Dr. DOWLING—Mr. Chairman, Members of the National Conservation

Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are very glad to have this

opportunity to appear before this great Congress. In the beginning

I want to say that we owe much of our enthusiasm to the good work

of the Indiana State Board under Dr. Hurty, and to your pure food

department, under Dr. Barnard; also to Dr. Evans, of Chicago, and

Dr. Wiley, of Washington. We have endeavored to imitate them in some

ways, but nevertheless, in some ways we have fallen short.

Hygiene, the science of preservation and promotion of health, in

some form, has been recognized by every nation since the dawn of

civilization.

Among the people of antiquity, conquest and domination were directly

dependent on physical vigor, hence their laws regulating this feature

of national life. Among the Greeks, the health idea was embodied

in the cult of Hygeia which arose hundreds of years before the

Christian era, consequent probably to a devastating plague. In the

early period of Rome, when courage and patriotism were cardinal

virtues, physical development was provided for and emphasized. Social

and political fluidity in the middle ages precluded the evolution of

organized thought or systems in sanitary science.

Individuals set aside conventional thought and method and strove with

Nature that they might learn her secrets; their work was not in vain,

but with few exceptions their discoveries were unimportant.

The experimental method popularized in Baconian philosophy gave an

impetus to the study of the physical sciences, but many decades

passed before notable deeds were recorded. It was the nineteenth

century, scientific in spirit and achievement, that made vital the

long result of time and opened a perspective before undreamed of. The

awakened health conscience of today is the crystallized result.

In scientific annals, the discoveries of the bacteriologist rank

among the first. Perhaps, in the evolution of knowledge no truths are

more potential. Within a generation the influence is marked, not only

in relation to the individual and community, but in effect on the

civilized world. The sanitarian with this knowledge was enabled to

demonstrate control of environment. The success of the experiment has

opened a new world just as surely as did the discovery of October,

1492.

The changed viewpoint of the relative value of hygiene in its

application to life is due not wholly to the discoveries in medical

science. It is one phase of the general awakening to the defects of

the present social order: a manifestation of the modern attitude

toward “waste.” Efficiency implies economy, not alone of expenditure,

but of material resource and vital force.

Conservation and preservation of the material wealth of the country

is dominant in the intellectual activity of all enlightened people.

But it becomes increasingly apparent that the Nation which conserves

its mines, forests, soil and sources of power is poor indeed if its

men lack virility and mental initiative. This thought is back of the

public health movement. The impulse is in part commercial, in part

scientific. It grows out of recognition of the futility of remedial

and philanthropic measures and the conviction of the potentialities

of science for human betterment. In import the movement is ethical

and spiritual; it is beyond question the greatest of modern times.

This meeting is significant of the changed attitude toward the

Nation’s greatest natural resource—its people. The Congress is

national, its purpose conservation, its main topic—to quote from the

invitation—the conservation of vital resources. There is significance

also in the topics selected for discussion in the health section.

They relate to the larger aims of sanitary science. In the popular

mind health work has reference only to superficial conditions,

control of epidemics, cleaning of streets and similar activities, but

the hygienist knows that sanitary regeneration means an attack on

many existing institutions, customs, practices and methods that lie

deep in the roots of the social structure.

Housing, child labor, industrial occupations, labor insurance, vital

statistics, food supply, community methods and conditions are the

subjects chosen for discussion. Their primary importance is apparent.

The period of twenty minutes allotted for the opening of this

division makes imperative only brief suggestive statements of

the essentials in their relation to public health and individual

well-being.

Mr. Lawrence Veiller, in the Annals of the American Academy, says:

“We have paid dear for our slums.... No one has ever attempted to

estimate the cost to the Nation of our bad housing conditions,

because it is an impossible task.... Who can say of the vast army of

the unemployed how large a portion of the industrially inefficient

are so because of lowered physical vitality caused by disadvantageous

living conditions? Of the burden which the State is called on to

bear in the support of almshouses for the dependent, hospitals for

the sick, asylums for the insane, prisons and reformatories for the

criminal, what portion can fairly be attributed to adverse early

environment?” Describing surroundings, the author continues: “The

sordidness of it all, the degrading baseness of it, unfortunately is

withheld from the eyes of most of us. What it can mean to the people

who have to live in the midst of it we can but faintly conceive.

Let us frankly admit that these conditions result in imposing upon

the great mass of our working people habits of life that are more

compatible with the life of animals than with that of human beings.”

Moreover, not alone in the slums do these conditions exist. In almost

every city of the Union, a few blocks from the main thoroughfares,

there are congested districts unspeakably bad.

With the knowledge we now have of the relation to health and sickness

of air, sunlight and propagating agencies of disease incident to

dirt, it is nothing short of criminal to tolerate such conditions.

If physical suffering only were the result, indifference would be

unpardonable, but overcrowded homes, insanitary in every respect,

make for low standards of decency and morality. Vice, with its

correlatives, disease and pauperism result. Often crime and insanity

make the chain complete. The conditions of life in the middle ages as

recorded in history seem to us barbarous in the extreme; relatively,

ours really are. Then, there was no certainty as to the effect of

insanitary environment; the people did not know; we do, yet with

inexplicable indifference communities not only let the worst obtain,

but they permit a perpetuation of the system. Authorities stand

aghast at the expense involved in the tearing away of a whole section

of a city, but the cost of such a measure easily, often probably,

may become a mere item in comparison with the economic loss from an

epidemic of a virulent type.

It is a hopeful sign that a few enlightened municipalities have set

an example in remodeling districts, not only in the erection of

comfortable homes, but further in the establishment of healthful

and beautiful environments. The housing problem is one of the

most difficult and complex of our day. It can be solved only by

enlightened legislation supported by public opinion.

About a century and a quarter ago the factory system began to

develop with intensity in England. Later, in this country, it grew

by leaps and bounds. Child labor with its attendant evils was a

logical result. For nine years there has been systematic effort to

control the unhygienic features of the system. Some good has been

accomplished, but because of the nature of the problem progress

is slow. The injury to the child is plainly apparent. Long hours

in poorly ventilated rooms, with constant use of the same set of

muscles, stunts and dwarfs the body; equally, the mind. Toil of this

nature uses up the young life; it leaves the State the burden of

caring for an individual hopelessly inefficient if not worse. But

of more importance is the consequential physical deterioration. If

these youthful toilers grow to maturity their bodies are devitalized;

if they marry their children are almost invariably low in vitality.

Hygiene in its application does not imply the remedy of existing

conditions alone for the individual or the present; it looks to

the future. Therefore, protection of the child is a principle of

paramount importance.

Child labor laws are now more humane than a few years ago; conditions

in many factories have been vastly improved. But as yet we are far

from an ideal stage in the regulation and supervision of this feature

of industrial life.

Every argument concerning the employment of children in factories

may be applied to women engaged in similar occupations. In the mills

and shops where women stand all day, where they endure for hours not

only unhygienic environment, but in addition mental anxiety, where

the whip “employed by the week only” is held over them, the nervous

strain as well as physical exertion saps the very foundations of

vitality. Investigations made by Dr. R. Morton of New York, show

the health of industrial women is proving a serious thing in the

United States, and unless conditions are bettered that there will

be a general breakdown of the working women of the country. Nor is

this the sum total of the consequences. In the children of these

women low vitality is perpetuated. Records quoted by Dr. George Reid,

Health Officer of Stafford, England, give the mortality of children

under one year of age as greater among those of mothers who work in

factories than among home mothers. Statistics compiled by him show

the death rate one hundred and forty-five per one thousand births for

infants of home mothers and two hundred and nine per one thousand

births for infants of mothers who work in factories. The injury to

the State is apparent.

On the question of prevention of occupational diseases, I cannot

do better than quote the measures suggested by Dr. H. Linenthal,

of Boston. They are: collection of accurate data about working

conditions; data relative to the effect of occupation on mortality;

proper medical instruction; reporting to health authorities specific

industrial diseases; examination of all industrial workers; exclusion

of minors and women from certain industries; sanitary laws for

factories; regulation of dangerous trades by health authorities, and

the carrying of an educational campaign of hygiene among employers

and employes. The comprehensiveness of these measures indicates the

extension of the problem. No movement of recent times is more humane

and economic than the one termed industrial insurance.

The purpose is the capitalization of the workingman’s energy at the

time of his greatest productivity; the basic principle that every

far-sighted social policy is founded more on energy reserve than

money reserve. The aim is to secure for the nation the greatest

possible reserve of bodily and mental force and power and physical

and moral health.

The problem has been attacked in various ways by different

countries. Germany has been the most successful. There the

workingman’s insurance has attained the dimension of a gigantic

social institution. Dr. Frederick Zahn of Munich, Director of

the Bavarian Statistical Office, in a recent address, gave the

following interesting figures: Out of 16,000,000 laborers in Germany,

14,000,000 are carrying sick insurance, and 15,700,000 invalid and

old age policies.

In the past twenty-five years over one billion six hundred million

dollars have been paid in benefits. In addition, prophylactic

measures are provided for.

Only those familiar with the necessities for correct data in health

work appreciate the immediate and imperative need for statistical

information. Records of births and deaths and of supplementary

details form a basis for advancement. Without such data, the

sanitarian gropes in the dark. Yet no request from the health

department is so lightly treated. Reform in this can be wrought

slowly. Appropriations to pay registrars and enforcement through the

courts are the means for the inauguration of a more perfect system.

One of the hygienic essentials in this country is education in the

relative values of food products. The phenomenal growth of the urban

population which has reduced the number of producers and the almost

universal practice of adulteration make imperative the enforcement of

stringent laws and instruction in the nutritive value of classes of

foods and the economy of selection.

The campaign for a supply of clean, pure milk in many centers has

grown out of the effort to lower the infant mortality rate. It has

stimulated inquiry and supervision of other food products which is

encouragingly prophetic.

Hygiene in its application to personal and community life is

essentially preventive. This idea is not sufficiently understood to

be taken at its real value; curative measures the people commend,

but possible calamity seems remote, therefore, prevention does not

appeal. It is this concept of the collective mind that lies back of

the extravagant parsimony universal in health appropriations. It also

explains public apathy and indifference.

The most practical means for sanitary progress are two, education of

all the people in the primary truths of hygiene, and the application

of the science through governmental agencies. These are so closely

related that they are practically inseparable, but logically may be

differentiated.

Hygiene is an organized science; its principles are rational and

demonstrable; its application will bring returns economic, ethical

and spiritual. This must be acceptably taught to the people by

methods suited to the present state of the public mind. Conviction

that will lead to action is the end to be sought. Education will

create a public sentiment persistent and insistent for measures

promotive of public good. Concomitant with this effort, in fact a

part of it, the various units of government should be executives

in the establishment of hygienic measures and the abolition of

insanitary conditions. When people believe that the eradication of

typhoid fever and hookworm disease is more important than high or

low tariff; when they become convinced that malaria is a national

disgrace and uncleanliness a relic of barbarism, there will be money

and judicial decisions for the elimination of these defects.

Fortunately, these are the views of an increasingly large number of

people. There is a health awakening. The principles of the science

of health are every day becoming concrete in laws, and habits of

thought and living. It is the conviction of the progressive minority

that a Nation’s first duty is to conserve and protect its citizens,

to develop a community of efficient men and to minimize natural

disadvantages. Further, that collective intelligence must plan for

the preservation of the people and the perpetuity of the State, and

in so doing must recognize public health as fundamental, both in the

simple phases and in its comprehensive aspect. (Applause.)

