neither are the men for whose
profit they work. But there has been no profit on either side for the
last year and it looks as if there would be none for a long time to
come. The men of both sides are pretty good fellows away from the mines
and the subject of mining; on the matter of mining, they show the
obstinacy of men who look at a proposition from but one point of view,
who see no justification of the position of those who oppose them and
who seem to have lost absolutely the sense of proportion.
If the efforts made by William B. Wilson, former Congressman from
Pennsylvania and former secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers
of America, to have a federal investigation of the situation early in
the struggle, had been successful, the whole matter might have been
settled long since. But his resolution calling for a congressional
investigation was buried at the last session of Congress and was never
resurrected.
Wilson charged that a condition of peonage existed in the mines and that
men were held there by force and compelled to work against their will.
The coal operators denied this vehemently, at the same time fighting
bitterly a federal inquiry. Evidence I was able to gather on a trip of
investigation to the mines convinced me that a form of peonage does, or
did, exist; that the miners were oppressed; that the rights guaranteed
under the constitution were denied them; that the protection of the law
of the state was withheld from them and the law openly defied and
ignored by the coal operators. These things were done, apparently, not
because the operators were cruel, but--the old story of
dividends--because they thought it necessary that a balance be shown on
the right side of the ledger, and because competitive conditions in the
coal fields were such that more of this balance had to be produced from
the men themselves than from the bleak hills in which they toil.
The investigation is bound to come. Wilson is a cabinet member in the
new administration, and could of his own volition carry it on under the
broad terms of the act creating the new federal Department of Labor. But
there is another agency which may look into the situation. When fellow
members of the lower house balked Congressman Wilson's proposal, he
interested Senator Borah of Idaho and the latter promised to introduce
into the Senate, at the coming special session, a resolution calling for
a full and complete investigation, by a committee of the Senate, of the
whole situation in the West Virginia coal mines, including the question
of peonage, the use of mine guards and other means of oppression. This
would be a Senate resolution, it would not have to be concurred in by
the House of Representatives, and it is understood that Secretary Wilson
has votes enough pledged to pass it.
Even the close of the strike which has been rumored the past fortnight
would not make such a fundamental inquiry during the spring and summer
inopportune, but rather a measure of precaution in anticipation of
future labor conflicts in the region. The fact that such an inquiry has
been actively contemplated is not generally known; information about it
has not been published in the newspapers, but has been given me for use
in THE SURVEY.
_Backward View of the Trouble_
The Kanawha trouble dates back about ten years. At that time the miners'
condition was good, as things go for men in the coal fields, and the
miners along Cabin Creek were organized. An ill-advised strike was
called then, and it resulted in a disastrous defeat for the miners. This
strike was ordered by officials of the union against the desire of the
miners directly affected and it is charged by Cabin Creek miners that it
was declared in the interest of the Ohio operators who desired to
cripple their West Virginia competitors. Some of these operators have
since admitted that they helped finance the strike. As long as the
trouble lasted, operators in competitive fields could gobble the
business of operators whose plants were shut down. Of course, after the
men had been beaten and the strike broken and non-union conditions and
wage scales went into effect, the competition was more bitter than it
had been before, yet the pickings were good while they lasted. That,
however, is all ancient history.
Ever since the strike of a decade ago the men on Cabin Creek have been
restless. Conditions were burdensome although they were not so bad on
Paint Creek which was organized. The operators were out after business
and they cut prices on coal to the limit in order to meet the
competition of Illinois, Ohio and western Pennsylvania operators and get
a share of the "lake trade." For the driving force behind this civil war
in the hills of West Virginia is to be found in the coal bins of 10,000
factories of the Middle West and beyond whose managers and workmen know
little or nothing of the struggle.
By "lake trade" is meant the coal that goes to ports on Lake Erie for
transportation by steamer and barge to Detroit and as far as Duluth and
Superior for distribution throughout the Northwest. All the trade that
passes over the lakes, no matter what its ultimate destination, is known
as the "lake trade." The Pittsburgh operators have held that the opening
of the West Virginia fields was an economic blunder, that the lake
demand was no greater than Pittsburgh and Ohio could supply, and that it
was a mistake for the West Virginia operators to enter that field. The
latter took the position that they had the coal, and did not propose to
let it remain undeveloped because it would interfere with the market of
the operators of other fields. They would mine their coal and would sell
it wherever they could, and if they could grab a big share of the lake
trade they proposed to do it. It has been a battle of millions.
To strengthen their position the Pennsylvania operators have bought
large blocks of West Virginia coal lands. The Lackawanna Coal Company
has, for example, secured control of the principal operations on Paint
Creek.
The operators in the Ohio, Illinois, and most of the Pennsylvania
fields, get out their coal under terms as to hours and wages imposed by
their agreements with the United Mine Workers. In order to be in a
position to meet the growing competition of the West Virginia fields on
an even footing in the matter of labor, it is an open secret, that they
have given aid and comfort to the union in the effort to organize the
West Virginia field. They have been fighting on the other hand for a
reduction in their own freight rates or an increase in those of their
West Virginia competitors, they did not care which, as the consumer
finally pays the bill. Until a comparatively recent time, the rate from
the Pittsburgh district to Ashtabula and Cleveland has been 88 cents a
ton, while to Toledo and Sandusky, the rates from the West Virginia
field have been 97 cents and $1.12 a ton.
Something more than a year ago the pressure on the railroads became so
great that a meeting of the officers of the coal carrying roads and the
operators from the Pittsburgh and the West Virginia districts was held
in New York in an effort to settle the difficulty. No agreement could be
reached and the roads, unable to resist the pressure of the Pittsburgh
operators advanced the rate from the West Virginia fields 9-1/4 cents,
making the differential in favor of the Pittsburgh field 18-1/4 instead
of 9 cents.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood._
CONFISCATED ARMS AND AMMUNITION
The revolvers and rifles were taken from both mine guards and strikers]
The West Virginia operators appealed to the Interstate Commerce
Commission for an investigation, and an order suspending the rate was
granted. Then John W. Boilleau, a big operator in Pennsylvania, demanded
a reduction of 50 or 55 cents a ton from the Pittsburgh district,
further complicating the situation. Early last year, the Interstate
Commerce Commission handed down a decision reducing the rate from the
Pittsburgh district 10 cents and held that the Chesapeake and Ohio and
the Kanawha and Michigan rates should remain as they had been but that
the Norfolk and Western rate might be increased. This decision resulted
in increasing the differential in favor of Pittsburgh to 19 cents.
