We are by no means without instances in this country, of death

rates reduced by preventive methods, as shown for young children

in our largest cities after the introduction of pasteurized

milk. Deaths have been thus spared for that peculiarly helpless

class of sufferers, to the extent of fully 50 per cent. in some

districts—in large measure through the well-directed activity of one

public-spirited New York merchant. But we have much to do in other

lines, and we have only begun to free ourselves of the typhoid fever

incubus. As late as fourteen years ago there were 11,000 cases of

that infection in the camp at Chattanooga, with 800 deaths. In the

entire Spanish war the deaths of our soldiers from diseases, it was

calculated, were thirteen times as many as from wounds in battle—the

diseases mostly, like the Chattanooga typhoid, of the preventable

kinds.

Loss of life by preventable accidents, on railways, in factories and

mines, is too closely associated with that by diseases to be here

omitted, though entitled to much fuller treatment than we can here

afford. The deathroll from this cause is still disgracefully large

in this country, far surpassing any country of Europe; but there

are signs already of diminution. For instance, one steel factory,

reporting 43 accidental deaths among 6,000 employes in 1906, showed

only 12 fatalities in a payroll of 7,000 in 1909, safeguards having

been introduced in the meantime. This instance is very good, so

far as it goes, but we need to make much more progress in the same

direction.

What we want is systematic effort, by some powerful consolidated

agency, to promote the conservation of human life. We have no need to

find fault with any of the organizations now engaged in furthering

that end, several of which are doing good work. We may gratefully

acknowledge the aid of the various medical societies, “regular” and

“irregular”—though we take the liberty of wishing that they might

fight the common enemy a little more and each other a little less.

We may also welcome the assistance of the life insurance companies,

notably the Equitable and the Metropolitan, whose managers clearly

realize how their interests are involved. Whatever lengthens the

average term of human life is a factor operating to increase their

dividends and to reduce the cost of insurance to their policyholders.

It is worth while to note, at this point, that the majority of

life insurance officers are strong advocates of the formation of a

national bureau or department of health.

Still more do we owe to the activities of State and municipal boards

of health, which do more good because they have more power. Where

properly supported they have done a great work, at obstructing the

spread of epidemics by quarantines and other methods of isolation,

at curing pollution of water supply, at instituting improved sewer

systems, at bettering the general food supply by inspection of

markets. You have just heard a condensed account of the activities

of one of our best State health departments, that of Pennsylvania.

You will infer from what that department has done in seven years what

might be done by a national bureau or department, with powers and

field of operation extending over the entire country.

The movement for a bureau or department of health, national in its

scope, has been most actively advanced in Washington by Hon. Robert

L. Owen, Senator from Oklahoma. His bills call for a department,

and he gives strong reasons for the view that such an organization

would, while that of a bureau would not, suffice for the national

governmental activities in behalf of the public health. President

Taft strongly urges a “Bureau of Public Health,” and plainly

intimates a preference for the bureau plan. The “Committee of

One Hundred on National Health,” formed by the Association for

Advancement of Science, in 1906, with Prof. Irving Fisher as its

president, originally contemplated a department whose head should

be a member of the President’s cabinet, but it has in its recent

publications adopted the alternative phrase “bureau or department,”

which course is here followed, because there is manifestly nothing to

gain by keeping up a contest on the point. The memorial prepared by

the committee of one hundred proposes for a national department of

health certain functions, as follows:

1. Administration—Including the national quarantine work, and

whatever regulation of interstate commerce might affect human health,

such as meat inspection and enforcing the food and drug act.

2. Co-operation—The work of assisting State, county and city health

agencies, after some such fashion as the National Department of

Agriculture co-operates with State agricultural colleges and

institutions.

3. Research and Investigation—The work of obtaining needed scientific

information concerning the cause and prevention of diseases that

now shorten or impair human life; this would include a study of

accidents, of poisonous manufacturing trades, of hygienic conditions

in schools, etc., just as yellow fever was studied in Cuba, as the

hookworm is now to be studied under private endowment, as the work of

the Pasteur Institute was conducted under French government support.

4. Education—The work of supplying to the country scientifically

established data on matters pertaining to health, such work as is

done by the “publication division” in most of our governmental

departments; thus rendering available for practical use the work of

research and investigation. The countries in which is found the most

rapid reduction of the death rate are just those (Sweden for example)

in which the spread of a knowledge of hygiene is widest.

Of these functions the mere statement is a most powerful argument for

the bureau or department suggested. It only remains to remove a few

misunderstandings. One objection, for example, is powerful in many

minds—that such a centralized office must necessarily be the organ

of a particular medical school, and must so give that school—the one

denominated “regular,” for example—an unfair advantage, unsuited

to a government of liberty and equality. To this it may be frankly

replied, that the primary objects of the new office being the four

just stated (administration, co-operation, investigation, education),

it would aim to collect and diffuse the greatest attainable amount

of accurate knowledge on the subject of health; and that if it found

a larger quantity of better knowledge in one school than in another,

it would be false to its trust if it did not spread that knowledge

accordingly. Personally, the writer finds it hard to believe that it

could treat a school that taught the unreality of disease, or the

surpassing value for all kinds of disorders, of drugs, of a narrow

range of characteristics, on an exact equality with schools that deal

with facts as they find them; but he heartily agrees that the citizen

ought to enjoy the liberty of choosing his own medical advisers, so

far as he does not endanger life or health by so choosing.

There are other objections to organized national work for health,

many of them from a so-called National League for Medical Freedom,

the most active workers in which have been shown to be interested in

one or another kind of proprietary medicine, backed by some “mental

healers,” and by associations of druggists who object to the “pure

food and drugs act” of 1906. Several homœpathical State societies

have repudiated that “league for freedom,” and have emphatically

attested their approval of the proposed bureau or department of

health; this, notwithstanding their well-understood grievances

against “regular” practitioners. Some of the best informed among the

osteopaths and the Christian Scientists are pronouncing similarly;

and so, if the disavowals keep on, the League of Medical Freedom may

soon be left with only those who seek freedom to dope their victims

with drugs that enslave; stupefy them—infant and adult—with opium

and thinly disguised alcohol, and generally to reverse the progress

of a century. But, since it is estimated that $75,000,000 a year are

expended by our fellow-citizens for patent medicines, it is easy

enough to see how they must regard a national department which is

to improve the sanitary conditions of the country, show people how

to care for health, stop the sale of poisonous nostrums and impure

foods, and end the career of opium under the name of “soothing

syrup.” Their profits would be gone, and of course they disapprove

and protest.

Altogether, the cause of a national bureau or department of health is

commended, both by those who favor and those who oppose it. It could

not ask better advocates than the distinguished men who heartily

favor it, on the congressional or the collegiate stage; nor more

suitable adversaries than those constituting the League for Medical

Freedom.

President WHITE—This is a most valuable paper, and it will be

printed, together with the other papers and addresses of this

convention. Every one should avail themselves of the opportunity to

subscribe for this book, which costs one dollar.

I will now introduce to you the gentleman who kindly gave his hour to

Mr. Farquhar. He is Mr. Reginald Pelham Bolton, of New York City, who

will speak to you on “The Prevention of Elevator Accidents.”

Mr. BOLTON—The preservation of human life and the protection of our

fellow-creatures from physical injury, claim prior consideration over

conservation of mere materials.

Any form of danger which results in the destruction of life, and

exhibits a tendency toward increased developments, invites our

systematic investigation. Ameliorative measures, if undertaken in

advance of the growth of an evil, are of double value. To one phase

of the subject, of the conservation of life, I desire to direct your

attention.

The increase of fatalities and injuries resulting from the extensive

use of passenger elevators has become sufficiently marked to deserve

careful attention by those who are concerned with the benefit of our

fellow-citizens. Complete statistics as to the number of accidental

occurrences in and about elevators of all classes throughout the

country are not available, but an estimate based upon such official

returns as relate to labor alone, indicate that the annual total

is now probably in excess of seven thousand, of which probably

three-fourths are of a preventable character.

From small beginnings, the roll of such accidents reported by the New

York Department of Labor, which it is conceded do not cover all such

occurrences, rose in 1909 to a total for five years of 1,600 injured

persons, of whom 198 were killed and about 298 permanently disabled.

The Wainwright-Phillips Commission of the New York State Legislature

reported in 1911 a list of injuries and deaths, in the three years

1907 to 1910, affecting 1,108 persons, of whom 106 were killed

and 241 were more or less seriously and permanently crippled. In

addition, no less than 200 persons fell down hoistways, of whom 43

were killed outright and 19 permanently injured.

These occurrences took place only on elevators in industrial

establishments, and are only those which have been officially

reported.

The Industrial Commission of the State of Wisconsin reported for the

ten months, September, 1911, to June, 1912, thirty-nine accidents

in and upon elevators, and fifteen more due to falls down elevator

shafts; all occurring in establishments of various industries.

Accidents occurring in transportation were 195, so that the relation

of elevator accidents and falls was 28 per cent. of transportation.

That such accidents are duplicated outside the limits of observation

of labor departments is indicated by an examination of the reports

of the New York county coroners, which show about one hundred deaths

annually from elevator accidents in the county of New York only.

In the year 1911, in the Borough of Manhattan, there were reported

sixty-eight fatalities in connection with elevators, about two

hundred permanent injuries, and probably about three hundred more may

be estimated as having sustained lesser injuries.

The fact that accidental occurrences in or about elevators are thus

found to be deplorably numerous and increasing is not to be taken

as a reflection upon the general security of elevator travel. Their

number is relatively small in comparison with the vast number of

persons utilizing these appliances. One express schedule elevator

handles about 700,000 persons per annum. Further, by far the

larger number of mishaps are not due to failure or fault of the

elevator itself, but occur in and about the entrances of, or in the

hoistways of such apparatus, from persons falling through unguarded

openings into elevator shafts, and of course a number are due to the

recklessness and incompetence of employes and operators.

