The Survey, Volume 30, Number 6, May 10, 1913

EDITORIAL GRIST — SOUTHERN SCHOOLMEN AND THE CIRCLE OF LIFE — LESSONS FROM OHIO RESERVOIRS

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.

215B. 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.

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 216consisted 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.

These men and women who met at Richmond had their faces set toward the village and the open country. They realized that American life was becoming a pyramid set wrong end up. To turn the pyramid over, so that at the bottom supporting the whole structure will be a satisfied and satisfying country life, was the large task to which these southerners gave vigorous attention. The conference took note of the fact that the “great American contortion” of the fed trying to support the feeder cannot be perpetuated. It realized, too, that the general assumption that all country people are or are to become men is wholly wrong; that it is many generations past the time when in an organized and comprehensive way, educational and social agencies should have begun to help the farmer’s wife and daughter so that they could help themselves. To be sure, wife and daughter will not have their due until the farmer is economically efficient, but what are the chances that he will increase his yield if he has to eat poorly cooked food, to say nothing of putting up with a nagging wife and a discontented daughter?

As the most tangible and immediate method of making the farmer more efficient economically, the conference emphasized better business methods. Here again Dr. Albert P. Bourland, executive secretary, showed discernment, in that he related the subject of agricultural co-operation and better farm credits to the other topics discussed—school, church, home and business in the large. The conference had the right to preach co-operation for it was practicing it!

All the discussions were illuminated by honesty—the recognition of problems and the characterization of evils by their right names. Indeed, this meeting made the few visitors from north of Mason and Dixon’s line again wish that in their sections of the country there were the same hearty frankness joined to tact.

Since this conference discussed the whole of the circle of life, what right had it to be called a conference for education?

In the South, the machinery for social amelioration is to a large extent educational. Whether it be the hook worm in South Carolina or bad housing in Texas that is attacked, efforts to make the South a better place in which to live emanate to a surprising degree from state departments of education, agricultural colleges, state universities, sectarian colleges, secondary schools, and—praise be!—one-room rural schools. Whether or not these institutions have the help of individuals, they do their work in the name of all of the people.

MORRIS KNOWLES

Pittsburgh Flood Commission

Early reports of the recent Ohio floods gave many the impression that the disasters were due to the failure of reservoirs; and as these reports were not generally corrected later, this impression no doubt remains in the minds of some. An investigation made during the week following the disasters showed this to be incorrect; but the escape was so narrow in some instances that the lesson of reservoirs of this sort is driven home almost as strongly as if they had failed and caused an enormous destruction of life and property.

Most of the reservoirs in the flooded districts belonged to the Ohio state canal system and were constructed to supply water for the canals in the dry seasons. In addition, the Columbus water supply storage dam on the Scioto river, was reported to have failed, causing a panic in Columbus. A number of power dams in various parts of the state were also the subjects of similar rumors. But these reports were either entirely without foundation, as in the case of the Columbus dam, or else the dams were relatively unimportant, so that this article may well be confined to the canal reservoirs.

The Ohio canal system, built in the second quarter of the last century, consists of two main divisions—the Ohio Canal, or eastern route, connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio river by way of the Cuyahoga, Tuscarawas, Muskingum, Licking and Scioto river valleys; and the Miami and Erie Canal, or western route, connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio river by way of the Maumee, Auglaize, and Miami river valleys. In addition, the Muskingum river was slack-watered below Zanesville. Numerous lateral, feeder and tributary canals completed a system which had cost approximately $16,000,000 and which comprised in 1850 over 1,000 miles of canals, more than 300 lift locks and half a dozen reservoirs.

In the case of each of the main canal routes, water was lacking on the summit level during the dry season, and the reservoirs were constructed to supplement the normal flow at such times. The Portage Lakes, just south of Akron, were dammed about 1840, to supply the summit of the eastern route; Loramie and Lewistown Reservoirs about 1850–60, for the western route; and the Licking Reservoir, or Buckeye Lake, about 1832, for the Licking summit. In addition, Grand Reservoir, the largest in the state, was 217built about 1841, to supply the northern slope of the Miami and Erie Canal.

LOOKING DOWN THE EAST RESERVOIR CREVASSE
In the wreckage are the remains of a saloon and of a concrete bridge.

During the middle of the last century, just prior to the Civil War, these canals were very active, and brought in a gross revenue, during some years, of over $500,000. In 1851 the gross earnings were over $799,000, and the net earnings almost $470,000. But later, the decline came, as it did on all of the old canals. As the canal section and lock dimensions were out-grown by the demands of modern traffic, a gradual abandonment of navigation followed, until now, for many years, there has been no canal freight traffic at all. Some of the branch and feeder canals have been officially abandoned, and either left to deteriorate without attention, or else filled up. Several of the reservoirs were dedicated by the legislature, by several acts passed since 1894, to use as public parks and pleasure resorts, with the provision, however, that they must be maintained for canal purposes.

For the past few years, therefore, the only revenues from the canals have been from the leasing of lands for oil well drilling and from the sale of water or water power to private or municipal water works and industrial plants. An annual appropriation has been made, in addition, to assist in meeting the expense of maintenance. There has, therefore, been no great stimulus to comprehensive and thorough work, and probably a great deal of the maintenance has been of a perfunctory character. The canals and reservoirs are in charge of a Board of Public Works of three members, but neither this nor any other state body or official appears to have had the specific duty of investigating these reservoirs from the sole point of view of public safety.

The Portage Lakes, about six miles south of Akron, were provided with no spillway whatever. The only way water could be discharged from them was through a thirty-six inch pipe. At the beginning of the rain-storm, the level in the reservoirs was within about one foot of the top of the embankment. It was not surprising, therefore, that the lakes filled up, overflowed the low embankment and washed out a crevasse about twenty-five feet deep and nearly 200 feet wide. The water overflowed a considerable area of low farm lands.

At the Lewistown Reservoir, which covers 6,000 acres, about a quarter of a mile of the west embankment was overflowed continuously for a day and a half. Waves dashed over the top of the south bank for several days. Both banks were almost despaired of, and a large force of men, including cottagers and citizens from neighboring towns, worked hard, placing logs and sand bags, to save them. In this they were successful, but a large area south of the reservoir was overflowed.

The Loramie Reservoir of 1,830 acres was already filled to above the spillway level when the rain started, and the water reached a maximum elevation of about four feet above the 200 foot spillway. Two small crevasses about twenty and twenty-five feet wide respectively and five or six feet deep, were washed out at a low portion of the embankment.

The Grand Reservoir is one of the largest artificial bodies of water in the world and covers about 13,400 acres. The water rose to about two feet above the ninety-five foot spillway. The water did not come near overtopping the banks, but heavy waves were driven against and over them, eroding them seriously at some points, and softening and furrowing their backs at others. 218A large force of volunteers worked with the laborers, filling and placing bags of sand, while a company of state militia patrolled the banks. No breaks occurred at any point, but the situation was critical for two or three days.

REPAIRED BREAK IN LORAMIE RESERVOIR EMBANKMENT.
When the break occurred the water was about four feet over the spillway.

---

These situations teach a lesson that ought never to need repetition. Reservoir failures did not contribute measurably to the flood damage in Ohio. The trouble was caused by excessive and extensive rains.

