Part 3

The evidence upon which the whole case hinged was in the form of depositions taken in Russia and submitted by the government to the United States commissioner at Chicago. So well grounded were the suspicions with which it was regarded, that the whole record of the testimony was submitted to John H. Wigmore, dean of the Northwestern University Law School, one of the highest legal authorities in America, and author of one of the principal American text books on evidence. His careful analysis of the voluminous record in the case led him to conclude that while Rudowitz was a member of the revolutionary committee and voted for the execution of the spies, the evidence identifying him as one of the party charged with the killing "is too slight to be of any value"; that "there is no evidence of marauding or neighborhood feuds or common depredation on the part of this or any other band in any part of the evidence for the prosecution"; that there is conclusive evidence of a temporarily successful revolution "giving the military forces of the national government under their system certain rights of summary execution, and correspondingly giving such rights to the revolutionists, so as to fix upon their acts of summary force, if duly authorized by their officers, as revolutionary acts of force." These facts justified Dean Wigmore in concluding that "the killing was a purely political act, the arson was also ordered politically, being a customary incident similar to the existing government's own punitive practice in such cases."

The suspicions based upon such facts in this and other cases, aroused the American spirit against the apparent attempt of the Russian government to secure the extradition of many political refugees on poorly substantiated charges of being common criminals. Hundreds of men and women faced the possibility of being forced to change their names and hide themselves. Great mass meetings were held in the principal cities to protest not only against the extradition of Rudowitz, but against the continuation of the present treaty with Russia under which it was asked. Conservative citizens, to the American manor born, such as President Cyrus Northrup of the University of Minnesota, W. H. Huestis of Minneapolis, Charles Cheney Hyde, professor of International Law at Northwestern University, Councillor W. J. Calhoun of Chicago, joined their protests with those of recently arrived refugees and such friends of theirs as Jane Addams, Jenkin Lloyd Jones and Dr. Emil G. Hirsch. But beneath the value set upon this popular agitation for the defense of the right of asylum in America, was the confidence that there was good law under the case for Rudowitz, which would surely determine the decision of so good a lawyer as the secretary of state.

Now that this confidence has been confirmed, the question is being validly raised by the press whether the qualifications exacted of those appointed to United States commissionerships are as high as was originally demanded for the delicate and difficult duties of that office. It is pointed out that when in 1793 Congress first authorized such appointments by the circuit courts, it defined the qualifications of those eligible as "discreet persons, learned in the law." Later acts, however, dropped the requirement that they should be "learned in the law" and continued the reference to "discreet persons." In substituting "United States commissioners" appointed by the district courts for the commissioners of the circuit courts in 1896, Congress provided only that no United States marshal, bailiff or janitor of a building, or certain other federal employes should hold the office. Some of the most eminent lawyers, who publicly joined in protesting against the extradition of Rudowitz, took occasion to criticise the appointment to this office of men not trained in the law, and inexperienced in the sifting of evidence, whose decisions, involving the liberty and life of men, must be based entirely upon the knowledge of the laws of evidence. Certainly this case should lead either to stricter definition of the qualifications for United States commissionerships or to far greater care in the appointments to that important office. Moreover, the injustice of putting upon a political refugee the burden of proof that he is such has been made manifest in this case. For to do so Rudowitz would have been compelled not only to bring his evidence from Russia, but also to expose to certain death those whom he would have been compelled to name as his compatriots in the struggle for liberty.

SAVINGS BANK LEGISLATION: WHAT IS NEEDED?

JAMES H. HAMILTON[1] Headworker of the University Settlement

"Everything speaks for and nothing against the post office savings bank," writes Professor J. Conrad of the University of Halle. This is strong testimony from a German economist who is a careful student in the field of social economics, and who lives in a country which has a splendid system of municipal savings banks. But if one looks beyond Prussia and Saxony into the province of Posen he sees great stretches of neglected territory. And in this country if one looks beyond Massachusetts, with its much praised trustee savings system, into New York and Pennsylvania he sees much to be desired,--and if he looks still further west he finds a sadder neglect than the neglect of free popular education in darkest Russia.

[1] Author of Savings and Savings Institutions; Macmillan, 1902. Pp. 436. Price $2.25. This book can be obtained at publisher's price through the offices of CHARITIES AND THE COMMONS.