It remains the fact, however, that a large part of these occurrences

are unnecessary, just as was found to be the case with many of

the forms of danger to life and injury to limb which attended the

operation of freight and passenger trains prior to the adoption of

certain of the safety appliances and methods which have been brought

into general use on railroads, as a result of the concentration of

public attention upon the subject, and legislative action based

thereon. Similar attention and action with the compilation of

statistics upon the subject will undoubtedly result in diminishing

the number of fatal and injurious occurrences connected with elevator

operation.

Some loss of human life and injury to the person may to some extent

be regarded as an unfortunately inevitable accompaniment of all forms

of motive apparatus, and the complex conditions of modern existence

have not only increased this liability by demands for more rapid

movement of all forms of mechanical transportation, but the vast

increase in the usage of appliances has introduced new elements of

danger.

In no class of transportation are the effects of haste and crowding

more apparent and dangerous than in the modern means of vertical

transportation, use of which is now made by all classes of people.

Liability towards accidental occurrences in elevators, therefore,

affects the whole public, and it is needless to dilate upon the

general concern in, and economic loss resulting from deaths or injury

of any member of the community. It may be conservatively estimated

that the economic value of the mere services of persons killed in and

about elevators, based upon life expectancy, and the loss of time of

those injured, would annually exceed the cost of equipment of all

passenger and freight elevators with modernized safety appliances.

There are some features connected with elevator accidents which call

for consideration and rectification. These have grown up around the

development of the appliance in a manner somewhat peculiar to it.

The elevator is a transportation apparatus which is for the most

part privately operated and owned. Unlike the railroad, it is not

regarded by the law as the apparatus of a common carrier. Unlike the

road carriage or car, it is not operated upon the public highways.

Unlike the machinery of a factory, it is not utilized exclusively by

employes.

Its development and use have been, perhaps, too restricted to require

the attention of such legislation as has been rather freely applied

to the other classes of appliances engaged in transporting human

beings.

It has therefore come about that the legal status of the elevator is

in a very indefinite condition, its public regulation is generally

local and therefore at best erratic, and the liability for the

security of its occupants is as varied as the legal practice and

rulings of different States.

The results are unfortunate to all concerned except perhaps that part

of the legal profession which concerns itself with the prosecution

of claims for injuries. Only two States, Pennsylvania and Rhode

Island, have adopted legislative provisions, of limited character,

relating to elevators. The former State provided so long ago as

1895 a requirement for automatic locking devices on all passenger

elevators, thus being the pioneer in this direction. The State of

Rhode Island by its general law, Chapter 129, requires all elevators

“to be equipped with safety appliances to prevent the starting of

the elevator car in either direction while any door opening into the

elevator is open.”

The State of Wisconsin, by its Industrial Commission law, Chapter

485, of 1911, placed in the hands of that body general power to

require safeguards “in all places of employment,” but it does not

appear that the powers of the act extend to every class of building

in which elevators may or can be employed. Other efforts have been

made to effect legislation in the same direction, but have so far

failed of enactment.

A bill was introduced in the House of Representatives December 12,

1910, by Mr. W. Bennet, requiring all elevators in the District of

Columbia to be provided with gate and car interlocking devices,

which bill did not become law. A bill was introduced in 1911 into

the Assembly of the State of New York amending the labor law in

the direction recommended by the Wainwright-Phillips Commission,

and empowering the Commissioner of Labor to require automatic

door-locking and car interlocking on all passenger elevators in

factories. Senate Bill 911 and Assembly Bill 329 of 1911 were

designed to require in general terms the use of “such safety devices

as will prevent accidents to persons getting on or off elevator cars

and from falling through open doors into the elevator shafts.”

The attention of the American Museum of Safety has been directed

for some years towards the accomplishment of some amelioration of

existing conditions, and that humane organization made a strong

effort to arouse public interest in these measures and to secure

their enactment, but without success.

The subject has received some sporadic attention by several public

associations, including the National Civic Federation, the American

Association for Labor Legislation and the New York Association for

Labor Legislation, but without effective results.

With the foregoing exceptions, the obligations of an owner of a

building, as regards the security of an elevating appliance, are

practically limited to a compliance with the then existing local

regulations to the purchase of a device commensurate with the

existing state of the art, of a design made by a reputable concern,

and to the employment of reasonable care in upkeep and operation.

No legal obligation appears to lie upon an owner to alter or modify

the appliance in conformity with greater knowledge of the art, or

to add to it greater means of security. Until some unfortunate

occurrence has taken place, an owner of property naturally feels

unwilling to embark on such expenditures. The present system of

liability insurance rather tends to such a situation, as an owner has

no inducement in the form of reduced premiums, to expend money upon

desirable safeguards. If the liability corporations should concede

a substantial reduction of premiums, in connection with appliances

dealing with a certain proportion of the risks attending elevator

operation, much could be accomplished without the aid of special

legislation.

While the law-making powers do not hesitate to direct such measures

to be taken with and upon the property of common carriers, they seem

to regard the operation of a practically public conveyance within

private property as a privileged possession and hesitate to enter the

castle of the owner and involve him in enforced expenditures upon a

privately operated appliance.

Yet an elevator, whether used for the purpose of the carriage of

goods, of tenants, of employes, or of visitors to a building, is a

common carrier earning a profit, even if indirectly, for it is as

much a source of revenue as is the machinery of a factory around

which many enforced safeguards have, by legislation, been thrown.

If, therefore, the owner of a building installs elevators for the

convenient carriage of tenants and visitors within his property, he

does so because the apparatus enhances the value of that property,

and that enhancement is largely due to the public use of the

appliance, in which use the unknowing users have some right to

legislative protection from results of ignorance or incompetence, of

neglect or parsimony.

It has taken a long time for this view of the matter to become even

partially recognized, even in the city of New York, in which the use

of elevators has multiplied beyond all conception of what seemed

probable twenty-five years ago. The number of passenger elevators

in the Borough of Manhattan alone, now exceeds nine thousand, and

these increase annually by about five hundred new machines. The

estimated number of freight elevators, none of which under present

circumstances are subject to official inspection, is not less than

ten thousand.

The regulations regarding elevators in Manhattan, commencing with

feeble beginnings, have advanced under the careful direction of the

present Superintendent of Buildings of Manhattan, Rudolph P. Miller,

C. E., into the field of interference with private control, and the

department is compiling further regulations which will go a long way

towards the protection of the public in safeguarding the elevating

apparatus they are compelled to use. The Manhattan regulations,

while in themselves excellent, are directly applicable to passenger

elevators only with such freight elevators as are within the same

shaft enclosure as a passenger elevator. They require the operator to

be of reliable and industrious habits, not less than eighteen years

of age, with at least one month’s experience in his duties.

A number of known elements of unsafe character are prohibited

and some constructive features of value are insisted upon. No

provision is, however, made for automatic interlocking of gates and

car movement, nor are projections in the shaft prohibited. Some

good, detailed regulations and suggestions have been issued by the

Wisconsin Labor Commission, but these and other State and local

regulations could be substantially increased in value, by a thorough

technical investigation and settlement.

Some improvement of deficiencies in apparatus existing prior to these

rules has been effected by requiring safeguards to be applied upon

any alteration or large repair work being sanctioned. This course has

brought about the addition of speed safety appliances in a number of

old installations where this elementary security was absent.

Later regulations will, in similar manner, require carefully

conducted tests of all machines whether new, altered or repaired.

Many minor matters of security are or will be thus provided for,

yet the limited powers of a bureau can but at best halt in dealing

with the entire problem. And when the regulations of Manhattan are

made, as they should be, the best possible, it is regrettable that in

another city or even in another borough of the same city, the same

desirable conditions will not apply.

Yet the security of an elevator requires the same measures of

attention, in one State as in another, as much in the merest hamlet

as in the great metropolis.

The use of elevators is now widespread through all States, and in

all classes of buildings, affecting the convenience and security of

all classes of persons; and calling for the establishment of well

considered and equalized regulation in every part of the country.

It speaks volumes for the sense of responsibility of our leading

manufacturers of elevators, that among all the tens of thousands of

machines turned out by such concerns as the Otis Elevator Company

and their competitors, accidents due to the physical breakage of the

machinery of elevators should be in number only what they are, when

they include the failures of machines built in days when the industry

was small and the art far less understood than it is at present.

When we reflect upon the fact that the passengers carried in

elevators in the city of New York far exceed in number those carried

on all the surface and subway lines, we may the more appreciate

the point to which I desire specially to direct your attention,

namely, the desirability in the public interest of State regulation,

and as far as possible, uniform regulation, of the security and

operation of elevators. The local regulations may be left to care

for details of installation but the State authority is necessary to

require elevators to be not only modern but progressively modernized

appliances; that no antiquated and essentially dangerous apparatus

shall be continued in use, and that necessary safeguards and properly

qualified operators shall accompany their operation.

The State may further require that in excessively tall buildings,

where the elevators constitute the only practical means of egress in

emergency, there shall be a proper sufficiency of such appliances

capable of removing the occupants within a reasonably safe period of

time.

The limitations of the carrying capacity of an elevator are now well

understood, and the safety of operatives in high loft buildings and

of tenants in loftier “tower” office buildings, demands that the

parsimony of owners and the ignorance of architects should not be

allowed to restrict the exit of occupants of such buildings. A second

elevator, in the Triangle fire disaster, would not only have saved

its capacity in human occupants, but would have averted the fatal

overcrowding of the single car which rendered it practically of no

avail.

Many loft buildings of twelve stories and some even exceeding twenty

stories are in existence in which the elevator accommodation is

utterly inadequate for the removal of occupants of upper floors

in a reasonable time, in case of emergency. The effectiveness of

exterior “fire escapes” and of crooked interior stairways, especially

for great heights, is now known to be strictly within certain

limitations, and elevators have on many occasions demonstrated their

value in the saving of life in panic and fire.

Office buildings are constructed thirty and more stories in height,

without fire escapes and with winding stairways which are useless

in emergency, and with such limited elevator capacity as would not

remove the tenants in less than thirty minutes.