But even if the reservoirs did not fail with disastrous results, the margin was a narrow one and the lesson is equally plain. It has long been an engineering principle that an earth embankment must not be overtopped. Twenty-four years ago, the Johnstown disaster, due to insufficient spillway capacity, impressed this upon the whole world. And it is an interesting parallel, that this was caused by an old reservoir originally built by the state for canal purposes, and later abandoned and used for pleasure purposes. Yet in Ohio there were four earth embankment reservoirs, one of which had no spillway and a far from sufficient discharge pipe; two of which filled up so that the banks were overflowed; and one which did not overflow, but which filled up sufficiently so that waves were driven over the embankments. Nor was the rainfall one beyond the range of probability. The March storm probably broke all records for combined intensity, duration and extent. But for small drainage areas such as these (52 to 114 square miles) the rainfall was not unprecedented. At least two storms have occurred in Ohio during the past forty years in which the rainfall in forty-eight hours was greater than that recorded in any forty-eight hours of the late storm, at any station, excepting Piqua, which is below the reservoirs in question. And in at least one storm in the same period, the rainfall for twenty-four hours was within .06 inch of the highest twenty-four hour rainfall of last month.

The faults in these reservoirs, then, were not due to a lack of knowledge as to what to expect, but only to failure to apply knowledge already gained. In this case, of course, state ownership put an extra responsibility on Ohio to see that its property was not a menace to its citizens. But, in any case, the state is the only institution which can see that such structures are provided with the necessary facilities to make them safe. Johnstown ought to have taught the necessity of examining reservoirs and dams, and of enforcing suitable standards of design and construction. Yet if we examine the statute books of Ohio we find no legislative provision of this kind whatever. Nor is there any provision for the study, mapping and gauging of the water resources. This is a necessary preliminary to a full understanding of the possible menace from uncontrolled waste.

With only two or three exceptions, conditions are precisely the same throughout the country. Even in Pennsylvania, which has probably suffered more grievously from dam failures than any other state, there is as yet no public knowledge of the design and condition of all dams, and no authority in any official or body to correct a dangerous condition.

Must we wait for another Johnstown or an Austin to change these things? Or will we learn from what might well have occurred in Ohio, and make a repetition of such disasters impossible? The lesson is plain. Will we profit by it?

BOOKS — VOCATIONS FOR GIRLS — GENETICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HEREDITY — MARRIAGE AND THE SEX PROBLEM — BEDROCK — CATCH-MY-PAL — THE LIFE OF ELLEN H. RICHARDS — CAROLA WOERISHOFFER, HER LIFE AND WORK

MODERN PHILANTHROPY

By William H. Allen. Dodd, Mead & Co. 437 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.64.

During 1910 and 1911, the years immediately succeeding the death of her husband, Mrs. E. H. Harriman received many thousands of appeals from as many individuals, charities, churches or other enterprises, most of whom either felt that they had some claim upon her generosity or hoped that their individual desires or necessities were particularly worthy of support. These appeals, to the number of 6,000, Mrs. Harriman turned over to the New York Bureau of Municipal Research for analysis and study. They came from all corners of the globe. The plans and remedies proposed ranged from a sage’s advice to a cheap cure-all emanating from a freakish brain.

Using the results of this study as a text, the author has written this volume, a part of which is a discourse on the relation of philanthropy to the functions of government. Another part is more like a manual on will making and successful appealing for private funds. The final section is an argument in favor of a national clearing house for appeals and charitable causes.

The details with which the analysis and classification of the 6,000 appeals is presented are so elaborate that they become tiresome and confusing. Besides, many of them are so exceptional that while they might be texts for discussions in social ethics, few general conclusions of value can be reached from them.

The discussion of will making has greater value for our various communities, and is receiving increasing attention among lawyers, social workers and civic reformers. The author proposes that lawyers recognize this value and equip themselves as experts or consultants for those who in increasing number wish to leave of their resources a contribution toward the betterment of social and civic conditions. He calls attention to the fact that the terms of a will are generally an expression of a previous generation’s interest and that it is altogether too commonly true at the present time that the will maker’s thought is not kept abreast with the development of the community and the needs of the times. For instance, the important work in scientific research of the present day is not provided for to any large extent by bequests but is largely financed by gifts from the living.

The continuous education of prospective givers is urged so that their bequests may express a vital interest of the donor’s present instead of his past. The tendency of men to make their wills in middle life will, however, always prove to be an obstacle to this desired result, and hence the terms of a will must be made as general as a careful description of the donor’s interest allows it to be, rather than so restricted that its usefulness will soon be so lessened that the state must set a limit to the life of the bequest.

The list of nation-wide needs that the book presents is certainly a formidable one. Many of them require a paragraph while others ought to have a whole chapter if not a whole volume to elucidate them and show their value to the skeptical reader or legislator. In the shape in which they are presented they bewilder all except the expert social scientist or social reformer. That the needs have diverse values is easily seen by examining two in the list of 4 per cent to 6 per cent investments, combining public service and private profits. Here we find the enigmatic suggestion that we discover the “application of the Child’s Restaurant idea to boarding houses” placed side by side with the need of a “model factory system that would net capital 4 per cent or 5 per cent and let the earnings above that limit go to make high wages, shorter hours and lower prices.” Many utopias are contained in these lists. The enumeration is impressive and suggestive but not convincing.

The author’s tendency to question every social fact, every community habit and every form of benevolence is found throughout the volume. This undoubtedly arouses thought. It is nowhere better exemplified than in the following statement: “It is doubtful whether the philosophy of giving formulated by Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller rings truer than does that of begging letters. After all, philosophy is not much more than straight seeing, and a person in trouble, needing help, can see almost as much and as far as a person wanting to get rid of money. Neither a multi-millionaire nor a professor of ethics could surpass the good wife whose husband is harassed to pay $200 debts.” These half truths challenge one to find the whole truth, but they do not much enlighten him who is seeking to find a safe social policy.

Mr. Allen’s mind is fertile. He has the unusual gift of throwing out sheaves of questions for arousing one’s interest, and for this purpose the volume in question is particularly noteworthy.

By Mary A. Laselle and Katherine Wiley. Introduction by Meyer Bloomfield. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 139 pp. Price $.85; by mail of The Survey $.92.

This little volume is designed to be of service in assisting wage-earning girls to a wise and intelligent choice of a vocation and may be used as a reference or text book in the elementary grades, as well as furnish “advisory material” for those girls who continue in school after fourteen years of age.

The chief value of this book has been pointed out by Mr. Bloomfield; namely, that it is written 220by teachers who perhaps thus unconsciously express the prevailing discontent of the teacher alert to modern demands on education, and the reaching out of the hitherto secluded educator into the realities with which the child, unequipped, constantly struggles.

The material is attractively arranged, presented in a breezy, readable form, tinged with the spirit of sentiment, calculated to excite and hold the interest of the girl reader. It cannot fail to make the careless, irresponsible girl more thoughtful to untangle many perplexities for the troubled girl and to arouse ambition for personal efficiency in all girls who read it. The emphasis for gaining success is laid almost entirely upon personal efficiency. While the necessity cannot be made too clear to the girl—who is inclined to look upon her wage-earning life less as a profession than the boy—the book is disappointing in its almost total lack of recognition of the many failures in industry to meet the reasonable claims of efficiency. The absence of such information is prone to tempt the girl into industry sooner than there is financial need for her service, and does not protect her incentive or optimism, which protection is hoped for by the concealment of these facts. It is this feature which is too often damaging to the beneficial effect of many vocational bulletins published without an intimate and accurate knowledge of the trades discussed.