If we fully comprehend the fact that the savings bank is an educational, and not a commercial institution we will see at once that the law of supply and demand cannot properly regulate its growth. We will see on the contrary that if left to local initiative by either municipalities or trustees, the banks will likely appear where they are least needed and fail to appear where they are most needed, and the need of a general federal system, or a postal system, which will leave no neglected spots becomes perfectly clear. "Everything speaks for the post office savings bank."

Postmaster General Meyer, in his article in the August number of the _North American Review_, presents this country's need of a postal savings system in a very attractive and convincing way. I think, however, that the educational aspects merit more emphasis and more extended treatment. The public, I think, needs to recognize this institution not alone as the often successful rival of the saloon, the enemy of dissipating and destructive spending, but it needs also to recognize its relationship to the strong type of citizen, with resisting power against the petty immediate wants in the interest of greater economic security, the type that can save against the rainy day, the week of sickness, and the declining powers of the later years of life.

In my own judgment the highest function of the savings bank is to lead the workman back to the ownership of his tools, or since that is not literally possible, to a share in the ownership of the productive forces of society. The workman may not recognize in the share of stock, the bond, the equity in a title to real estate, the successor to the tools his forefather kept stored in his cottage. When he has been brought to see it and to make such ownership the goal of his ambition, his tribute of devotion to his wife and children, he will be a stronger and a better man in every respect, and the multiplication of this kind of citizen is as worthy an object of education as the spread of a rudimentary knowledge of letters. Universal proprietorship is no less desirable, from the social point of view, than universal education. The purpose of the savings bank is therefore not so much to instill the idea of hoarding for future spending, but of investing to increase the permanent income.

Having this in mind the provision of the English postal savings system for investing in government stocks for the depositor on his request is fully warranted, and even more so the French provision for investment of the excess of deposits over the legal maximum in government stocks without request. The deposit account itself represents investment,--by trustees on behalf of the depositors. But the depositor should eventually become a conscious owner on his own account. It would seem most proper that he be supplied with information which would enable him to form an independent judgment as to different securities, and the savings bank might very well act for him in making his first investment.

The one departure from precedent in Mr. Meyer's bill is in the investment of funds. It contemplates a system of loans to the local banks with a view to "keeping the money at home." The departure from the practice of investing in government securities may be good for the object intended, which relates to the incidents rather than the primary object of savings bank administration. It seems to me most unfortunate that Mr. Meyer should have selected a form of investment that would tend to defeat the primary object of savings banks in the necessarily low rate of interest. I think he must fail to fully realize that the savings bank is to educate the propertyless to become proprietors, to appreciate the need of supplementing the earnings of labor by income from accumulated capital, and not to serve as a mere place for hoarding. It is the interest rate that tickles this dormant sense into life. It seems to me a pity that he did not see in the example of the municipal savings banks in Germany and of our own trustee banks, which invest chiefly in real estate mortgages, a way of reaching the one object without injury to the other. This would be a departure from the general practice of postal savings systems which would at once "keep the money at home," and insure a higher rate of interest than the yield of government securities. Money thus invested would get back into the channels of trade as readily as if it were loaned to the local banks, and with much less objection, and the rate of interest would probably be about double. The yield should be four per cent against the two per cent proposed by the postmaster general's measure.

It is certainly most refreshing and encouraging to listen to the promise of legislation that extends its benefits immediately to the common people, which contains the hope of more social solidarity. A comparison of our policies with those of old world countries in this respect is not comforting to our patriotic pride. It seems time that we were less laggard and that we should have more courage to experiment. The promise made by all political parties of a postal savings bank is probably the most encouraging sign we have had. It would be much more encouraging if the measure that is promised contained more of the results of bold experiment in other countries and contained more of an original and experimental nature that promises a more pronounced application of the true principle of savings banks, and that fosters a clearer popular understanding of that principle. It is equally important that the principle be brought out in clear relief from the point of view of the administration and of the patrons. The administration needs clearly to understand that it is not conducting a banking business but giving education in thrift, and the youthful and other patrons need to understand that they are being led in the direction of economic independence.

SOCIAL EDUCATION[2]

Reviewed by HELEN F. GREENE

It is a long look forward and a wide one that Dr. Colin A. Scott takes in Social Education and one that social workers other than the teachers for whom the book was primarily written, will find themselves enriched by sharing.

[2] Social Education by Colin A. Scott, Boston, 1908. Pp. 300. Price $1.50. This book may be obtained at publisher's price through the offices of CHARITIES AND THE COMMONS.