A most important and desirable subject for general action is afforded

by provisions for safeguarding elevator gates and doorways. In and

about these orifices, as previously observed, a large proportion of

unnecessary accidents and fatalities occur. The unlatched door, the

open gate, the absence of inner gates, the projecting sill, and the

slippery tread, are fruitful causes of deplorable injuries and have

caused the unnecessary loss of many precious lives. The proportion

which this class of occurrence bears to the total is evidently large.

An analysis of a list of four thousand accidental occurrences shows

the following proportions:

Per cent.

Getting on or off cars 58

Falling through unguarded openings 20

Fractures and fall of cars, only 17

Mechanics making repairs in shafts, etc 4

Unexplained 1

A number of devices have been developed during recent years, which

have overcome objections to their use in the past, whereby the gates

of elevators must be securely locked and fastened before the car can

be moved. Six of such devices are approved for use in the State of

Pennsylvania. It would seem that so simple a feature eliminating the

essential danger surrounding the operation of a car moving vertically

between floors in a shaft would long ago have been demanded by every

form of authority.

With other engineers, I was at one time opposed to the use of such

appliances on the ground of their uncertainty. But the growing volume

of fatalities directly attributable to the lack of such safeguards,

together with radical improvement in their construction, now demand

the opposite conclusion.

There has been particular objection in some large cities to the

application of devices for locking the gates, on the ground that the

speed of operation on rapid schedule service would be retarded and

inconvenience and overcrowding would result. In order to satisfy

myself upon this point, I made this year a series of comparative

trials of elevators equipped with one such appliance, the Clarke

automatic safety devices, and found that no such loss of time in

service actually resulted. On the contrary, a trial of the elevators

in the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company’s Building, 49 Wall street,

New York City, and in the Hotel Imperial, showed that the operators

made better time with the device in service, as they were compelled

to make more exact landings and thus avoided much of the time

frequently wasted in reversals of the car movement.

Under the present circumstances, therefore, it seems that the proper

time has arrived for action in this respect, and that the example

set by the States of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island may be embodied

in careful legislative requirements in other States, which would,

at some expense, it is true, to private owners, safeguard the

public from those peculiarly present dangers which have taken such

unnecessary toll of human life and limb, in the ghastly entanglement

between the gate or doorway and the moving car, or the dreadful fall

through the opened gate.

It would be very desirable, if, in the investigation of this subject,

and the preparation of legislation to deal with it, competent

technical and legal ability were employed, as the subject is of a

technical character. Some of the legislation already in existence has

been worded in so ill-considered a manner, as to give the impression

that it was phrased in order to prevent the recovery of damages by

injured persons.

The expression of your interest in this matter will tend to

strengthen the hands of those who are seeking at present, by the

limited means available, to enforce good methods of installation,

proper safeguards and proper operation. It will also aid our great

manufacturers, who lead the world in the design and construction of

these truly American appliances, in securing the proper surroundings

and proper care they are constantly urging for the appliances they

construct, and will aid humanity by averting some unnecessary wastage

of the health and lives of our fellow creatures.

Following Mr. Bolton’s paper he presented the following resolution:

Whereas, The number of accidents and fatalities attending the

operation of elevators is increasing, many of which are of a

preventable character;

Resolved, That the National Conservation Congress recommends to

the Legislatures of all States an official investigation of this

subject, and the enactment of such provisions as have been adopted

by the States of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

President WHITE—This is important, and if there is no objection it

will be handed to the Resolutions Committee.

Mr. FREDERICK KELSEY (Orange, N. J.)—I would like to offer this

resolution:

Whereas, Under the laws of the District of Columbia and some of the

States, fictitious and fraudulent overcapitalization of corporations

is permitted; and

Whereas, Under the operation of these promoter-made laws enormous

and widespread losses to innocent persons all over the country and

throughout the civilized world have resulted;

Resolved, That this Congress earnestly favors the amendment of these

laws and calls upon the President and the United States Congress

to enact such legislation affecting the incorporation and control

of corporations as will bring the creation and conduct of these

creatures of the State back to the moorings of common honesty.

I would like to say that, like most of the previous speakers, I

have given this subject very careful attention. I was chairman of

a committee, a civic and economic committee of our State, which

committee spent eight months in considering this subject, and I want

to say that you cannot appreciate the widespread loss, the injury,

the injustice of improper concentration of wealth that has been the

direct outgrowth of these laws in our own State and other States of

the Union.

President WHITE—The resolution will be referred to the Resolutions

Committee.

The Congress now stands adjourned until 2:30 o’clock this afternoon.

_EIGHTH SESSION._

The Congress assembled at the Coliseum, at the State Fair Grounds,

Indianapolis, on the afternoon of October 3, 1912, and was called to

order by President White.

President WHITE—This Conservation Congress was to have been addressed

today by the Governors of two of the States. I am very sorry to

announce that Governor Hadley, of Missouri, is unable to attend.

This Congress is greatly honored today. The city of Indianapolis

is greatly honored today. The State of Indiana is greatly honored,

and I personally am greatly honored. I feel honored in having the

privilege of presiding over a meeting at which our distinguished

guest is to speak.

He who causes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before

is a public benefactor. He who with one talent helps one child,

one boy, to rise to manhood and usefulness, is a great and useful

citizen. He who is fortunate enough to possess ten talents and who is

an inspiration to thousands of the youth of the land, who has planted

in their minds and in their hopes the desire to become great and

useful in this world, to become great and good, efficient citizens—he

is the greatest of all.

He is the Governor of a great State, and has inspired the citizens of

mature age to a better government for the people and led them on to a

greater field of usefulness. We feel perfectly safe in trusting him.

To whatever position duty may call, whatever fortune may trust him

with, the people will be safe under his guidance. (Applause.)

I feel unworthy to present to this audience one who has been

the leader in so many good works, one who has been a practical

conservator of human effort, but I take pleasure in introducing to

you as the speaker of this day one who has come here to get closer in

touch with the Conservationists of the United States, to gather from

this audience an inspiration as to the great force of Conservation

which is to lead the world—the Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New

Jersey. (Great applause.)

ADDRESS BY THE HON. WOODROW WILSON, GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY.

Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens: It is with genuine pleasure that I

find myself in this place, facing a company of men and women who are

devoting themselves to so disinterested a cause as that to which this

Congress is consecrated.

Your chairman has stated in exactly the terms of my own thought, the

errand upon which I have come. It would seem presumption upon my

part to instruct this Congress, or to attempt to instruct it in the

means of Conservation. I have come here, as he has said, to share

in the inspiration of the occasion, to gather into my own thought

an impression of the men and women who are working for these great

objects in the United States. When I was on my way out here, and was

thinking of this occasion, I prepared my talk on the conservation of

our natural resources. When I arrived at the station, I was told to

change the subject, that was not what the Congress was, this year,

devoting its particular attention to, but to the conservation of

the vital energy of the people of the United States. I had thought

that I would have to apologize to you for wandering off before I

had finished my address, into that very topic, because it seems

to me that the more broadly we view the field of obligation, the

more clearly it will appear to us that our duty is only done in

respect to the laying of the foundation, when we have conserved the

natural resources of America, for those natural resources are of no

consequence unless there is a free and virile people to use them.

We are in the midst of a political campaign, and most of the

audiences that I have faced have been political audiences. I want to

say very frankly to you, that it is a comfort to me to face another

kind, because, in a campaign, we take politics, as it were, to the

people, but on this occasion the people of the United States are

bringing to us the great forces of their thought.

A congress like this means something more vital, in some aspects,

than any of the ordered efforts of political parties; for here are

represented the men and women from every quarter of the Union, come

together to speak that great volunteer voice of America, which is the

atmosphere of politics, which creates the environment of the public

man, which is the independent conscience of a great people asserting

itself and instructing those who serve it, what their lines of best

service are.

All voluntary effort distinguishes a free people from a people that

is not free. An effort, an organization, that comes about whether the

politician wants it or not, is the kind of effort and organization

which shows that the people are ready to govern themselves and to

assert their own opinions, whether the men in the public eye now

consent to be their servants or not. (Applause.)

I have often made this boast about America, that, truly as we love

our own institutions, proud as we are of the political history of

America, if you could imagine yourself absolutely forgetting the

documents upon which our constitutional history rests, over night, in

the morning, we could make a new Constitution; we would not lose our

self-possession, we would not lose our long training in self-control;

we would not lose our instinct and genius for self-government. Strip

us of one government, and we would make a new America in which we

would shine as much as we did in the old. (Applause.) If that be not

true, then it is not America, for America consists in the independent

and originative power of the thought of the people. And so, when men

and women from every part of the country gather in a great congress

like this, to speak, not of matters of interest so much as of matters

of duty, you realize in a gathering like this the vitality of the

heart as well as of the mind of America, and men of every sort must

give heed to the utterances of gatherings of this kind.

I know that there are some persons who come to these gatherings

representing only themselves. I know that a gathering of men

interested in a special cause is a great magnet to the crank. I

know that all sorts of people, with special notions of their own,

come sometimes to exploit them; but, after all, we ought to be very

tolerant even of them, because some of the finest notions in the

world have lived for a little while very lonely in the brain of

a single man, or a single woman, and it is only by the tolerance

of preaching that they get their currency, and finally get their

imperial triumph by conquering the minds of the world, so that it is

these voluntary contributions of thought, these irresistible currents

of national life that are the most vital part of every people’s

history. That is the reason I say it is a comfort to face an audience

that I am not trying to persuade in regard to anything, but with

which I am trying to get in sympathy, in order to share the great

force which they represent.

It would be almost like assuring you that I was a thoughtful and

rational being to say that I am in profound sympathy with the whole

work of this great Congress, and that I am in particular sympathy, in

keenest sympathy with that part which affects the conservation of the

vital energy of the people of the United States. (Great applause.)

We have prided ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, upon our inventive

genius; we have prided ourselves upon the ability to devise machines

that can almost dispense with the intelligence of man. We have become

a great manufacturing people because of this genius, because of our

ability to draw together not only the tangible machinery of great

enterprises but also the intellectual machinery of great enterprises,

and we have been so proud of the mere multiplication of the resources

of the Nation, so proud of its wealth, so proud of the ingenious

methods by which we have increased its wealth, that we have been

sometimes almost in danger of forgetting what the real root of the

whole matter is.

