Part 6

I belong to the class of mothers who would not usually speak in public except for an accident. The accident was that I discovered a woman trying to do the impossible and found that society seemed organized to ignore her. She was not very good, but she was not bad. No one tried to help her to be better. They said they had been observing her, and that they were not satisfied. She was a widow of thirty-five with eight children under the working age. The conditions under which that woman was struggling were absolutely impossible and I broke the boycott. Since then I have been interested in mothers with minor dependent children.

It seems to me that taking away the children from a mother, is like taking away her life, for the connection is so close and subtle. Many a mother would prefer a quick and sudden death to that slow and living one. It is like giving capital punishment for a trivial offense. Sometimes the offense is unintentional. It may be poverty.

There is a certain temporary relief gained, when children have been entirely dependent on the mother, and she has had no bread to give them. At first, when the relieving officer takes the children and she knows that at night they will be snug and warm and in the morning dressed and fed, there is a great wave of thankfulness and relief. But soon the mother asks herself, “why could not I have warmed and fed and dressed them, since I could have done it for less?” Even the simplest mothers have heard the whisper now. In their desperate loneliness they are gathering, by tens and by thousands, to ask for the custody of their own children.

This social revolution may be like the French revolution, but it is surely not like the burning of witches, unless the witches are the ones that stand by the cradles of neglected childhood.

How carefully Miss Richmond, appealing to our judgment and sound sense, figures out the seemingly fabulous sums that might have been saved to fight tuberculosis and feeble-mindedness, from the sums wasted in soldiers pensions. But why, I ask, is the whole country spell-bound, helpless and hopeless at the prospect of the mounting pension ladder? If we admit that the granting of pensions to disabled soldiers was right, why attack the principle instead of the abuse of the practise? Surely that could be helped. If a thing can be proven to be wrong and illogical by mathematics, as Miss Richmond has proved it to be, then it can be solved by mathematics. There is a leak somewhere.

In the same way, if there are more children with their mothers, after a certain law has been passed, and at the same time more in the institutions, it shows, surely, that the attention of the community has been called to a lot of children unknown before or that someone has blundered in counting them. A new law does not produce a spontaneous crop of children, under the Juvenile Court limit. Where were those children? These are the things that a mother naturally asks. They say that the soldiers are dying out. But unless the risks and dangers and lack of independence of the life deter women in the future, there will always be mothers.

But will there always be poor mothers? Have we not begun a war on poverty?

Why is not the prevention and cure of poverty as wide and noble a field as the cure of tuberculosis? Are we not studying to eliminate it in the same way by destroying its breeding places, by rescuing the child, by no longer considering poverty as “the curse of God?” Poverty and tuberculosis and other dark shapes go hand in hand. Why is not the prevention of needless poverty also a constructive health measure?

And why, if we are to be so very careful and scientific about it, is the question of non-support always confused with that of the death of the wage-earner? The man cannot take his responsibilities with him into the next life, whatever we say, and the poor cannot carry adequate insurance till we copy England or Germany.

Let us have “more individualized, more skillful, more thorough treatment of the widely diversified causes of dependence” by all means. But let us not forget that the fact of bearing and rearing a child in itself creates a certain, if variable, state of dependence for a woman. No amount of learned reasoning can change the fundamental fact that while the child is coming into the world and is young the mother must forfeit a certain amount of her independence to care for the child. What I do not have patience with is the preaching of that good old-fashioned dogma “the mother’s best place is in the home.” Nothing can be more valuable to the state than the mother’s contribution, but the home has no safeguards other than those which the man, with his willing or unwilling hands can give her.

It is the preachers and the social workers, I have thought to myself many times who have waked our sleeping “social conscience.” It may be a good genie that is waked but it wants something to do, and will not be put off with promises.

CLARA CAHILL PARK.

[Secretary of the Commission to Study the Question of Support of Dependent Minor Children of Widowed Mothers.]

Wollaston, Mass.

PERSONALS

Wilfred S. Reynolds, executive secretary of the Cook County Board of Visitors during its first year has succeeded Prof. Henry W. Thurston and Dr. Hastings H. Hart as secretary and superintendent of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society. A graduate of Earlham College, Indiana, Mr. Reynolds was for six years superintendent of schools and assistant superintendent of the School for Delinquent Boys at Plainfield, Ind. Under Amos W. Butler, he was for four years in charge of the department of the Indiana Board of State Charities for the supervision of dependent and neglected children.

The Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society is devoted to home-finding and the supervision of children in foster homes, the aid and helpful oversight of dependent parents with children, and to the administration of the four institutions conducted by the society in different parts of the state of Illinois. A careful survey of Chicago and of the state at large will soon be undertaken by Mr. Reynolds and his staff to determine anew the specific demands for the society’s work and the scale upon which it can now be undertaken. Its expenditures last year, as reported by the subscriptions investigating committee of the Chicago Association of Commerce, were $62,616.

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The death of Samuel Allan Lattimore, Ph.D., LL.D., emeritus professor of chemistry of the University of Rochester, at the age of eighty-five, marks the passing of a notable educator and social worker. Though born in the central West of southern ancestry, he spent most of his professional life in the East. He combined in character the courtesy of the South, the vigor of the West and the conservatism of the East. He was a real aristocrat, the kind that makes a true democrat. As a teacher, and even as a friend, he gave the impression one has in the Alps of distance without remoteness, of aloofness without coldness.

Dr. Lattimore’s reputation as a scientist was such that in the face of bitter political opposition, his report recommending the present source of Rochester’s water supply was accepted. This secured to the citizens an ideal water system. He was one of the organizers of the Western New York Institution for Deaf Mutes, of the Mechanics Institute and of the Reynolds Library, three of the most useful institutions of the city. For several years he was a member of the city Board of Health, of the Monroe County committee of mental hygiene of the State Charities Aid Association, and of the board of visitors for that organization to the state hospital for the insane. He was a pioneer advocate of cremation on the ground of its sanitary value, and his body was one of the first to be reduced to its elements in the crematory just completed by his city.

The scholar and the gentleman blended in him so perfectly that we think of him first as a citizen. The community is as much his debtor as the university. He had unusual opportunities to make large sums of money as an expert chemist, but never would lower his professional standards for commercial gain. One of his most conspicuous early services was a course of free public lectures on science given to large audiences of working men for several successive years in Buffalo, Cleveland and Rochester.

Professor Lattimore’s mind was keenly alert to the very end of his career and kept in touch with all of the movements for social welfare. Only a few days before his death he was deeply interested in the article in a recent SURVEY by Samuel Fels on The Policeman. He suggested that it be reprinted in _The Common Good_ and a copy be sent to every policeman in the city. His wish has been carried out.[3] He was a fine type of the new citizen-scholar, with a large and keen sense of the duty which scholarship owes to the community.

Footnote 3:

The Common Good of Civic and Social Rochester. March, 1913. p. 171.

PAUL MOORE STRAYER.

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Recently the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company elected Lee K. Frankel sixth vice-president. As assistant secretary and manager of the Industrial Department, Dr. Frankel has brought his knowledge of social work and conditions into the industrial insurance field.

At the summit of his usefulness Prince A. Morrow has been gathered to his fathers. Worn out by labor for a cause that possessed him mind, body and estate, he was cut down in the glory of what must almost be considered martyrdom. His zeal for his endeavor engulfed him, rendered him oblivious to all minor concerns. He was happy in death because it occurred when the tidal wave that he had started on its onward course was sweeping a mighty current throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Dr. Morrow was born December 19, 1846, and therefore had not reached the allotted threescore and ten years when death claimed him. He was of gentle birth, and his mental equipment and capacity entitled him to work as a peer among intellectual men. His honesty of purpose, strength of character, and mental courage rendered him a fit champion for the cause he finally espoused. At the age of eighteen, he won his academic degree at Princeton College, Ky. He took his professional degree from the Medical Department of the University of New York in 1874.

His activity in professional work soon brought him into prominence as a surgeon, lecturer, professor, and author. He was an indefatigable worker from the first, and a voluminous writer, contributing essays freely to medical periodicals, translating important works from the French; he stood out as an authority on dermatology and syphilology. Along these lines he gained distinction and emolument.

But this goal did not satisfy the cravings of his moral nature. He had in him the sturdy courage and the indomitable will of a reformer. In his late manhood he set about the herculean task of cleansing the moral atmosphere of the community. He opened the door of publicity and let in the light of knowledge upon the slimy and festering course of the venereal diseases in their ravaging march among the ignorant and innocent.

This led to a broadening of the lines of his endeavor and the inclusion of the sex problem in his crusade. More and more he recognized the necessity of imparting correct information upon sex matters to the budding curiosity of youth and of giving honest food to clean young minds, rather than the distorted nourishment they had been wont to receive. His studies, his writings, his teachings, and his special line of practice and hospital work, all had served to fit him peculiarly for his chosen task. The final outcome of it all was the crowning glory of his life, the formation of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, of which he was the life and the soul and which above all else is worthy of record among his achievements.