This setting forth of disadvantages as well as advantages has been most excellently done in another recent Boston publication, Survey of Occupations Open to the Girl of Fourteen to Sixteen Years, by Harriet Hazen Dodge. This pamphlet presents both sides of the question in a most helpful, concise and scientific form. The knowledge of the “disadvantages” is needful to the educator with whom will lie the decision as to the kind of trade or industry with which education can assist and co-operate in moulding the life of the child.

Vocations for Girls will be of assistance to the elementary teacher in providing an opportunity for intelligent contact with the girl worker, and suggestive material for further investigation as to the educative motive in trades and the benefit of the “occupative motive” in the girl pupil.

Little or no new information is given the sociological worker concerning specific lines of work for girls, or concerning her education for wage earning and home making.

The note of unquestioned recognition of the permanency of the girl’s wage-earning life which pervades every page of the book, is most welcome and all too urgently needed—both by girl and employer. But above all else, let me repeat that the book deserves a pioneer place in vocational literature, as one of the outward proofs of that which has long been felt,—that the destiny of the wage-earning child can be safely trusted to the keen interest, stimulating sympathy and sound judgment of his or her main dependence—the most potent of our social forces—the public school teacher.

By Herbert Eugene Walter. 272 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.65.

Everyone interested in the modern problems of eugenics and the care of defectives will find much of value in this book. The author says: “An attempt has been made to summarize for the intelligent but uninitiated reader some of the more recent phases of the questions of heredity which are at present agitating the biological world.”

The book is an excellent statement of the present most generally accepted theory of heredity, with only as much reference to other theories as will enable the reader to see how modern theories have grown out of the old ones.

Much of the book is extremely interesting to anyone with the least beginning of a scientific mind. The incidents with regard to the various experiments by biologists are illuminating.

The author is fair and guarded in his statements on questions which are in dispute. Although there can be no doubt as to his own beliefs in such matters, for example, as the inheritance of acquired characters, yet he gives both sides of the question fairly. Some of the instances of experiments read like a romance. The story of Lamarck’s Evening Primrose as studied by De Vries is fascinating.

Of course, to the socially minded person, the most interesting part of the book is that which deals with its application to man, and the chapter on human conservation which takes up such topics as how mankind may be improved, control of immigration, discriminating marriage laws, educated sentiment, segregation of defectives, etc., is compelling and well worth study.

The text is illustrated by a large number of diagrams some of which, although simple to the student of biology, will require considerable study by the ordinary reader. On the whole, the book is a valuable contribution to our literature on heredity and will be of great service to those who, while unable to study eugenics exhaustively, still feel that they must know the general theories on the subject.

By Dr. F. W. Foerster. Frederick A. Stokes Co. 225 pp. Price $1.35: by mail of The Survey $1.44.

This is a translation of a work entitled Sexualethik und Sexualpadagogik by Dr. F. W. Foerster of Zürich, Switzerland. The translator supplies a brief statement of Foerster’s personal development and his final adoption of a positive ethical and religious philosophy akin to the new idealism of Prof. Rudolph Eucken. The book devotes considerable space to the theories of Ellen Key, Freud and Forel. On its positive side it advocates undeviating adherence to the traditional point of view in matters of sex and marriage. A somewhat pedantic touch results from the translator’s use of “ethic” in preference to the more familiar “ethics” as an equivalent for the German Ethik.

By Annie L. Diggs. The Social Center Publishing Co., Detroit. 70 pp. Price $.25; by mail of The Survey $.30.

Although, like Hayne’s famous speech on Foote’s resolution, this book shoots a passing reference at almost every topic of public affairs, it is in essence an argument for establishing an employment bureau in connection with every educational institution in the United States. The reasoning of the treatise, like its rhetoric, is thoroughly ill-digested. While the author has imagination enough to see the perfect beauty of a social adjustment which would provide a suitable occupation for every educated person, and an educated person for every occupation, she apparently relies on the sentimentality and good-heartedness of mankind to bring this about.

Her program for starting an employment bureau is to get a handful of men and women into a parlor and start one. The task of launching raw youngsters on their life-work is to be done at first by volunteers “whose imaginations are quickened by a longing to serve humanity.” The author is evidently unacquainted with the history of vocational guidance in Boston, which has emphasized above all else the need of full and scientific information about industry and individual aptitudes before placement is sparingly attempted. She says not a word about the age at which children are to be steered into jobs, and is apparently unfamiliar with recent investigations in New York, Cincinnati and Philadelphia, which have made it alarmingly probable that there are no positions in cities into which it is wise or safe to place children. She seems to accept as good, without discrimination, any and all attempts at vocational training, at the same time not realizing that such training should precede organized placement.

In a word, the book embodies nearly all of the fallacies and half-truths which make so difficult the progress of wise educational readjustment in this country at the present time. Mrs. Diggs describes herself as the chairman of the Department of Employment Bureaus of the National Social Center Association. It is to be hoped that if that organization ever addresses itself to active propaganda, it will not adopt Mrs. Diggs’ views on finding work for children.

By Rev. R. J. Patterson, LL.B. Geo. H. Doran Co. 192 pp. Price $1.00; by mail of The Survey $1.07.

The author, a Presbyterian minister, in the north of Ireland, catches enthusiasm from a Catholic priest, and a temperance movement of great significance results, enrolling 130,000 men in a year’s time, chiefly by the work of ex-drinkers for their former “pals.” The book is a glowingly Irish account of what has been a unique illustration of the power of sheer brotherhood, applied after the method of the Gospels and in the unconventional spirit of the Good Samaritan. The material given here is to be classed for significance in interpreting religious experience with two recent publications—Varieties of Religious Experience and Twice-Born Men.

Perhaps the core of the book is the conclusion phrased in words previously and independently used by Professor Horne: “Sometimes conviction leads to action.... Sometimes action leads to conviction.” The experience of the mystic seems incalculable; the religion of the Gospels and of this book reveal a constant, lawful and infinite power, a source of true miracle, latent until men take its challenge and by a brotherly act of will allow it to work its wonders through them. “All our attempts to save a man,” says Mr. Patterson, “should be made at the point where he understands.... [Jesus] began at the blind man’s eyes, at the lame man’s feet, at the deaf man’s ears, at the dumb man’s tongue.” This movement has given also another proof of the pressing necessity of social centers for men, equally attractive and unconventional as the saloon, and the author has interesting things to say about “Temperance saloons,” public opinion, and legislation.

By Caroline L. Hunt. Whitcomb & Barrows. Boston. 328 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.66.

Bryn Mawr College, Class of 1907. 137 pp.

“The large, outgiving life” is a graphic phrase used by the biographer of Ellen H. Richards in introducing the story of her sixty-eight well-spent years. Mrs. Richards was a woman in whose nature the quality of acquisitiveness seems almost to have been omitted. She gave boundlessly of herself to individuals and to the common welfare. Her thoughtfulness for friends and associates and her notable public services were intrinsic forms of self-expression. Apparently, she was incapable of a perfunctory act. Her letters to friends, the gift for the coming baby, the “treat” for the girl student away from home for the first time, the pot of flowers sent to a new neighbor, her letters to “correspondence” students, her analysis of the water supply of the state of Massachusetts, her leadership in the home economics movement—all these things, from the least to the most important, were but the sincere expressions of her outpouring spirit.