President WHITE—The next subject to be discussed is by one who

employs labor in the State of Indiana, and who is a large employer of

labor. His subject is “The Duty of the Employer.” I now take pleasure

in introducing to you Dr. Edward A. Rumely, of Laporte, Indiana.

Dr. RUMELY—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Four generations

ago, there were but three millions of Americans scattered along

the Atlantic Seaboard. Back of them was a vast virgin continent,

the richest the white man had ever found in the long migration upon

which our race started ages ago. The American continent was rich in

timber, in the soil fertility of its vast valleys and prairies, and

rich beyond measure in the superabundant deposits of mineral wealth.

The first settlers were few in number; they brought with them but

few tools and little wealth that today we would call capital. It was

the natural and proper thing for them to set to work to gain, with

the least possible labor, the great natural wealth that the virgin

continent treasured for them.

They killed the fur-bearing animals, felled the trees to export

lumber, dug in the quickest way the mineral wealth of the land and

started to grow such crops as would carry to market the greatest

value from the fertility of the virgin prairies. Wheat was easily

transported, and each bushel contained from twenty to thirty cents

of soil value. Hence with wheat our prairies were taken under

cultivation, and from the returns of the wheat crops cities and

railroads and homes were paid for.

Only today, when the average yield per acre has gone down from forty

to thirteen bushels are we beginning to see clearly that by this

process we have been drawing heavily upon our soil capital.

While the population was small, labor was difficult to secure. Cities

had to be built, roadways opened, railroads constructed, rivers

bridged, and a continent brought under subjection. The process of

the past four generations was possible only because our fathers

economized their own labor and created, as fast as possible, the

values they needed to barter off into the markets of the world for

capital from the superabundant natural wealth that surrounded them.

Today, we are mining our iron, copper, lead and other metals more

rapidly than any other country in the world. The pioneer farmers

who worked the soils of the south with tobacco and of the east with

wheat, can no longer move off to the west, when, having exhausted the

fertility of our lands, they find farming no longer profitable. The

hundred thousand vigorous Americans who went last year to Canada with

energy, capital and American tools are a concrete evidence that we

have reached the end of the course which we have been traveling.

The whole country has been startled by the warning of the far-sighted

men, and now the demand for conservation of our natural wealth is

becoming more and more insistent. We have been made to realize that

every child born brings a mouth that must be fed, a body that must

be sheltered and clothed, but no increase in natural wealth. We must

still learn that every child does bring two hands which can work,

and which, when highly trained and backed by scientific knowledge,

can create untold values. Stated otherwise, we must care for our

increasing population, not by increased exploitation of our natural

stores, but by providing abundant work for skilled labor.

AMERICAN FARM MUST BE FACTORY—NOT A MINE.

Our agriculture has been a process of mining. The farm must now

furnish a field for the profitable employment of skilled labor,

for the use of capital, and the application of the principles of

scientific management, becoming thereby a workshop instead of a mine.

In order to sell the labor power of our people, we must encourage the

development of all secondary industries. By “secondary industries” I

mean those industries which take raw materials that are largely the

product of crude machinery and unskilled labor, and add to them in a

large measure labor and capital values.

The agricultural implement manufacturer purchases steel and iron

at approximately one cent per pound, and by further refinement

creates implements worth eight cents to twenty cents per pound. The

automobile maker takes lumber and iron, worth from two cents to

four cents per pound, and produces a car worth from thirty cents

to one dollar per pound, while the same materials, worked up into

cash registers, typewriters, etc., would be worth from $3 to $10 per

pound, and in watches from $50 to $5,000 per pound.

CREATE VALUES FROM LABOR.

We began by cutting the maple tree into a cord of wood, worth from

three to seven dollars, and each tree furnished material for one

day’s work. This same tree—if sawed into lumber—is worth twenty

dollars and would furnish employment for one man for three or four

days. If quarter-sawed and more carefully treated, it might be worth

forty dollars and would furnish employment for more skilled and

better paid workers and for a period of from ten to twelve days. And

this same lumber, in a furniture factory would produce furniture

worth from $100 to $500 and would furnish employment directly and

indirectly equal to from six months to one year’s work for one man.

The whole range of values in this series, from the seven dollars’

worth of cord wood or $500 worth of manufactured goods, depends

upon the degree of refinement extended to identically the same raw

material through the quality and quantity of labor employed upon

it, the capital expended and the application of greater scientific

knowledge to the processes of production.

The secondary industries that we must now begin to encourage are

characterized by a wide variety of work. They have different

standards, are not easily susceptible to organization on a large

scale, and hence politically have never acted as a concerted and

effective force. The National Association of Manufacturers has been

held together largely by an exaggerated emphasis upon the struggle

against trades unionism. This ideal of strife with labor is no

longer sufficient, and many believe that much more can be gained

by co-operating with labor to build up the productive power of our

people.

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES AND CONSERVATION.

Today, the interests of the secondary manufacturer coincide closely

with the demands of the conservation movement, and with the best

interest of the Nation. The secondary manufacturer needs a permanent

supply of raw materials. It is to his interest to see that coal,

lumber, iron, electric power generated from our waterfalls, and

every other raw material of manufacture be permanently available

at reasonable prices. Where undue monopoly of the power of such

raw materials exists, the secondary manufacturer will be acting in

accordance with his own enlightened interests if he helps to restrict

and regulate by political action. Reckless exploitation, leading to

exhaustion of any natural store, threatens the very existence of his

business.

In order to produce in large quantities, the secondary manufacturer

must sell into broad markets; must use freely and extensively

the transportation systems of the country. He realizes that the

development of railroading in the United States (which surpasses that

of any other country in the world, and has knit together a population

of a hundred millions with great buying and consuming power into

one homogeneous market) is one of our great national assets. On the

basis of this broad market, quantity manufacture can be developed as

nowhere else in the world.

President WHITE—Before introducing the next speaker, I will read a

letter from Dr. Charles A. Doremus, of New York, whom we expected to

be here.

NEW YORK, September 30, 1912.

Mr. J. B. White, President of the Fourth National Conservation

Congress:

Dear Sir—Much to my regret I am prevented from attending the

sessions of the Congress, though appointed to represent, as a member

of its Committee, the American Electrochemical Society.

One of the matters detaining me is work in connection with the

American Museum of Safety, which is doing progressive work to

conserve human life. There are now twenty-two such museums and

their beneficial influence is being felt here and abroad. The

large corporations have been enlisted in the work of accident

prevention and allied topics and the recent congresses, the Eighth

International Congress of Applied Chemistry and the International

Congress of Hygiene and Demography, have awakened great public

interest in all that pertains to the preservation of health and life.

May the Congress over which you have the distinguished honor to

preside still further enlist our people to safeguard not only our

material wealth but the people themselves.

I have the honor to be,

Yours very respectfully,

CHARLES A. DOREMUS.

President WHITE—I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Dr.

J. N. Hurty, of Indianapolis, President of the American Public

Health Association, and Indiana Health Commission, who will speak on

“Conservation of the Human Race.”

Dr. HURTY—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

High authority says we are only fifty per cent. efficient; that

we live out less than one-half the natural duration of life, that

we consume twice as much food as is needed to maintain efficient

life, that we waste as much as we use, and that one-half of all

human beings born either die before reaching maturity or fall

into the defective, delinquent or dependent classes. In these

facts we find reasons why we waste the major portion of all our

resources and call it development. In these facts we find reasons

for the existence of robber taxation and predatory business. For, a

people who waste themselves, will, of course, waste their natural

resources. Therefore, the first, the most important, the fundamental

conservation, is the conservation of human efficiency. A people

who cannot be brought to a realization of the fact that they lead

only half lives, and, who realizing, will not end, will show the

nations-to-come what fools the present mortals were.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

Length of life is a resultant of strength. “Honor thy father and thy

mother that thy days may be long in the land the Lord thy God giveth

thee.” It is an honor and it is a strength, for a nation to have a

low sickness and a low death rate with their consequent lengthened

average duration of life. In India, the average length of life is

twenty-five years, in the United States, forty, in England, forty, in

Germany, forty-three and in Sweden, forty-five. The natural duration

is one hundred years. Metchnikoff, after thirty years of study of

disease and death says, only a very few die natural deaths, most of

mankind commit suicide. That is, most people do not know how, or will

not, conserve their vitality, and thus results a greater or less

period of disability and inefficiency with premature death. Nature

does no fooling, she has her laws and they are enforced up to the

handle.

VITAL ASSETS.

Comparison of vital and physical assets as measured by earning

power, show that the vital are three to five times the physical.

The facts show that there is as great room for improvement in our

vital resources as in our lands, water, minerals and forests; and

furthermore, this improvement must come first for through human life

only is natural conservation possible. The dead past may bury the

dead, but living and strong men, not the weakly and sickly, must do

the work of Conservation.

ILLNESS.

From our vital statistics, which constitutes the bookkeeping of

humanity, we learn that fully 100,000 people in Indiana are sick at

all times, 25,000 of whom are consumptives. Not less than half of

this is preventable, and three-fourths may be prevented by strong

effort. Eighteen experts in various diseases as well as vital

statisticians, have contributed data on the ratio of preventability

of the ninety different causes of death into which mortality may be

classified. From this data according to Fisher, it is found that

fifteen years at least could be at once added to the average lifetime

by practically applying the science of preventing disease. More

than half of this additional life would come from the prevention of

tuberculosis, typhoid fever and five other diseases, the prevention

of which could be accomplished by purer air, purer water and purer

milk. Let the business men, who are in the saddle and who run our

affairs, thoroughly consider this. They surely know that disease and

premature death are drags to business. Fifteen more years of life to

each citizen means an enormous increase in the strength and happiness

of the people, with consequent betterment to business.

_Minor Ailments_ must be thoroughly considered in any steps toward

the conservation of vitality. They are far more common and farther

reaching than is generally realized. They are chiefly functional

disorders such as of intestinal canal, heart, nerves, liver, kidneys,

etc. These disorders are gateways to the more serious disorders.

Those who neglect colds, or what seems to be colds, will prepare the

tissues of the respiratory tract for pneumonia and consumption.

Benjamin Franklin, wise and practical, successful as merchant,

scientist, and statesman, said—“The having of colds is a great

drawback. I notice when I have one my efficiency is greatly

decreased. Thought, judgment and understanding are clouded.

Furthermore, I notice that colds follow excess in eating and drinking

and the much breathing of bad air. They are quite unnecessary.” The

losses due to mistakes in business and in the general conduct of life

on account of minor ailments cannot be estimated except perhaps as

time lost. A study of the matter shows that the time lost cannot be

less than four days annually to each supposedly well man. Applying

this to the wage earners of Indiana, counting one wage earner to

each five people, making 500,000 in all, and we have to pocket an

annual loss of 2,000,000 days or 5,470 years. In dollars, counting

the average wage at $500 per annum, the loss amounts to $2,735,000

annually. This is certainly a prodigious loss to suffer in Indiana

because of minor ailments, all of which can practically be avoided by

proper public and private hygiene.

Neurasthenia, so common in the United States, is one of the most

serious and insidious introductions to grave disorders, which may be

due to depraved nutrition, to needless worry, or failure to have

adequate recreation.

_Patent Medicines._ A source of drug habit, ill health, disease,

inefficiency and race poisoning, militating against business is the

horrible patent medicines. Medicines at their best, given under

skilled medical direction are very dangerous things. (Applause.)

The drug addicts, made so by a certain kind of practitioners, by

self doctoring, and the taking of patent medicines, are numbered by

hundreds of thousands. A large proportion of drunkards are started on

their way by taking tonics. It is mostly the alcohol in tonics which

produce the seeming improvement and which give temporary relief,

but which invariably make the last state worse than the first.

