Part 2

Mrs. Julian Heath, founder and president of the National Housewives League, explained the work of the league. H. W. Hess of the University of Pennsylvania raised active discussion by his paper on Advertising: Waste or Necessity, Which? He claimed that advertising was a necessity and socially advantageous. Samuel H. Barker, financial editor of the _Philadelphia North American_, discussed the effects of false capitalization.

At the session on the Minimum Wage, Henry R. Seager, professor of political economy, Columbia University, pointed out the social factors involved in the introduction of a minimum wage, showing that we must be prepared for the elimination from industry of certain groups now employed and their maintenance in some fashion. The minimum wage to Professor Seager is only part of a general scheme including social insurance.

H. La Rue Brown and Mathew B. Hammond discussed the minimum wage from the experience of Massachusetts, of Australia and New Zealand. Scott Nearing, instructor in economics, University of Pennsylvania, discussed the existing wage scale and pointed out that to a large extent the wages paid in the United States are not up to the necessary minimum.

The first address at the closing session on How Can the Cost of Living be Reduced? given by Dr. Shaw, editor of the _Review of Reviews_, traced the development of the co-operative movement in this country and abroad and indicated the role that productive co-operation might well play in the development of our industrial institutions. He maintained that poverty is decreasing, while wants increase.

Martha Van Rensselaer, chief of the Department of Home Economics of Cornell University, who told wittily of the difficulty of securing women’s interest in household affairs, they frequently failing to recognize as do their husbands their own importance in our economic institutions.

The last paper was by Amos R. E. Pinchot, a lawyer of New York, who pointed out the relationship which exists between overcapitalization and the cost of living and the necessity for regulating monopolies.

COMPENSATION LAWS IN TWENTY STATES

The 1913 legislative session has so far raised the number of state compensation acts in the United States to almost a score. West Virginia was the first this year to pass such a law, which was signed by the governor on Washington’s Birthday, though it will not go into effect until October. It creates a pseudo-elective insurance fund contributed by employers and employes, to be administered by a Public Service Commission created at the same time, all administrative expenses to be met by the state and not out of the fund. The commission shall each year determine the premium rates of the twenty-three classifications into which the law divides the industries of the state. Election to pay to the fund, on the part of employer and employe—10 per cent only is to be paid by the latter—does away with the right to go to law.

Medical benefit under the law shall not exceed $150, and funeral expenses shall not exceed $75. The money benefits, which do not begin till one week has elapsed, are 50 per cent of wages or wage loss for disability. In case of death the benefits in some cases are 50 per cent of wages and in others a sum of $20 a month for one dependent and $5 additional for each additional dependent with a maximum of $35 is reached. Non-resident aliens are in express terms included as beneficiaries.

In Oregon a law establishing a state accident insurance fund was passed shortly after that of West Virginia. This is to be administered by a commission of three whose salaries are to be paid out of the fund. The fund is made up of contributions by employers and employes—in hazardous occupations the former furnish twice as much as the latter in amount—to which the state adds an initial contribution of $50,000 and one seventh of the total amount each year thereafter.

This act like that of West Virginia is pseudo-elective, election being presumed on both sides in default of written rejection. In case of accidents due to failure to provide proper safeguards, however, this election can be waived and the workman can then sue under a liability law with the customary defenses removed. Benefits which begin immediately are more generous than under the West Virginia law. In case of death one surviving dependent is to receive $30 a month, with $6 for each additional dependent up to $50; parents of a minor workman to receive $25 a month until he would have reached his majority.

Payments for total disability are much the same as to dependents on decease. Partial temporary disability is to be compensated for a limited period with “that proportion of the payments provided for total disability which his earning power at any kind of work bears to that existing at the time of the occurrence of the injury.” Lump sum payments may be made to beneficiaries out of the state, a provision which must include non-resident aliens.

The Oregon law provides funeral expenses not to exceed $100 and contains a clause, such as was defeated in the Washington law on which it was modelled, giving the commission authority to provide first aid to workmen entitled to benefits under the act, together with medical and surgical expenses up to the sum of $250.

In March a further step in compensation legislation was taken by the Ohio legislature when it established, in place of its elective law, a compulsory state insurance fund contributed by employers in all industries. Comment on this act by the state actuary will be published later. According to latest reports laws were on the eve of passing in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas.

In New York a compensation bill was passed at the close of the session. It is pseudo-elective in form and provides benefits of 50 per cent of the employe’s wages up to $10 a week.