The school as a special organ of a constantly changing social order, must itself be easily capable of change. Instead of the uniformity on which the clan and early religions insisted must come the great variety of characters and capacities which the modern highly differentiated state demands.

How shall the school, called into existence by society for its own service and protection, most effectively educate the formers of the "New Society"?

Turning to real life for an answer we find that "society at its best organizes itself in groups in which each individual in the various groups to which he may belong finds himself in contact with others whose weakness he supplements or whose greater powers he depends upon." "If the school is to prepare for society as it is, it would be natural to expect that some such form of social activity, however embryonic, should be found as a necessary feature of its life." "The group must be capable of going to pieces, a thing it cannot do if it is to depend on the authoritative backing or constraint of the teacher. Indeed it is only when it can go to pieces that there is any reality in the effort to hold it together." "True responsibility and even obedience of the highest type is felt only when the group is free."

The positive view of liberty and independence is urged, not the negative one which teachers,--and he might have added club leaders,--are too prone to take. "If children are to be trained socially, they must feel the full effects of social causes,--not merely of society at large, but especially those of the embryonic society of child life to which they belong. They must study these effects practically, and must see to what extent, as social beings, they are real causes themselves. It is on a basis of experience of this kind that they can best interpret the larger and more complex life of adult society and the state."

Declaring social serviceableness and the highest development of personality "to be the aims of the school, he urges that there shall be some test of its success in securing these." "This test can be found only in the extent to which pupils, when freed from the oversight and benevolent coercion of the teacher, can use the knowledge and carry out the habits and ideals which it is the aim of the school to foster and protect."

In the three succeeding chapters, three types of school in which the social spirit has been specially manifest are criticized according to this test. The schools are: (1) Abbotsholme, the "monarchy," under the principalship of Dr. Cecil Reddie; (2) The George Junior Republic; (3) The Dewey School.

In each he finds "elements of a high degree of social value, and an approximate solution of the problem of educative social organization."

But it is in the two following chapters on Organized Group Work, fragments of which appeared in the _Social Education Quarterly_ of March, 1907, that Dr. Scott makes his own most valuable contribution to the problem. It is an attempt to show how it is possible, "even with crowded classes and without special equipment, to obtain in the people's schools, those co-operative and self-sustaining motives which are worthy of democracy and best able to measure the teachers' work."

The experiences which he describes he calls "experiments simply in the sense that all life is experimental, and they were devised with the view that the development of intention and resourcefulness on the part of the pupil is the greatest and most undeniable duty of any form of education."

The method was as follows: Each teacher said to her class: "If you had time given to you for something that you enjoy doing, and that you think worth while, what should you choose to do?

"When you have decided how you would spend the time, come and tell me about your plan. You may come all together, or in groups, or each by himself; but whatever you say you want to do, you must tell the length of time you will need to finish it, and how you expect to do it."

A most varied and interesting set of plans resulted. A printing group; cooking groups; groups for bookbinding; many for the writing and giving of plays, suggestive of the festival work of the Ethical Culture School, which has already been so helpful to club leaders.

The history of these groups, their human and humorous experiences:--of the child who was "bossy" and the way in which the group handled her,--are given in delightful detail and carry conviction with them as to the worth of the method.

To one judging socially and not pedagogically the closing chapter on The Education of the Conscience is disappointing. It seems to keep too much to the idea of personal morality as an end rather than as a means to the more vital and individually inspiring and healthful social morality; and to admit of the implication that the moral side of school life is a thing at least a little apart, rather than finding, when given a teacher with the right spirit, that, to quote Dr. Dewey, "every incident of school life is pregnant with ethical life."

PITTSBURGH SURVEY

INTRODUCTORY TO THIS ISSUE

This second Pittsburgh issue deals with certain physical necessities of a wage earning population. It shows a city struggling for the things which primitive men have ready to hand,--clear air, clean water, pure foods, shelter and a foothold of earth. Thus we have in Pittsburgh a smoke campaign, a typhoid movement and the administrative problems of the Bureau of Health in milk and meat inspection; thus we have the necessity for sanitary regulation of dwellings wherever people live dense or deep, whether squatters' shanties such as those of Skunk Hollow or company houses such as those of Painter's Row, whether city tenements or mill-town lodgings; and the necessity further for increased numbers of low-cost dwellings. Similarly, flood prevention, traction development, bridge building and the like are so many efforts to expand, or conquer the difficulties of, the town's corrugated floor.