After months of thought and much counsel and consultation among his friends, who furnished him scant support and at best only lukewarm approval, he finally called a meeting on February 8, 1905, at the New York Academy of Medicine. A handful of men, twenty-five in all—timid, half-hearted associates—gathered around him to discuss the propriety of organizing a society for “the study and prevention of the spread of diseases which have their origin in the social evil.”

A movement of this nature was already under way abroad, notably in France, Belgium, and Germany, but England was nearly silent on the subject and not a ripple of the current had started on this side of the Atlantic. The medical profession of New York was indifferent, if not passively hostile, to the new movement, while the country at large was apathetic. But Dr. Morrow struggled in season and out of season against indifference, opposition, and ridicule. From this small beginning he pushed ahead, until death snatched his tired body from the arena. Yet his accomplishment lives and is his monument—and practically his alone—for he was its life and its spirit.

Today the society in numbers approaches 2,000 and embraces in its membership individuals in every quarter of the globe—Canada, England, Scotland, Mexico, Asia, Africa, New Zealand. Largely from the seed sown by the pioneer society, there have sprung up in the United States over twenty kindred bodies, most of which were helped in organization by the literature of the New York society and the kindly counsel and encouragement of Dr. Morrow. The laity even more than the profession, and notably women, have put their shoulders to the wheel and assisted. The press is no longer timidly hostile, but opens its columns and lends its editorials to spreading the idea which is now slowly sweeping over the land.

Dr. Morrow has been recognized as the general at the head of the advancing army, a recognition which may be epitomized by quoting the words of a resolution passed by the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography at Washington, September 27, 1912:

Be it resolved: That the participants of this section on sex hygiene of the Fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, consider it a privilege to make public record of their sense of obligation to Dr. Morrow for his courageous and unflinching attitude in the fact of difficulties that would have discomfited an ordinary man, and of admiration for the achievement that has culminated in the prominent position that education in sex hygiene has commanded in the deliberation of this congress.

“Be it also resolved: That the delegates here assembled join with rare pleasure in the attempt, inadequate though it be, to express to Dr. Morrow the gratitude not only of the American people, but of the world of nations.”

Dr. Morrow’s gracious manner and courtly dignity, the balanced charm of his cultured and deliberate diction, a combination that quite justifies the seeming pretension of his praenomen—these things, and many others, will long be remembered by those who have the honor to believe that they may be classed among the number of his friends.

E. L. KEYES.

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Prof. Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago was again elected alderman of his ward on April 1. The circumstances of the victory give it unusual significance. All Chicago watched the struggle so closely as almost to forget the aldermanic battles in other wards. The way in which he took up the cudgels shows again Professor Merriam’s high degree of civic courage. For scarcely a man who had served with distinction as an alderman and then as the leader in a mayoralty campaign that attracted the nation’s attention, would have entered an aldermanic fight again with the odds against him. His ward, the boundaries of which were recently changed, no longer includes the university as it did when he was previously elected alderman. It now stretches far to the south, and takes in some industrial sections. Professor Merriam not only had an able opponent but, in making non-partisanship a main issue, he decided to run solely as an independent candidate nominated by petition.

His opponents all ran on party tickets. There was even a candidate under the Progressive Party designation despite Professor Merriam’s prominent identification with that party during the last presidential campaign. The progressives in Chicago tried hard to arrange an agreement between all the parties to abandon party names and leave the field throughout the city clear for nominations solely by petition. When this failed they nominated their own candidates. The candidacy of a “progressive” against Professor Merriam is said by some to have been part of a scheme to beat him.

Professor Merriam has aggressively worked for public rights and welfare and the newer methods of bringing the control of government back to the people. His election is a triumph for this type of public service as distinguished from the “business administration” type which his chief opponent personified.

G. R. T.

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Karl DE Schweinitz, for nearly two years secretary of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, will shortly become head of the Bureau of Advice and Information of the New York Charity Organization Society. This bureau undertakes to investigate, at request, agencies and institutions accepting donations from private individuals.

Mr. de Schweinitz brings to his new task experience in investigation, publicity and social work. He has been a reporter on both the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ and _Press_, and has served in the circulation department of the Curtis Publishing Company. For a year he engaged in publicity work at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Olive Crosby has been appointed office secretary of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Miss Crosby was formerly secretary of the New York Diet Kitchen Association, and earlier, head of the investigating department of the New York Charity Organization Society.