I say, without intending to indict anybody, that it has too

often happened that men have felt themselves obliged to dismiss

superintendents who overtaxed a delicate piece of machinery, who have

not gone further and felt obliged to dismiss a superintendent who

overtaxed that most delicate of all pieces of machinery, the human

body and the human brain. (Applause.)

If you drive your men and women too hard, your machinery will

presently have to go on the scrap heap. If you sap the vital energy

of your people, then there will be no energy in any part of the

life you live, or in any enterprise that you may undertake. The

energy of your people is not merely a physical energy. I am glad

to say that the great State of New Jersey, which I have the honor

to represent, has been very forward among her sister States in

attempting to safeguard the lives and the health of those who work

in her factories, and in all the undertakings which are in danger of

impairing the health. I am glad to say that our Legislature has been

to a very considerable extent, though not so far as it ought to be,

thoughtful of the health of the children, thoughtful of the strength

of women, thoughtful of the men and women together who have to

breathe noxious gases, who are exposed to certain kinds of dust bred

in certain manufactories, which dust carries congestion and danger

to the lungs and to the whole system—we have been thoughtful of these

things, but after all, we stand in exactly the same relation to our

bodies that the nation stands to her forests and her rivers and her

mines.

I have no use for my body unless I have a free and happy soul to be

a tenant of it. We have no happy use for this continent unless we

have a free and hopeful and energetic people to use it. I know that

I have sometimes spoken of how foreigners laugh at Americans because

they boast of the size of America, as if they had made it, and we

are twitted with a pride in something that we did not create. We did

not stretch all this great body of earth and pile it into beautiful

mountains and variegate it with forests from ocean to ocean, and they

say, “Why should you be so proud of what God created? You were not

partners in the creation?”

But it seems to me that it is perfectly open for us to reply, “Any

nation is as big as the thing that it accomplishes, and we have

reason to be proud of the size of America, because we have occupied

and dominated it.” (Applause.)

But we have come to a point where occupation and domination will not

suffice to win us credit with the nations of the earth or our own

respect. It was fine to have the cohesive and orderly power to plant

commonwealths from one side of this great continent to another. It

was pretty fine, and it strikes the imagination to remember the time

when the ring of the ax in the forest and the crack of the rifle

meant not merely the falling of a tree or the death of some living

thing, but it meant the voice of the vanguard of civilization, making

spaces for homes, destroying the wild life that would endanger human

life, or destroying the life which it was necessary to destroy in

order to sustain human life; and that the mere muscle, the mere

quickness of eye, the mere indomitable physical courage of those

pioneers that crossed this continent ahead of us, was evidence of the

virility of the race, and was evidence also of its capacity to rule,

to rule and to make conquest of the things that it needed to use.

But now we have come to a point where everything has to be justified

by its spiritual consequences, and the difficult part of the task is

that which is immediately ahead of us.

Until the census of 1890, every census bureau could prepare maps

for us, on which the frontiers of settlement in America were drawn,

and until that time there had always been an interspace between the

frontier of the movement westward and the little strip of coast upon

the Pacific, which had been occupied, as it were, prematurely and out

of order.

But, in 1890, it was impossible to draw a frontier in the United

States, it was impossible to show any places where the spaces had

not, at any rate, been sparsely filled, sparsely occupied by the

populations that lived under the flag of the Union. It was about that

time, by the way, or eight years later, that we were so eager for a

frontier that we established a new frontier in the Philippines, in

order, as Mr. Kipling would say, “to satisfy the feet of our young

men.”

But the United States, ever since 1890, has been through with the

business of beginning and now has the enormously more difficult task

before it of finishing.

It is very easy, I am told, though I have never tried it, roughly to

sketch in a picture, that all the students in art schools can make

the rough sketch reasonably well, but they almost all, except those

who have passed a certain point, spoil the picture in the finishing.

All the difficulties, all the niceties of art, you have in the last

touches, not in the first, and all the difficulties and niceties of

civilization lie in the last touches, not in the first.

Anybody with courage and fortitude and resourcefulness can set up a

frontier, but we have discovered, to our cost, that not many of us

can set up a successful city government. (Applause.) Almost all the

best governed cities in the world are on the other side of the water;

almost all of the worst governed cities in the civilized world are in

America. And the thing that is most taxing our political genius is

making a decent finish, where we made such a distinguished beginning.

We show it. You can feel it under you as you traverse a city; you

can feel it in the pavements. They are provisional, most of them,

or have not been laid at all and in jolting in the streets that are

not the main thoroughfares of an American city, you feel the jolt of

unfinished America. We have not had time, or we have let the contract

to the wrong man. (Great applause.)

But, whatever be the cause, we have not completed the job in a way

that ought to be satisfactory to our pride. You know that we are

waiting for the development of an American literature, so I am told.

Now, literature can not be done with the flat hand; you can not

write an immortal sentence by taking a handful of words out of the

dictionary and scattering them over the page. They have to be wrought

together with the vital blood of the imagination, in order to speak

to any other reader except those of the day itself. And, as in all

forms of art, whether literary, or musical, or sculptural, there is

this final test: can you finish what you begin? I believe, therefore,

that the problem of this Congress is just this problem of putting the

last touches on the human enterprise which we undertook in America.

We did not undertake anything new in America in respect of our

industry. You will not find anything in the way of industry in

America which can not be matched elsewhere in the world. If the

happiness of our people and the welfare of our people does not exceed

the happiness and welfare of other people, then, as Americans, we

have failed; because we promised the world, not a new abundance of

wealth, not an unprecedented scale of physical development, but a

free and happy people. (Applause.)

That is the final pledge which we shall have to redeem, and if we do

not redeem it, then we must admit an invalidity to the title deeds of

America.

America was set up and opened her doors, in order that all mankind

might come and find what it was to release their energies in a way

that would bring them comfort and happiness and peace of mind. And

we have to see to it that they get happiness and comfort and peace

of mind; and we have to lend the effort, not only of great volunteer

associations like this, but the efforts of our State governments

and national government, to this highest of all enterprises, to see

that the people are taken care of, not taken care of in the sense

that those are taken care of who can not take care of themselves,

because the best way to teach a boy to swim is to throw him into the

water, and too much inflated apparatus around him will only prevent

his learning to swim, because the great thing is not to go to the

bottom and many of the devices by which we now learn to swim make

it unnecessary to swim, because you can stay on top just the same,

and I, for my part, do not believe that human vitality is assisted

by making it unnecessary for it to assert itself. On the contrary,

I believe that it is quickened only when it is put under such

stimulation as to feel the whip, whether of interest or of necessity,

to quicken it. But the last crux of the whole matter comes here: I

am not interested in exerting myself unless the exertion, when it is

over, brings me satisfaction.

If I have to work in such conditions that, every night, I fall into

my bed absolutely exhausted, and with the lamp of hope almost at its

last dying flicker, then I don’t care whether I get up in the morning

or not; and when I get up in the morning, I do not go blithely to my

work. I do not go to my work like a man who relishes the tasks of

life. I go there because I must go, or starve, and there is always

the goad at my stomach, the goad at my heart, because those dependent

on me will suffer if I do not go to my work and the only way I can go

to my work with satisfaction is to feel that, wherever I turn, I am

dealing with my fellow-men, with fellow-human beings. So that we must

take the heartlessness out of industry before we can put the heart

into the men who are engaged in the industry. (Applause.)

The employer has got to feel that he is dealing with flesh and blood

like his own and with his fellow-man, or else his employes will not

be in sympathy with him and will not be in sympathy with the work,

and a man who is not in sympathy with his work will not produce the

things that are worth using.

All the stories we tell to our children about work are told of such

men as Stradivarius, who lingered in the making of a violin as a

lover would linger with his lady; who hated to take his fingers from

the beloved wood which was yielding its music to his magic touch. In

all poetry and song since, Stradivarius has been to us the type of

the human genius and heart that is put into the work that is done

without attention and zest.

We point to some of the exquisitely completed work of the stone

carvers of the Middle Ages, the little hidden pieces tucked away

unseen in the great cathedrals, where the work is just as loving in

its detail and completeness as it is upon the altar itself, and we

say this is the efflorescence of the human spirit expressed in work.

The man knew that nobody, except perhaps an occasional adventurer

coming to repair that cathedral, would ever see that work, but he

wrought it for the sake of his own heart and in the sight of God. And

that, we instinctively accept as the type of the spiritual side of

work.

Now, imagine, ladies and gentlemen, imagine as merchants and

manufacturers and bankers, what would happen to the industrial

supremacy of the United States if all her workmen worked in that

spirit. Would there be goods anywhere in the world that could for

one moment match the goods made in America? Would not the American

label be the label of spiritual distinction? And how are you going

to bring that about? You are going to bring it about by such work as

this Congress is interested in and the work which will ensue, because

the things which you are discussing now are merely the passageways to

things that are better.

Just so soon as you make it a matter of conscience with your

legislatures to see to it that human life is conserved wherever

modern processes touch it, just as soon as you make it the duty of

society to release the human spirit occasionally on playgrounds, to

surround it with beauty, to give it, even in the cities, a touch of

nature, and the freedom of the open sky, just as soon as you realize

and have all of society realize that play—enjoyment—is part of the

building up of the human spirit, and that the load must sometimes

be lifted, or else it will be a breaking load, just as soon as you

realize that every time you touch the imagination of your people and

quicken their thought and encourage their hope and spread abroad

among them the sense of human fellowship and of mutual helpfulness,

you are elevating all the levels of the national life, and then you

will begin to see that your factories are doing better work, because,

sooner or later, this atmospheric influence is going to get into

every office in the United States, and men are going to see that the

best possible instruments that they can have are men whom they regard

as partners and fellow-beings. (Applause.)

I look upon a Congress like this as one of the indispensable

instruments of the public life. Law, ladies and gentlemen, does not

run before the thought of society and draw that thought after it.