Her impulse for service was re-enforced by a remarkable talent for administration. It was this which made possible the extraordinary generosity of her life. It was scientifically managed from the start. At the height of her career, as Miss Hunt remarks, Mrs. Richards was doing the work of ten people. Even as a little girl, Ellen Swallow had shown her capacity to carry on a triple career by helping her mother at home and her father in the “general store,” besides doing the lessons proper for a little girl. Later she combined teaching with housekeeping and storekeeping and helped to earn the money with which she went to college. During the greater part of her two years at Vassar, she supported herself by tutoring. From this time on, as student in the Boston Institute of Technology and subsequently as instructor, Mrs. Richards was 222steadily increasing the range of her energies and activities. The history of her life is the history of the inauguration of many social and scientific movements.

As a leader, she united to a marked degree the qualities of pioneer and conservator. To have been the first woman to enter the Institute of Technology and to have opened the way for other women was for her a life-long satisfaction. She was never weary in fighting the battle for the higher education of women. But she had also a strong instinct for sustaining the victory so hardly won. This is illustrated by a reproachful letter which she wrote to a woman friend, a college professor, who had fainted. “Take beef three times a day for a fortnight to tone yourself up,” she wrote, “and don’t do it again. It is fully as important to keep in physical condition as to have a mental grasp. Nowadays the last card they can trump up against us is that we are not physically equal to what we try to do. The more prominent we are the more closely they watch us. Just now, too, when so much is in the air against woman’s education.”

The volume is issued as a memorial and was prepared with the co-operation of Professor Richards and a committee of Mrs. Richards’ friends representing her various interests.

At the age of twenty-five, Ellen Swallow was just pulling herself free from the narrow life of a New England village and starting off to Vassar College. At the same age, Carola Woerishoffer, thanks to a more favorable environment and a more enlightened generation, had finished her college course and entered upon a well-established career of social service. When her gallant and useful life came to a tragical end in an automobile accident at this same age, she had already accomplished much that was worth recording.

A picture of her life and personality is given in a small memorial volume, which consists chiefly of a series of addresses made by personal friends at a meeting held in Greenwich House shortly after her death. In the descriptions of her friends, the girl’s devotion to athletics, her spirit of comradeship, her strong-willed nature, her democratic instincts, her German fondness for thoroughness and hatred of dilettantism, and her sense of social responsibility as the possessor of wealth are the qualities which are made to stand out as most representative of her.

The spirit in which her social work was done was thus described by one of the speakers: “She and another young woman, Elizabeth Butler, who also did immeasurably hard things and who also left us forever this summer—they undertook so simply the things that to us of my generation seemed a moral adventure, a wonderful undertaking,—these young women took them in such a matter-of-fact way. It did not seem to Carola an adventure to go into laundries any more than it did to Elizabeth Butler to go into the depths of blackest Pittsburgh. The things were there, and we had to know about them, and it was all matter-of-fact, just as it would have been for an able-bodied man to go and look at things and come back and tell the world what it bitterly needs to know about them. It was all matter-of-fact for them, and I believe they are forerunners of new generations of women who will insist in their youth on knowing life as it is, on facing the world clear-eyed and changing these things which we of my generation, in our youth, shirked and preferred not to know.”

BOOKS RECEIVED IN APRIL

TREND — LEADERS IN THE MONTH’S MAGAZINES — The Problem — The Workman’s Rights — Principles Governing Employers — Warning for Rich — Warning for Workmen

COMMUNICATIONS — THE SHOPPERS’ PUZZLE — SEX HYGIENE LECTURES — SEGREGATING VICE — SEX HYGIENE AND YOUNG PEOPLE — FREE ACRES COLONY — THE BALKAN WAR AND ARMENIA — THE SEATTLE CONFERENCE — ANOTHER CASE OF RED TAPE — HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS — SOCIAL ETHICS — THE BACK FENCE — THE OTHER OTHER HALF — A CALL FOR LEADERSHIP — MOTHERHOOD AND TEACHING

THE WEST VIRGINIA COAL STRIKE

I read with much interest the article by Mr. West in the April 5 number of The Survey and I must raise my voice in protest against taking Mr. West too seriously. I have lived with the miners of West Virginia for the past four years and have made a pretty thorough study of the entire situation.

It is perhaps hardly to be expected that a newspaper reporter visiting the field during the struggle would get an unbiased view of the situation.

No one who is conversant with the situation would deny that there are two sides to the fight and that both have made their mistakes. The question of union or non-union has little to do with it. The worst living and working conditions are to be found in some of the union settlements along the Kanawha river; perhaps there are some equally bad ones in non-union fields. The best working and living conditions of West Virginia are found in non-union fields. Yet, I do not wish to be understood as arguing against unions, as I do not believe that the union question has much bearing on the real conditions.

It is simply the character of the operators and the men themselves that determines the conditions of any mining settlement. There is much mis-understanding and mis-information among the men themselves.

Mr. West mentions the company stores as being a source of contention. Now, it is true that in some of the stores some articles are priced too high, but, on the other hand, men are often mis-informed as to prices in other places. To illustrate, in the early days of the strike a miner on Cabin Creek told me he was paying $1.20 per bushel for potatoes at the company store that could be bought in Charleston for $.60. The next day I was in Charleston and meeting a farmer on the street, selling his own product, I learned that the price was $.30 per peck. My miner friend therefore had jumped at a conclusion that the facts would not justify, and yet that same man could, by this mis-information, stir up much dissatisfaction.

When I lived in Charleston, I used frequently to buy meat at the company store and take it home, a distance of thirty miles, because I could buy it from three to five cents per pound cheaper than in Charleston. On the other hand, I saw in two different stores in another district, bedsteads marked $7, the exact counterpart of which I have bought myself in Charleston for $4.50. Such a profit as this certainly is not justifiable. Taken all in all, the prices on necessities do not vary to any great extent between the company and the independent stores when one considers the additional cost of transportation.

Nothing is more dangerous than truth and error mixed. Mr. West says the operators have a larger number of men than they can make use of at each operation and that the reason of this is that they may have their houses filled. The real fact is that nearly every operation must have from 20 to 30 per cent more men than are needed in order to run the mine to the full capacity, as about that proportion will lay off work each day. I have tried to find the reason for this and have been told repeatedly by the miners themselves that since they could earn enough money in four or five days to support themselves for a week they could see no reason why they should work every day.

The “guard system” is certainly not an ideal one. Neither are all of the men serving as guards ideal citizens. They certainly have been guilty of many of the abuses which might be expected from so much authority with so little responsibility to the state. But there must be some method of policing the mining districts. Thus far the state and county have failed to provide police facilities, and an “absentee” police system would make crime easy to commit in such a country. Thus far, there has been no improvement suggested by those who are leading this insurrection.

In regard to the housing, if Mr. West or any one else could build one of the four room cottages at a labor expense of $40., or even twice that, he would be in great demand as a contractor for house building. Moreover, any operator would be glad to get his houses built at a net expense of twice the figures given by Mr. West. One needs only to visit the houses vacated by miners to convince himself that the 10 per cent income on the actual investment will hardly pay for repairs. The average miner is not at all careful as to where he collects his kindling wood. I have seen many houses with from one to four doors and perhaps a quarter of the ceiling missing, having been used for this domestic purpose.