TREND

LEADERS IN THE MONTH’S MAGAZINES

WHY CHILDREN WORK. By Helen M. Todd. _McClure’s._ The answers of eight hundred of the little workers who were questioned by Miss Todd as factory inspector in Chicago. A little less than half the Chicago children gave their father’s illness or death by industrial accident or disease as the reason. An almost equal number said they liked work better than school, and their reasons, as given by Miss Todd, constitute a pretty serious criticism of our educational system.

SAFETY BY SANCTION. By John Anson Ford. _Technical World Magazine._ Tells of the “safety first” campaign set on foot by R. C. Richards, claim agent of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, which, in less than two years, has resulted in saving the life of one trainman out of every two who under former conditions would have been killed under the cars; saving similarly one out of every three of the trackmen formerly doomed to death in the performance of duty; reducing the accident toll among passengers by 152 more passengers saved from death and almost 5,000 more spared from injury than the year before.

This novel and enlightened effort to reduce claims by preventing accidents has now spread to forty-six railroads operating 60 per cent of the railroad mileage in the United States.

THE FIRE INSURANCE TRAP. By William B. Ellison. _Pearson’s._ As the expert chosen by Governor Sulzer to frame a new form of the insurance policy for New York, Mr. Ellison tells of the sixteen “teeth” by which policy-holders can be caught at the present time. These teeth are clauses in the policy by which the companies can escape from their liability.

A UNIVERSITY THAT RUNS A STATE, by Frank Parker Stockbridge, and

WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO, by Adolph O. Eberhardt. Both in the _World’s Work_. In Wisconsin, the university “writes many of its laws, directs much of its public service, increases its crops, makes better farmers and housekeepers, conducts correspondence schools, and carries a college education to the door of every citizen who wants it.” In Minnesota a governor who writes of his own plans, is trying to keep farmers on their farms, by using a generous state educational fund, with further grants by the Legislature, to make the country school houses centers for social intercourse for recreation and for practical instruction in agriculture and household economics.

CONSUMERS’ CO-OPERATION, by Albert Sonnichsen, and CO-OPERATION IN WISCONSIN, by Robert A. Campbell. Both in the _Review of Reviews_. A résumé by the secretary of the co-operative league of the progress of the co-operative movement in Europe and America, supplemented by the intensive study of one state by an official of the State Board of Public Affairs, created last year with instruction, to make a special study of the state experience in this field.

INDUSTRIAL PEACE AND WAR. By Everett P. Wheeler. _Atlantic Monthly._ A plea for a compulsory arbitral tribunal, which would substitute continual peace for recurrent warfare in the relations of labor and capital. Mr. Wheeler does not believe such a method of settling labor disputes would be impracticable or unsuited to American conditions or that the compulsory powers of such a tribunal should be any more repugnant to our ideas of liberty than is the power of our courts to decide disputes between individuals.

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THE FOOL

Mary Eleanor Roberts in the _Independent_

There’s a fool runs the mission, that place on the pike, For darkies, and dagoes, and bums, and the like, And if I had his job, why I’d go on a strike.

With coal at eight dollars, and working alone, All smiling, and eager, and thin as a bone, “For the Lord,” so he says, “will take care of His own!”

And the ghost of a coat, and a stitch in his side, And his eyes bright and starved, and his boots gaping wide— I got tired of waiting for Thee to provide.

So I sent him a check; just to shame, it might be Such a God by an out and out sinner like me; But he fell on his knees and gave thanks unto Thee!

HOW THE FACTORY GIRL IS BETTER OFF THAN THE STORE GIRL

A GRAPHIC PRESENTATION IN THE REPORT ON WORKING GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ROCHESTER OF THE RELATIVE POSITIONS UNDER THE LAW OF TWO GROUPS OF GIRL WORKERS.

FACTORY MERCANTILE

Law requires one seat to each girl. Law requires only one seat to every three girls.

60 minutes for meals. 45 minutes for meals.

Indifferent appearance. Must dress well.

Many sit to work. On legs most all the time.

MINORS MINORS

8 hours a day, 6 days a week. Not 9 hours a day, 54 hours a week. Not before 8 a. m. or after 5 p. m. before 8 a. m. or after 7 p. m.

WOMEN WOMEN

9 hours a day, except when making Over 21, no limit to hours she may up for a holiday. work. Up to 21, 10 hours a day, 60 hours a week.

54 hours a week. (Law does not apply between Dec. 18th and 24th)

Not before 6 a. m. or after 9 p. m. Not before 7 a. m. or after 10 p. m., if under 21.

—_From the Common Good._