Law is nothing else but the embodiment of the thought of society,

and when I see great bodies of men and women like this, running

ahead of the law, and beckoning it on to fair enterprises of every

sort, I know that I see the rising tide which is going to bring these

things in inevitably. I know that I see law in the making; I know

that I see the future forming its lines before my eyes, and that,

presently, when we come to an agreement, and wherever we come to

substantial agreement, we shall have the things that we desire. So

that, for a man in public life, an assemblage like this is the food

of his thought, if he lend his thought to what his fellow-countrymen

are desiring and planning; and all the zest of politics lies, not in

holding things where they are, but in carrying them forward along the

lines of promise, to the place where they ought to be. (Applause.)

You are our consciences, you are our mentors, you are our

schoolmasters. The men in public life have only twenty-four hours

in their day and they generally spend eight of the twenty-four in

sleeping—I must admit generally to spending nine—and in what remains

they cannot comprehend the interests of a great nation. No man that

I ever met, no group of men that I ever met, could sum up in their

own thought the interests of a varied nation. Therefore, they are

absolutely dependent upon suggestions coming from every fertile

quarter, into their consciousness. They are subject, or they ought

to be subject, daily, to instruction. A gentleman was quoting to me

today a very fine remark of Prince Bismarck’s. He was taxed with

inconsistency, with holding an opinion today that he had not held

yesterday. He said he would be ashamed of himself if he did not hold

himself at liberty, whenever he learned a new fact, to readjust his

opinions. Why, that is what learning is for. Ought any man to be

ashamed of having accepted the Darwinian theory, because he did not

hold it before Darwin demonstrated it? Ought any man to be ashamed

of having given up the Copernican idea of the universe? Ought any

man to be obliged to apologize for having yielded to the facts? If

he does not he will sooner or later be very sorry, because the facts

are our masters, and if we do not yield to them, we will presently

be their slaves. I suppose if I chose to assert the full consistency

of my independence I would say that I was at liberty to jump from

the top of this building, but just as soon as I reached the ground

nature would have said to me, “You fool, didn’t you ever hear of the

law of gravitation? Didn’t you hear of any of the things that would

happen to you if you jumped off a building of this height? Suppose

you spend a considerable period in a hospital thinking it over,” and

it would be very impressively borne in upon me what the penalties of

ignorance of the law of gravitation are. Now, it is going to be very

impressively borne in upon the public men of this country if they

ignore them what the laws of human life are. As Dr. Holmes used to

say, “The truth is no invalid. You need not be afraid; no matter how

roughly you treat her, she will survive, and if you treat her too

roughly there will be a certain reaction in your own situation which

will be the severest penalty you could carry.”

I come, therefore, to Indianapolis today to put my mind at your

service, merely to express an attitude, merely to confess a faith,

merely to declare the deep interest which must underlie all human

effort, for, when the last thing is said about human effort, ladies

and gentlemen, it lies in human sympathy. Unless the hearts of men

are bound together the policies of men will fail, because the only

thing that makes classes in a great nation is that they do not

understand that their interests are identical. (Applause.)

The only thing that embarrasses public action is that certain men

seek advantages which they can gain only at the expense of the rest

of the country, and when they have gained them those very advantages

prove the heaviest weight they have to carry, because they are then

responsible for all that happens to those upon whom they have imposed

and to those from whom they have subtracted what was their right.

So that the deepest task of all politics is to understand one

another; the deepest task of all politics is to understand everybody,

and I do not see how everybody is going to be understood unless

everybody speaks up, and the more independent spokesmen there are the

more vocal the Nation is, the more certain we shall be to work out

in peace and finally in pride the great tasks which lie ahead of us.

(Great and prolonged applause.)

_NINTH SESSION._

The Congress reconvened at 8 o’clock p. m., in the Palm Room of the

Claypool Hotel, and was called to order by President White.

President WHITE—This is the evening session of the National

Conservation Congress. I foresaw what was coming a long time ago

when we began to prepare a program. I knew there would be a large

number of ladies here, because they were getting very enthusiastic.

I knew they would want section meetings for themselves to talk over

matters of vital interest and plan how they were going to work for

Conservation in all its departments, vital, social and political.

I felt that I was not capable and I did not know of any man who was

capable of presiding over a large number of women, who sweetly and

persistently know what they want and are bound to get it. (Laughter

and applause.)

I was invited by the lady who is going to take charge of this meeting

to attend the convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs

at San Francisco, and right there I decided that Mrs. Moore should

preside at this Congress at some one of its meetings, and I politely

told her so at that time. I did it in justification of her rare

ability displayed upon that occasion, and, selfishly, because I knew

I was too timid to rule on points of order where there were so many

women. (Laughter.)

I take pleasure in introducing Mrs. Philip N. Moore, of St. Louis,

former President of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and a

member of the Executive Committee of this Congress. She needs no

introduction, as you all have met her many times. I now turn the

meeting over to her good graces and good will.

Mrs. MOORE—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: During the year that

I have had the pleasure of working with the presiding officer of this

Congress, it has been his gracious courtesy during the whole time to

the woman who was on the Executive Committee that has induced me to

accept the position he has given me tonight.

Many of you will remember that four years ago, when the Governors

were called to the White House in Washington, to discuss the

natural resources of our country, the only woman’s organization

that was represented at that time was the General Federation of

Women’s Clubs, through its President. From that time to this, the

Conservation Congress has recognized this organization as being

very much interested in the conservation of the natural resources

of the country as well as in the conservation of human life through

its public health department, through its industrial and social

conditions and through its home economics, four of the strongest

departments of the General Federation. I am, therefore, very proud

tonight to accept the courtesy of the presiding officer of the

Congress.

While we are waiting slightly for the first speaker of the evening, I

have asked the next one upon the program to take her place. I am sure

it will be just as much of a pleasure to you, and I am sure it will

be a pleasure to her, to take the earlier place upon the program.

We are all very much interested, as men and women, as fathers and

mothers, in the Children’s Bureau which has been created this past

year, and we were very much interested in the possibility of a

woman being made chief of that bureau. There never was a question

in our minds but that it should be the very best person that could

be found, whether man or woman. But the fact that there was a woman

who by education, training and experience was fitted to take this

place has been a pleasure to all who are interested in that special

development. The fact that she has looked into the life of children

from birth through childhood, with work and play and home and school

as they have applied to the life of the child, will be of the

greatest benefit to us all through these future years.

I am very glad to introduce to this representative audience of the

Congress, Miss Julia Clifford Lathrop, who is Chief of the Children’s

Bureau of the United States Department of Commerce and Labor.

Miss LATHROP—Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I need

not explain to a Congress interested in Conservation why the

representative of this new Bureau should be here and should wish to

speak about the Bureau itself.

When I was first honored with this appointment it was suggested

that the Bureau should be staffed with women alone, and I was asked

what I thought about it. I said I should be very much embarrassed;

that I had never known any children who had not two parents, and

that I felt that if there had been intended a division of that sort

the Lord would have communicated it long ago. I thought it would be

presumptious for me to begin, so the Children’s Bureau has on its

staff both men and women and, perhaps, I may as well begin by saying

something about that staff, and about the organization of this new

Bureau. And, first of all, perhaps I may forestall a criticism which

is likely to come before very long that we are rather dilatory and

are not accomplishing very much, by reminding you that the Bureau did

not go into operation last April, when the President approved the

bill, but only on the 23d of August, when the appropriation became

available, so that really the Bureau is just forty-one days old. It

has a staff of fifteen persons, and it has to spend for this first

year a sum aggregating about thirty thousand dollars. Its province,

as the law says, is to inquire into and report upon all matters

pertaining to the welfare of children and child life. You can see

for yourselves whether that is a big job and whether the army really

seems adequate for immediate performance of the contract.

It is, of course, enormously important that a Bureau of this kind,

undertaking a sort of work which, after all, is in some respects new,

should be composed of people who have very much at heart the welfare

of children; who have, even as much as that, the scientific training

and wisdom which is necessary if we are to make an appeal to people’s

emotions and sentiment. So the staff of the Bureau is composed of

people who have been selected from various departments of the Federal

Civil Service as having, particularly, acquirements in science, as

statisticians, and in other respects particularly fitted, as we

believe and as my superiors believe, to do the work of this growing

Bureau.

The Bureau has this great general object. Now, it is a question how

to take hold of this great task, where to begin, but the law itself

does give some hint—it enumerates certain objects which we shall

discuss in detail as time goes on.

The first of these is infant mortality and the birth rate, and after

that follows various subjects, such as juvenile courts, or the care

of children in regard to diseases and accidents which may befall

them, the regulation of their labor, legislation affecting children

and all matters pertaining to their welfare.

It is all very well for those of us who are doing all sorts of

volunteer work, as most of us are, to begin on the problem of helping

people at any point where we can take hold. We do not have to know

any great fundamental facts; to know that babies need care, and

that children ought not to go to work when they are too young, to

know that children need to go to school, need to be healthy, need

to be happy, and that they need recreation just as much as they do

education and that the two are part of the one same great sort of

development—all these things we have a right to begin on anywhere

we can. But when the Federal Government takes hold, I think it

somehow promises a sort of basis to all the rest of us, and it

seems as if it were its business to see where there was the most

fundamental point to begin its work. When we come to look at the

question of dealing with children, we are constantly faced by the

fact that we do not know how many children there are; we do not

know how many children are born and die in this country. We do know

once in ten years how many children exist at a particular moment,

and by that decennial information we know that the Bureau has to

deal with about thirty-six per cent. of the total population of

this country directly, that between thirty-five and forty per cent.

of the population of this country is under sixteen years of age,

which seems to be the age of the end of childhood, just by common

acceptation; at least, at that age in many of our States children

are permitted to become independent workmen. So you see we have a

very large number of children with whom we have the right to deal

directly, and, as I tried to show a moment ago, we think we have a

right to deal indirectly with all their parents. We think the whole

country is a good deal our province in prospect, but we cannot be

satisfied with this decennial knowledge of how many people there

are in this country. What we want is a great, democratic continuing

public edition of “Who’s Who in America.” We want to know day by day

the advent of every citizen into this country. We want, in fact, in a

phrase which is not particularly exciting, “birth registration.”