Alcohol, and all other drugs, are more dangerous than dynamite,

and trade in them should be restricted more severely than trade in

dynamite. (Applause.) The earth has been ransacked for drugs to cure.

Everywhere we see emblazoned advertisements of medicines which the

ad says will cure every disease from corns and ingrowing toenail to

syphilis and gonorrhea; and yet, sickness and disease grow apace with

our civilization. The world has been fine-combed from the equator

to the poles for a something with which to bring health and prolong

life; and lo, and behold, like the blue bird, these blessings are in

every household patiently waiting to be called. At present, we are

in the patent-medicine stage of ignorance, from which we must emerge

before real conservation of human life and energy can be realized.

(Applause.)

SCHOOL HYGIENE.

In conserving vitality, the child must have physical defects removed

as far as possible, then he must be brought up amidst healthful

surroundings and itself trained in all that conserves health. This

great State of Indiana has already taken steps in this direction.

The 67th General Assembly ordained that the schoolhouses hereafter

built shall be sanitary in all particulars. This means, that waste

of money and waste of child strength and happiness, shall cease in

this fair State so far as this one matter goes. The same assembly

has given permission to school authorities to institute medical

inspection of school children that they may be relieved of morbid

physical conditions which cause pain, inefficiency, illness and

early death. It was a marked forward step to grant this privilege

but it was a mistake of the Legislature in favor of loss of vitality

not to make this practical care of children compulsory. Physical

strength is the fundamental requirement for the making of children

into educated and moral citizens. There is now a world-wide movement

led by Switzerland and heathen Japan to save children and make them

strong. A Japanese physician traveling in this State said—“We have

relatively fewer short graves in our cemeteries.” The intelligence

and business sense of a community could be accurately measured by

determining its relative number of short graves. Youth is the time

to serve the Lord. We must train the body in youth as well as the

mind or the opportunity to conserve vitality is largely lost. A far

better business scheme than securing more factories would be for the

business men to turn their attention to the conservation of human

vitality. The returns would be immense, failure to score in such an

effort is impossible.

Hygiene has been permitted to extinguish cholera and yellow fever,

and by the grace of private benefaction it will soon banish hookworm

disease which now incapacitates 2,000,000 people in the South. And

may God hasten the business men to permit hygiene to banish those

twin leprosies, syphilis and gonorrhea, which are important factors

in the causation of insanity, crime, and pauperism, and which so

fearfully wreck the lives of so many innocent women and children

as well as wreck the lives of the guilty. (Applause.) Syphilis and

gonorrhea are responsible for the existence of a large proportion of

defectives of various kinds which fill our institutions. Let hygiene

drive these plagues away, and, Indiana, instead of building another

insane hospital, for another million dollars, which she must shortly

do, could donate one of the five now existent to educational use of

some kind. (Applause.) I strongly advise Indiana to listen to the

health cranks if she wishes to save health, time and money.

SAVING VITALITY.

“_Strength, Endurance and Fatigue_, are the three great elements to

be considered in conserving life. The measure of strength is the

force a muscle can exert once, the measure of endurance is the number

of times it can repeat an exertion. Fatigue is caused by fatigue

poisons, which must be removed from the body during rest, principally

during sleep.

Anything, therefore, which reduces strength and lessens endurance and

prevents removal of fatigue is inimical to vitality conservation.”

SCIENCE OF LIVING.

The science of living begins at the mouth. Barring the taking of

drugs, as a man eats and digests his foods so he is. Owing to drug

taking and errors in human feeding, disease is latent in man at all

times. Only a few escape sickness and pain and die natural deaths.

This is not as nature would have it. Josh Billings, recovering from

heart trouble caused by the excessive use of tobacco said—“Nature

made us all right, we make fools of ourselves.” Other drugs which are

of almost universal use and which affect heart, nerves or efficient

elimination are coffee, tea, spices, cocaine, morphine, chloral and

alcohol. (Applause.) All of these are drugs, and all are poisons, and

all more or less disturb the vital functions, reducing vitality and

efficiency.

Any departure from unstimulated nutrition works harm. Stimulated

nutrition is unnatural, and perforce, is opposed to strength.

Immoderate eating—feasting and gluttony—reduce vitality and induce

disease with its consequent inefficiency. A very old adage says—“Most

men dig their graves with their teeth.” The old time author of this

was striving for the conservation of human vitality. Immoderate

amounts of nitrogenous foods, exemplified in white of egg and

lean meats, cause auto-intoxication. They do this by undergoing

putrefaction in the digestive tract, thus making toxins, which in

turn being absorbed into the body, cause the following train of

ills which results in loss of vitality and efficiency. Some of the

auto-intoxication or over-eating ills, are—biliousness, coated

tongue, foul breath, clammy hands, clammy feet, dry lusterless

hair, putty complexion, dulled hearing, dulled vision, dulled

taste, dulled smell, early loss of memory, loss of continuous

thought and attention, headaches, vertigo, dyspepsia, loss of

strength, rheumatism, insomnia, fugitive pains and aches, hysteria,

nervousness, nightmare, irregular heart, shortness of breath, brittle

nails, dry harsh skin, cancer and premature old age of the doddering

and slobbering kind. (Applause.)

Until we learn and practically apply the science of living we cannot

attain over 50 or 60 per cent. efficiency and must continue to live

lives of sickness, pain and disease, and die before the natural

duration of life has one-half expired; and if this does not hinder

and delay the conservation of natural resources nothing will.

“_Over-fatigue_, is a cause of loss of vitality. The present working

day from a physiological standpoint is too long. Over-work better

expressed by the term over-fatigue, starts a vicious circle leading

to the craving of means for deadening fatigue, thus inducing drug

habits and drunkenness.”

“Experiments in reducing the length of the working day show a great

improvement in the physical and mental efficiency of laborers and

results in an increased output sufficient to pay the difference.

However, the great justification of the shorter day is found in

the interests of the race and nation, not the employer. Public

safety requires, in order to avoid railway collisions and other

accidents, the prevention of long hours; lack of sleep and undue

fatigue is quite as great as the waste from serious illness. A

typical succession of events is, first, fatigue, then “colds,” then

tuberculosis, then death. In order to prevent in the beginning this

increasing line of destructive agencies, undue fatigue must be

prevented.”

HEREDITY.

Vitality largely rests upon inherited qualities. A child born of

weak parents, those parents having received their weakness by

inheritance, will itself be weak in the same way. Idiots breed

idiots. Whatever improvement the child may enjoy, must rest upon its

inherited foundation. If a child inherits brown eyes they must stay

brown, no amount of cultivation may change their color, but inherited

weak sight may be improved to a greater or less degree. Two forces,

therefore, control vitality, namely, conditions preceding birth and

conditions during life. In other words, the foundations of vitality

are wholly inherited, and may be cultivated to the degree the

inherited foundations will permit.

A perfectly sound physical and mental inheritance is rare and is

the greatest of all assets. The highest development of a nation

will begin when the human law conforms to God’s law of development

and parenthood is denied to defectives. Prisons and asylums are now

sufficiently numerous, as it is evidence of defectiveness of the

masses to conduct our affairs so as to necessitate their increase.

Indiana now has five great insane asylums, each representing about

one million dollars, and there are enough insane in jails, poorhouses

and in homes to fill another one. Our population increased 16 per

cent. in the last decade and insanity increased 29 per cent. There is

a business problem for you.

To go along in the future as in the past, permitting, even fostering

the production of the hereditary insane, of the hereditary pauper

and criminal, of the hereditary idiot and feeble-minded, and then

building great palaces in parks to care for them, will mean we have

not the common horse-sense necessary for the proper conduct of our

affairs. (Applause.)

HYGIENE.

We must look to hygiene, the science of health, to conserve human

vitality. The term includes every necessary force to prevent disease,

to increase strength and endurance, and to prevent the production of

the unfit.

The ponderous and oppressively costly courts have been grinding for

centuries and crime increases. Punishment and fear of punishment

restrain evil doing, but does not eradicate the tendency to evil.

This and other defects we must, as far as possible breed out of the

race, and science can find a valid answer for every objection which

obstructionists can raise to this proposition. Fostering insanity,

crime, pauperism and imbecility, is not evidence of understanding and

of high ability.

The divisions of hygiene are: Federal, State, Municipal,

Institutional, School, Domiciliary and Personal.

Hygiene not only makes for greater physical strength and endurance

but it makes for greater moral strength. It is the essence of

charity, kindliness, patience and truth.

When, through hygiene, defectives, delinquents and dependents are

no longer propagated, when simplicity and frugality of living are

achieved, voluntary celibacy and voluntary childlessness will become

discreditable, and sickness, disease and premature death will

disappear before temperance and sanitized homes.

President WHITE—This admirable paper causes me to say to every one

here that they cannot afford to go away and not deposit a dollar

with the Secretary for the book of the Proceedings of this Congress.

The book of these admirable and practical addresses should be in

every home, should be in the library. I hope that every one will

leave their address, will register, and receive as soon as they are

published a copy of the Proceedings. (Applause.)

It was Louis D. Brandeis who said a year or two ago that the

railroads of this country could save a million dollars a day with

practical economy and with good system. He got that idea from and

quoted Mr. Harrington Emerson of New York City, who will now address

this audience upon “The Rescue of the Fit.”

Mr. EMERSON—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: There is a growing

clash between employer and employe. The old order is passing away

and the new order has not yet come in. The millions lost in strikes

are forever wasted. This direct waste due to supposed conflict of

interest is one of the great losses. The other is more serious. Not

one man in ten is in the place in the world best fitted for him, not

one place in ten is filled by the best man in the world for the job.

When the job is not bossed by the right man and when the man is on

the wrong job there is a waste whose magnitude is incalculable. It is

to mitigate, palliate, obviate, these two great sources of waste that

on a large scale a new plan is being put into operation. The theory

that underlies it is founded on principles, not on empiricism or on

tradition or on rule of thumb.

It is theory that has given us the best designs for steam turbines,

gas engines, dynamos, aeroplanes—it is theory that gives us this plan

of the _Employment Department_.

What is the theory?

All manufacturing costs fall under three divisions: Materials, Labor,

Equipment Charges.

Materials means all materials, whether for manufacture or operation.

Labor means all personal service or personal charges, whether direct,

indirect, supervising or managing.

Equipment charges are made up of taxes, insurance, depreciation and

interest on investment.

Although these three classes of expense are so different there are

some general economic laws which apply to all of them and it is quite

certain that what we have learned to accept as to materials, may have

some lessons applicable to personal service and to equipment charges.

When our building materials consisted of prairie sod the problem was

simple, we picked out the best sod in sight, plowed it up, hauled it

to one side and erected it into walls. When the task is to build an

automobile the handling of materials is not so simple.

In automobile plants the engineering department designs what is

wanted, then draws up specifications, precise and scientific

specifications; steel that will test under tension or torsion so many

thousand pounds, steel balls, that are so round, so hard, so even in

size, bronze, that is so resistant, copper that is so pure, etc.

The purchasing department then calls for tenders or for bids. Samples

or specimens are submitted for test and these go into the testing

laboratory where they must come up to specifications. The purchasing

agent says: How good a wire can you sell me for $0.10 a pound? What

will the price be on wire testing 200,000 pounds?

The materials having been tested and bought are put into the

storehouse under a competent storekeeper. It is his business to see

that they do not spoil, that they are not wasted or stolen. He issues

only on requisition, the requisition specifying the proper quality

and quantity. When the materials go into use they are continually

inspected during the progress of the work.

There is therefore an inspection department. Engineers have learned

that it is not the price of materials that counts but the quality.