SOCIOLOGY’S WELCOME IN THE NEW SOUTHLAND

Genuine enthusiasm and interest on the part of nearly a thousand social workers, who gathered in Atlanta from April 25–29 to attend the sessions of the Second Southern Sociological Congress, tended to disprove the statement of a speaker at the opening session that “when sociology came south it met with a cold reception.” At Atlanta sociology received a hearty welcome. Signs that a spirit of “constructive criticism” is awake in the South were present on every side, in the newspaper, the pulpit and in conversation.

Though the South is still a section and in some respects probably wishes to remain one, still, in the words of Acting President A. J. McKelway: “Broadly speaking, all our problems are American problems. There is no peculiarly southern problem of poverty, illiteracy or crime; our problems of the city, of rural life and child welfare are the same throughout the nation.”

The spirit of introspection was apparent on the floor of the different conferences. The boastful paragon of knowledge was lacking. The frank admission of all was: “We want to know.” Dr. John E. White, of Atlanta, expressed this when he declared: “We have come at last to the conclusion that to rid ourselves of criticism, we must first criticise ourselves. We here propose constructive criticism at the hands of southern men.”

But the southerners at the conference were willing to receive the message of those from the North who went to counsel and advise. Both Owen R. Lovejoy and Walter Rauschenbush declared, in essence, “The North is farther along in industry and consequently has more of the evils incident thereto than the South—evils which the South is sure to suffer unless it is more wise than we. We come south, not to criticise, but to warn—confessing our own failures and urging upon you the exercise of wisdom and common sense.” These men, together with such speakers as Francis H. McLean, Charles S. MacFarland, Hastings H. Hart, Alexander Johnson, Clifford G. Roe, John Ihlder, Mornay Williams, as well as Miss Lathrop, were listened to with a true regard which made itself apparent later. “I confess with shame that we have no adequate laws in the state of Tennessee,” said one member, “and that is the reason I am here—to learn as much as possible even at the risk of making myself obnoxious with questions.” The statement expressed the attitude of a large number of the delegates.

A striking feature of the departmental conferences of the congress was the series of thirty-five recommendations or principles adopted at the conference on the church and social service. Several of the more important recommendations follow:

1. We would recommend a more aggressive policy on the educational side of civic matters. Such questions as sanitation, the milk supply, meat inspection, social hygiene and other important matters can be taught with tremendous effectiveness by the use of the moving picture machine.

2. We would recommend that each church make a social survey, getting complete possession in systematic form of the various needs of the community in which they work and listing possible types of social effort.

3. We would recommend that each church elect a social service committee for the whole congregation and a social service assistant superintendent for the Sunday school, whose business it shall be to direct the expressive activities of the whole body.

4. We recommend the unification of our church forces upon one concerted effort at evangelizing the down-and-outs in a thoroughly equipped union mission.

5. Unify the charity forces of the city. Let the churches do their miscellaneous charity work through the regular organized charity forces of the city.

6. We would urge the cities to organize their churches into federations to meet at regular intervals for the discussion of social problems and plans.

7. Encourage wider use of church buildings.

8. We would urge the exchange of delegates by ministerial bodies with the labor unions, and the observance of Labor Sunday in all the churches.

9. We should be glad to see all of our cities have a woman’s boarding home, where, under safe conditions, the working girl who comes to town may be supported and directed at small cost while she learns her new trade.

10. We would recommend a down-town social center for men, with Christian influences.

11. Help in the fight against preventable disease, and for the art of living intelligently.

12. Let the country churches make wider use of their buildings, providing circulating libraries. Let them help provide better highways, better schools, better comforts and conveniences for the home, better culture forces in general and better living conditions on the whole.

The remaining twenty-three recommendations are practically elaborations of the ones given above, and all touch upon the same phases of work that are outlined above.

RURAL EDUCATION IN THE NEW SOUTH

The Conference for Education in the South, meeting in Richmond April 15–18, brought together more than 2300 men and women. Farmers and business men, college presidents and country school teachers, men interested in local credit associations, men bent upon improving tax systems, and ministers of churches—all met together to tell what they themselves out of their experience had gathered of the ways to make life better.