First of all, we want it because we want to know, and we want to know

for various reasons, which I think do not occur to most of us every

day. In the first place, we want to know because, unfortunately, a

great many babies come into this world under circumstances which do

not give them the best chance in the world. If the advent of a little

child could be at once communicated to doctors and nurses where

doctors and nurses are not taken for granted, it would be possible

to prevent the risk of that blindness which sometimes overtakes

newly-born children; it is possible to establish the health of the

mother and child together, so that it may have the best chance in

the world; and you all know how throughout this country, even in our

remoter counties, there is coming to be a great and splendid health

service. I think we cannot be too delighted with what the Red Cross

Society, with what many similar societies are doing in the way of

rural nursing. I think if Florence Nightingale could look out over

America now, she would think we are beginning to realize her noble

words about health and nurses.

Now, those are perhaps the most important reasons why we want to know

the advent of every child, so that we can help that little child, and

help his mother and keep her alive, because it is a very terrible

thing that out of all the children who are born into this country a

very large number—two hundred thousand, some people say, and three

hundred thousand, some people say—die before they are twelve months

old, and more, a third of them die before they have been in the

world a month. I want us to consider this for a minute, not as an

economic problem, but what it means in the old fashioned terms of

human suffering, the agony and loss of family happiness and joy, that

two hundred thousand little babies should die and leave the hearths

to which they come every single year of the world in this country.

And when we think that already, doctors tell us, we know enough so

that that waste is very largely the fault of our carelessness and

selfishness and greed, it makes us blush to think we are not all

working hard to save the lives of these children.

Now, there are great efforts already undertaken to save the lives of

these little babies, in which many of you are already engaged, and

we may well hope that such societies as this Conservation Congress

and the Congress for the Prevention of Infant Mortality will before

the next decennial census occurs have made a great difference in the

number of children who are born, only to die.

But, suppose that a child lives, is there any real sense in his

having a birth certificate, or is that just some abstract notion of

the statisticians, who get all the certificates and have punching

machines and a great many mechanical contrivances for numbering and

making computations out of figures? I think you will be surprised to

find how much human connection it has.

In the first place, as to this very Bureau for which I am venturing

to speak, we are told to find out about the diseases of children

and about the birth rate of children. How can we know about the

birth rate unless we know how many children are born and die? In

Washington, there was set up a wonderful placard on the wall to show

the birth rate in that city, and there were columns of red and green

and other colors, and you just knew, humanly speaking, that the birth

rate was fluctuating that way, and you talked with somebody and

you discovered that this birth rate was fluctuating as one set of

gentlemen or another was electing the health officer.

So now we want to have some authoritative way of truly finding out

how many children come into the world in order to know what the birth

rate is, in order to know how to study the diseases of children, and

then, when children grow a little older, we want to have a public

record of their births so that we may know when they are entitled to

go into the schools to begin on that system of care and culture for

which the public schools stand, and then beyond that, when they are

older and the time comes for their advent into the army of work to

which we hope we all belong, then we want to know that those who are

less favored are not hurried into that army unduly. How much it would

simplify the problem if we had not to trust to all sorts of chance

ways of proving a child’s birth and if we had a public record of it.

Have you ever thought that we are the only great nation which does

not know how many children are born into it, and which does not do

its children the dignity of putting their names down in a public

record? All Europe has a public registry, and why? Because it has a

standing army and wants the names of its boys for conscription. Now,

in a country of peace, aren’t we to have any victories for peace? Are

not we to recognize a child as having any dignity to be a peaceable

citizen and not either a target for a gun, or the man behind the gun?

I think you will, perhaps, be interested if I venture to tell a story

of a neighborhood in which I have lived long, an illustration of how

a birth certificate is a good thing. A little while ago, a family

came over to Hull House for some help. They were awfully poor. The

oldest girl, who was at that time the breadwinner of that family, was

out of work on account of the garment workers’ strike. There were

eight children. They had come over at the time of the earthquake

in Messina. The father had been entombed and his mind had almost

succumbed to the fearful experience. He was always thinking the walls

were coming on him and he was not in a very good frame of mind to be

a successful breadwinner. So they got into difficulties and asked

the Charities Board to help them. There was another younger girl and

they thought they had better get a work certificate for Giovanna,

but the truant officer said she looked too young and couldn’t have

it, and she was sent back to school. And then they got a little more

desperate and they tried again to have poor little Giovanna go to

work. The Charities Board, who were helping the case, thought they

had a right to dictate a little as to how they should help, and they

just wrote to the City Hall in Messina, and the City Hall in Messina

sent back a very prompt letter showing how old the children were,

and showing that the daughter who had been at work for two years

was really about fourteen years old and had been working that time

illegally, had been cheated of two years of school, where she might

have learned good English and learned American housekeeping and had a

better chance to earn more money the next two years. The other little

girl was still younger. So the people in Hull House and the people in

the Associated Charities and the factory inspector made a veritable

cordon around this helpless family and demanded they be sent back

to school. The oldest girl went back very unwillingly. She said

indignantly, “Me go back to school, me big enough to be married.” She

was very hurt and humiliated. I am not sure we did right about it.

Giovanna was confiscated and sent back to school for two years. This

family did not have a fair chance over here just because the factory

inspector and school authorities, not having any birth reports over

here for children, followed the usual system of guessing and did

not think to take advantage of what Messina, notwithstanding the

earthquake, had to offer from her very responsible records.

Has it ever occurred to you that to very many of our foreign

residents a birth certificate for a child would be an absolute asset?

In Chicago is a very prosperous and highly respected man. He came

from Germany when he was a baby of four years, with the family. His

father was never naturalized and the man himself never was challenged

in his right to vote. He grew up and attended our public schools,

and all that. He accumulated a fortune and went back, as many people

do, I suppose rather proud, to see the old country and friends who

remained there and with whom he had kept in constant communication,

a prosperous and splendid example of what America could do for a

man. He had been in Berlin for about two hours when the police were

on his track merely because he was a German citizen and must serve

in the army. He telephoned to a lawyer friend and asked him what

could happen. He said, “There is just one thing that can happen, and

that is that you get out of town.” So, two hours after he arrived at

Berlin on this triumphal journey, he left very actively, and he is

said never to have heaved a sigh of such joyful relief as when the

crossed the boundary into France. That is an example of people really

knowing where they were born and being able to prove it.

I suppose the reason we have not been more eager about our birth

rate is because we have not thought anything about it. We think a

great deal about writing the baby’s name in the family Bible and

christening it in the church we attend, but somehow we have forgotten

this larger, more fundamental thing. The advent, of every citizen of

this country ought to be on the books of the commonwealth.

There is a very good story, which belongs to your own Dr. Hurty. I do

not know whether you all know it, or whether I dare tell it, but I

will presume that this audience is largely made up of visitors, and

steal his story. In this State, Dr. Hurty is authority for saying

there was a farmer who had a ne’er-do-well son and a granddaughter,

and when the farmer came to die he wished to leave the farm to

the granddaughter, but he left the use of it to the son until the

granddaughter should arrive at the age of twenty-one. When the girl,

as she thought, was twenty-one, she claimed her inheritance, but the

other side said she was only nineteen. She went to the Bible, where

her name was written down, but the leaf was torn out, and the court

was very much perplexed. It came to be a serious legal question, and

finally a neighbor recollected that the grandfather had had a very

remarkable calf born on the same day with this little girl, and he

said he knew the farm books kept by the grandfather would record this

pedigree. So the farm books were looked up and the birth of the calf

was discovered and the birth of the girl was established. (Laughter.)

You all remember how George Bernard Shaw warns us against placing

confidence in the _deus ex machina_. He says you cannot presume on

things being some miraculous way you would like them to be, and so

we cannot presume on grandfathers always keeping herds of cattle.

(Applause.)

I am perfectly sure, as I have said before, as I had the honor of

saying over at San Francisco before the General Federation of Women’s

Clubs, that if the women of America wanted birth registration they

would get it in a twelvemonth. Now, it sounds so very remote from

putting down the baby’s name in the book.

In the State of Indiana you have a very good law, Dr. Hurty tells me,

and all that is necessary is for the women of Indiana to say that

they want the names when their children are born recorded in the

public records of Indiana. In 1910, when the last census was taken,

all that we know about the births in this country was what we learned

from eight States, the New England States, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Not your State, or mine, Illinois, was deemed worthy to be considered

at all. So far as the general government was concerned, for anything

it knew, nobody had been born in either of these States in ten years.

In the next census year, I hope very much in a great many States in

this country, perhaps in all the States in this country, we shall be

able to be recognized by the general government as having been born

and as having been born very accurately, so that we will be worthy to

be counted, as much so as if we lived in Boston and Massachusetts,

which, they are always telling us, are the most accurate State and

city.

Of course, the Bureau cares for a great many things besides the

registration of births, but I hope I have made it plain that we

should ask that we be allowed to get a method of acquiring steady,

constant and reliable means of legal proof as to the children

who enter this Nation, because it is the dignified basis for

a governmental Bureau, which I believe is destined to grow to

proportions which none of us can measure, which shall continue

long after all of us are gone. No other bureau in the world makes

so tremendous an appeal to the emotions and sentiment—a children’s

bureau, a bureau to concern itself with the life and happiness of

the children of a great nation, and the more appealing it is, the

more must it be founded upon facts which will bear the very closest

scientific scrutiny. What the Bureau will be doing years from now I

do not know. I know what it must do now. The law is very distinct

about some of the things it must do, and by implication many of the

things it cannot do. It is a bureau to gather information and to

publish it as the secretary of the department under which it exists

may direct. It can publish in any way which the secretary deems best.

There are a great many different ways of publishing facts. We are

learning to publish facts through the sort of thing you have in the

State House here and other exhibits, through the appeal to the eye.

In this way thousands of those who cannot study very carefully or

cannot read a table to save their lives may understand, and I hope it

is with some of the simpler methods of popularizing things that this

Bureau may begin to make itself useful.