One real difficulty with the miners is a lack of constructive leadership. When they are taught such anarchistic ideas as that voiced by Mr. Houston at the investigation of the commission, it is no wonder that such men, under the leadership of individuals, whose past history will hardly bear the light of day, band themselves together for desperate purposes. Mr. Houston stated that the miner should be paid every cent that the coal brings in the market, except what the railroad gets for transportation, and there are many mine workers who actually believe this.

My sympathy is with the miner whose work is dangerous and who should have every consideration consistent with good order and business conditions. There is no calling which requires so little investment on the part of the worker that brings such returns in money. Any miner in the Cabin Creek or Paint Creek field who is willing to work steadily can earn anywhere from $3 to $6 per day and many earn more than this clear. The real difficulty with these men is that they need education and training as to how to care for their money after it has been earned. It is true that there are many days when the mines cannot run owing to breakdowns or lack of sufficient cars in which to load the coal. This latter reason is especially frequent in some sections.

I have hardly touched the subject but I do 226hope this matter will be thoroughly investigated and I personally believe no person is more anxious for a federal investigation than the operator himself, although Mr. West says the operators oppose such an investigation.

[Industrial Department, the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association.]

Pittsburgh.

I went to the strike district unprejudiced. My instructions were to tell the truth about the situation. I did so to the best of my ability. I believe I was fair. In my article in The Survey I simply told what I saw in the mines. I believe such conditions as exist there are brutalizing in the extreme. I believe they are responsible for much of the lawlessness that exists throughout West Virginia.

In regard to the cost of the houses, I was told in the mines by a well informed man that the labor cost on a certain set of the cottages erected some years before had been $40 each. That is not at all unreasonable. Two carpenters at $2.50 a day each could build one of them in eight days. As I happen to be somewhat familiar with building operations I am confident that my figures are not out of the way, especially when you consider that the land on which the buildings stand cost little or nothing. The expense for lumber was only the cost of sawing the timber already at hand, plus the cost of window frames and doors, bricks for the chimneys, composition roofing and the little hardware required.

It is true that some of the things sold in the company stores are sold at prices no higher than those which prevail in Charleston. Some of the prices may even be lower. That is really not the point. It is the fact that men are compelled, by one means or another, to deal at the company stores. That has always been a grievance among miners. I reported the Frostburg strike in the George’s Creek region of Maryland twenty years ago for the Baltimore Sun. While the conditions there were ideal as compared with those now existing in the Kanawha valley, the company store was one of the greatest grievances of the men.

I stand by what I have said about the crowding of the mines and the mine guard system. I know the miners are not all they should be, but they are not to be measured by the standards among men whose opportunities have been greater. Theirs is a skilled occupation and a dangerous one. Yet they have few if any of the advantages of the men of other skilled occupations and live under conditions that are oppressive and brutalizing. The stock argument that they can earn anywhere from $3 to $6 a day if they work steadily is idle. No set of men who could earn from $18 to $36 a week would live under such conditions as prevail in the mines. Mr. Shaw says there is no calling which requires so little investment on the part of the worker that has such returns in money. That is a very broad statement. Investment in what, in tools or in time spent in learning the trade? How about the bricklayer, the Belgian block paver, the stone-mason, the plasterer or any one of a dozen trades that might be mentioned?

As for the desire of the operators for an investigation. I stated that the operators opposed such an investigation. Mr. Shaw has his belief that the operators would welcome one. I have the statement of the representative of the operators that they would oppose any investigation, state or federal, because of “its unsettling effect on the men.” And the letter of the operators opposing an investigation on the part of the state, proposed by the then Governor Classcock, and refusing to become a party to it, is on file among the records in the capitol of West Virginia.

My statements were conservative and most of them even at this late date are susceptible of proof by any commission of investigation. Finally it is up to the Survey readers whether they take the article seriously or not. If the criticisms of Mr. Shaw are the most serious that can be brought against my article, I do not fear that my reputation for accuracy will be greatly damaged.

[Staff of the Baltimore Sun.]

Baltimore.

The excuses of the St. Louis firms quoted by the Consumers’ League of that city are all too familiar to those who have been interested in the Saturday half-holiday elsewhere. There is always one department at least under the roof of every reluctant merchant which positively cannot be closed on Saturday afternoon and evenings for the two summer months, either because of the heavy trade on that day, or because competitors among the single-line stores keep open. Then there is the alleged hardship to working people in that their only shopping time would be taken away.

The one thing which is not heard from such employers in discussing the question is that Saturday is the day when clerks most need a respite, especially in cities where it is not only the weariest day, but the longest.

Has it occurred to the St. Louis League that the day of heaviest trade bears some relation to advertising? Their reactionary firm probably makes an advertising feature of Saturday bargain sales. This firm ought to realize that in cities where the Saturday half-holiday is most general and successful the Saturday trade has not been lost but has been readjusted by a shift of bargain sales to other days.

The argument based on the working-men’s need has a semblance of truth and might have more if the early closing were for more than the eight or nine Saturdays of July and August. Most working-men can arrange to do necessary shopping at some other time for those few weeks. Many of them in trades which have the eight hour day have the hour from five to six, in addition to the noon-hour daily—and in 227the case of family-buying there is the wife who is the natural shopper. When the matter came up in Syracuse labor leaders assured the Consumers’ League that the argument had no real basis.

Let us hope that the Consumers’ League of St. Louis may be able to convince its reactionary firm that the approval and consequent patronage of the public the year round is worth as much as its trade in men’s furnishings on Saturday afternoons of July and August.

[President Consumers’ League of Syracuse.]

Syracuse, N. Y.

It has always been a puzzle to me why the weekly half holiday, so strongly advocated for store and factory workers, should be Saturday rather than a mid-week afternoon and why all the stores in any city should close on the same afternoon.

Half the number closed on Wednesday, the others closed on Thursday afternoons would necessitate a change in pay day, possibly in positions where members of the same family work in different stores. Open stores on Saturday afternoon ought to be a help to the class of people who never have anything ahead, to keep the Sunday ordinances.

Ovid Center, N. Y.

The Survey of March 29 printed a letter from me telling of a problem with regard to Saturday afternoon summer closing. A St. Louis department store (one of a chain of stores established in various cities under one firm) kept open all last summer on Saturday afternoons. The president of the corporation told representatives of the Consumers’ League that the stock-holders would never consent to Saturday closing because a great bulk of business was done in the men’s furnishing department at this time, the only time men have for shopping.

A few weeks ago the Consumers’ League laid their problem before the Central Council of Social Agencies. The trades unions sent the firm word of their objection to the custom of remaining open Saturday afternoons during the summer months. The Retailers’ Association added their protest.

A committee from the Central Council called on the corporation president. He gave this committee the same negative answer that the Consumers’ League Committee had received. But the dismissal was not final. Soon he sent for the Central Council Committee to return. He gave them the news that the store would close Saturday afternoons during the summer months, as is the custom of all other large St. Louis department stores. He said that the firm had always done all in its power for its employes and, as it was agreed that keeping open Saturday afternoons was not consistent with the best welfare of the employes, the store would close at that time. Of course the contention that closing Saturday afternoons would deprive men of their shopping time and would only increase night shopping remains unanswered.

At any rate, the fear that other department stores might follow the example set by this particular one is banished.

