The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913

COMMUNICATIONS — WAGES FIXED BY LAW — PLAY CENTERS FOR THE POOR — THE NEW PUBLICITY — WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION — MOTHERHOOD AND PENSIONS

Your San Pedro correspondent^[2] has got his figures on wages wrong and he leaves the expenses of business out of account. The 1910 Census bulletin of manufactures gives the figures thus, stated in thousands of dollars:

This balance is 10¹⁶⁄₂₀ per cent of the value of the product. Out of this interest on capital and wear and tear have to be met. The employees, in wages and salaries, get 21²⁄₂₀ per cent—just about twice what the manufacturers get. If 13 per cent were to be added to wages, as Mr. Deegan proposes, there would be a loss and business would not be done.

He may say charge more for the goods. But he complains of the high cost of living now. To increase it would be an injury—not a benefit.

My advice to all my labor friends would be to reduce the cost of production by making labor more efficient. Avoid strikes, settle differences by arbitration. If existing arbitration tribunals are inadequate, provide better, and remember that the real interests of labor and capital are identical. Labor would be fruitless, without factories and machinery. The men who invent or provide these are entitled to their share.

Henry De Peyster’s article on Play Centers for the Poor in The Survey for March 22 is interesting and illuminating. Evidently he has made a profound study of the question. But with regard to France I should like to add a few words to correct a false impression which Mr. De Peyster surely had no intention of giving.

As he says, the problem is different in France and Germany from that in other countries; but he does not mention (except tacitly by the picture on page 856) the admirable provision made by the Mission Populaire (the McAll Mission) to meet the actual condition.

In all the larger stations of that mission both in Paris and in the provinces (Rouen, Nantes, Lille, etc.) the daily Ecole de Garde (supervised study and play hours) is an important feature. The children leave school at four—their parents reach home from work not much before half past six. Therefore the boys and girls within walking distance hasten to the McAll station. After a light lunch they are turned into the play-ground for an hour on the parallel bars and the other apparatus. At five they are collected in the mission rooms, where their preparation for the next day is supervised by volunteer teachers.

Mr. De Peyster evidently uses the word “religious proselytism” in the French, not the English, sense. The French word “proselyte” is nearly equivalent to the English “convert.” That the Ecoles de Garde of the McAll Mission do have a religious motive goes without saying. About ten minutes of religious instruction are given daily, but absolutely without proselyting intent. Most of the parents of these children are free thinkers or violently opposed to religion, a few are Roman Catholics, but never a word is said which could mar the influence of any religiously disposed parent. As for the others, the widely established fact that more children from the McAll Ecoles de Garde pass their examinations than any others makes even anti-religious parents eager to have their children attend them. For in France the whole future of every child depends upon his school examinations.

To the Editor:

In a recent book review of a modern novel, the writer speaks of “episodes which violate the reserve that is bred in the bone of the English-speaking peoples.”

It is a serious matter, to my mind, that that reserve is being deliberately violated by a number of well-meaning people at this time in the campaign that is being carried on against certain diseases.

“It is necessary,” these people say, “to speak plainly. Great harm has been wrought by ignorance. The innocence of the child has been its weakness. Under plea of modesty fathers and mothers have been foolish and cowardly,” and so on. You hear and see it everywhere, and lectures are being delivered, to mixed audiences, on things which, the apostle said, it was a shame even to speak of.

Now I believe that the necessary information can, and should be, given to children from twelve to fifteen; but it is my positive belief that it should be done by the parents, or else by the use of carefully prepared printed matter. A short, modestly written pamphlet can tell all that is necessary. It can be placed in the hands of the child with instruction that it should be read and destroyed; also that the parent will give any further information required. I believe that oral instruction on these matters, to more than one child present at a time, is bad and harmful.

I feel deeply in the matter, for I feel that harm is being done when a strong, fine, racial 72trait is being violated, in attempting a good work that can be better done, in my opinion, when it is done in harmony with our best traditions.