As quality goes up quantity goes down and price goes up but not as

fast as quality. Although steel wire is dear and cast iron is cheap,

we build bridges out of steel wire. Although we can buy carbon steel

for $0.14 a pound, we pay $0.60 a pound for high speed alloy steel

because it works faster and so much more powerfully that it would

be cheap at $800 a pound if we could not get it for less.

As to complex modern materials we need therefore an engineering

department to design and specify, a testing department to test and

analyze, a purchasing department to buy at the best price and on the

best terms, an inspection department to watch results from day to

day, hour to hour; a storekeeping department to hold and to conserve,

to issue carefully and economically.

Modern personal service is more complex than modern materials. How

can we afford to omit as to personal service any of the safeguards

found necessary as to materials? These necessary safeguards we apply

through a very highly organized employment department directed and

managed by specialists of the higher class and a corps of assistants.

In the employment department all these methods so necessary as to

materials, we apply also to personal service control, whether we are

securing a factory superintendent or a shoveler of sand. First of all

an organization is outlined. It is evident that to perform certain

kinds of tasks there is only one best organization. Battleships

are a modern development, they have been slowly evolved. America

started it when the Confederate Government sheathed the Merrimac with

railroad rails and sank all the wooden ships. As the London Times

editorially said, “The Merrimac made all the navies of the world

obsolete.” Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, have helped develop

battleships, but the organization controlling every battleship in

the world, whether Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Chilean

or American, is substantially the same. An American officer could

be transferred to a foreign navy and find himself at once. Naval

organizations the world over are interchangeable. The ordinary

manufacturing concern has no standardized organization, it has

generally grown like Topsy. Positions are ill defined and generally

worse manned. The first duty, therefore, of a modern employment

department is to outline the organization, the one best organization

for the business in hand.

Its second duty is to specify the essential and required qualities

for each position.

There are three different ways of filling positions:

1. To have on one’s hands some incubus, a king’s son or a king’s

mistress or some political henchman, and to create a position for

the incubus to fill, “duke of this” or “countess of that,” or a fat

contract on city work. In England this is called “finding a berth for

a friend”—_a berth—a place in which to fall asleep_.

2. The second way, and the more usual one, is to see a real vacancy

and to shove a friend into it, hoping he will make it a go. The man

and the job stand as good a show of fitting each other as a man would

of getting the right clothes by drawing a suit in a raffle. It was

Roosevelt who saw a vacancy in the Presidency, grabbed Mr. Taft,

shoved him into the place, and now declares he does not fit. Personal

liking is not the proper basis for a Presidential preference.

3. The third way to fill a definite vacancy is to find the man fitted

for the place, and, after test, put him into it, even as we find a

suitable wire for a bridge and put it in.

If we have a locomotive of definite design and we need an exhaust

nozzle, there is only one design of nozzle that will answer. So if

in the organization there is a position to fill, the best man for

that position must have certain qualities and not have others, not

every man, not the convenient man in ten, probably not one man in

ten thousand is the man for the place. The employment department

seeks diligently for the right man, the man who combines experience

with aptitude. If it had to choose it would prefer the man without

experience but with all the aptitudes to the man of experience

without aptitudes. The man with aptitudes can learn quickly, reliably

and fast; the man without aptitudes can never be anything but a

misfit. Therefore the employment department having secured a number

of prospects, carefully tests the most promising.

The old-fashioned plan is to ask a few questions, secure a few

recommendations, take a look at the man, and if a hunch is felt that

he will do, accept him. I know all about this plan, for I have tried

it for twenty years, and in some years it has cost me $50,000. The

plan does not work. I received the best set of recommendations I ever

saw about a sea captain, and when we entrusted him with a $140,000

steamer he deliberately wrecked her in order to make some graft out

of the repair bills.

That the man was a scoundrel was written in large type all over his

face, but in those days I could not read plain print and I was better

fitted, and that was _not at all_, to navigate the steamer than to

select a captain.

When I taught in college I got an inkling of the right way. I taught

German, and at the beginning of the year my classes were filled up

with sixty students, and at the end of the year there were only

twenty left. I worked on the theory that there was no profit to any

one in making a bluff at studying German. It was either worth while

or it was not. If worth while, learn German; if not worth while,

don’t waste time on it. So I weeded and weeded my German garden until

only those were left who could really learn. They learned to know

German as well as they knew English. The weeding process was hard

on me and hard on the misfits, hard on the good students. I gave

an immense amount of rough effort to no purpose in an absolutely

useless attempt to make silk purses out of sows’ ears. Then sows’

ears might have made good mince meat, but the carving and slashing

I gave them hurt them to no purpose. My time was taken up on rough

work until the misfits and the good students failed to receive the

specially skilled attention and help their progress required. After a

couple of years of this I tried a new plan. It was evident that any

students who did not know English, English grammar, English spelling,

English pronunciation, were not fit to study German, so I examined

all applicants as to English, but I gave those who failed a week’s

test, lest some genius should by chance be overlooked. I never found

the genius. Under this plan I started out with a class of twenty-five

instead of sixty. I gave my time to those who could profitably make

use of it, and not to those who could not, and every one of the

twenty-five learned German.

A man or woman can be tested in five minutes for fundamental

aptitudes and traits of character as easily and reliably as I

tested the prospective German pupils. It would take one too far to

go into the whole subject of character analysis. A great composer

like Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, can originate music, but there are

thousands who can learn to play it well. So with character analysis.

It requires a special and rare gift to uncover the lessons written

in the coloring, in the texture, in the shape of head, in the

expression of the face, of the body, of the hands, in the clothes, in

the personal tricks of habit, to cross-check these tests by others

as the answers to test questions, but this knowledge has been so

formulated that all can learn. So instead of trying to play bumbly

puppy by ourselves, of missing the accumulated researches that have

been going on all over the world, of repeating all the mistakes that

others have made, we do as the Japanese did when they adopted the

British navy, the German army and the American schools as models. We

are advised as to our employment department by a specialist of the

highest skill in character analysis, in all problems relating to the

handling of people. The tests are rapid but they are many and they

interlock so far as to be conclusive. A man can lie with his eyes or

with his lips or with his body, but no man is skillful enough to lie

at the same time with eyes and lips and hands and body.

After men have been tested they are employed, not before, and they

are only employed because they have the qualities that fit them for

a particular place. They may be at the time only 30 p. c. men, they

may be succeeding an 80 p. c. man, but the great fact is that the 30

p. c. man can and will become a 100 p. c. or a 110 p. c. man, while

the 80 p. c. man is perhaps in reality an overstrained 70 p. c. man.

Starting with the best of human material years are not lost gradually

collecting it. Not only are the unfit excluded, but what is very much

more important, the _fit are rescued_, they are given opportunity,

they jump at once into the places they can fill instead of waiting

for years.

What is the unnecessary cost to a business of a 30 p. c. man compared

to a 100 p. c. man?

The hourly costs of a man are: His hourly wage, the hourly machine

charge, the hourly overhead charge. These three items will easily

average $0.70 an hour in a machine shop. If the man works at full

efficiency he gives us in a year 2,700 hours of standard work in

2,700 hours of actual time at a total cost of $1,890. At 30 p. c.

efficiency, it will take 9,000 actual hours, costing $6,300 to

deliver 2,700 hours of standard work. The added expense due to

inefficiency is $4,410 for a single worker.

Efficiency does not mean strenuousness. The fluttering rooster is

strenuous, but he makes little progress; the eagle flies efficiently,

covering miles of country, yet never moving a wing. The Chinese

coolie on his river treadmill is so strenuous that he wears himself

out in a few years. As a producer of power he costs $1,300 a year for

the horse-power hour you can buy from Niagara for twenty dollars. The

chauffeur of an American automobile gliding along at forty miles an

hour, carrying six passengers, is efficient, not strenuous.

It is evident that under this modern employment plan the rate of

wages per hour ceases to be a critical question. The efficient man,

like steel wire and high-speed steel, is always worth more than he

would think of asking for his services.

The requisition calls for a man with certain qualities—it never calls

for a man at $0.20 or at $0.30 or at any other rate per hour. Fixed

rates per hour are obsolescent when one man turns out the work for

$6,300 and the other man turns it out for $1,890. For $1,890? No, he

does not. We do not ask him to; we can not secure and hold any 100

p. c. man for the wage rate in the $1,890. We pay the man more, we

gladly pay him more, we pay him as much as we must to secure him, but

he is cheap at almost any price.

The man who receives a salary of $60,000 a year is expected to profit

his company to the extent of $6,000,000 a year; the man who works

for a dollar a day is always a loss, a severe loss, and, therefore,

we try to eliminate him by the substitution of a machine. The fight

against a machine is to carry on a losing fight against the whole

current of the age. To put the worker in a position for which his

aptitudes qualify him is to double, treble his value, and everybody

is best fitted for something. A group of children were playing

automobile; one was the engine, another the chauffeur, others the

passengers. A little tot far behind was hurrying along. What are you

doing? I am playing automobile. What part are you? I am the smell.

In a watch there is not a useless piece. In a perfected organization

there is not a useless man; there cannot be an unqualified man

without endangering the whole. As I write, 20,000 mill hands are

rioting at Lawrence, Massachusetts, because somebody has blundered,

because some position had been badly filled.

The wage question is ethical. The workman is worthy of his hire,

but also man does not live by bread alone. The man scientifically

selected is 100 per cent. efficient because he likes his work, is

fitted for it and it likes him; it is no longer a drudgery, it is

a pleasure. We are rescuing the fit for the work which by nature’s

right belongs to them and under this plan there are few unfit.

In years gone by when a beef was slaughtered much of the carcass

was wasted—the horns, the bones, the hair, the hoofs, the blood,

the offal went to waste. Now nothing is wasted; everything has its

use, and the offal we return as fertilizer to the soil is of greater

perennial use than the tenderloins and sirloins which find their way

to the tables of the rich.

We have in the past treated men as if they were coal, a raw product

only fit to burn, or as the German soldiers pathetically called

themselves, in 1870, mere cannon fodder. But mere coal contains

ammonia, beautiful dyes, strange and powerful medicines, as well as

heat units.

Everybody is normally good for something, and if fitted to the right

place is worth more than he now is.

At Seattle a boy of 17 was excluded from the high school because he

could not learn their lists of English kings or American Presidents,

but that boy went out and when I met him he had grabbed the

evaporative power of the sun and was propelling a boat with it on the

waters of Puget Sound. He was fit, more fit in a mechanical way than

any other boy I ever knew.

It is to this Rescue of the Fit that I look forward for the great

uplift of American industries, the great increase in happiness and

the great elimination of strife.

It is being put to a practical test in a plant employing 200 men and

it is working.

This is my message to you.

President WHITE—There is nothing further on the program for this

afternoon, and we will therefore adjourn until 8:00 o’clock this

evening, when Dr. Wallace and Judge Lindsey will speak in Tomlinson

Hall.

SIXTH SESSION.

The Congress assembled at Tomlinson Hall, at 8:00 o’clock p. m., and

was called to order by President White.

President WHITE—The delegates, visitors and citizens of this city

have a rare treat in store tonight in the program that has been

published, and I have a rare honor in introducing the speakers. It

will be a red-letter day in my life, and I know it will be in yours.

I now want to make this audience acquainted with “Uncle Henry”

Wallace. I would be glad if everyone could know “Uncle Henry” as I

have been fortunate enough to know him. He has been an inspiration to

every young man and every farmer and all who have known him in the

State of Iowa for the past twenty-five or thirty years. He loves to

sit down in his office, or study—and I have been there to see how he

works—answering letters that the farmers from all over the country

write him, and who look to “Wallace’s Farmer” as a source of profit

and information upon every subject that affects the home. He comes

close to the home, close to the family, to the fireside, answering

all their questions and telling them just how they should do this or

that, and all in that fatherly, kindly, brotherly way, so that he is

referred to by everyone who knows him as “Uncle Henry.” He is going

to talk to us tonight upon “Human Efficiency,” and he will speak from

a very practical standpoint, for he has had experience all along the

line.