With this handicap in freight rates, the operators on Paint and Cabin
creeks say that it is impossible for them to pay the union scale and
submit to union conditions and keep going. It is a fact that although
the average price of coal in West Virginia for 1911 was a cent above the
price in 1910, many coal companies failed. Some mines have been operated
by receivers while others have been closed down on the ground that coal
cannot be produced at the mouth of the mines and put on the cars at the
price it brings in the market. Others are just about coming out even
while some are making money.
_Profits from Mine or Men?_
The strikers answer by charging that the losses and difficulties
incident to competition are many of them paper losses and paper
difficulties, that the mines would pay well under union conditions and
rates of pay if the mines were not working on an inflated capitalization
and were not endeavoring to earn money on a lot of watered stock.
In one of the talks which I had with Neil Robinson, secretary of the
West Virginia Mining Association, he went into the cost of production
and told of the efforts of the Pittsburgh operators to shut the West
Virginia coals out of the lake trade. He produced the calculations of G.
W. Schleuderberg, general manager of the Pittsburgh Coal Company, which
were given in the lake rate cases before the Interstate Commerce
Commission, showing that the average cost of production in 52 mines,
including general office expenses, depreciation, royalty, fuel,
supplies, and labor, was 99.09 cents per ton of coal on cars.
As against this, he showed a generalized statement, which he said was
based on actual working conditions in the Kanawha splint coal mines
indicating a cost of 99.11 cents on cars, a difference of two hundredths
of a cent in favor of the Pittsburgh operators.
The Schleuderberg figures showed a total labor cost of 72.16 cents a
ton while Mr. Robinson's figures showed for the Kanawha fields a labor
cost of 65.66 cents a ton, a difference in favor of the Kanawha fields
of 6.5 cents, and if superintendence and certain other costs be
included, a cost of 63.78 cents, which is a per ton difference in favor
of the Kanawha fields of 3.38 cents. This would more than cover the
increase asked by the miners which is half of the Cleveland compromise
scale or approximately 2-1/2 cents a ton.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Coal Age_
ON GUARD
A Cabin Creek rifle-woman before her tent.]
Of course, there is the railroad differential in favor of Pittsburgh to
be considered. In spite of the differential of 9 cents against the West
Virginia field, which existed up to the time of the settlement of the
lake trade cases by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the West
Virginia operators shipped in 1910 to lake ports more than six million
tons of coal, a growth of over four million tons since 1906; or 125 per
cent and even with the differential spread to 19 cents, they are
shipping coal as rapidly as they can mine it.
The explanation of the Kanawa Valley miners is that in their efforts to
capture the Lake Trade the West Virginia operators in competing with the
Pittsburgh district operators have been selling coal at less than cost
and making their profits out of their men.
The miners told me that ever since the fight began their condition has
been becoming harder and harder to bear. One of the men, answering my
statement that the operators said they were barely meeting expenses
said: "Damn it, I know there is no money in coal at 80 cents at the
tipple; any fool knows that, but by God, they've got no right to take it
out of us."
And that in my judgment is about the truth of the situation. Or, as Neil
Robinson explained to me in all seriousness: "Labor is simply a pawn in
the game."
Yet the game has cost the state, the operators and the miners millions
of dollars and many lives, has caused untold hardship to women and their
children, has engendered a bitterness that a generation in time will not
heal and hatreds that will last a lifetime.
In making that statement, I am convinced that Mr. Robinson did not know
how it would sound to one who puts the well-being of men, women and
children above the necessity of capital for dividends. He was simply
stating a business fact. I had several talks with him in the course of
my stay in the mine region and found him a cultivated, courteous man. I
think I got his point of view which coincides with that of the operators
generally. They seem to look upon labor as material, to be bought as
cheaply as possible and to be utilized in the manner which will be most
profitable to the mine investments.
Whenever I went in to see him to discuss the situation he immediately
produced account books, and books of statistics and began giving me
figures. The whole case of the operators, he seemed to think, could be
shown by the books and the balance sheet. He told me of tonnage, cost of
production, railroad freight rates, yield on investment, the yield of
competitive fields and the cost of operation in those fields,
capitalization and rates of dividends. But of the human side, he had
substantially nothing to say. Of the outrages of the miners--and they
have been numerous--he spoke with bitterness, but of the outrages
committed upon them he was silent.
Of course, figures such as Mr. Robinson produced are important but they
are not everything. The trouble is that the operators do not seem to be
able to see beyond them into those desolate little cabins under the
everlasting hills, to the rights of men, to the causes that make for
anarchy--that have made for anarchy, in this very region.
_The State at Stake_
It is hard to tell just how many men have been out in recent months.
Five thousand would be a fair estimate. And remarkable as it is, these
men have been able to hold out through a winter--and winters are severe
in those West Virginia mountains--and they enter the spring and the long
season, when cold does not fight them from the ranks of their opponents,
full of cheer and determined to continue the industrial war in which
they have engaged.
It must be remembered that this fight is not simply one between miners
and operators on Paint and Cabin Creeks. It is localized there, but
every miner and every operator in the state is involved more or less
directly. It is really a fight for the unionizing of the entire coal
fields of West Virginia, now largely non union.
If the operators stamp out the effort to restore unionism on Paint and
Cabin Creeks and prevent its going further than it has already gone on
Coal River it will mean the checkmating of unionism in the coal fields
of the state. Fights will be made, one after another, in places where
the United Mine Workers have organizations and they will be broken up as
they were broken up on Cabin Creek ten years ago. Once broken, they will
not be permitted to be formed again.
If, on the other hand, the miners win, their organization will be pushed
first into one field, then into another, until the whole state shall
have been unionized. It will take them years to do this. This explains
the extreme bitterness of the present fight, each side practically
staking its all on this one throw. Of course, the operators do not admit
that they are battling to crush out unionism in the state and the
officials of the mine workers' organization do not talk much about
extending the fight to other fields if they win in this. That is their
purpose, nevertheless.