Attempts at allegory, comparisons with plant life, and so on, are all best left aside. The child should be told what is right and what is wrong, and why. But it should not be told in company with others, and especially not in mixed audiences. The inbred reserve spoken of is too precious a possession to be thrown away, even in a good cause.

Something of the same purport may be said of the social evil now so freely discussed in the press and forming so large a part of the subjects written about in your issue of March 8. “Frankness” and “freedom” are excellent, but some things are too fine to be tarnished by careless use, and modesty is one of them.

Where we are getting to in this new movement to tear away the veil that has screened the family life of America can be seen in some of the new fiction. For instance, in Arnold Bennett’s Carlotta the hectic heroine thinks that truth demands that one should follow the dictates of animal instinct!

The logical result will be that morality, either ethical or religious, will be sent to the waste basket.

To the Editor:

In the March 8 issue of The Survey there appeared an article by Paul Kennaday, entitled Big Business and Workmen’s Compensation. This article is full of inaccurate statements and should never, in justice to your readers, have been printed.

On page 809, in the first column, it is stated: “Seized upon with alacrity by reformers, fought at first at every step by the casualty insurance companies and employers, ‘elective’ acts are now cherished like a prodigal son,” etc. This statement is unqualifiedly untrue. Employers generally have been notoriously in favor of elective compensation laws. Of course, they have been far from unanimous, and their expert advisers have generally been in favor of compulsory laws, but anyone familiar with the attitude of employers in the movement for compensation can bear witness to the fact that the majority of employers have throughout entertained a preference for elective laws. On the other hand, the casualty insurance companies have not fought such laws, nor have they generally specifically favored them. There has been as much difference of opinion among the insurance men on this question as there has been among all other classes of people. But in general the representatives of the casualty insurance companies have favored any kind of a law which would substitute the liability for compensation in place of the liability for negligence.

Of course, the casualty insurance companies have objected to such elective compensation laws as the Ohio Act of 1911, for the reason that that act gave the state insurance office a monopoly of the compensation insurance. That left the casualty companies to deal with the old negligence liability with all its abuses and consequent unpopularity, while it gave them no opportunity to demonstrate their ability to administer compensation insurance better than the State Office and without the abuses incident to negligence insurance.

The statement on page 809 at the bottom of the first column and the top of the second, that the “club” features of the elective compensation law has a peculiar advantage from the casualty companies’ standpoint is also diametrically the opposite of the truth. What the casualty insurance companies most desire is that the compensation law shall be so framed as to induce all employers, or all large employers, pretty unanimously to adopt one course or the other; that is, en masse to elect the compensation features of the law, or, en masse to reject them. Otherwise the casualty companies have to do business under two different laws, providing for two different kinds of insurance, the consequent of which is to duplicate the work and a large part of the expenses of the insurance companies. They naturally do not want a law which will cause employers to jump back and forth from the compensation features to the negligence features and vice versa, and experiment, but rather one which will induce all to come permanently under the compensation features or to stay out permanently.

On page 809, in the second column, it is stated, referring to casualty companies: “With equal determination they stop, where they can, laws which give the employer no election, but compel him to insure.” That is a purely gratuitous misstatement of the facts. The casualty companies have not—whatever some few exceptional representatives of some companies may have done—tried to stop the enactment of compulsory compensation laws. They have, on the other hand, opposed the enactment of so-called compensation laws which would give a monopoly of the insurance business to political boards. In so doing they have adopted the natural attitude of protecting their own business; and have done no more than would the persons engaged in any other business if it were proposed to transfer their business to politicians.

On page 809 in the same column, it is stated: “Prospective annual profits in enormous amounts are at stake for the casualty insurance companies in this fight.” That statement is a pure figment of the imagination. The writer cannot point out anywhere on this earth where casualty insurance companies have made profits in enormous amounts. What is at stake for the casualty insurance companies is the total value of the machinery and good will of their business, which ill-advised enthusiasts, under the secret guidance of Socialist agitators, are trying to destroy. But more important, the employes of such companies have their bread and butter at stake; it being proposed to transfer their jobs to political appointees and to leave them out in the cold.