St. Louis.

In the health section of your issue for April 19, the writer saw your article on Courses on Sex Hygiene. Considering the fact that these lectures were given expressly for social workers, it was surprising to learn that only the first few were well attended. If there is any subject demanding the attention of social workers, it surely is this most important one.

About eighteen months ago a young woman, a member of the Factory Committee of the Wolf Company’s plant, incidentally mentioned the interest taken in a series of lectures on this subject given to members of a girls’ club in one of the main social houses on the East Side. The question of giving these lectures was immediately taken up with the management, with the result that four series of four lectures each were given to about 175 employes. This was the first time that many of these workers had the opportunity of learning, in a dignified and instructive manner, the interesting story of reproduction.

The lectures were given by Nellie M. Smith whose book containing these talks, The Three Gifts of Life^[1] has recently been published, and many of those who attended the lectures purchased copies of this volume with the intention of giving them to their mothers or younger sisters to read.

These same lecturers are now being given by a large industrial corporation in this city which is always ready to investigate thoroughly, any work that makes for the betterment of the life of its workers. Furthermore, the question of giving these lectures to six other manufacturing establishments is now being seriously considered.

It might be well to mention that these lectures were merely announced to the workers and in no case was attendance compulsory. They were given without charge during regular working hours.

Our workers have surely benefited by the knowledge gained through this course and the writer trusts that many other manufacturing concerns will give this matter serious thought. It is an established fact that the worker cannot get full production from any power machine unless the human machinery is properly cared for, and but few persons thoroughly understand how to best care for themselves.

New York City.

It is not a little curious that in all the agitation on the vice question no one has suggested what has always seemed to me the evident solution of the whole matter. Without a second thought, if there were no men there would be no prostitutes; the men are the sole and only source of the whole evil. I am aware that segregation has its drawbacks. It does stimulate clandestine prostitution. It has the fault of legalizing a shameful business. Also under our present conditions it supplies an opportunity for graft. But overruling all these disadvantages is the fact that it facilitates the catching of the men. This is impossible in hotels and apartment houses, but if men found frequenting the segregated district were seized and submitted to compulsory examination, it would only be the blatant sinners who would ever run the risk, and the number of such customers would be greatly reduced.

This suggestion may appear Utopian, for do not the originators of prostitution themselves make the laws? However, there now seems some chance of the public conscience, male and female, being widely aroused and it is possible that the originators of the whole evil may not escape the dragnet.

Denver.

The present excessive demand for prostitution which comes largely from young boys is, I believe, caused by the nature of our present social organism which abnormally emphasizes the sex relation and puts it before every other influence a boy meets. Women’s dress, current literature, musical comedies and problem plays, “smutty” stories told by boys among themselves, even our advertisements—all combine to throw a fascinating glamor around sex indulgence and develop an abnormal instinct in our boys, which takes command of their nervous system and insists that sex indulgence is necessary.

The average boy of eighteen cannot think of marriage for economic reasons, but his nature craves action, and under these ever-present influences he comes to believe that the perfect “good time” is sex indulgence—and he will exercise all his ingenuity, when with a girl, to attain his goal. No one, who is not in the confidences of young people, has the least idea of the pressure thus brought to bear on girls. The girl finds it necessary in order to hold a boy’s attention, with the amusements and companionship that goes with it, to do as he wants; many girls fall through their perfectly natural desire for healthful recreation which they can get more plentifully by giving in—or through a sentimental desire to retain the favor of boys who are satisfied with nothing short of intercourse.

The ultimate remedy must be to put against this “prevailing spirit of the times” a powerful combatting influence, which will establish in our boys a high ideal of womanhood and marriage.

Swissvale, Pa.

Many persons interested in social betterment work, have written to me enquiring about the Free Acres Colony at Berkeley Heights, N. J.

If you can get along without gas and a janitor and plumbing and a land lord and other modern improvements, you can build your own one room tent-shaped bungalow for $40 there, and make your own clothes and be as respected as you are respectable. Later, you may make it your residence. Any handy man or woman might make a living chopping wood, or gardening, and so forth, and no one there will either give you anything or try to take anything away from you; for in this co-operative land-ownership there is no speculative element.

On a co-operative basis, Free Acres affords an opportunity to own a rural home without having to buy land. But it is as secure as buying, for the lease is a perpetual lease and can be transferred. At present it is pioneering; there are no established industries there as yet, but opportunity is open to anyone to establish them. You can lose yourself in the woods which surround the farm, although it’s only twenty-seven miles from the City Hall in New York.

New York City.

In 1908 when, after a revolution, Turkey proclaimed a constitutional government someone had to pay the penalty for the disturbance. As usual the Armenians paid it with the massacre of 25,000 Christians at Adana. Now that the Turk is being driven out of Europe upon whom is his wrath going to fall?

Greeks, Bulgarians, Servians and Roumanians all have served their time under the Turkish rule of massacre and oppression but they were fortunate. Geographical conditions helped them to free themselves. The Armenians revolted, too, although isolated from Christian neighbors and surrounded by ten Turks and Kurds to one Armenian.

The Armenian is the tiller of the land in Asia Minor. During the old regime because of the systematic oppression, some of the Armenians had to emigrate to earn a living. Others could not work their lands for the government had sold their oxen for taxes. The lands of these unfortunates, were grabbed by force by the Turks. For four years during the constitutional government this question was before the Turkish Parliament and was never settled. The Ottoman government can never realize that the poverty of the public means the poverty of the government.

Asiatic Turkey is blessed by fine agricultural land, yet Turkey instead of exporting wheat has to import flour. During the war while I was in Constantinople half of that city was without bread for a day and a half on one occasion. The soldiers brought over from Asia Minor were 229without food and they were plundering the bakeshops in the city.

In 1908 when Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the young Turks invited all the Moslem population of these regions to migrate to Turkey and promised them money and lands. Thousands responded but they were disappointed and were saddled on the Christian population of Macedonia. This started a natural hatred towards the Moslems, and when the war started these immigrants wisely flew towards Asia Minor, the promised land. The government is shipping them to Asia Minor and Armenia at the rate of 1,500 a day. What will become of the Armenians on whom is already saddled twice more than they can endure by the Asiatic horde of Turks and Kurds?

The war was renewed because Turkey did not wish to have a few Mosques in Adrianople under the Christian rule. Yet the Turk did not think anything about the ancient churches in Asia Minor that were defiled and ruined by the Moslem hordes, nor of the bodies of the clergy which were mutilated in time of peace.

What kind of government can one expect from a race that has no such thing as home and family in the civilized sense of domestic conduct, laws, sincerity and happiness? And what kind of laws and ruling can be expected for the infidel and subject race to the above government? Yet Europe will content itself believing that the Turk will be good hereafter and will enforce the traditionary promised reforms in Armenia.

New York City.

The Survey of April 12 announced the appointment of the new committees of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, stating that pursuant to the recent amendment to the by-laws Frank Tucker, the president of the conference had requested the committees to begin their work immediately. It was pointed out in your article that the Committee on Organization has been in many respects the keystone of the national conference and that its duties have been difficult and arduous.