The miners are receiving assistance from other operators in non-union
parts of the state. All the resources of the United Mine Workers of
America are being thrown behind the miners. As explained to me by
perhaps the most prominent man in the organization a few days ago, there
is now no big fight on hand anywhere else in the country, and there has
been none for a year. This has enabled the mine workers to collect a big
fund and they are still collecting. The organization's war chest is kept
in good shape by contributions from every mining district in the nation
and all this will be poured into the Kanawha field if necessary. In
addition to this, the miners again have the sympathy, if not the active
co-operation, of the operators in the Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio
fields where the union scale is paid.
In fact, the operators in the fields which are organized look upon their
brothers who have been able to prevent the union getting a hold in their
operations very much as the union laborer looks upon the non-union
laborer, although the operator is not so frank in expressing his
opinion. He is perfectly willing to upset the labor conditions in his
competitors' operations and aid the laborers in making their fights. And
the operator in the unorganized field is perfectly willing to see his
competitors' fields organized to the limit.
The country in which this war between the miners and the coal companies
is taking place is as wild as any that lies out of doors. Cabin Creek
Junction is sixteen miles east of Charleston and Paint Creek Junction is
seven miles further east. On Cabin Creek the railroad runs south along
the bed of the creek sixteen miles to Kayford while on Paint Creek the
road extends for twenty-two miles. These creeks are little streams,
ordinarily, which sometimes reach the proportions of torrents, flowing
along the bases of the mountains. The elevation of the creek beds above
tide ranges from 800 to 1,000 feet, while the tops of the hills which
rise abruptly on both sides of each creek are from 1,000 to 1,500 feet
higher. The sides of these hills are so steep that only an experienced
mountaineer can climb them, yet here and there near the creek beds the
miners have raised little patches of corn and vegetables.
[Illustration: MOTHER JONES]
The workable veins of coal lie high up on the sides of these hills, and
from each mine mouth a track leads to the coal tipple below from which
the coal is dumped from the mine cars to the cars of the railroad which
runs beneath the tipple. Here and there at the base of either of these
ravines is a narrow strip of flat land, and on these flats, the mining
villages are located. At places the bottom of the ravine is so narrow
that there is not room for the railroad track, the creek bed and the
county road, so the road runs along the bed of the creek and is
impassable at times of high water and oftentimes in the winter.
It is estimated that before the strike began, there were approximately
10,000 men, women and children living along Cabin Creek and somewhat
more than half that number along Paint Creek. A train runs up each creek
in the morning and there is another in the afternoon and if you happen
to miss the afternoon train out there is no way out except to walk, and
walking is very difficult in that country.
[Illustration: MINERS' HOMES LEASED FROM MINE OWNERS
_Courtesy of the New York Sun_]
For that reason little real news of the exact condition of affairs has
reached the outside world. Newspaper men are decidedly unwelcome along
the creeks; that is, their presence is distasteful to the mine owners.
Few strangers had been allowed to enter the creeks for a long time prior
to the entry of the militia last summer, without explaining their
business to some man, and usually a man with a gun. Ordinarily a
stranger would not get beyond the junction of the main line and the
branch road. If the explanation of his business did not happen to be
satisfactory, he was told to get out. If he demurred or showed a
disposition to argue he was frequently beaten up. If he got up the line,
his chances of getting beaten up were largely increased. One labor
organizer told me that a couple of years ago he was pulled off a train
and kicked into insensibility by the mine guards and when he recovered
was made to "walk the creek" in water up to his waist because he had
gone up Cabin Creek to see what the labor conditions were.
_The Mine Guards_
These mine guards are an institution all along the creeks in the
non-union sections of the state. They are as a rule supplied by the
Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency of Roanoke and Bluefield. It is said the
total number in the mining regions of West Virginia reaches well up to
2,500. Ordinarily they are recruited from the country towns of Virginia
and West Virginia, preferably the towns in the hill country, and
frequently have been the "bad men" of the towns from which they came.
And these towns have produced some pretty hard characters. The ruffian
of the West Virginia town would not take off his hat to the desperado of
the wildest town of the wildest west.
These Baldwin guards who are engaged by the mining companies to do their
"rough work" take the place of the Pinkertons who formerly were used for
such work by the coal companies. Since the Homestead strike in the steel
mills years ago when the Pinkertons fired into the strikers and killed a
number of them, this class of business has gradually drifted away from
the Pinkertons and much of it has been acquired by the Baldwin-Felts
agency.
In explanation of the employment of these guards, the operators say that
their property must be guarded, that the state does not give them
sufficient protection. Men who do service as mine guards cannot be
expected to be "ladylike." They deal with desperate characters and are
constantly in peril. The guards act on the principle that they must
strike first if they are to strike at all, and evidence shows that they
have not the slightest hesitancy about striking first. The operators
also say that it is necessary to require explanations of strangers in
order to keep out labor agitators and to prevent the miners from being
annoyed and threatened by them.
No class of men on earth are more cordially hated by the miners than
these same mine guards who are engaged to "protect" them from annoyance
by outsiders. Before the state troops went into the region and took
their rifles away from them, the mine guards went about everywhere, gun
in hand, searching trains, halting strangers, ejecting undesirables,
turning miners out of their houses and doing whatever "rough work" the
companies felt they needed to have done. Stories of their brutality are
told on every hand along the creeks. Some are unquestionably
exaggerated, but the truth of many can be proved and has been proved.
In spite of the work they do some of these Baldwin men seem to be decent
enough chaps to those who are not "undesirable," and they are, for the
most part, intelligent. But they are in the mines for a definite
purpose. They understand what that purpose is and they have no hesitancy
about "delivering the goods." They seem to have no illusions about their
work. It pays well and if brutality is required, why, brutality "goes."
Whenever possible they are clothed with some semblance of the authority
of the law, either by being sworn in as railroad detectives, as
constables or deputy sheriffs.
But for all that a number have been indicted for offenses ranging from
common assault to murder. In every case, however, bail has been ready
and it is rare that charges against them have been brought to trial.
Some of the assault cases in which they have figured have been of great
brutality, yet rarely has any serious trouble resulted for the guards.