73Lower down in the column it is stated that “casualty insurance companies are to be found advising, wherever workmen’s compensation is under discussion.” As a matter of fact, the casualty insurance companies have been very reluctant about advising except when called upon; but their actuaries have been in constant demand, and naturally should be, since they are about the only persons except the officials of the state insurance departments, who know anything about the business and the subject matter involved. The further statement that “At meetings of bar associations their attorneys have resolutions passed deprecating state insurance” is a gratuitous insult. No attorney for an insurance company would offer a resolution at a meeting of any bar association affecting the interests of his clients without stating that fact; and thereupon the resolution would be considered on its merits and would express the opinions of the members of the bar unaffected by the interests of the casualty insurance companies.

On page 810, in the first column, it is argued that no doubt big business and the insurance companies would be glad to see the pending constitutional amendment defeated. That is a pure assumption. Inasmuch as said amendment goes infinitely farther than authorizing a compensation law, and generally repeals the Bill of Rights in application to the relation of employer and employe, there may be many conservative opinions opposed to its enactment. But big business, the casualty insurance companies and a host of conservative people have been most active in the movement for an amendment permitting the enactment of a compensation law in this state in such form as the judgment of the legislature might decide, without any restrictions in the interests of any party.

On the same page, near the top of the second column, it is objected to the insurance committee’s compensation bill now pending in the Legislature that it leaves the function of fixing rates in the State Insurance Department. Why not! Is the objection to that provision that the Insurance Department, being already constituted and being composed of officials expert in the subject of insurance, will fix rates properly and not use state-administered insurance as a political weapon? Why create a new body to deal with the technical subjects with which the Insurance Department is qualified to deal?

Further down it is stated, sneeringly, that “three constitutional objections to one bill is good measure.” The objections are then stated. Now as a matter of fact three constitutional objections to one bill don’t amount to much unless these objections are valid. All the objections recited in this paragraph have been carefully considered and the overwhelming weight of opinion is that they are not valid.

It is then stated that a certain change in this bill from its earlier form has “in effect, turned the whole rich New York field over to the casualty companies.” And the reason for that conclusion is stated to be that the employers will do nothing until the casualty companies’ agents come to them, and will then do what the casualty insurance agents advise. That is nonsense. When the casualty insurance agents go to the employers under a law such as is proposed in this bill, they will go with a proposition involving an extremely large increase in rates. Employers throughout this state have been aroused over the subject of compensation and have studied the question of insurance sufficiently to turn out en masse against a proposition to give a state office the monopoly of insurance. Does it seem probable that when they are approached by the casualty insurance companies’ agents they will suddenly turn into fools and in effect submit to a monopoly by those companies? On the contrary, they will study the problem of mutual insurance very hard, and there will undoubtedly result many experiments in that line. Large establishments also will study out the problem of carrying their own insurance. It is also probable that a few employers may venture to experiment with state insurance. But the fact is, as the writer of this article knows, that no well informed and substantial employer will have anything to do with state insurance except as a last resource, or unless he is compelled.

Finally it is stated that no spokesman for the casualty insurance companies appears upon the field in New York. That is rather ridiculous. Officially, the two best informed persons upon casualty insurance in this state should be Mr. Hotchkiss, the former, and Mr. Emmet, the present, state insurance commissioner; and they both have spoken for, although not as the representatives of, the casualty companies of New York. At the same time, Frank E. Law, of the Fidelity and Casualty Company, and Edson S. Lott, of the United States Casualty Company, have made many addresses and published a considerable amount of literature on this subject. Naturally, the insurance companies have sought to avoid anything that would cause the false impression that any bill was in their particular interest. They have therefore rather confined themselves to opposing thoroughly bad measures than to advocating anything that they particularly desire or recommend.

The whole animus of this article is clearly betrayed in the opening words of the last paragraph, where the writer says, “while men are deliberately and openly planning the utter rout of the casualty companies....” Who are these men that are deliberately and openly planning the utter rout of the casualty companies? The writer is among them. They are those who seek to destroy private business in all its forms and to substitute state management and control in its place. Their activities in the present campaign have nothing to do with the particular merits or demerits of the compensation measures in question. Their whole attitude is false, in that they do not admit their motives, and besides wantonly misstate facts as to their adversaries.