The Bureau, although it is a different type from all the other work

of the government in a certain sense, after all, is not so isolated

as we might think. There is a Bureau of Labor, which has studied

much the labor of women and children. There is the Census Bureau,

of which I have spoken. There is the Bureau of Immigration and of

Education, and the Bureau in the Department of Agriculture, which has

concerned itself very much in the South with those very interesting

and productive efforts for better farming, which have begun their

activities by stimulating tomato-canning among the girls. All of

these things, part of them purely educational, part of them a matter

of direct work, are things which we shall not do over again, from

which we hope to learn very much.

There have been a good many anxieties about this Bureau, many people

have thought it was a mistake. Some people have said, “Ah, well,

you are going to center everything about children away off there

in Washington where there will be a government with a lot of very

comfortable clerks sitting about in offices and writing down figures

about children instead of doing things for children and you will

palsy local effort.” If the Bureau does that it is a failure. What

the Bureau must do is to stimulate and help local effort. It must

gather facts and try to present them so convincingly and simply that

they will be useful and stimulate many to activity.

Then there has been a great dread lest the Children’s Bureau might

interfere with parental rights, lest the Bureau might seem to

override the dignity and privacy of homes. I do not believe the

Bureau will ever do that, because I know that the people who care

most about the Bureau are people who realize that the welfare of the

child is measured by the welfare and the wisdom of its parents, and

that the way to help the child is not to take him out of the family,

but keep him in it and help the parents to help him. And the Bureau

will do its work with a fine respect for parenthood. And perhaps I

cannot better close, since this is a woman’s meeting, and we may well

be generous to the gentlemen scattered here and there, by a story of

a man, a father.

Not long ago I went to a meeting in Chicago, at which there were

many delegates from the foreign colonies in that city. It was a

representative meeting standing for about one hundred thousand

residents of that foreign town. It was really a meeting of protest

against threatened restrictions which many of us thought very

ill-advised and cruel, which were to be applied to immigration. A

man rose who belonged to a foreign colony which we are accustomed to

regard as especially dull and illiterate, and he told very simply how

that colony had come from a people who had been oppressed, the study

of its language had been forbidden, reading and writing had been

forbidden, and in a way, a certain illiteracy and dulness had been

forced upon them; and he told so simply with what ardor they came

here where there was freedom, where there were schools. I shall never

forget how simply he said, “I am a father, and, like every father, I

want my child to go higher than me.”

That was the simple but overwhelmingly eloquent expression of a man

whose English was very broken, but who, after all, spoke exactly the

great impulse which has controlled all of us since the beginning of

that wonderful seventeenth century when parents began to come over

here. And, as I heard him speak, I thought that whether it was those

who came in the cabin of the Mayflower, or those who sank in the

steerage of the Titanic, they were all moved by that same mighty

impulse, that the next generation should have a better chance than

they had.

Now, this Bureau must move forward if it is to be useful in the

same spirit in which families move forward, in which the race moves

forward, to give the next generation a better chance than this has

had. I thank you. (Applause.)

The CHAIRMAN—Those of us who heard Dr. Wiley, the other evening, give

his impressions, may be interested in giving to Miss Lathrop another

fact which will prove the value of birth registry. Dr. Wiley said

that no one across the water could marry unless he could prove that

he had been born. It would be impossible for many to marry in this

country, if that were the case here.

We have always admired the way the Daughters of the American

Revolution have taken the history of our country, have looked up the

old stamping grounds and marked them, and have taught the children

in schools the traditions of the country, to honor the makers of our

country and to make them good American citizens. But we are really

more pleased that the Daughters of the American Revolution have

recently taken up more modern things, and that they are preserving

the resources of the children. The speaker has been very much

interested in modern life, in community life for the rural life of

our country.

As a loyal Daughter, I have great pleasure in introducing to you Mrs.

Matthew T. Scott, of Washington, D. C., President General of the

Daughters of the American Revolution.

Mrs. SCOTT—Madam President, Members of the Fourth Conservation

Congress: Among the many opportunities for service, which today are

open to women in this country, there are three to which I wish to

call attention for a few moments this evening. The first is that of

the unrealized possibilities of the home life of the nation. If we

only were endowed with a larger share of that priceless attribute—the

constructive imagination—we should be able to see the untold

resources which still lie latent, waiting only to be discovered,

developed and enjoyed in the mysterious precincts of that laboratory

of the soul—that forging-room of character, that fountain-head of

those subtle forces which add temper and edge and distinction to our

ordinary human attributes—that civic and social Holy of Holies—which

we call Home.

And let us remember that the sources of our country’s permanent

prosperity and glory lie not in the form of our government, in the

wisdom of its administration, nor even in its written laws and

constitution, but deep in the intellectual and moral life of society,

and potentially in those nameless influences, radiating from the

women who give its halcyon charm to hearthstone and library and to

all the intimacies and inspirations of the home. For, after all, it

is the home—the sanctuary to which we women must hark back—the home,

with its _sanctity_, which is the palladium, the corner-stone, the

key to the arch, of all that is most precious in the life and destiny

of America.

Again, let us never forget, that to us women—the home-makers of our

land—as never before in the world’s history, is entrusted the healthy

development of the social and moral fabric of society in our country,

in the innumerable and intricate complications of this Twentieth

Century civilization. A distinguished educator has recently said:

“At the present time the world is awakening to the teachings of the

old prophets. Now, as then, the morals and ethics of a nation are

just what the wives and mothers, the home-makers of the land, make

them.”

Again, the home is also the place where the future citizens of

this nation are to be trained. The place that fosters patriotism,

obedience and love, reverence for authority, the finest elements of

character. Some day the present generation will have to hand this

country over to the sons and daughters who are being trained by

fathers and mothers of today to administer the affairs of the home,

in preparation for the larger field and wider duties of government.

It is well for youth to learn that honest toil is never hopeless or

degrading. It is well for youth to be at one with Nature and to learn

of her; to know and feel the joy there is in bountiful, glorious

Nature; to be familiar with her song—the ripple of the river on

its stones, the murmur of trees, the rhythm of the sap that rises

in them, the thunder in the hills, the stars shining in perennial

beauty, the song of the thrush, and the carol of the lark; to watch

the sun in its course and learn the dim paths of the forest.

“It is the song of infinite harmonies.”

The man, woman or child of vision responds—perhaps, all unconsciously

and inarticulately—but responds like a vibrating chord to the note of

these melodies, that should be part of the charm of the home-life of

the farm.

There can be no disputing the fact that a goodly number of American

women are wonderfully successful home-makers. But at the same

time, it must be admitted, that a large number of our household

mistresses must plead guilty to the charges of extravagance—technical

ignorance of household economy—and a considerable degree of all-round

inefficiency, both as housekeepers and as home-makers, for the terms

are not synonymous.

It is a commonplace among sociologists that in most well-to-do

American homes enough is wasted in the kitchen alone to keep a

French family in comfort. We are also wasteful of light and heat,

and, above all, of our time and energy. Our country is in dire need

of a woman who will do for the home what a distinguished inventor

and public benefactor of Philadelphia has done for the factory—that

is, introduce an “efficiency” system, which will do away with our

present waste of both money and time, and increase the quantity and

quality of the actual output—not only of creature comforts, but also

of artistic attractiveness; and of that indefinable atmosphere of

peace and restfulness, which, of all the by-products of home life,

is certainly the pearl of greatest price. The time will surely come

when both mistress and maid will prepare for their life’s work—as

home-makers—with the same care and enthusiasm that men now put

into the work of perfecting themselves in their various trades and

professions. Home-making, like piano-playing, is an art—to succeed in

which requires something more than temperament. Until the technique

has been properly mastered, temperament has little opportunity to

manifest itself to advantage.

A generation ago home-making and farming were occupations that anyone

with a mediocre intelligence and a reasonable degree of industry was

considered sufficiently equipped for. But today these two avocations

occupy a secure and increasingly important place among the learned

professions.

Agriculture, “dignified by the ages, as old well-nigh as the green

earth itself,” has become a scientific profession alluring to men

and women of brains and culture, who quickly become enthralled

by its ever-expanding and fascinating possibilities. In every

State in the Union we have magnificent agricultural colleges and

schools of domestic science, in which are being prepared for their

respective careers thousands of prospective farmers and thousands

of prospective housewives. Moreover, several bills have been pending

before Congress which provide for the widest possible dissemination

of instruction in agriculture and domestic science (including the

pure food problem) among the rural population of every county in this

Nation.

This is a glorious work. The proposed instruction in agriculture is

something which, as a farmer, I am particularly enthusiastic about.

Yet I feel that quite as important as this will be the educational

facilities in the household arts and in the highest home-making

ideals, which are to be placed within reach of every housekeeper

and every prospective housekeeper in this land. Just as agriculture

is the basis of all our material prosperity and power, so the home

is the perennial and sacred source from which emanate those potent,

ennobling and refining influences, which slowly and silently have

lifted man out of past savagery, and will yet, we trust, lift us

out of our present state of semi-civilization—with its class war,

political and business corruption and industrial brutality—on to

higher and even higher stages of moral, intellectual and social

development.

This is my idea of the relatedness of Conservation to the home. Is

there any question that this is truly Conservation—its essence—in the

minds of any member of this convention?

The second realm of opportunity which I want to point out to you

is that which spreads out before us in a bewildering splendor of

promise, in connection with the schooling of the young, as related to

the home. We are all aware that the large majority of our common and

high school teachers are women. In many of our States women vote for

members of the School Board, and if a majority of them really wanted

this right, there is no doubt that they would secure it everywhere.

In this event it would be a comparatively easy matter for them to

formulate and carry through policies of their own. Thus from the

cradle to the university the education of the children is potentially

in the hands of the women of this country.

This is a power which the priests of various religions frequently

have endeavored to obtain on the grounds that if they were allowed

to control and dominate the child’s mind during its formative

period, their influence upon its after-life would be dominant and

enduring. I wonder if we realize what almost unlimited power over

future generations is thus entrusted to our hands. Are we, as women

and mothers, exercising that power with an adequate sense of the

responsibility which it places upon our shoulders?