Under the revised by-laws the duties of this committee are simplified. It is no longer obliged to make its report within a few days of its appointment. There are, however, certain disadvantages in the new plan from the point of view of members of the conference who desire to have a voice in its organization. Under the old plan, in spite of the fact that the committee was thrown into the turmoil of conference politics, the active members of the conference were all there and had an opportunity to be heard by the Committee on Organization. Under the new plan the committee is expected to have its work practically done by the time the conference meets. Unless the committee adopts a procedure which is democratic it may properly be open to the charge of making conference politics worse instead of better.

As chairman of the committee, therefore, I desire to announce through the columns of The Survey that it is the desire of Mr. Tucker and myself, in which I am sure the members of the committee concur, that all interested members of the National Conference of Charities and Correction will have ample opportunity to express their views in reference to matters with which the Committee on Organization is concerned. There will be a number of open meetings both before and after reaching Seattle at which all those interested in the conference will be welcome.

It is my desire that this committee shall truly represent the wishes of the conference with reference to all matters of organization. Inasmuch as the president is anxious that this committee shall have a tentative report ready soon after the conference opens in Seattle I wish to urge all readers of The Survey who are interested in the national conference to submit their suggestions as early as possible. We especially want your suggestions regarding the following:

1. Topics for discussion.

2. The names of the committees.

3. The membership of the committees, the committee chairmen and vice-chairmen.

The following dates have been set for open meeting: Friday, May 16; Tuesday, May 27; Friday, June 13.

These meetings will be held at 4 P. M., in Room 214, United Charities Building, 105 East 22nd Street, New York city. Kindly put the dates on your calendar. If you cannot come send your suggestions to the undersigned at the above address.

[Chairman Committee on Organization, National Conference of Charities and Correction.]

New York City.

During the year 1912, the Domestic Relations Court of Brooklyn, established in 1910, disbursed through the Department of Charities, which maintains a branch office in the court building, $101,660.45. That amount was made up of small payments ranging from $1 to $10, which the delinquent husband and father was ordered by the court to pay toward the support of his wife and children.

The method of disbursing the money is crude and archaic. The women are paid in cash at the cashier’s office in the court, thus necessitating the expenditure of time and carfare. The office of the cashier in the Brooklyn court is open from 9 A. M. until 3 P. M., except Saturday and Monday. Saturday the office closes at noon. On Monday only is there an evening session from 7 P. M. to 10 P. M. In Manhattan conditions are worse, for there banking hours are closely observed, and there is no evening session, though many of the women work during the day. Collection of the week’s money thus involved the loss of a half day’s work.

Mrs. A made nine trips to collect a total of $8, and from that must be deducted at least ninety cents for carfare, loss of time not being 230considered. Mrs. B is very old. Mrs. C is an invalid, Mrs. D has a very young child and four older children to look after. Mrs. E lives a long distance from the court. Her carfare is always twenty cents and frequently it is necessary for her to take the two youngest children with her. Mrs. F works during the day and goes to school at night. These are only a few of the many reasons why the present plan of payment should be abandoned.

Philadelphia disburses about $200,000 a year on cases of this kind. The money is paid by checks sent by mail. We are informed that no case of fraud has occurred. Chicago has a similar system that works equally well.

It was not to be expected that the originators of the Domestic Relations Court idea would construct a perfect machine, and efforts are being made to correct this defect by an order to the effect that any woman who can prove to the satisfaction of the Department of Charities that it is a great hardship for her to go to the court, can have her money sent by mail. Unfortunately, there is a lot of red tape in some of our city departments and often it is very hard to prove things to their satisfaction; so it is to be hoped that this order, which is a step in the right direction, will soon be stretched into a big, manly stride, long enough to cover all cases.

[Brooklyn Bureau of Charities.]

Brooklyn, N. Y.

In your issue of April 19 the splendid article on The Housing Problem As It Affects Girls, by the president of the Chelsea House, has greatly interested me. May I add a few words on the subject and the names of other cities where such houses are already started or are under consideration?

There is a splendid though small Girls Friendly Lodge in Washington, D. C. In Cincinnati the Anna Louise Home accommodates about 150 girls, and Bishop Frances of Indiana has converted his spacious school Knickerbocker Hall in Indianapolis into a boarding home for young girls. This, I suppose, is the most complete and pretentious house of its kind. It has a gymnasium, swimming pool, almost entirely single rooms, and will accommodate nearly one hundred girls. In Louisville besides the Girls Friendly Inn, there is the Business Woman’s Club which meets the needs of a better paid class of young women, and the Monfort Home which like the Inn meets the needs of a girl earning a more moderate wage.

I have had letters from all parts of the country asking questions relative to starting such homes, and know that the subject is under consideration in Denver; Watertown, N. Y.; Lexington, Ky.; Minneapolis; Memphis; and Mobile.

The cherished hope I believe of all such houses should be to make them self supporting. No self respecting girl wishes to be even a partial object of charity. From the starting of the Girls Friendly Inn we have aimed to make the house self supporting, and with the exception of the interest on the mortgage, the house mother’s salary and coal, the weekly income meets all the expenditures. As soon as we can enlarge the house it will be entirely self supporting. I find this a great help, in securing the co-operation of the girls and in preventing waste in light, water and so on. The dominating thought is to make the inn a normal home and with this in view there are almost no rules. No one but those close to the young working girl knows what it means to her to be able to entertain her “gentlemen friends” in a quiet and home-like living room or to be able to give a party or entertain her Sunday School class in an attractive room.

The problem of sickness is an important one. Girls must often struggle along half sick because they can not afford a doctor or medicine or because they are afraid of losing their position. The inn has an endowed bed in the Norton Infirmary, and the services of some of our best physicians, also a discount of 25 per cent on all drugs and prescriptions. I find a word from the house mother is always received kindly by the employer and in my experience of eighteen months I have never had a girl lose her work on account of sickness.

[Housemother Girls’ Friendly Inn.]

Louisville.

The following is a remarkable illustration of the advance in our conception of social obligations to unfortunates:

The president (of the Chicago Medical Society, December 13, 1867) “appointed a committee to consider the wisdom of the members of the society signing a petition requesting that the physician who was then imprisoned (Dr. Mudd) for caring for the wounds of Lincoln’s assassin should be released. The members of the society were of various opinions in regard to the ethical position of the unfortunate doctor.”^[2]

Chicago.

One of the greatest disfigurements to the landscape as one looks out the back window of the average house is the row after row of unsightly wooden fences which rigorously mark off each twenty-five or thirty feet of land and constitute a barrier of exclusiveness very chilling in its effect on one’s friendly disposition. Of course one does not want his neighbor’s children to tramp unceremoniously over his little flower or vegetable garden, but could not the same results he brought about by a simple wire division covered with virginia creeper, grapes or clematis? Think of the beauty of such an outlook, and the aesthetic humanizing effect such a display of 231floral wealth would have on the minds of young and old! It might possibly result also in breaking down some of that proverbial coldness and hauteur which is said to characterize city neighbors. Life is short at best and sufficiently lacking in familiarity and cordiality to warrant some attempt to reform the wooden back fence out of existence.

Toronto.

“We want to know ‘how the other half lives.’” This was said fifteen years ago, and we are saying it today. But it is the other half that we now have in mind. Library shelves are filled with books about the one half. Sociologists have studied it; health officers have examined it; sanitary boards have considered it; laws have been made to regulate it. Juvenile courts, protective leagues, visiting nurses’ associations, social settlements, charity organization societies, have been bringing us day by day information as to how that half lives. Now we want to know how the other half lives.