The first issue of this series, that of January 2, pointed out that with the moving into Pittsburgh of new and immigrant peoples, the spirit of the frontier and of the mining camp possessed the wage-earning population. This spirit has characterized civic development. Wherever there has been profit in public service, private enterprises have staked their claims to perform it. While the biggest men of the community have made steel, other men have built water companies, thrown bridges across the rivers, erected inclines and laid sectional car lines. To bring system and larger public utility out of these heterogeneous units, has become the present governmental problem of the city.

In a sense, this situation is repeated with respect to the institutions transplanted into Pittsburgh, or initiated there, to meet the cultural and social needs of the community. Thus we have local alderman's courts, unco-ordinated charitable enterprises, and a ward system of schools. The trend of the decade here, too, is obviously toward system,--toward a municipalization of lower courts, an expansion of the health service, an association of charities, a city system as against a vestry system of schools, a civic improvement commission that will focalize public sentiment in all movements for municipal improvement.

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In the third and final issue of the series, that of March 2, the emphasis will be transferred from the civic to the industrial well-being of the wage-earning population,--the vital and irrepressible issues of hours, wages, factory inspection, accidents and the cost of living.

A supplementary group of studies,--of the libraries, schools, playgrounds and children's institutions of Pittsburgh,--will also be published in the issue of March 2.

PITTSBURGH

THE PLACE AND ITS SOCIAL FORCES.

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The second of three special issues of Charities and The Commons, presenting the gist of the findings of the Pittsburgh Survey, as to conditions of life and labor among the wage-earning population of the Pennsylvania Steel District.

I. JANUARY 2-THE PEOPLE. II. FEBRUARY 6-THE PLACE. III. MARCH 2-THE WORK.

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A CITY COMING TO ITSELF

ROBERT A. WOODS HEAD OF SOUTH END HOUSE, BOSTON

The capacity for being seen with the eye in the large, which New York in her sky scrapers has purchased at so great a price, is the birthright of Pittsburgh. Where from so many different points one sees the involved panorama of the rivers, the various long ascents and steep bluffs, the visible signs everywhere of movement, of immense forces at work,--the pillars of smoke by day, and at night the pillars of fire against the background of hillsides strewn with jets of light,--one comes to have the convincing sense of a city which in its _ensemble_ is quite as real a thing as are the separate forces which go to make it up.

The Allegheny River, providing a broad, open space up and down and across which much of this drama of modern world industry may be viewed, has at last come to mean not separation but identity of the population on either side of it. If the banks of the river were improved, it might easily be sentimentally as well as economically one of the most important common possessions of the old and the new sections of Greater Pittsburgh.

This tendency of cities to reach out and include their present suburbs, and even the territory where their future suburbs are to be,--a tendency which a few years ago was mocked at,--is in these days seen to be normal and wise. The proper planning of the city's layout, the proper adjustment of civic stress upon the different types of people in a great urban community, demand the inclusion of the suburbs. Greater Pittsburgh is less satisfactory than Greater New York and Greater Chicago, only because it is less inclusive than they. Some important suburbs of old Pittsburgh are not included, and the suburbs of Allegheny are nearly all outside. The latter omission is particularly unfortunate as it is doubtful whether Allegheny by itself will raise the average civic and moral standard of the greater city. It is regrettable too that Allegheny continues to show reluctance in making common cause with her larger neighbor. The toll bridges and the many obstacles against making them free, seem to typify the difficulty of intercommunication. The two towns, however, so clearly belong together that this feeling of clan cannot long survive. From nearly every commercial point of view that is worth considering Allegheny is dependent upon Pittsburgh. In the few exceptional instances, as in the case of two or three large stores, Pittsburgh recognizes a measure of dependence upon Allegheny. It is interesting that those of the old families connected with Pittsburgh industries who still insist on having town houses, reside on the Allegheny parks or commons.

A strong sense of corporate individuality comes to any community that is arrested by the challenge of great tasks. One of the influences leading to the creation of the greater city was the widening of the territory administered industrially from Pittsburgh. The best oil wells are now south rather than north of Pittsburgh, and the center of the coal regions is fast passing from the southeast to southwest and on into West Virginia. The necessity of easy transfer of iron ore from the Superior region is bringing up insistently the proposal of a canal to Lake Erie, so as to match some of Cleveland's special advantages. The nine-foot channel for the whole length of the Ohio will enable Pittsburgh's long arm to reach out and touch that of Cincinnati.