They go about their work in a purely impersonal way. If a worker becomes
too inquisitive, if he shows too much independence, or complains too
much about his condition, he is beaten up some night as he passes under
a coal tipple, but the man who does the beating has no feeling against
him personally; it is simply a matter of business to him.
Just what the services of the guards cost the coal companies is
difficult to learn. The companies contract with the Baldwin-Felts agency
for them and the sum they pay is kept a secret. It is generally
understood that the guards get about $5 a day, or between $100 and $125
a month. A man in the mines who knows one of them intimately told me he
"picked up his gun" for $105 a month. When a man joins the Baldwins he
"picks up his gun," and that stamps him forevermore with his former
associates if they were of the laboring class as an enemy and a man who
has turned his back on his class and his kind.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the United Mine Workers' Journal_
A GROUP OF STRIKERS' CHILDREN]
Unless the miners are beaten in this fight, and utterly and completely
beaten, there will never be a settlement of the difficulty here until
the mine guards are driven from the region. "The mine guards must go,"
is the slogan of the striking miner everywhere. His going is of more
importance than an increase in pay. There will be no lasting peace in
the region until they are gone. All over the state when the situation in
the Kanawha valley comes up for discussion you are told that the mine
guards are at the bottom of the trouble. They are the Ishmaelites of the
coal regions for their hands are supposed to be against every miner, and
every miner's hand is raised against them. They go about in constant
peril--they are paid to face danger and they face it all the time. But
they are afraid, for they never know when they may get a charge of
buckshot or a bullet from an old Springfield army rifle that will make a
hole in a man's body big enough for you to put your fist in. A number of
guards have been killed since the trouble began, and it is generally
understood that some of these were buried by their fellows and nothing
said about it, there being a disposition down in the mines not to let
the other side know when either side scores and gets a man.
_Beginning of Hostilities_
Preparations for the warfare, which began in April of last year, had
been going on for months before the actual opening of hostilities. The
miners on Paint Creek began buying old Springfield rifles which the
government had discarded and which were offered in quantities by junk
dealers and department stores in Charleston. There had been rumors of
trouble, and the Paint Creek miners who were organized had received
intimations that Cabin Creek conditions would be established in their
operations. There had been no mine guards on Paint Creek for they are
seldom seen in union operations. The miners had received information
that the operators would not sign the scale for the new year but would
repudiate the union and bring in the guards.
Their information proved correct. When the Kanawha Operators'
Association met to consider the scale, the Paint Creek operators
declined to sign it and withdrew from the association. The miners struck
and the guards appeared over night. A big fight took place at Mucklow
when the first blood was spilled in the trouble. It has been spilled in
quantities since with more or less regularity.
The companies immediately prepared for a long fight. Miners were evicted
from their homes and many of them have since been living in tents
furnished by the United Mine Workers. Machine guns were imported and
mounted in concrete fortifications that were hurriedly built on the
roofs of the company stores and mounted in positions of vantage in the
hills. Whisky, cartridges, rifles and machine gun ammunition were
brought in in large quantities.
The strike spread at once to Cabin Creek and from the beginning the
warfare has been more serious on Cabin Creek than it has been on Paint
Creek. More machine guns were established on Cabin Creek than had been
planted in Paint Creek. The situation grew so threatening that Governor
Glasscock ordered out the militia early last August at the solicitation
of the mine owners. By that time almost every man on Cabin Creek had his
rifle and ammunition, hidden but where he could get at it without
trouble. For the most part the arms were smuggled in over the hills. The
mine owners informed Governor Glasscock that the miners were armed and
were threatening to wipe out the mine guards, one of the guards, William
Stringer, having been slain in a most brutal manner. The miners did not
ask for protection, saying they could protect themselves. It is
generally believed that they were waiting for some particularly bad move
on the part of the guards, when they proposed to exterminate them if
possible. The mine owners expected that when the troops came they would
disarm the miners but allow the guards to retain their rifles, in other
words, and to put it very plainly, they expected that the militia would
be used as an additional force against the miners. But when the troops
began disarming the guards as well as the miners they protested most
vigorously. But for every rifle taken away from a guard in the early
days of the trouble, dozens of new ones were brought in.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the United Mine Workers' Journal_
A TENT VILLAGE OF STRIKERS
The deserted town is in the background]
_Martial Law_
Governor Glasscock's attitude pleased neither the operators nor the
strikers. The miners at the outset wanted him to proclaim martial law,
to search the whole place, run out the guards, take their arms away from
them and take the machine guns out of the improvised forts. They
received the soldiers with open arms--no set of soldiers ever went into
a strike region and received a heartier welcome. In the presence of the
troops, the guards had no terrors for the miners, and even the children
were unafraid.
When martial law was really proclaimed, however, the strikers did not
like it. The law was enforced with vigor and a number of the strikers
were put in prison for violating the law against unlawful assemblages.
The shoe had begun to pinch and it pinched pretty hard before the
soldiers were withdrawn. It was a mistake to take away the troops before
the strike had been definitely settled. It would have cost the state a
good deal to have retained them after things quieted down, but if a
comparatively small force had been kept, it is hardly likely that the
recent trouble would have occurred, and it would not have been necessary
to send the soldiers back and proclaim martial law a second time. Then
many lives would have been saved.
The trouble that followed the withdrawal of the troops could have been,
it seems, foreseen by almost any one. One of the miners said when I was
in the mines:
"Hell is going to break loose here as soon as the troops are
recalled unless the mine guards go out at the same time. They have
it in for us and we have it in for them. As soon as the troops go
out, we fellows who have been working to unionize this region are
going to catch it. But when they start something the fun will
begin.
"If you want to see some hot doings just wait around until the
troops go. Conditions such as prevail here are a disgrace. The like
of them does not prevail in any civilized country on the globe. And
we are not going to stand them any longer. I have never had to kill
a man and hope never to be compelled to kill one, but I would kill
a dozen of these guards as I would kill so many rats if they should
attempt to lord it over us as they have been accustomed to do. And
I would do it with a perfectly clear conscience."
The man who made this statement was killed in one of the recent fights
in the valley. I saw his name in the list of the dead.
One of the things that give the coal operators such complete control of
the men who work for them is the ownership of great tracts of land.