The coming ambassador to the Court of St. James, a southern man, and a freckled, sunburned Virginia boy stood in the great auditorium at Richmond before thousands. Walter Page, the ambassador, introduced Frank Brockman, the boy, who told slowly and carefully how he had raised 167 bushels of shelled corn on one acre of Virginia land, how he had made $175 upon that acre thereby breaking the corn growing record of a state. He had listeners who understood and appreciated. In front of the boy sat southern farmers, teachers, demonstration leaders and superintendents of schools. Behind him, upon the platform sat the men who have made possible his work and the success of thousands like him in southern states. The men on the platform, like the boy, told their story simply and slowly to the men on the floor.

The immediate aim of the conference, as its name implies, was to stimulate progress in the South, but the speakers were not drawn from the South only. From New York and Ohio, Minnesota and Canada, men had come to bring their expert knowledge of improved farming, of co-operative agencies for buying and selling, and of more efficient schools. The men and women whose names were on the program talked not theories but facts which they themselves knew and had demonstrated and about the value of which they were intensely enthusiastic.

One humorous illustration of this came one morning during a session on co-operation. A. V. Nelson, a Swede from Minnesota, was telling of the farmers’ co-operative enterprise in his home town. As he proceeded, with enthusiastic impetuousness, faltering now and then in his use of English and then plunging on again, someone in the audience called out “Take your time!” Someone else at the same time asked him a question. “But dey von’t let me take any time,” he exclaimed ruefully, looking at the chairman who stood firm for the time limits of his program—“but I tell you vat I do! I stay here till tomorrow morning if you want to ask questions—I did not come here yust to talk, but to get you to go home and do somethings too!”

A third fact about the conference was the great emphasis it laid upon the present opportunities for life in the country. The long program contained only incidental references here and there to city conditions. No addresses in the whole conference were listened to with more attention than the earnest account by Frank Brockman of the way he raised his prize-winning crop of corn and the stories by two girls of how they won their prizes for growing and canning tomatoes. Their enthusiasm gave an added human interest to all the other discussions in the conference of how the work on the farm can be made more profitable and attractive.

Men and women from the rural schools gave actual instances in which the schools are being conducted to fit boys and girls for intelligent citizenship in their own country communities; school superintendents told of the new emphasis which is being laid on the proper training of teachers for the rural work; physicians detailed the activities of boards of health and of the Rockefeller Commission in fighting typhoid, the hookworm and other diseases. Still others told of the ways in which, by labor saving devices and by the promotion of a closer social life, the drudgery for women in the country homes can be alleviated. Business men from the cities told how chambers of commerce, railroads and other organizations centering in the city could help to stimulate the prosperity of the country. Throughout the conference the chief emphasis was not so much upon benefits for individuals, but upon the chance for individuals to work together for the benefit of whole communities.

What may be called the religious spirit of the gathering was not confined to this general ideal of co-operation. There were well-attended and enthusiastic conferences on the opportunities of the country church. Without dissent it was assumed that the church is concerned with every agency which makes for the finer development of country life—with better schools, better system of land ownership, better health, better recreation, a closer knit and happier society. It was recognized that the country minister, as a natural leader in his community, has an almost unequalled chance to promote co-operation for community good. He must be, as one speaker put it, “a man of piety walking with God, a man of humanity walking with men.”

During the conference there was an exhibit in the old high school building. Here the kind of progress in rural education which the speakers in the conference had talked about was visualized by pictures and charts and whole rooms full of the work turned out in the manual training and domestic science classes.

EDITORIAL GRIST

MARKETING AND FARM CREDITS

HERMAN N. MORSE

Though little that was new on the subjects under discussion was brought forward, the First National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits, through the papers presented and the official resolutions adopted, called attention to certain highly important facts. The conference agreed that a number of conditions detrimental both to the farmers and the general public are prevalent, and that certain constructive remedial policies are necessary. One proposition to which there was general agreement was that the margin between the price which the producer receives for his product and that which the consumer pays for it is too great. The farmer receives too little and the consumer pays too much. The market for farm products is too unstable and the fluctuations and variations in price are too great and too uncertain. Competition has failed adequately to control and regulate prices.

The present marketing facilities, it was stated, are utterly inadequate to bring the supply and the demand together. Quantities of farm produce rot in the fields because they cannot be gotten to those markets in which there is an active demand for them. This is partly because of the lack of properly distributed shipping facilities; partly because the producers are not sufficiently in touch with the markets; partly because storage firms, commission men’s associations, etc. interfere with the normal operation of the markets; and partly because certain kinds of products are not provided to the mass of consumers at prices which they can afford to pay, though that price would give the producer an ample profit if exorbitant middleman’s profits were eliminated.