I now take pleasure in introducing to you Dr. Henry Wallace, of Des

Moines, Iowa, former President of the National Conservation Congress.

(Applause.)

Dr. WALLACE—Mr. President, and Members of the Congress: It might not

be amiss, before entering into a discussion of the subject proper, to

recall the different subjects which have from year to year engaged

the attention of the Conservation Congress, and to show how the

choice of the subject for each different Congress was the natural and

logical result of the discussion of the preceding Congress.

The first Congress was called, and the Congress itself was organized,

as a forum in which the leading men of the Nation could discuss the

problems raised by the Conservation Commission, appointed by Theodore

Roosevelt at the suggestion of Gifford Pinchot, then holding the

position of Chief Forester in the Department of Agriculture. His

position as Forester enabled him to see the terrific waste going on

in the management of our forests, and the various means by which

the government forests were passing into the hands of individuals,

subsequently to be wasted for private gain. He saw clearly that

unless our forests were conserved and managed as are the forests

of all other civilized nations, soil erosion would render future

forest growth impossible, would fill our rivers with silt, dry up the

streams in summer and convert them into raging torrents in winter,

depriving us of water for irrigation, and diminishing in value the

water power, or white coal, on which future generations must largely

depend for power and transportation.

A forum was greatly needed in which the questions raised by this

fearless idealist—to whom the Conservation of our resources for

future generations is both wife and child—could be openly and

fearlessly discussed by leaders and in the hearing of the American

people. When the First Conservation Congress was called to meet in

Seattle in 1909, naturally the main topic for discussion was the

Conservation of the forests and of the water powers, which were then

fast passing into the hands of great corporations.

By this time the public conscience was aroused. The people of the

United States began to see clearly that we dare not go on in the

future, looting and wasting our natural resources as we had done in

the past. They began to realize that the generations of the unborn

had rights in the oil, the coal and other minerals in that portion of

the public domain that we had not as yet recklessly thrown away, or

allowed to be stolen from us under forms of or in defiance of law. So

the Second Conservation Congress was called in St. Paul, in 1910, as

a forum in which the leading men of the nation could thresh out the

problem as to whether these resources to which the American people

at present held title should be administered by a Congress chosen

by the people and speaking for the people, or whether they should

be administered through an act of Congress by the several States in

which the Government property happened to be located.

The historian of the future alone will be able to measure the

beneficial results of the fierce conflict between those who would

despoil these resources for private gain and those who would conserve

them for future generations. We can, however, see some of the

results in the change in the policy of our national administration,

in the vigilant watch now maintained by the present Secretary of

the Interior; by the success which crowned the efforts of Mr.

Pinchot and others who kept constant watch over bills intended, by

means of concealed jokers, to break down the fixed policy of the

Government; and by the veto of the President of vicious bills which,

notwithstanding the utmost vigilance, were enacted by the last

Congress. This watch and guard over the heritage of the unborn could

not have been maintained successfully, had it not been for the white

light thrown upon the problem by the Second National Conservation

Congress.

I was, unexpectedly to myself, chosen President of the Conservation

Congress at the close of the St. Paul meeting; and with the consent

and advice of my executive committee, in making out the program for

the 1911 meeting in Kansas City, fixed the attention of the American

people on the necessity for the Conservation of the fertility of the

soil, and the development of a better social and family life among

the tillers of the soil.

The time had come for the American people to understand that the

rapid and regular advance in the cost of living was due mainly to the

terrific waste of the fertility of the soil, that had been going on

for more than a hundred years. It was time for the farmer to learn

that he was not in a position to throw stones at the lumberman who

had wasted our forests, or at the mine owner who is wasting one-third

of the coal in the process of mining; that he, while a sharer in the

cheapness of the products of forest and mine, had himself been mining

the fertility of the soil, stored for his benefit through countless

ages, and selling it at the bare cost of mining; and in doing so had

built up cities the world over, which must cry for bread when the

fertility of his soil became exhausted.

It is too early yet to measure the full results of this Kansas City

Congress. This should be noted, however, that, whether the result of

the discussions of this Congress or not, the people of the United

States have shown an interest in agriculture and the maintenance of

soil fertility which they had never shown before. Bankers, railroad

officials, capitalists are beginning to see that unless the farmer

receives encouragement and efficient aid, this nation will soon

cease to be a factor in supplying other nations with food, and will

gradually become a consuming instead of a producing country, so

far as the products of the soil are concerned. We are beginning

to see that unless a more satisfactory social life is established

in the open country, the increasing disparity between rural and

urban population must continue and the cost of living must go on

increasing, and with it increasing discontent and social disturbance.

My successor and his executive committee, with their wide experience

in practical affairs, saw clearly that if we are to restore fertility

to our wasted soils, if we are to do anything worth while for the

Conservation of our resources of any kind or character, there must

be an increase in the efficiency of the individual. They therefore

wisely chose the subject of “Vital Resources” as the main center

around which discussion must revolve at the present Conservation

Congress.

The subject of Vital Resources opens up a very wide field for

investigation and discussion. Various subjects in the group have been

discussed and others will be, by specialists who have given their

particular subject years of conscientious and close study. So when

only last week I was urged to make this address instead of discussing

a minor phase of the subject, there was nothing left for me but a

general discussion of the subject of Human Efficiency.

Man, after all, is the biggest thing on this planet. The farm people

are always bigger than the farm. No matter how rich by nature the

farm may be, it will lose fertility if the farmer is not big enough.

The first-class farmer will take an inferior piece of land and in

time bring it up to his own measure. If the farmer does not fit the

farm, it will in time come up to or decline to his measure. The

average production of the soil is the expression of nature’s opinion

of the fitness of the man who tills it for a term of years. The

most severe condemnation of the American farmer is the fact that,

with some of the richest soils in the world, he has so wasted its

fertility that he is crying out for commercial fertilizers; while

the “heathen Chinee” has farmed for at least forty centuries, and

has maintained his soil fertility without the use of commercial

fertilizers.

If any great business has attracted attention by its success, one

always asks: Who’s the man or men behind it? The greatness of this

nation is measured not by its soil, its mines, its forests, its

water powers, but by the efficiency of its people. This is true of

all nations. The cynical Bismark, who always cast covetous eyes

on Holland, is said once to have remarked that the way to redeem

Ireland was to transport the Dutch to the Emerald Isle and transport

the Irish to Holland; that the Dutch would make Ireland an earthly

Paradise, while the Irish would not keep up the dikes except with the

help of the Germans, who would in that case soon have a seaport.

The only way by which you can restore the wasted fertility of the

soil and the waste of our forests and develop properly our mineral

resources; the only way in which we can as a nation take the place

to which we are entitled—that of leader in the world’s trade and

commerce—is by increasing to the utmost limit human efficiency,

physical, mental and moral. These three are ineradicably linked

together, because they are integral parts of every human being. We

can not develop fine human beings physically without the development

of the intellect and the soul; nor can we develop either the

intellectual or the moral to the limit without taking care of the

body.

If we are to have the maximum of efficiency in the man, the child

must be well born, must be free from incurable diseases, mental,

moral or physical. To every generation of human beings is given by

an allwise Ruler the power to foreordain the character and quality

of the generation to come. The coming generation is as helpless in

our hands as clay in the hands of the potter. By marriage parents

decree the personality of their children. By “personality” I mean the

inherent tendencies—physical, mental and moral—which, when developed

wisely or unwisely, make or mar the character. In that little

pink lump of humanity—the pride of the father and the joy of the

mother—are bound up in various combinations the incidents, passions

and capacities of the parents. It is this which gives its awful

sacredness and tremendous possibilities to marriage.

The State by the extent to which it discourages and represses vice

and crime, by the extent to which it prevents and controls disease,

by the extent to which it encourages the marriage of the fit and

prevents the marriage of the unfit, foreordains the character of

the next generation. I know that I am approaching ground but little

trodden, in which many fear to tread, and to tread on which is by

many deemed sacrilege. But if we are to be a virile nation, strong in

body, in intellect and in morals, the truth must be told fearlessly;

and there is no more fitting place to tell it than where the people

of this Congress are making a study of our vital resources.

To put the matter with brutal frankness: The State must soon

determine whether the hardened criminal shall be allowed to take an

active part in foreordaining the character of future generations;

whether the manifest degenerate, whether that degeneracy be the

result of being badly born or of vice or crime, shall be allowed

to breed degenerates; whether those afflicted with incurable and

transmissible disease shall be allowed to transmit them to a helpless

posterity.

In order that the State may act wisely, it is time for a most

thorough and searching investigation of existing conditions, material

and moral, which lead to crime; the extent to which criminal

tendencies are transmissible—criminal tendencies, mark you, for

crime itself is not transmissible; what proportion of our crimes

are due to intemperance, and to what extent the unbalanced state

of mind which makes self-control impossible, and leads to crime, is

due to inheritance. It will no longer do to say as some do: that

intemperance, by killing off the unbalanced and weakling, rids

society of an encumbrance; nor that nameless diseases weed out of

the race those unable to maintain self-control. While all this is in

a certain sense true, it furnishes no argument for abating zeal in

repressing these crimes against humanity. That terrible saying of

Anne of Austria: “God does not pay at the end of every week, but at

last He pays,” finds striking illustration in the fate that sooner or

later befalls the intemperate and the impure.

On one subject there is no need of any investigation. We must either

adopt such measures as will insure as far as possible that the coming

generation shall be well born, or we will compel our posterity to

pay the price, as we are paying it now. We stand before the world

today convicted of having more murders, more suicides and far more

lynchings in proportion to our population, than any other civilized

nation on the face of the globe; and also with having, speaking

generally, by far the most corrupt city governments. Is it not time

for us to investigate and see why we thus stand condemned in the eyes

of the nations, and to what extent we are breeding crime, the crime

that is our disgrace? For be assured that we must in all cases pay

the price, not in cold cash alone, but in blasted lives and ruined

homes and a lower degree of human efficiency. If we are to be a great

nation, worthy of our blood inheritance and worthy of our material

resources, our children must be well-born.

If we are to secure that measure of human efficiency that will

enable us to make full use of our inheritance, whether of blood or

material resources, we should see to it that the coming generation

is not merely well born, but well fed. The farmer is wise in that

he takes special care of the young things that come on his farm. He

builds a lamb creep, that the young lamb may get feed denied its

dam. He sorts his pigs into convenient sizes, and shuts them out of

the feeding places until the feed is properly placed, and then lets

them all in at once, so that they may all have equal opportunity. He

does not allow the weanling colt to take its chance with the selfish

and unprincipled horses in the stalk field. He protects his colts

and gives them food “convenient” for them. If an unruly beast in

his stock yard tyrannizes the young and robs them of their food, he

does the sensible thing. He dehorns the unruly. He will tolerate no

oppression about his farm. In this he is wise; wise, because he knows

that if he fails to do this, the red flag of the sheriff will sooner

or later stand above his door, and the farm will be sold to some man

who will handle it more wisely.

The State has a similar responsibility for taking care of the young.

Whatever may be their endowment by nature, that is, by birth, they

need the nurture which is necessary to bring out and develop fully

the gifts of nature. The State should smite anything that stands in

the way of the proper nurture or feeding of the young. If the State

is to prosper, it must protect the weak against the encroachments of

the strong; and of all classes, the children of the State need its

protection most.