After all, the discussion of State Funds to Mothers has not left us breathless. Even after the clear statements of two opposing social points of view in The Survey of March 1, and the summing up by Dr. Devine it seems to me that there still remains another point of view—that of the mother.

Speeches in a Mother’s Congress do not always give the right idea of the mother’s point of view. One must make allowance for fervour. A speaker of charm and imagination will be quoted, but the great body of mothers are as calm and collected in thinking on this subject as on any other domestic problem which comes to them for solution. For there is no doubt that the women, and above all, the mothers, will have something to do and say about the solution of this problem.

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.

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.

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.

PROF. SAMUEL A. LATTIMORE

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.

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.

76At 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.

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.

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.

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 — THE FOOL

HOW THE FACTORY GIRL IS BETTER OFF THAN THE STORE GIRL

The Common Good, a civic and social periodical of Rochester, devotes its February issue to a compilation by its editor, Edwin A. Rumball, in collaboration with Catherine Rumball, of the facts in regard to the working girls and women of that city who numbered at the 1900 census about 19,000, or over 31 per cent of all the women of Rochester. The facts are for the most part taken from the last census or from the Federal Report on Women and Child Wage-Earners and other authoritative sources, and are handled so as to show Rochester people just how high up or low down in the scale of cities, Rochester stands in its treatment of its women workers. The report is also issued as an “equal pay” document by the woman suffrage organization.

Among the answers to the question why they quit school which Helen M. Todd put to Chicago factory children are the following from Why Children Work in McClure’s:

“Because you get paid for what you do in a factory.”

“Because it’s easier to work in a factory than ’tis to learn in school.”

“You never understands what they tells you in school, and you can learn right off to do things in a factory.”

“They ain’t always pickin’ on you because you don’t know things in a factory.”

“You can’t never do t’ings right in school.”

“The boss he never hits yer, er slaps yer face, er pulls yer ears, er makes yer stay in at recess.”

“The children don’t holler at ye and call ye a Christ-killer in a factory.”

“They don’t call ye a Dago.”

“They’re good to you at home when you earn money.”

“You can go to the nickel show.”

“Yer folks don’t hit ye so much.”

“You can buy shoes for the baby.”

“You can give your mother yer pay envelope.”

“Our boss he never went to school.”

“School ain’t no good. The Holy Father he can send ye to hell, and the boss he can take away yer job er raise yer pay. The teacher she can’t do nothing.”

Running the Home, by Martha Bensley Bruère in Good Housekeeping, is an argument for the use of public utilities in place of certain old-fashioned forms of “elbow grease,” on the ground not merely of the saving of labor but of expense. Mrs. Bruère’s conclusion is that the city, with its superior facilities for using centralized facilities for heating, lighting, etc., co-operatively, comes out far ahead of the country. In the budgets she studied the percentage of income spent for the “operation of the household—heat, light, repairs, services, etc.”—in the city was only half what it is in the country.

In Parenthood and the Social Conscience, Seth K. Humphrey (Forum) recommends the lifting of the burden of the hereditary defective from society by “parenthood laws” which would not force sterilization on defectives but would give them the choice of sterilization or segregation. The much controverted Indiana institutional experience is the basis of Mr. Humphrey’s conclusion that many defectives will accept the former method of “ending their miseries with themselves.”

Following up Burton J. Hendrick’s narrative last month of the Jewish invasion of America, Abraham Cahan, “editor, author, and general counselor of the Jewish East Side of New York,” this month begins in McClure’s the material and spiritual history of David Levinsky, a Russian Jew who became an American millionaire.