B. F. Yoakum estimated that every year fruit and vegetables worth $35,000,000 rot on the ground from the lack of shipping and storage facilities and of knowledge of receptive markets. The annual loss from corn stalks, rice, flax and other grain straw which is now burned he estimated at $250,000,000. The additional amount which the farmers could receive for their products, if by co-operation they knew when and where to sell their products, he placed at $1,500,000,000 per year, making a total loss of $1,785,000,000. In the judgment of the conference this was not an over-statement of the facts.

The delegates to the conference also agreed that the average farmer has a total income disproportionate to his importance in the national economy. W. J. Spillman, chief of the Bureau of Farm Management of the federal Department of Agriculture, estimated that the average farm income in this country is about $655 a year; of this amount about $1 a day is the entire return for labor. This labor income, he asserted, holds throughout the states. After computing the interest on his investment, the farmer averages $1 for every day he works. In states such as Illinois, he said, where the investment is greater, the farm family has a larger sum to use without impairing the capital than in a state like New York. The difference, however, is in the interest on invested capital not in labor income.

Even in sections where the farmers generally are satisfied with the return which they get for their labor, they are unable to get products to the consumers at a reasonable price. This works a great and unnecessary hardship upon the poor.

Farmers generally, and especially small farmers, it was agreed, are at present unable to secure for sufficient time and at a reasonable rate, the capital with which to purchase land or proper equipment and materials for the most effective and economical operation of farm property. In this connection the European methods of rural credit were discussed at some length.

In considering the remedies for these conditions, certain general principles, it was decided, should control whatever policies were advocated.

It was urged that farm products ought to be generally standardized as commercial products are. There should also be organization among farmers for the raising of particular standardized products in different communities or in different parts of the same community to which they are especially adapted. Scientific farming and soil conservation were assumed.

The key-word emphasized by the speakers for all efforts to improve agricultural conditions was co-operation. This co-operation, they declared, must have the dual purpose of giving the producer a fair and consistent profit and of giving products to the consumer at the lowest possible price. The producer and the consumer must be taken into complete partnership. Combination must never be on the principle of the industrial combinations or trusts. This will require some little revision of our present anti-trust laws to permit combinations except “in so far as they are detrimental to the interests of the people.”

Finally, the conference in its formal resolutions advocated the following constructive measures:

(a) The passage by Congress of a currency system which will permit farmers to obtain currency on their land in much the same manner that national bankers obtain currency by depositing bonds as security.

(b) Taking government crop reporting out of the hands of “stock gamblers” and making it a public matter.

(c) The rapid development of the government Bureau of Markets about to be established.

(d) The organized co-operation, both of consumers and producers, under proper supervision, to promote effective distribution, economical marketing, and to reduce expenses between producer and consumer.

(e) Organized co-operation properly supervised to secure more advantageous systems of rural credit.

(f) The extension and improvement of the parcel’s post as a potent factor in reducing the cost and facilitating the distribution of the products of the farm to the ultimate consumers.

SOUTHERN SCHOOLMEN AND THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER

You can’t be wise on an empty stomach. You can’t fill that stomach until you are wise. Nor can you be educated or fed until you are good, happy, clean—nor good, happy or clean until you are educated and fed. In the individual, then, life is a complete circle, every part of which is integral. In the whole group of individuals, there is the same circle, no part of which is complete in itself, or even significant unless considered merely as a segment.

This fundamental fact, so obvious, yet so seldom fully recognized, gave form and force to the Conference on Education in the South, recently held in Richmond. Farmers, business men, country preachers, officials, writers, editors, physicians, plain citizens, and school teachers—some 2,300—met together to discuss the problems which are common to them all. Wonder of wonders, the “conference” was a real conference; spell binding addresses were conspicuous by their absence. To a remarkable extent, the program consisted of concise and vigorous statements of actual accomplishments and constructive pleas for needed accomplishments. At one meeting Virginia Pearl Moore of Tennessee would tell how a mountain girl had made at the cost of a dollar or so a home canner with which she had won a prize—and rebuilt a whole community; at another E. M. Tousley of Minnesota would tell how the farmers’ corporation at Dassel in his state had procured for the consumer his share of the price of his crops—and rounded out and made full the life of the neighborhood.