Everywhere you are confronted with a notice that you are on private
property.
_Landlordism_
Because the West Virginia mining villages are nearly all on private
property, the operators owning the highways as well as the houses of the
miners, they can control their going and coming and determine who may or
may not visit them and talk with them. It is idle to say that the men
can come and go as they please, as the operators claim. Each individual
among them has the right to go from his home to the mine and back again
and to travel on the county road, which is merely an excuse for a
highway. But he has not the _right_ to go from his own home to that of a
fellow workman nor has his wife and children. When they do so, it is by
the sufferance of the mine owner, unless they go by the county road and
then half the houses cannot be reached. It is idle to say that this
power is not exercised by the operators. It is. I have seen it
exercised, and this very fact contains a serious menace to the country.
I talked it over one day with Governor Glasscock in the early days of
the trouble.
"How can it be remedied?" he asked. "The whole situation bristles with
problems like this. In this case you are up against a man's
constitutional right to control his property as he sees fit and to keep
trespassers off it."
Such a situation offers a serious problem in government. Take Cabin
Creek alone, with its branches to Kayford and Decota. There are more
than twenty square miles of territory in which live ordinarily about
12,000 persons. In all that territory there is scarcely a place in which
a man may go without being under surveillance, and except at the little
"free" or incorporated town of Eskdale, hardly a house into which a
friend may be invited for a drink of water except by the grace of the
coal companies.
The miners say that such a condition is un-American. They want it solved
and they do not care how it is to be solved. While this matter is not
put in the list of their demands, it is one of their serious grievances.
Here are the things they are demanding:
Abolition of the mine guard system.
A reform in the system of docking.
The employment of check-weighmen on the tipples to represent the
miners and to be paid by the miners. The law provides for these
check-weighmen, but this law is ignored by the coal companies.
Permission for the men to trade where they please without
discrimination against them for so doing.
The payment of wages in cash every two weeks and not in script or
credit cards.
Improved sanitary conditions, with the requirement that the
companies remove garbage and keep the houses in condition.
Payment for mining coal on the basis of the short ton on which the
coal is sold and not on the basis of the long ton, on which it is
at present mined.
Rentals of houses based on a fair return on their cost with
allowance for upkeep and electric lights on the same basis.
The nine hour day--the men now work ten hours.
Recognition of the union. This implies, in the bituminous districts
of the middle West, the check-off system by which the companies
deduct from the pay envelopes of individual miners not only the
charges for powder, rent, medical attention, store accounts, etc.,
but also for union dues which are turned over to the union
treasuries direct. This method of recognizing the union has been
most vigorously opposed by the operators in the anthracite
district.
An increase in pay. This last the miners regard as the least vital
of all their demands as a present issue.
_Charges as to Peonage_
It has been charged that a condition of peonage exists in some of the
mining districts of the state. This is a subject on which the operators
are very sensitive. They deny vehemently that such a thing is possible.
Peonage, as it is usually understood, means compelling men to work under
duress until debts they may owe are paid. It is a violation of state and
federal laws.
Men who come into the mines usually have little or no money. Sometimes
their transportation into the mines is paid and they are charged with
the cost of it on the books of the companies employing them. They are
given a cabin to live in and if they have no money when they start and
seem to want to go to work in good faith they are given credit for small
amounts at the company stores. Accordingly, unless the miner is an
unusually thrifty fellow, he is usually in debt at the start.
Miners have told me that in the Cabin Creek region they are paid only
once a month, but when they start in, they are not paid any cash for
sixty days, the first month's pay being held back. In the meantime,
however, after they have earned sufficient money to pay the rent and
other charges in connection with their cabins, their school tax, burial
tax of twenty-five cents a month, their assessment for the maintenance
of the mine physician, and sometimes an item for "protection" which is
an assessment for the pay of the mine guards they will, "on
application" be given a "script card" entitling them to purchase from
the company store goods to the amount indicated on the card. On the
edges of the card are figures and the amounts purchased are punched out
very much as the waiters in a quick lunch restaurant punch out the
amount of a customers order on his check.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the New York Sun_
SOLDIERS IN CAMP AT CABIN CREEK JUNCTION]
These script cards will not, it is said, be given to a miner for the
total amount which stands to his credit on the books of the mine
company, but is usually for $2 or $3 if the man has that amount due him
after deductions are made for rent in advance and other charges. If a
man is very anxious however, to have some cash, a clerk in the store,
will, it is said, discount his script card, charging him 25 per cent.
For the first two months, then, the miner, who starts out in debt, has
to get everything he needs from the company stores. The prices at these
stores are high, much higher than the miner would have to pay elsewhere
for exactly the same grade of stuff. For the most part, the grade of
goods sold at the company stores is much higher than is usually
purchased by laboring men and their wives when they buy where they
please. Here are some of the prices I found prevailing at stores along
Cabin Creek:
Eggs 35 cents a dozen; "white bacon," pure fat and popularly known
as "sow belly" 18 cents a pound; smoked bacon 22 cents a pound;
white sugar 20 cents for a two pound bag; lard 15 cents a pound;
brown sugar 15 cents a pound; coffee 30 cents a pound; tomatoes 15
cents a can; peas 15 cents a can; corn two cans for 25 cents;
cheese 30 cents a pound; bread 5 cents a loaf; flour $7 a barrel,
and salt 5 cents for a two pound bag. Salt is not sold in bulk.
Compelled to buy at high prices, it can be readily seen that a man
cannot save much money, although it is a fact that a few of the very
thrifty ones have rather respectable bank accounts. So when the average
fellow starts out in debt, he usually stays in debt. His work is hard
and he eats heartily when he can. Then the miners' wives have never been
taught how to make much out of little or to conserve their resources, so
there is naturally much waste in cooking, much is spoiled and much is
poorly prepared.
All this tends to keep the man in debt. At the end of his two month's
work he may have couple of dollars coming to him or he may be still in
debt and if he is in his house a day over the first of the month, rent
in advance is charged against the first money he earns even though he
and his family may be in need of food. Sometimes he does not get any
cash for months, and you have to have cash to get out of the mines for
the railroads will not permit the miners and their families to travel
without paying fare.