79Frank Barclay Copley in an article in the American Magazine, which receives the commendation of Frederick W. Taylor in an introductory note, thus defines the position of the new science of management toward trade unionism:

“The only way the workers, herded into gangs and treated as machines for grinding out dividends, can defend themselves is through organization. Ordinary unionism, therefore, finds its justification as a war-measure. Scientific management, however, by establishing that community of interest between capital and labor which has so long been obscured by ignorance, creates industrial peace, and the only persons who have reason to oppose it are those who have a personal interest in the continuance of warfare. Under scientific management the workers are not subordinates, but coordinates, and each individual is free to earn, learn, and rise as the Almighty has given him the power. No form of collective bargaining would seem to be called for, because tasks are set and wages fixed, not by arbitrary action, but by knowledge. The only real boss, in fact, is knowledge; and if anyone can speak with knowledge, he will be listened to, and he will have his reward. On the other hand, the tongue of ignorance must be still; and so it follows that to the extent that unionism means the placing of ignorant men in the saddle, or to the extent that it involves high labor costs, to that extent must scientific management always be against it.”

As an indication of those interferences with shop administration which, with the growth of scientific management, the unions will be called upon to abandon, the passage is significant. But progressive labor men will fail to find in it any glimmer of understanding on the part of the scientific managers of the larger democratic safeguards of unionism. Who, for example, is to set the base rates from which the wages of any given line of craftsmen are to be scientifically built up and calculated?

Character (Boston) publishes the following resolutions adopted by W. E. Wroe and Company, a Chicago paper house. They are written in the first person, thus making them apply to the man who runs and reads as well as the man who formulated them:

I will be square, fair, and just towards all my fellow-men, and by fellow-men I mean, not only those I meet in a social way, but my associates and employes in business.

I will keep myself clean and decent, and my desires worthy of a true man.

I will listen to the dictates of my conscience.

I will do my best in everything I undertake, and will undertake nothing unless I can give it the best there is in me.

I will speak only optimistic, uplifting words—nothing which can possibly bring pain to my fellow-men merely to give gratification to my own fancies.

I will remember that life embodies giving as well as taking and that what I receive depends entirely upon what I give.

I will be thankful for life because it gives me a chance to work and accomplish.

I will despise nothing but meanness. I will fear nothing but cowardice.

Courtesy Rochester Common Good.

WORKING AFTER HOURS

A Rochester woman collecting fire wood. This is a regular part of the daily housekeeping of poor families.

The beginning of a homesteading policy for Egypt is thus described in a Consular Report:

“Lord Kitchener laid the foundation stone of an agricultural school in the Egyptian Delta on November 6 and initiated a scheme for the distribution of land which has become available for cultivation through drainage. As an experiment, 610 feddans (or acres) were distributed in five-feddan lots to the landless fellaheen (peasants), the idea being to help the poor fellaheen and at the same time to increase the number of small landholders and to create family homesteads. During the first three years, when they must do work of reclamation, the fellaheen will receive the land practically free, and in the following ten years they will pay a moderate rental, after which the holding becomes theirs for life. Afterward the land descends in the families if the government approves. Alienation is forbidden, except with the consent of the State.”

JOTTINGS — ST. LOUIS SCHOOL OF PHILANTHROPY — “THE UNAFRAID”

A plan contemplated for over a year to make the St. Louis School of Social Economy a department of Washington University has just been consummated. The university now assumes full direction and control of the school, but the relationship which has always existed between the school and the Russell Sage Foundation remains unchanged.

The staff, consisting of George B. Mangold, associate director, T. W. Clocker, assistant director, and Ora A. Kelly, assistant, has been increased. Charles E. Persons was recently appointed assistant director and immediately entered upon his duties. Mr. Persons is a native of Iowa, a graduate of Cornell, and received his Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has taught at Wellesley and at Princeton. From Princeton he went to Northwestern University. Mr. Persons’ brother, W. Frank Persons, is superintendent of the New York Charity Organization Society. Mr. Persons has courses on public health and immigration and will assist in research Work.

The Whitehaven Tuberculosis Sanatorium has a training school made up for the most part of young men and women who have been cured of tuberculosis, and who thus fit themselves to become workers against the scourge. Under the title The Unafraid, William Warren Keller, former secretary of the Child Labor Committee for western Pennsylvania, and himself a man who, during the past year, has downed an incipient case of tuberculosis, wrote some verses in congratulation of the last graduating class. To quote two stanzas:

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