Recently there has been a great investigation of one special phase of the life of the poor. Great business firms have been asked how certain sums of their earnings were distributed as wages to the poor, and the wage-earners have been asked what use they made of these wages. How much do working girls receive and how much does a working girl need to live decently? These are the questions that have been asked. “We want to know more of the life of the working people,” has been the cry.

But wait. Now we want to know how the other half lives: Society is a whole, not a half. These great questions are questions of society, and they can not be answered by investigating half of society.

Yes, we want to know about the $2,000,000 that was paid in wages; to whom it went, and how it was spent, but we also want to know about the $7,000,000 that was paid in dividends. To whom did it go, and how was it spent? How much did the dividend receivers need a week on which to live? Were they judicious in their expenditures? These questions also ought to be investigated by a commission.

What do we know about the occupations, the health, the morality, the family life of the very rich?

If we are suspicious that the home life of the children of Mrs. Zambrowski of Mulberry street is not all that could be desired, we send a juvenile court officer to investigate. If there is evidence that the father is not honestly employed, if there is disease in the household, some officer is on hand to see what is the matter. What do we know of the home life of the Van Astor children? Is Mr. Van Astor an industrious bread earner? Are the home conditions of the Van Astor children morally healthful?

We want to know more about these excursions to Europe. Are they always cultural? We want to know more about the life of Mrs. Astorbilt in her Paris home. We want to know more about the employment conditions of the “Four Hundred.” Perhaps a law should be made in the interests of health limiting the number of continuous hours spent in certain social activities. We want to know more about the lives of boys and girls in wealthy boarding-schools. We desire to find out just how a working girl spends $8 a week, but we also wish to learn just how the dividend receiver spends $800 a week. The poor need visiting housekeepers to instruct them, but may not the wealthy need visiting home-keepers?

The unexplored continent of sociology is the life of the wealthy. It is to the interest of the health and well-being of society that a careful and dispassionate study be made of this subject.

Chicago.

There is a widespread opinion among social and industrial workers that the unequal conditions existing in human society are going to be levelled: that equality of opportunity and the more equitable distribution of the necessities of life are to be accomplished by a system of “passing it on.” In this way, the social burden, instead of resting where it does now, on the lowest stratum of the population, will be placed on broad shoulders better able to bear the load.

Do not such solutions as employers’ liability, workmen’s compensation, the minimum wage, reduced hours of employment and better occupational conditions all mean an increase in the cost of producing the necessaries of life? Do they not tend to make more grave one of the vital problems of the hour?

There seems to be a feeling abroad, of which many are possessed, that there is somewhere a great fund of capital on hand, which only needs equitable distribution to allow all now engaged in industry to live in comfort, with only a moderate amount of exertion.

This is the result, probably, of seeing large rows of figures, stated as the wealth controlled by financial institutions, or in the possession of individuals. Most of these figures refer to pieces of paper, either evidences of debt, or titles to ownership of lands, factories or other tools of trade. Not one of these is available for furnishing the necessities of life, without human labor applied at the right time and place under competent direction.

There is produced, by direction, foresight and toil, in any given year, hardly more of any stated necessity of life than the current needs of the people. It is probably true also that it is the thrift of the few; the foresight of the so-called capitalist; the enterprise of the manufacturer, builder or railroad man, the wise ventures of the merchant and trader; that keep up the present standard of wages and living—low though it may be in comparison with our wishes or ideals.

232A large number of those engaged in business enterprises fail to succeed at all. The profit of the more successful, though often imposing, averages a very small percentage counting both good and bad years. It is easily turned into a loss, by dull times, trade changes, or careless management.

To quote Ray Stannard Baker (not writing in behalf of the mill owner) in his article on the Lawrence strike: “If one were to divide all the surplus of profit in the textile mills today—figure it out for yourself! It would increase their wages and improve their living conditions almost inappreciably.”^[3]

So it is evident that if employment is to continue and a larger share is to be given to those who perform the manual labor, while at the same time the conditions under which they work are to be improved, some means must be devised whereby the present margin of profit can be increased. Otherwise those who plan and carry on these industrial undertakings will be discouraged.

Of course many believe that capital, or business enterprise, has had too much attention already. Now that the capitalist “class” (mostly made up of men formerly poor) has shown the way to the accumulation of wealth, they think it is simply necessary for “society” or “the workers” to do the same thing themselves, and pocket the results. But how this is to be done has not yet been shown.

How can the employer treat his working force more generously, without the fear of insolvency staring him in the face, when the books are balanced for the year?

One of the most hopeful solutions was promised in the new “efficiency” discoveries. These seemed to indicate that a larger output by the worker could bring about a greater reward for himself, together with a corresponding increased profit for the employer.

But, so far, the attitude of “labor” seems to be opposed to anything like an increase either of efficiency or production. Reduction of hours and minimum of output, seem to be favored. The false idea is that more “work” is thereby created, although the amount of the absolute necessaries of life which their labor produces is thereby curtailed. Their idea is that they do not get their share of the “wealth” they already produce; that a constantly increasing mass of it is kept out of their reach. They wish to seize part of it, not by earning, but by taking it from the present recipients.

So we are brought back to the original issue. How can it be brought to pass that the director of enterprise on capitalist, whose brains are the creating power of the world’s wealth, shall be filled with an altruistic spirit that he may spare and increase all benefits and comforts with his manual helpers? And how, on the other hand, can we inspire the worker, under his direction, with loyal energy to do all in his power to support and carry on the wealth-producing enterprise, each emulating each with noble example and worthy sacrifice?

Here should come in the twin forces of education and religion. Enlightenment will be of no avail without a moral basis. The fundamentals of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule must have a place in our great educational system which should teach men that there is a higher element in life than the facts of science and material things.

This new social adjustment, if it is to come peaceably and not through anarchy, must find new and able leadership which does not resort to loud protestations of devotion to one class combined with denunciation of another, or to vague cries of “social justice,” or to illusory schemes for levelling inequalities that are imbedded in human nature itself. What is needed is a leadership founded in a love for mankind, wide as the race, broad-minded, hopeful, strong and sane, to help the new generation forward in progress that shall also be peace.

New York.

“Motherhood and teaching”^[4] was an issue in Minneapolis not long ago, and the school board decided against the employment of married women. The board was influenced according to report, by the fact that there were poor teachers who married and this was a comfortable way to dispose of them, regardless of the injustice to the good ones. I understand that in Kansas there is a state law prohibiting the employment of married women. Were this policy applied to men teachers it would be ridiculed. Marriage is a strong factor in developing permanence of interest in the vocation and in blending vocational interest with community interest.

The ability to teach is dependent upon qualities which are mental and temperamental. The hours and the character of the work of a teacher are such as are peculiarly adapted to the woman who may marry and who may have children; and her fuller experience in life should make possible a fuller understanding of the needs of childhood.

It is generally recognized that our schools have deteriorated. Would not a very simple remedy be the employment of mothers as well as fathers? Would not they understand better than others what the children need?

When education was in the home it was proper that mothers should be teachers. With the socialization of education as of industry, a celibate class has arisen to take the place of mothers. Mothers have become the parasites of society, while constructive work in social service has devolved upon a celibate class. We have reached the stage now when society needs every possible constructive factor and the latent possibilities for social work in the married woman should be encouraged rather than discarded.

[President Liberal Union of Minnesota.]

Minneapolis.