Most of these people have no one outside on whom they may call for help
in leaving the district, and without money, they must stay in the mines
and work. Heretofore their best means of getting out was to develop
strong union tendencies and to talk about the necessity of organizing.
Then, if they were not beaten up, their fare was sometimes paid, and
their furniture and families moved to some other point. Once out,
however, it would be unpleasant for them to try to get back.
A point is made by the operators that they have offered to pay the fares
of any of their men and of their families, including transportation
charges on their household goods, to Charleston or to fields operating
under union conditions. It is a fact that such offers have been made and
because the miners did not avail themselves of the offer, it is cited
against them as unreasonable, and that they did not care so much about
bettering their condition as about harassing the operators.
As a matter of fact the men do not care to leave the region. They are
engaged in a fight to unionize it and are as anxious to succeed as are
the operators to prevent them from doing so. "Stay where you are and
unionize your district but do not crowd into organized operations," is
the advice given by the union organizers. That is why the unions in the
other districts are supporting the strikers and have been doing so for a
year.
_The Glasscock Commission_
Last summer after the mine companies refused point blank to be a party
to the appointment of a commission by the governor for the investigation
of the situation in the mines, Governor Glasscock appointed one anyway.
Bishop Donahue, the Catholic bishop of Wheeling, S. L. Walker, and Fred
O. Blue were appointed as commissioners. Extracts from the report of
this commission are interesting:
"From the cloud of witnesses and mass of testimony figuring in the
hearings, there emerges clearly and unmistakably the fact that
these guards [the mine guards referred to heretofore] recklessly
and flagrantly violated in respect to the miners on Paint Creek and
Cabin Creek, the rights guaranteed by natural justice and the
constitution to every citizen howsoever lowly his condition and
state.... Many crimes and outrages laid to their charge were found
upon careful sifting to have no foundation in fact, but the denial
of the right of peaceable assembly and of freedom of speech, many
and grievous assaults on unarmed miners show that their main
purpose was to overawe the miners and their adherents and, if
necessary to beat and cudgel them into submission. We find that the
system employed was vicious, strife prompting and un-American. No
man, worthy of the name, likes to be guarded by others, armed with
black jacks, revolvers and Winchesters whilst he is endeavoring to
earn his daily bread.... We are unanimously of the opinion that the
guard system as at present constituted should be abolished
forthwith."
The commission also found that the company stores overcharged the
miners, that the system of docking was unfair to the miner, and that a
system of blacklisting of miners prevailed.
On the other hand the commission found that in a general way, the miners
in the Paint and Cabin Creek districts were fairly well off, that their
wages were above the average prevailing in the organized fields, that
their cabins were above the average, and that the rent, while "slightly
excessive" was not exorbitant, and that the sanitation was "as good as
can be expected." On the question of wages, the commission found that
the annual wage of miners in West Virginia for the years 1905-1911 was
$554.26 while the average annual wage of miners on Paint and Cabin
Creeks "is from $600 to $700." It will be noticed that in the first
instance a definite, fixed figure is given for the average. In the other
the statement is a general one "between $600 and $700."
The statement is also made that "a minute examination of the pay rolls
discloses the fact that 16 or 17 days' work a month constitutes a high
average and that many engaged in the mines _decline_ (the italics are
mine) to labor more than 12 or 14 days."
There are two sides to this. The "unwillingness" of the miners to work
more than a certain number of days a month is proved to the satisfaction
of the commission by an "examination of the pay roll." As a matter of
fact in most instances the reason the men do not work more days in a
month is due to the system of "crowding" which prevails all over the
non-union districts of West Virginia. This is one of the things the
miner complains about most bitterly. It is worked in this way: An
operation has, say a capacity of 200 men. On the pay roll of that
operation may be anywhere from 300 to 400 men. All these men cannot work
in the mine at one time, but the company always wants to have plenty of
men on hand. So the men are allowed to make but little more than half
time. The advantage to the operators is that the more men they have the
more cottages they will rent, the more mouths there will be to feed from
the company stores, and the more money collected for physicians' fees,
insurance and other things for which the miners have to pay. It is
absolutely true that the men do not work more than from 12 to 17 days a
month, but the pay roll will never tell you the real reason. The men
want to work, but they are not permitted to do so.
As to the cabins being above the average--they may be. I went into some
of them. I would want a more comfortable stable for my horses. The
greater number of the cabins contain four rooms each and are absolutely
without any sanitary or other arrangements for the convenience of the
occupants. Some few are larger and some are smaller but the four room
cabin is the type. They are nearly all alike, built of rough lumber and
roofed with a composition roofing such as is bought by the roll. The
rental is on the basis of $1.50 per room per month. A four room cabin
costs $6 a month, a six room cabin costs $8 or $9. But take the average
four room cabin at $6, the yearly rate is $72. That is interest at 6 per
cent on $1,200. The labor cost on these houses was not more than $40
each on the average. Including the land on which the houses stand they
did not cost the companies more than $300 each. Six per cent on $300 is
$18.
Now, the houses are put up as much for the convenience of the companies
as for the miners. There would be no coal mined unless the miners had
houses in which to live, so a 6 per cent rate on the houses would seem
fair. But even allowing 10 per cent, the rate would be $30 instead of
$72. At the rentals charged these houses have paid for themselves over
and over again and everything the companies get out of them now is pure
"velvet." I would call the rental charges exorbitant rather than
"slightly excessive" as the commission finds.
As a matter of fact, that Glasscock commission report will not bear
close analysis. It is a straddle, made so perhaps in order to protect
"the good name of the state." I do not believe that it is accurate in a
number of particulars. I do not believe that the average wage of the
miners on Paint and Cabin Creeks is between $600 and $700. A good miner
will average $2.50 to $3 a day for the days he works. The impression is
sought to be created that many of the miners have money in bank. Some of
them have, undoubtedly, but they form an exceedingly small percentage of
the whole number. I know that as soon as the strike was called the vast
majority of the miners and their families had to be supported by the
union. I saw wagon loads of provisions sent up to the head of Cabin
Creek to feed those who were hungry and who had nothing coming to them
according to the books of the companies and who could get nothing at the
stores.