If organized capital provides so little pay for labor, that the

laboring man can not properly feed his children, then the State

should dehorn that organized oppressor, as the farmer dehorns

the unruly bull or boss cow. No profits to the individual or

the organization, even though they be members of the State, can

compensate for the robbery of the children of the State. If the State

on investigation finds that the money that should purchase food for

the young goes into the till of the publican, then the State should

smite the publican in its wrath—not the individual publican, who

perhaps may feel that he is earning his bread in the only way for

which he is fitted, but the system which makes it necessary for the

prosperity of the producer of intoxicating liquors, to corrupt so

many hundred of our youth for every thousand dollars of invested

capital. (Applause.)

If we have a system existing, whether in the State or the Nation,

which can thrive only on the debauchery of the young and on the

robbery of the child, by taking that which should go for food to

support it, then it is time that the State and the Nation should

control it to a point where it can neither seduce the young or rob

the child; and that point is suppression. We must do that or do

worse, namely, pay the price. We are in fact paying that now. The

individual who will not keep account of his expenses is in danger of

bankruptcy, no matter how great his resources; and the State which

refuses to count the cost of any institution or system which tends to

debauch morals, and corrupt the young, is on the way to destruction.

For there is no avoiding the payment of the cost, whether we keep

account or not; and that cost is not merely the dollars and cents,

but starved children, blasted lives, broken hearts, ruined homes,

increase of poverty and an increase of criminality, which is beyond

the possibility of mathematics to compute. The State can afford to

tolerate nothing whatever that stands in the way of proper nurture

of the young; nor can it safely endure anything which tends to dwarf

them physically, mentally or morally. (Applause.)

The State, however, will always succeed best by removing the causes

that lead to improper nurture, or to the formation of vicious or

criminal habits. The State can not endure poverty, grinding poverty,

among any class of its people; nor can it endure having its children

poorly housed. The slum is the enemy of the State and of every

citizen of the State. The vice and crime of the slum reach out to

the west end or the east end or the avenue, or wherever the wealthy

and prosperous congregate, thus saying to all men: We are brothers.

The poverty-stricken may well say: If you will not give us our

rights, if you grind our faces, we will not merely levy toll on your

pocketbooks, but we will infect you with our vices.

If we are to have the highest efficiency in the next generation,

the State (and by the State I mean the government, whether State

or National) must see to it that infancy is protected from the

abominations of soothing syrup, and “sleep-easy,” that usurp the

place of the catnip tea and other herbs which soothed infantile pains

in the days of our grandmothers. It is useless to expect efficiency,

if we pour into the innocent lips of unsuspecting childhood the

habit-forming drugs which benumb the brain, stifle sensibility,

and lay the foundation for incurable vices when the babe has grown

to manhood. Let us get back to the ideals of the ancient psalmist,

who, contemplating the future of the chosen people, uttered the

prayer that “our sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth,

and our daughters as cornerstones fashioned after the similitude of

a palace.” That is, a plant carefully cultivated, spreading freely,

its roots drawing sustenance from the soil beneath, its leaves

drawing sustenance from the air and sunshine, bracing itself against

the storm; the daughters the cornerstones of the home, with all the

adornment that we bestow on a palace fit for the abode of royalty.

Let us go back to this ancient ideal, if we are to be a happy people,

whose God is Jehovah.

If we are to maintain human efficiency, the State must lay a

heavy hand on the venders of impure food. After what Dr. Wiley

has told you, there is no need for me to enlarge on this cause of

inefficiency. Suffice it to say, there was a time in the memory of

some of the older men, when there was no pure food question. Our

oatmeal, our cornmeal, our flour came from our own farms. There was

no shorts in our buckwheat, no white earth in our flour. If our meats

were tainted, it was due to our own negligence. In these latter days

we have become by force of circumstances more completely “members one

of another,” drawing our food from all parts of the habitable earth;

and hence the State must protect us from imposition. If we are to

reap the benefits which come from the modern system of division of

labor, we must not quibble about the expense involved in enforcing

honesty in those who feed us.

If we are to have efficiency in the generation now entering upon the

stage, or in the one to follow, we will need to make radical changes

in our system of education. No matter what the natural endowment,

it will be comparatively inefficient unless properly developed.

Education does not consist of putting in but of drawing out. Culture

is simply the proper development of the gifts of nature. All children

are born with the capacity for doing, and doing well, some small part

of the work that needs to be done in this great world of ours. This

capacity is usually indicated by a strong preference for that kind of

work. The capacity for doing is largely a matter of inheritance, and

education is simply the development of this capacity. No education

which fails to develop what is in the child is worth having; but no

matter what may be the natural endowment, the capacity to govern in

State or Nation, or to build a road, or to plow a straight furrow,

or polish a pin, every child must have put into his possession the

tools by which he can secure that education which will fit him for

his life work. He must know how to read, that he may be in touch with

his fellow-man. He must know how to write, that he may communicate

his thoughts to other men. He must know how to reason, that he may

put this and that together and draw conclusions. These lie at the

foundation of all education.

Some education is acquired in mastering the “Three R’s,” namely,

the power to observe—to see things—to tell what is seen and to draw

conclusions; but the “Three R’s” are, however, merely the tools by

which we ourselves afterwards acquire an education. In spite of all

the money we spend on rural education (in my State from 42 to 50 per

cent. of all rural taxes), our children neither read well nor write

well nor reason well. How can they when our rural schools average

twelve pupils, most of them less than ten, and often five, three, or

only two or one pupil, and are taught mainly by persons themselves

but poorly educated, and who are teaching simply to acquire the

experience necessary to secure a position in a city school. Neither

the reading nor the writing nor the arithmetic of these schools has

any connection with the farm nor any relation to farm life, nor is

the teacher as a rule in sympathy with that life. Yet this is all the

education that 90 per cent. of the farmborn will ever receive.

Little education this for the mighty task of feeding the world at

prices that those not on farms can afford to pay. If the farm boy was

so thoroughly drilled in reading that he could read to himself with

understanding and read to others with expression, if he could express

his thoughts so clearly and fully that the dullest could understand,

if he could see things as they are, and tell accurately what he sees,

he would in time without further teaching become a leader of men.

The farmborn, however, usually fares better than the townboy in

the race of life. In growing up in the open country he learns what

books can not teach—the know-how, so far as farm operations are

concerned—and needs but to learn the reason why. The townborn, as a

rule, has no opportunity to acquire the know-how by following the

occupation of their parents; and hence much of his school life is

spent in acquiring information which, apart from its educational

value, is of no sort of use to him in after life. What the farmborn

need, if they are to be efficient in life, is an opportunity to

learn in a secondary school in the open country the reason why. What

the townborn need is secondary education which will fit them for

the work they are to do. If our farmborn are to be efficient, they

must have centralized schools taught by teachers who have selected

teaching as their life work and are paid accordingly, and thus be

able to acquire in the open country a secondary education that will

enable them to see clearly the reason why they should plow, or sow or

feed. If our townborn are to be efficient, they must have in addition

to a thorough mastery of the “Three R’s,” which is the birthright of

every child, such training as will fit them for their life work.

The misery of our system, whether in town or country, is that it

assumes that the chief end of man is to figure in some one of the

so-called “learned” professions. So the high school is keyed up to

the standard of admission to the college and university. The grade

school exists to qualify pupils for admission to the high school.

Hence the surplus of doctors without patients, at a time when

humanity is learning how to avoid needing a doctor; of lawyers when

men are fast learning to keep out of law.

In short, the end and aim of all education in the future must needs

be efficiency in the line of the chosen vocation. The great lack of

our present system is the failure to give the child a complete and

thorough mastery of the tools by which any education worth while

must be acquired: the ability to read with understanding, to express

itself, whether in speech or writing, so that all may understand; the

ability to see what is to be seen and tell it in plain English, and

to put this and that together and draw a just conclusion.

I need not say that no training for efficiency is complete that does

not involve the ethical as well as the intellectual and material.

This is a Christian nation, and the ethics of Christianity should

be taught in every school as well as in every home. We may not, and

should not teach the dogmas or doctrines of any sect or denomination.

We must forever keep separate the Church and the State; but

underlying all these creeds and denominations there is an ethical

standard which all but the criminal or would-be criminal accept; and

this should be taught, because it embraces our highest ideals of

manhood and womanhood and citizenship.

The crimes of which we are rightly ashamed are due largely to

the fact that the jealousy of the churches toward each other has

heretofore prevented the teaching of ethics to the children in our

schools. Without the practice of ethics, without the striving to

realize moral ideals, there can be no moral efficiency, and without

moral efficiency intellectual efficiency may become productive

of evil instead of good. An educated brain without an educated

conscience is a source of danger to the public welfare. It is high

time for the churches and all good people to get together and agree

on ethical standards to be taught in every school, that will put

moral as well as intellectual training in the coming generation.

I have touched merely the high places of the subject of human

efficiency. I have endeavored to say that if the generation which is

to follow us and carry on our work is to be efficient, the children

must be well born and well fed, protected from the vampires that

endeavor to suck their lifeblood, and must have an opportunity to

develop their natural capacity by an education and training—physical,

mental and moral—that will enable them to do the world’s work with

profit to themselves and their fellow-man. (Applause.)

President WHITE—In Denver, Colorado, some twelve years ago, there was

found a friend for children; there was found a judge who believed

that in the child brought before him for some breach of law, he

could see something divine, that he could see the soul, the germ of

the future man, the germ of a future life—something to redeem. He

believed he could see why Christ said, “Suffer the little children

to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of

Heaven.” He had faith in the child, and when he found it necessary,

in the way of discipline, to send them to the reform school, he

placed faith in them; he told them to go out to the reform school,

and he would be up to see how they were getting along after awhile.

He developed character from the start, and it soon became noised

around. In every paper, in every magazine, all over the world the

name of Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of Denver, Colorado, was known.

(Applause.)

I now have the pleasure to introduce to you Judge Lindsey, who will

speak on the subject “Is the Child Worth Conserving?” (Prolonged

applause.)

Judge LINDSEY—Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am sure I

appreciate this very cordial and kind reception, because it shows

your appreciation, not of the speaker, but of a cause—in which I have

only had a small part—that has come close to the heart of the people

of this Nation in the last decade or more, and well it is that the

great National Conservation Congress should not overlook the welfare

of the child.

I was delighted to note in the splendid address which we have just

listened to by Dr. Wallace, that this important matter of the child,

the youth, furnished its principal theme, because without childhood

there is no manhood; without the conservation of childhood there is

nothing else to conserve.

But my friends, I am in rather a difficult position tonight. I am

reminded, indeed, of an experience I had with a boy about twelve

years ago in my court. It was before the days of the Detention Home

School. One day I was down in the jail, and they told me they had a

boy there that they thought belonged to me—that they could do nothing

with him. So I went with one of the men down the long corridor to a

cage, that would have been a disgrace to the king of the jungle, and

there in a heap on the floor was a boy. I recognized him as a boy

who had been missing from the truancy department for about a month.

It seems that he had read in a paper that some man in New York had

lost his boy—about the age of this boy—so he framed up a story and

went to the police and told them he was the missing boy. There was a

reward offered for the lost boy, and there was an argument between

the lieutenant and one of the sergeants as to who saw him first—and

in trying to straighten this out they discovered the fraud. I said

to him, “Harry, what did you mean by this?” He replied, “Judge, dey

spoiled the dandiest bum I ever thought of.”