As a matter of fact the whole truth has never been told of the real
conditions existing in the mines of West Virginia. One of the most
illuminating pieces of testimony available to the non-partisan
investigator is that of former Governor W. M. O. Dawson. Governor Dawson
sent a special message--a rare document and hard to find now--to the
legislature of 1907. Three cases of peonage in lumber camps had been
called to his attention by Secretary of State Elihu Root at the request
of the Italian ambassador. In his message Governor Dawson declared
without equivocation that a system of peonage existed under the guard
system. One of these cases resulted in what he called a "wanton murder"
as a result of a controversy as to whether the murdered man owed $1.50
for the railway fare of his son. The man was killed by a guard. The
governor goes on:
"The use of guards in this state is not restricted to cases like
these under investigation. They are used at some of the collieries
to protect the property of owners, to prevent trespassing, and
especially to prevent labor agitators and organizers of the miners'
union from gaining access to the miners.... Many outrages have been
committed by these guards, many of whom appear to be vicious and
dare devil men who seem to aim to add to their viciousness by
bulldozing and terrorizing people. It is submitted in all candor
that it is not to the best interests of the owners of these
collieries to employ such lawless men or to justify the outrageous
acts committed by them.
"In certain parts of the state miners are oppressed and wronged.
They are compelled to work in ill-ventilated and otherwise unfit
mines. They are cheated in the payment of the compensation for
their labor. They work on the condition that they receive so much
per ton for the coal mined by them, the coal is not weighed but is
calculated by the mine car. These cars, at least in some of the
collieries, are rated at a capacity of two and one half tons,
whereas they often have a capacity of four tons and in some cases
even up to six tons, but the miner is paid for only two and a half
tons, for all above that he mines, he gets no pay whatever. This is
robbery of the poor and oppression of the weak. At some of the
stores conducted by the collieries the miners are charged
extortionate prices for merchandise. This is likewise robbery of
the poor and oppression of the weak."
_Mother Jones_
The developments of the winter have been under the regime of a third
governor, who came to the state house at a season when part of the
commonwealth was under martial law. In March came the trials of a number
of the strikers and their sympathizers--approximately fifty--by a
military court on charges of inciting to riot, conspiracy to murder and
conspiracy to destroy property. Among those in prison is Mother Jones,
the "Stormy Petrel of Labor" who is always present in big labor
disturbances, especially those of the miners and the railroad men. She
has given the best part of her life to the cause of laboring men and
they adore her.
This old woman, more than 80 years of age, was in the mines when I went
there and I got to know her well. She passed the word along to the men
that I was "all right" and reticent as they are to strangers, they told
me their side of the case without reservation.
I have been with Mother Jones when she was compelled "to walk the
creek," having been forbidden to go upon the footpaths that happened to
be upon the property of the companies and denied even the privilege of
walking along the railroad track although hundreds of miners and others
were walking on it at the time. She was compelled to keep to the county
road although it was in the bed of the creek and the water was over her
ankles. I protested to the chief of the guards saying that no matter
what her attitude might be, no matter how much she might be hated, that
she was an old woman and common humanity would dictate that she be not
ill treated. I was told that she was an old "she-devil" and that she
would receive no "courtesies" there, that she was responsible for all
the trouble that had occurred and that she would receive no
consideration from the companies.
I was with her when she was denied "the privilege" of going up the
foot-way to the house of one of the miners in order to get a cup of tea.
It was then afternoon, she had walked several miles and was faint,
having had nothing to eat since an early breakfast. But that did not
shut her mouth. She made the speech she had arranged to make to the men
who had gathered to hear her although they had to line up on each side
of the roadway to avoid "obstructing the highway," a highway that was
almost impassable to a wheeled vehicle and on which there was no travel.
And in that speech she counseled moderation, told the men to keep
strictly within the law and to protect the company's property instead of
doing anything to injure it.
I had several long talks with her. When she speaks to the miners she
talks in their own vernacular and occasionally swears. She was a normal
school teacher in her early days, and in her talks with me in the home
of one of her friends in the "free town" of Eskdale, she used the
language of the cultured woman. And this is the old woman whom nearly
all the operators in the non-union fields fear, and whose coming among
their workers they dread more than the coming of a pestilence. They now
have her safely in jail.
When I left the field[11] the conflict was still on. It seemed likely to
continue until one side or the other gave in. The presence of the
military could only bring about a peace that is temporary. Having held
out through the winter, the miners were preparing to hold out through
the spring and summer and autumn if necessary, and the United Mine
Workers of America were preparing to back them up with all the resources
of the national organization.
[11] Since the writer left the district an unavailing effort was made to
secure from the civil courts an order restraining the military
commission from conducting the trials of those held on charges of
participation in various deeds of violence in connection with the
strike. Later, however, Governor Hatfield who, as head of the military
forces of the state, has the power to review the acts of the military
commission, discharged from custody a majority of those held.
Recently negotiations have been carried on between the miners' union and
one of the large companies involved in the strike with the result that
there is a possibility of a settlement being effected in that quarter,
though the matter remains _in statu quo_ until the return from the
tropics of the president of the company. Recently some of the troops
have been withdrawn from the strike zone, though martial law is still in
force.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Coal Age_
MILITIAMEN ESCORTING PRISONERS TO COURT MARTIAL]
SOCIAL FORCES
By EDWARD T. DEVINE
CONSTRUCTIVE RELIGION
Greed, selfishness, privilege, injustice, exploitation, ignorance, and
neglect are the seven deadly sins of modern civilization. These evils
are alike in this, that they all have their roots in defective or
abnormally developed character. Weakness and pathological strength are
their opposite but closely related and interdependent poles.
Revolution will not exterminate them, except that revolution within the
soul of man which transforms weakness and moral disease into health and
normal vigor; which eats away the abnormal excrescence of harmful
qualities and transforms the monster into a sane and self-controlled
individual.
Laws will not of themselves exterminate the least of the social evils,
save as they correspond to a previous clear recognition of their wisdom
and justice in the free minds of citizens. If graft and privilege
express the habitual manner of doing business, the natural mental
reaction of the average man of the community, then it will be true, as
an investigating committee has said, that there is no virtue in the
legislative printing press.