I asked him where he had been for the last month, and he said he

had been living in a piano box. I went with him, and he showed me

the piano box, and as we came up a dog, a faithful, friendly dog,

jumped out and recognized the boy. While we stood there I heard some

boys just around the corner of the alley, talking about someone.

Some of them insisted that “he only gets full once a month,” while

some one said “he gets full once a week.” For a moment, I forgot the

law of the “gang” in regard to “snitchin’,” and I said, “Harry, who

are those boys talking about?” There had been a boy before me for

intoxication, and I wanted to find out if this was the same one. So I

said, “You slip around there and find out who it is they are talking

about, and you’ll save a lot of trouble for me—and for somebody else.”

The boy hesitated a little, torn between loyalty to the judge and

loyalty to the “gang,” but finally he went. In a little while he

came back, and looking into my face without the least change of

expression, said: “Judge, dem fellas is talkin’ about the moon; some

says it gets full once a week, and some only once a month.” Then,

after a minute, he continued, “Judge, you don’t always find out

everything you want to.”

Some time ago, I was informed by my friend, Mr. Shipp, that I was

to read a report at this Congress, but I found when I arrived that

they had me down for an entirely different subject. However, both

my report and the subject assigned me concern that very important

subject, “the child.” Many things have transpired during the last

year to give us hope and courage in the work for the child, and

after all there is one thing that marks this century of ours, makes

it distinct from all other centuries, and that is the fact that it

is the century of the child. Indeed, it seems we are to realize the

promise of holy writ, that a little child shall lead us. We are

beginning to see, through the misfortunes of the child, through

their tears and sufferings, many of the causes that are not only

responsible for the troubles of children but for the troubles of

men. For, after all, there is no child problem that isn’t a parent

problem—a problem of the home. And when we get back to the problem of

the home we are, of course, face to face with all the great social,

economic, industrial and political problems. Even the political

parties are at least beginning to understand that if they would meet

with the approval of the people they must concern themselves more

about the problems of humanity; that they must present real remedies

which promise an immediate check for the terrible waste of life, of

energy and of power, which is going on in this nation. That while

it is important to conserve our material resources—the power of our

waterfalls and the verdure of our forests—we must also conserve our

human resources. After all, these great assets of the nation are very

closely linked together. The strength and future well-being of the

race itself must depend in a large measure upon the Conservation with

which this organization has so well concerned itself during the past

decade. It is only a natural and to be expected step in the evolution

of its work that it should equally concern itself more directly with

the human beings who will not be able to profit from its work unless

their welfare is also conserved in other directions.

It has long been the opinion of specialists and social workers in

this country that the national government itself was not doing all

that it should do for the welfare of the children of the nation.

Largely because of the failure of any government agency directly

responsible for such work, the various methods of dealing with the

many-sided problems of childhood were more or less in a state of

chaos. The matter was first brought to the attention of Congress

through a bill formulated and agreed to by the various child saving

agencies of the State of Colorado, and introduced in Congress by

Hon. John F. Shafroth, the present Governor of Colorado, in 1902,

providing for a government bureau that should directly concern itself

with the welfare of children. This effort was followed several years

later by other child saving agencies in the introduction of what is

now popularly known as “A bill for the establishment of a children’s

bureau.” This bill was free from some of the objections of the

earlier bill which included governmental protection for dumb animals,

as well as a special bureau for the welfare of children. Great

impetus was given to this final effort by former President Roosevelt,

who called the White House conference on dependent children that met

in Washington City on January 25 and 26, 1909, when a resolution was

adopted recommending the enactment of the then pending measure.

The National Consumers’ League in its Tenth Annual Report presented,

perhaps, the ablest summary of all those presented concerning the

necessity for such a bureau. This summary pointed out many items of

information that ought to be valuable concerning the children of the

Nation—information that, as amazing as it may seem, was practically

impossible to be had in this Nation of ours concerning its children:

1. How many blind children are there in the United States? Where

are they? What provision for their education is made? How many of

them are receiving training for self-support? What are the causes of

their blindness? What steps are taken to prevent blindness?

2. How many mentally subnormal children are there in the United

States, including idiots, imbeciles, and children sufficiently

self-directing to profit by special classes in school? Where

are these children? What provision is made for their education?

What does it cost? How many of them are receiving training for

self-support?

3. How many fatherless children are there in the United States?

Of these, how many fathers are dead? How many are illegitimate?

How many are deserters? In cases in which the father is dead,

what killed him? It should be known how much orphanage is due to

tuberculosis, how much to industrial accidents, etc. Such knowledge

is needful for the removal of preventable causes of orphanage.

4. We know something about juvenile illiteracy once in 10 years.

The subject should be followed up every year. It is not a matter

of immigrant children, but of a permanent, sodden failure of

the Republic to educate a half million children of native

English-speaking citizens. Current details are now unattainable.

5. Experience in Chicago under the only effective law on this

subject in this country indicates that grave crimes against children

are far more common than is generally known. There is no official

source of wider information upon which other States may base

improved legislation or administration.

6. How many children are employed in manufacture? In commerce? In

the telegraph and messenger service? How many children are working

underground in mines? How many at the mine’s mouth? Where are these

children? What are the mine labor laws applicable to children? We

need a complete annual directory of State officials whose duty it is

to enforce child-labor laws. This for the purpose of stimulating to

imitation those States which have no such officials, as well as for

arousing public interest in the work of the existing officials.

7. We need current information as to juvenile courts, and they

need to be standardized. For instance, no juvenile court keeps a

record of the various occupations pursued by the child before its

appearance in court beyond, in some cases, the actual occupation at

the time of the offense committed. Certain occupations are known to

be demoralizing to children, but the statistics which would prove

this are not now kept. It is reasonable to hope that persistent,

recurrent inquiries from the Federal children’s bureau may induce

local authorities to keep their records in such form as to make them

valuable both to the children concerned and to children in parts of

the country which have no similar institutions.

8. There is no accepted standard of truancy work. In some places

truant officers report daily, in others weekly, in some monthly, in

others never. Some truant officers do no work whatever in return for

their salaries. There should be some standard of efficiency for work

of this sort, but first we need to know the facts.

9. Finally, and by far the most important, we do not know how many

children are born each year, or how many die, or why they die. We

need statistics of nativity and mortality.

The American Federation of Labor, the labor unions, and, of course,

practically all of the social workers of the Nation have united

through every means in their power to create the sentiment that has

finally resulted in a Federal children’s bureau.

This, then, is the most significant and, at the same time, the

most hopeful single item of accomplishment for the conservation

of the childhood welfare of the Nation for the past year. Next

in importance to the establishment of the bureau itself is the

appointment by the President in the person of Miss Julia T. Lathrop

as its chief. Her long and devoted service with Miss Jane Addams

at Hull House in Chicago, her well-known interest and experience

in the sociological work that has occupied so many years of her

useful life have especially equipped her for this work. While, up

to the time of the establishment of the children’s bureau, we were

rather lagging behind the European nations, the various national and

international conferences held throughout Europe during the past

year have been greatly stimulated by the example our Government

has set in establishing this special work for the Conservation of

the Nation’s best asset. It is hard, therefore, to estimate the

far-reaching influence of this wise and generous step on the part of

the National Government. It was my privilege, with others, to attend

sessions of the congressional committees and speak in behalf of the

National Children’s Bureau, and my enthusiasm is just as great as

it ever was for that important step, but I am not one of those who

have believed that when we establish the bureau we have done all

that we can do as a Nation to conserve the welfare of the children.

No doubt the bureau will accomplish much through such an educational

campaign as it may be able to conduct, and the gathering together of

very important information upon subjects that at present are left

largely to conjecture, and concerning which we shall still be left

very much in the dark. But I wish to predict that its chief service

in the end will be, as I hope it will be, to point out some of the

needed changes in social, economic and industrial fabric that must be

made if we are going to truly conserve the interests of the child.

A program of social justice, definitely proposed and persistently

carried out will in the end do much more for the welfare of the

children of the Nation than all the bureaus that we can establish.

The agitation carried on principally by social workers, juvenile

courts and probation officers, for the past ten years in behalf of

what is popularly known as “Mothers’ Pensions,” has begun to bear

fruit. As far back as 1899, a few of the States recognized the

principle that it should share with certain homes the responsibility

for the education of the child by not only providing free schools but

also by providing aid for certain needy parents of children in order

that the children could have the educational advantages afforded by

the State. The demand for an extension of this recognition of the

principle has met with response during the past two years in the

State of Missouri and the State of Illinois. While the Missouri law

was the first definite mothers’ pension law, so-called, to become

effective, it differs from the Illinois law in that it is limited to

certain large cities. A somewhat similar law in Illinois has now been

in force for a little more than a year. It is much broader in scope.

Generally speaking, these laws vest power in the juvenile courts,

after proper hearing, to direct the authorities dispensing public

revenues, to pay to the parents—generally the mother—of dependent

children a sum sufficient for the mother to care for the children in

her own home, where the conditions are such, of course, as to justify

keeping the child in its own home. It is assumed that the judge

will act with wisdom and discretion and not abuse the power vested

in him for the protection of dependent children. As a rule, this

confidence in the court is not misplaced. But I am strongly opposed

to legislation of this kind that is not carefully hedged about with

such safeguards as to avoid possible abuses under it. For it is the

abuses of such laws that furnish ammunition to its foes. This is not

an objection to the principle of the law or a criticism of those who

are entitled to so much credit for its passage. Most any kind of a

law to start with establishing the principle should be more than

welcome. The safeguards needed must largely develop in the course of

practice and experience under it, when they may be added by suitable

amendments from time to time—not an uncommon history of most all

legislation of this character.

In many States, as in Colorado, where we have on several occasions

attempted to secure legislation of this kind, we have met with

failure for several reasons. The need has not seemed to legislators

to be as acute as in States with more congested populations, in large

cities like New York and Chicago. And in many States the laws already

on the statute books have been fairly sufficient for their needs. Not

only in Colorado, but many other States, to my personal knowledge,

in exceptional or proper cases, mothers have been pensioned by the

county commissioners, or assisted under school laws to such an

extent that the lack of a more definite law upon the subject has

not been seriously felt. But any State, in which there is a city of

over 100,000 population or a considerable number of small cities of

over 25,000 population, if it would truly conserve the welfare of

its children, should not hesitate to adopt definite and effective

legislation of this character.

But signs of opposition to such legislation are by no means lacking.

It has been denounced in some quarters as paternalistic—socialistic,

and entirely beyond the province or within the power of the State.

But the time has long since passed in this country when there should

be any serious question of not only the power but the duty of the

State when it comes to the protection of its children. I say “its

children” because the State is the supreme parent—the over-parent.

From one viewpoint the State is superior to the natural parent. It

says to the parent, “If you neglect your child you forfeit your right

to its custody.” This is a just power to be wisely exercised. It is

primarily for the welfare of the child. Because of the natural ties

of love and affection that are supposed to exist between parent and

child it is assumed by the State that the best place for the child

is in its own home with its own father and mother. This is a wise

balance for this rather exceptional power of the State. The State

wisely recognizes that the home is the foundation of society, and

since it is in the interest of the State to keep the child in the

home, as one of the very best methods of preserving the home, the

first duty of the agents of the State should be to bring about that

result in every case possible. In fighting for the child the State is

only fighting for its own preservation.

Another prime duty of the State is to compel the father to support

the child and also to support the wife, not so much because it is the

wife but because it is a woman who is the mother of a child, or may

be the mother of a child. One great weakness in the nonsupport laws

of the various States and, at the same time, a danger in the mothers’

pension acts of the various States is the lack of a practical system

of operation and enforcement that will not permit the father to

shirk—that will hold him to a strict accountability to his duty to

the State, namely, to support the child. The child is the State and

the State is the child. The man or woman, therefore, who does most

for the child does most for the State. As a part of every nonsupport

law and mothers’ compensation act should be provisions for workhouses

where fathers who wilfully and without excuse refuse to perform their

duty to the child should be committed.