Philanthropy is no cure for the evils which cause crime, poverty,
squalor, and degeneracy. It is a necessary means of dealing with certain
definite conditions, but those conditions are symptoms of ulterior
maladies which the charitable relation does not reach. Neither
alms-giving nor preventive measures touch the real sources of
regeneration and health.
Education, in the specific sense of preparation for efficient work and
the development of the mental powers, such education as by mutual
consent we expect from our public schools, does not begin early enough,
or last long enough, or go far enough into the fields of personal
habits, ideals, and motives to guard even against ignorance, at least
that kind of wilful and appalling ignorance which prevents half the
world from knowing how the other half lives, even when the facts are
spread abroad equally in official reports and in popular literature;
that kind of ignorance which blinds the eyes of the more favored of
fortune and blasts the tender shoots of altruism which their hearts here
and there put forth. If education cannot prevent even ignorance of this
kind how much less can it be regarded as a remedy for deliberate
exploitation and conscienceless greed.
If neither revolution nor laws nor yet formal education can cure these
root evils, is there no cure? There is one potent, wholly efficacious
cure, and that is such teaching and such an experience as will supplant
selfishness and greed by generosity and compassion, the desire for
privilege by the desire for equal opportunity, the instinct of injustice
by the passion for justice, the tendency to exploit by the tendency to
nobly serve, ignorance and neglect by a clear-eyed and persistent
determination to know and understand and to act on that knowledge and
understanding. This teaching, wherever it is carried on and in whatever
name, is essentially religious teaching, and this experience, seizing
upon the individual, is nothing else than a religious conversion. This
is not to distort words from their established and usual meaning but
only to apply them as they must be applied.
No rich and educated Jew can justly claim a share in the glorious
traditions of his religious faith if he oppresses the poor and crushes
the needy; if, lying upon beds of ivory, inventing instruments of music,
drinking wine in bowls, and anointing himself with the chief ointments,
he is not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph, if he afflicts the
just, or takes a bribe, or turns aside the poor in the gate from their
right. The afflictions of Joseph are different in these days, the form
of bribery has changed, the rights of the poor from which they are
turned aside are not precisely those which the prophet Amos had in mind;
but the teachings remain, and the curse upon those who "rejoice in a
thing of nought" may not unprofitably ring in the ears of Jews and
Christians with all the old time authority and effect.
But how about the position of the prosperous and influential Christians
professing a law of love, the son-ship of all men to a common Father, a
gospel of good will embracing justice and implying obligations
stretching in all directions infinitely beyond justice, but never
denying it in the least iota? If this profession is not arrant hypocrisy
or pure self-delusion, the faith which he holds will instantly expel
the very evils from which we suffer, and nothing else except such faith
will expel them. Religion goes to the very roots of character, cleansing
the evil nature, revealing new motives, illuminating the mind,
trans-valuing values, strengthening the will, lessening the power of
temptations, setting the feet on safe paths, giving a new meaning to
common experiences and a new zest to life.
The question remains whether this kind of constructive religion, this
vital, living and vibrant faith, is to be found today in the churches
and synagogues, or whether it has departed from its ancient altars,
perhaps to reappear in strange disguises in the labor movement, in art
or poetry or philosophy, or among humble people who do not have the
means as yet of expressing the new impulses.
It is a grave question--for the churches. One interesting indication
that it is to be answered in favor of the continued claim of the
existing religious bodies to represent the main current of flowing
religious faith, work, and thought is to be found in a new journal which
appeared on the news-stands in March with the captivating title _The
Constructive Quarterly_. Silas McBee, former editor of the _Churchman_,
is its editor, but it is to have no "editorial pronouncements."
What is distinctive about this new periodical is that it is to work for
a better understanding among the various communions of Christendom,
building on what the churches are actually believing, doing, and
thinking. It is not seeking neutral territory where courtesy and
diplomacy would tend to avoid issues and round off the sharp edges of
truth and conviction, but rather common ground where loyalty to
conviction will be secure from the tendency to mere compromise and to
superficial and artificial comprehension. In the first number there is a
striking array of able articles from Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox,
Evangelical Protestants, from Europeans and Americans, clergymen and
laymen. It will be difficult to maintain so high a standard; but the
idea is an inspiring one and deserves to succeed.
The tragedy of ecclesiastical history in all ages is the spilling of
blood and treasure by the churches in warfare against other forms of
faith. It is true that the decay of religious controversy has usually
meant a decay of interest in religion. A writer in the _Quarterly_
quotes Tennyson as having said, "You must choose in religion between
bigotry and flabbiness." What the present venture is in some measure to
test is the possibility of laying aside hostility while yet maintaining
_esprit de corps_, to act in the spirit of Von Moltke's dictum, "March
apart, strike together!"
The success of the effort will depend on the clear perception of the
enemies against which the allied forces of religion are to strike, or
dropping the figure, on the concentration of effort on the positive
results which the forces of organized religion are to seek to secure in
the social order. These lie partly at least, avoiding dogmatic
exaggeration, in those social relations in which the evil tendencies to
which we have referred are so apparent. The religion which is
constructive is one which makes men unwilling to exploit the vices or
weaknesses of their fellow men, and at the same time makes the other men
unexploitable, which destroys privilege through just laws, impartially
enforced, and upheld by enlightened public opinion, which dispels
ignorance by full and exact knowledge bearing fruit in sound measures of
social reform, which protects the sub-normal and emancipates the
handicapped from their limitations, which permeates education, business,
politics, and eventually the entire social life.
There may be other tests of true religion, but these are concrete, easy
to understand and to apply. They have ancient and sufficient sanction.
They are unsectarian and non-controversial.
STRANGE INCENSE
CARY F. JACOB
_A tiny, tangled head bent down
Within a city's gutter--
A laughing face of tan and brown
Amid the rubbish of the town._
_Mud-pies and broken glass all day
Bring fairyland from far away
To thee, sweet innocence, at play._
_But mud-pies blacken; glass gives pain,
And laughing eyes are turned to gain
'Mid cold and hunger, snow and rain._
_God shield thee, tangled head bent down
Within a city's gutter!
Poor lily of the noisome town!
Strange incense, shed o'er stranger ground!_
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this work; otherwise they were not changed.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Survey, Volume XXX, Number 1,
April 5, 1913, by Various
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