Failing in the last Legislature in Colorado to get any legislation

for the relief of needy mothers, our people have appealed to the

people under their rights to initiative laws, for what we term a

Mothers’ Compensation Law, rather than a Mothers’ Pension Act. We

think that the difference is more than a mere haggling over terms.

The State maintains a standing army for its protection. Soldiers

fighting its battles, or standing ready to fight its battles while

performing that function, are paid—compensated. They receive money,

food and clothing from the State. When the fight is over, when they

have retired from service, in their old age they are pensioned.

In a different capacity, but none the less important and effective,

do mothers of children serve the State. They do not face death on the

field of battle, but they go down to the gates of death and bring

back their children. The perils and hardships that soldiers endure in

times of war are more than equalled by the struggles of hundreds of

thousands of mothers fighting the enemies of the State that killing

competition and the injustices of present economic conditions have

raised up in its path. In fighting these enemies to save their

children to the State these women are more serviceable soldiers of

the State even than those sons they reared, who may have died on the

field of battle.

The term “pension,” therefore, is a misnomer. It is confusing. It

interferes with a real understanding of what this fight is all about.

It might not be a bad idea to consider pensioning mothers, as we

pension soldiers after the battle is fought, after they have gone

through the valley of the shadow, after they have slaved, and toiled

and suffered and reared their children to manhood and womanhood, to

guarantee them a peaceful, happy old age by providing a “pension.”

But while they are engaged in the service of the State, in saving the

State by saving the child, I insist, where it is necessary to enable

them to do their part in the battle, they should be paid—they should

be compensated.

I insist further that the compensation should no more be in the

interest of the mother than it should be in the interest of the

soldier, except as a means of preserving the home and the State,

except as in the interest of public morals and for the prevention of

poverty and crime—all of which is necessary to save the State.

Maternity is more than a prompting of nature. It is a patriotic duty

to the State. As in the case of the patriot who enlists for the

war, of course it should be voluntary and in accord with social and

religious custom. But a wilful evasion of so plain a duty should

be visited with the same contempt that meets the deserter from the

ranks. As the profession of the soldier is no more the business of

the individual without the part and duty of the State, neither is the

perpetuation of the race wholly the business of the individual. And

of course it is the duty of the State to see that those individuals

responsible for the race should perform their duty. There must be

laws recognizing the man as the breadwinner and the mother as the

home maker. The man must be held strictly accountable to the State

for the support of the woman he has chosen to be the mother of his

children. And this must be primarily not so much in the interest of

the woman as in the interest of the children she bears or is expected

to bear. If the man fails in his duty he should be compelled to

perform that duty where it is possible to compel him to do it. If

that is not possible, then the State itself must assume the burden.

If the man has wilfully shirked it must provide workhouses in which

he can be made to perform the duty he has voluntarily undertaken.

But, at whatever expense or hazard, the State must see that the child

is protected. This is impossible unless the mother is protected.

The State has no right to scold women for race suicide when the State

itself is responsible for race suicide. The father would have just

as much right to scold his child for stealing when the neglect of

the father was responsible for the thefts of the child. The State

has just as important a part in this problem as the individual.

The individual must do his duty, but the State must see that the

conditions are such that it is possible for the individual to perform

his part. If the struggle for bread makes maternity a tragedy instead

of a blessing, it is the duty of the State to reverse the conditions

and make maternity a blessing instead of a tragedy. (Applause.)

In conclusion, I want to utter a warning. In standing for the policy

of the State to guarantee compensation to the mothers of children,

the State becomes responsible in a measure for every child coming

into the world. The next logical step will be for the State to demand

a right to say who shall and who shall not be the fathers and mothers

of its children. It follows that the Mothers’ Compensation Act is

only a part of a new code now in process of development in which

the State shall become more and more responsible, not only for the

children who are born into the world, but for the kind of children

that are born into the world and the parentage of those children. It

is all a part of a wise system of laws the purpose of which shall be

as far as proper and possible to exclude the unfit from the rights of

parenthood.

The revival of that interesting cult of eugenics now attracting so

much attention, the demand for the teaching of sex hygiene and the

agitation of kindred subjects now going on throughout the whole

civilized world, is simply a response to the growing need and the

growing demand that the State should become the over-parent of the

race.

It is impossible in the time allowed for this discussion and the

subjects that such a report should occupy to do more than discuss

one or two of the recent activities in behalf of the Conservation

of the child life of the Nation. Much excellent work has been done

by other organizations, some of which, because of the limitations

mentioned, it may be impossible to refer to. But I must especially

commend the work of the Men and Religion Forward Movement and the

excellent report of its Boys’ Work Commission. After all, the work

for the boy is necessarily in a large measure also a work for the

girl. This report ably discusses the religious needs of the child;

the message of Christianity to childhood; the essential principles

of organized work with children in the church, the Sunday-school and

local organizations, and the relation of these organizations to the

home and the child and to social and sex hygiene.

Of similar importance is the laborious, able and excellent report on

the safeguarding of adolescent youth, prepared for the International

Sunday-school Association under the direction of Mr. Wilbur R. Crafts

and his committee of assistants.

Dr. Wallace spoke of the need of moral education, and I heartily

agree with him; but what are you going to do in the case of a bright

boy who knows more about politics than he does about Sunday-school?

I have a boy like this in my mind. He knew the ward boss, knew all

about him—his authority over the dives and all that. But I thought

he needed moral training, so he was induced to go to Sunday-school.

I saw him afterwards and asked him what he learned in Sunday-school.

“Aw,” he said, “it’s a place where all the little kids go and gives

up a penny, but they don’t git nothin’ back.” “But you learned

something, didn’t you?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “they learned me

about the angels; they learned me they had wings like chickens, but

they didn’t learn me whether they laid eggs or not.”

I agree with Dr. Wallace that we need to change our methods. Of

course Dr. Wallace has had a different experience from mine. He has

children. I have children—a thousand of them—but they belong to other

folk.

There is no more important subject than the safeguarding of childhood

and youth against the moral perils of the modern community. Under

this head the important matter of regulating dance halls, skating

rinks, moving picture shows and various places of amusement is

becoming more and more one of the serious problems of community life.

The able reports of one or two vice commissions of the large cities,

notably Chicago and Minneapolis, have added much to the literature

and information valuable to those who are interested in conserving

and protecting the moral welfare of the nation’s youth.

Let me say here that I was in a city where they had such a vice

commission, and one of the officials told me the number of women

who had been forced into prostitution, or had been forced half-way

there. I asked him the ages of these women, and he said practically

they were all between eighteen and thirty-five, and on looking up the

statistics we found that this number of women thus forced into this

unholy life was 10 per cent. of all the women between eighteen and

thirty-five in that city. It is a frightful thing, my friends, but if

these things exist, if they are facts, we are false to our children

and false to our country if we try to blind our eyes to these facts.

It is our duty, and as Dr. Wallace has said, there is no place in

this country where these things ought to be more freely discussed

than in a Congress like this.

The child welfare exhibit, beginning with that of Chicago and

duplicated in a measure in other large cities, is one of the most

notable contributions in recent times in the great work of conserving

the welfare of childhood.

The wider use of the schools in its more careful regard for the

physical welfare of children must also be added to the hopeful signs

of the times. The terrific waste in money, energy and effort that

is going on in the cities because of the many boards controlling

such activities as schools, playgrounds, social centers, public

libraries, art galleries and public baths promises to be largely

avoided by a consolidation of these activities under the control of

one board with the schools as a great social center, to which is

added its neighborhood dance hall, public baths, public library,

public assembly hall, public playground and social center under

one single authority, such as a board of education and recreation

that promises to avoid the bickerings, difficulties, expense and

waste that is the outcome from duplicated boards. Activities that

are largely educational and concern the city’s youth, now largely

under a half-dozen boards or authorities, should be brought together

under one general authority. An amendment to the Constitution of

the State of Colorado proposing such a consolidation and the use

of the schoolhouses as polling places and for the discussion of

governmental, social and political questions during campaigns, is to

be voted on at the November election.

And now, my friends, in conclusion I want to say that one of the

prime duties of the Nation—its duty to the child—is to extend to

the women the same rights as the men, that they may go to the polls

and vote on these measures. (Applause.) This is not politics, Mr.

President, it is a plain, economic proposition, because I believe

the women of this country are awake to the needs of the children,

especially those in the centers of population, and when they are

given this right they will pass laws that are necessary to bring

about right and justice for the women and children of this Nation.

(Applause.) I would not have my position today but for the fact that

women vote in Colorado. (Laughter.) Either the bosses, the machine

or the gang would have got me long ago. Why? Because I went beyond

the court into the swamp lands, not beyond the city, but within the

city, and showed up the ghosts of poverty and crime and the relations

between a certain type of lawless big boss and vice. And when the

mother could see that the protection of her boy and her girl from

vice depended upon clean politics and righteous laws, then, my

friends, the change began to come, and it is coming in our State

as in every other State in this Nation—then began a reign of truth

and right and progress. (Applause.) And when the women of our city

understood what machine rule meant, they rose in their might, with

the ballot in their hands, and put an end to machine rule in that

city.

I remember a little boy that belonged to one of our debating clubs on

the west side, who was very much disturbed over the making of some

new laws. He came to see me, and when I asked him what he wanted,

he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, on which was written:

“Resolved, That all kids over ten years of age shall have a right to

vote for the juvenile judge.” “And then,” said little Benny, “when

we gets that law through the bosses will never get you, and we kids

will get justice.”

But it was not necessary.

I remember we had a little fellow who was quite a fluent speaker,

and finally one of the bosses began to get alarmed at the effect

this boy’s talk was having. The boss said to him, “You have a lot of

mouth, but you have no vote.” Quick as a flash came the answer, “I

haven’t got a vote, but I would have you understand that in the State

of Colorado my mother has a vote, and my sister has a vote, and she

married a fellow and he has a vote, and they will see that he votes

right.”

And the boy’s prediction was more than verified, for when the votes

were counted the majority was on the right side, and the people who

were working to relieve poverty and the suffering of children had won

by ten thousand majority.

So I feel we must have the women with us in this struggle for the

rights of childhood in this Nation, and with that right guaranteed

they will bring about sooner than any other agency some changes for

good in this Nation. If we are to save the child we want to save the

State, for the child is the State and the State is the child. Take

care of the child and the State will take care of itself. (Great

applause.)

Miss Adeline Denny (in the audience) moved that a rising vote of

thanks be tendered Judge Lindsey, who is in favor of women as well as

children. The motion was carried and the Chautauqua salute given.

President WHITE—The Congress now stands adjourned until 9:30 o’clock

tomorrow morning.

_SEVENTH SESSION._

The Congress convened in the Murat Theater, on the morning of October

3, 1912, and was called to order by President White, at 9:45 o’clock

a. m.

President WHITE—We are a little late in gathering this morning. The

meetings last night were rather strenuous. There were meetings in two

different places, and the one I attended had seventeen or eighteen

hundred in the audience, so we know we have a large attendance. The

idea of having sectional meetings is a good one, because it enables

discussions at greater length upon special subjects that concern

different people interested. Day before yesterday, we had three

meetings going on at the same time. Then we have an illustration of

what is needed in the way of civic reform and good government over at

the State House, and none of us should miss this. It is going on all

the time. It appeals to the eye, and we can see at a glance so much

that is needed in this battle for reform.