There are now thousands and hundreds of thousands of our sex who

are pining for something to do, which they can feel is entirely and

splendidly worth their while. How fortunate it is, that here, already

at hand, is a task which Nature, and “Man, the tyrant,” are agreed

is peculiarly adapted to our particular tastes and talents. But

what are we doing about it? Little as a sex, I fear, that is either

significant or creditable. When not merely in a few isolated cases,

but as a class, the women of America decide what they want in the way

of education for their children, if they want it badly enough, there

is no earthly power which can stand between them and their splendid

ideal goal.

But this means work, persistent, intelligent work. First of all, in

the matter of self-education, and, secondly, in that of carrying on

an aggressive campaign for the education of our own sex, and, if

possible, of the other sex as well.

I am beginning to get deeply concerned, not about the lack of

adequate opportunities for service on the part of women, but about

our failure, so far, to measure up to the incomparable opportunities

which are already ours. If there is any subject in which we, as

women, ought to be intensely and intelligently interested, it is in

this subject of education—not in the academic sense alone, but in the

broader view of character-building—upon a proper understanding and

handling of which depends the very future of civilization.

This, I take it, is truly Conservation work and when thoroughly

grasped, will as truly mark milestones of progress in our lifetime,

as those we may leave behind in material form.

The third of these brilliant avenues of possible social service,

which open before us in beautiful vistas of alluring opportunity, is

one which is involved in the purchasing power of women. As a general

thing, men are the wage-earners and women are the wage-spenders

for the home. Nearly all of the household expenditures of the

family are made by the wives and mothers of the race. It is a sad

commentary upon our business ability, and our rudimentary sense of

social solidarity, that so few of us have any realizing sense of the

potential power over the business and industrial world, which is

inherent in this our position as buyer, or spender, for the family.

I call your attention to the fact that if the women of America would

pool their purchasing power, and, resisting all the blandishments

of the “bargain counter” and the “sale”—based on sweat-shop

labor—would demand pure goods, made and sold under sanitary and

salutary conditions—more could be accomplished for the moral and

material uplift of the factory-worker and the saleswoman than by the

enactment of a volume of restrictive statute, the breaking of which

we thoughtlessly connive at, and practically become a party to, in

our mad scramble for cheapness at any cost of human degradation and

wreckage.

A superb organization, known as the “Consumers’ League,” has come

into being, for the express purpose of enabling men, as well as

women, to utilize their purchasing power in the great work of raising

the standards of the business and industrial worlds, both as to the

purity of the product offered to the public and the fairness of the

treatment accorded to employes.

Of all the splendid “movements” and “causes” which today invite

our co-operation and support, this is one of many, which seem to

me to fall naturally within our province, as wives, mothers and

home-makers. It is the principle underlying this great crusade of the

“Consumers’ League” and like organizations which appeal to us. As a

matter of fact, this is a work for the betterment of women in the

business and industrial worlds, and as a consequence improvement in

the home, which we women cannot avoid doing, without definitely and

publicly shirking our heavy economic and moral responsibilities, as

family purveyors and budget makers. Or, in other words, as domestic

chancellors of the exchequer.

Far be it from me to say that the members of our sex may not some day

decide to undertake, in addition to their other duties, the heavy

responsibilities of the voter and political worker. Perhaps it may

transpire, that upon our planet the true super-man is woman, and

that she is entirely capable of doing the man’s work as well as her

own. But, in the interim, until this fact has been satisfactorily

demonstrated, let us devote ourselves whole-heartedly to what is more

particularly woman’s work; to those delicate and difficult tasks for

which man’s clumsy fingers and prosaic processes of reasoning are

unfitted and wholly inadequate. And, above all, let us be quite sure

that we do our especial work—at least as well as he does his—before

we insist upon taking a hand in his activities and improving upon his

methods of performing his highly useful, if somewhat less exalted,

functions.

It may seem in these lines of work—somewhat unique—and hitherto

undefined as belonging to the realm of Conservation, that I am

departing a long way from the usual addresses on that subject. But

I ask your careful consideration of this subconscious knowledge of

every woman’s breast, that at least every issue and question I have

referred to has its foundation, in the broadest and deepest sense, in

the life and action which center in the home.

In the ways which I have so hastily outlined and in other, and

perhaps better ways, that may not yet have occurred to us, our great

work of Conservation is destined to continue its triumphal march

upward and on—in the name of the great principles upon which it is

founded, and in the name of patriots, living and dead, who have

labored and sacrificed to make of this, our fatherland, what, under

God, it is, has been, and ever must remain—the greatest nation on

earth. Because, beneath the ample folds of its unconquered flag,

there live more free, happy and God-fearing people than upon any

other part of the habitable globe. (Applause.)

The CHAIRMAN—I had been tempted to introduce the next speaker as a

charter member of the organization of the Daughters of the American

Revolution, but I was told by her that this would be considered

antediluvian, so that I have not any right whatever to use the

knowledge I possess. I have also been told by her friends, for I am

sorry to say that until this meeting we had not known each other,

that she is the personification of patriotism.

It gives me great pleasure to present to this audience the Honorary

Vice-President-General of the Daughters of the American Revolution,

Mrs. John R. Walker, of Kansas City, Mo.

Mrs. WALKER—Madam Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen: The term

Conversation has become so all embracing, from the viewpoint of

a Daughter of the American Revolution, it is as much a work of

patriotism as that of our own great organization—the one dealing with

the present and the future, the other with the past, the present and

the future. The motto of the Daughters of the American Revolution

is “Home and Country,” and so lofty is its ideal, so practical its

work, it will be felt throughout all time, as will this broad, wise

work of Conservation. The spirit of commercialism, of money worship,

about in the land, is fast sapping the resources of our great country

and begetting a selfishness that makes a willing sacrifice of the

rightful heritage of future generations. It would seem in the order

of things in this work of Conservation, that the men of our land

should give special concern to its material needs, its lands, its

waters, its mineral resources, and that the conservation of life

should appeal as nothing else to woman, the transmitter of life—Life,

a priceless boon. We protest against child labor—implore with all the

tenderness, developed through mother love, to spare the child in the

greed of money getting. Refuse the work of little hands, and little

feet, in factories, mills, and mines, and out of your abundance make

it possible for them, during the few short years of childhood, to

enjoy the freedom of the bird and the butterfly, give them a memory

of Nature’s blessed joys—God’s pure, sweet air; the wayside flower

plucked at will, the willow-shaded stream, and all that the sweet

breast of Nature offers so freely, without money and without price—to

the child of poverty. The Daughters of the American Revolution are

awakened to the realization that we, the home-makers, descendants

of the woman of the spinning wheel, hold the destiny of a nation in

our hands, that we must not only accept but consecrate ourselves to

woman’s highest mission, the crowning glory of womanhood—guiding the

young feet into right paths.

To give patriots to our country, we must rear patriots, train

Americans for America. In our great work of patriotic education our

aim is to train the youth of our land in good citizenship; teach them

to battle for good laws and social conditions, and to be courageous

in the fight, daring to do right in both the political and business

world—thus honoring his birthright. The Daughters of the American

Revolution have gathered the alien into the fold of the children

of the republic, to make of them true Americans, do for them the

best we know how; and many a lesson we can learn from them of

thrift, industry and patience under discouragement. In my own State

opportunity came to such men as Carl Schurz and Joseph Pulitzer,

poor emigrants, who became pre-eminent in our country’s history.

The privileges of the American woman go hand in hand with her

responsibilities, in her zeal for home and country; she is pointing

the way, realizing that our children have a great work before them, a

great problem to solve.

The Jewish dramatist, Zangwill, says: “To think that the same great

torch of liberty, which threw its light across all the broad seas

and lands into my little garret in Russia, is shining also for all

those other weeping millions of Europe, shining wherever men hunger,

or are oppressed, shining over the starving villages of Italy and

Ireland; over the swarming cities of Poland; over the ruined farms of

Roumania; over the shambles of Russia. What is the glory of Rome and

Jerusalem, where all races come to worship and look back, compared to

the glory of America, where all races and nations came to labor and

look forward.” America! great charity of God to the human race.

Conservation of life! As I stand before the shafts erected at

Arlington and Richmond and read to the memory of sixteen thousand

who fell in battle, to the memory of eight hundred unknown dead, my

very soul cries out against war. Eight hundred unknown dead! Can you

not see the long procession of anguished, broken-hearted mothers,

waiting and watching—watching and waiting, and hoping? Our law makers

oppose legislative measures advocating universal peace. How can they

with our Civil War yet fresh in memory, the nations of the earth yet

shuddering over the horrors of the war between Russia and Japan?

The heart sickens at the memory of the undying hatred of the human

heart; the blood thirst for blood in its brutal frenzy, sacrificing

her young men—the hope of a nation—and all for what? One more island,

perhaps, or insignificant kingdom. A war involving principle, as

our Revolutionary War, hundreds of years afterward excites the most

passionate interest and feeling; but wars for power, and possession,

the world cries out against. The time has come to sheathe the sword

and spare mankind. The vast expenditure of money for more destructive

engines of warfare, for the slaughter of men, would go so far in our

work for humanity, the helpless, the unfortunate, the struggling. War

affects not only those who bear arms, but those who stay at home; the

entire country is affected. War retards progress, paralyzes effort;

ambition cannot feed a sorrow, hands are listless and lax when the

heart is heavy. Mrs. Browning’s Italian mother wails: “Both boys

dead, one of them shot by the sea in the East, and one of them shot

in the West by the sea. Dead! both my boys. If your flag takes all

heaven, with its white, green and red, for what end is it done, if

we have not a son?”

On one occasion, a distinguished Confederate general was a guest

at our table; he had fought from the beginning to the close of the

Civil War. The little boy of the family gazed upon him with awe and

admiration. To know and be close to a great soldier, one who had

commanded armies and fought many battles, was indeed glory for a

small boy. After gazing upon him long and steadily, he startled the

assembled company by saying: “General, how many men have you killed?”

We gasped in horror, wondering what the reply would be. Quickly the

General responded, “I don’t know that I have killed any.”

We read “The Charge of the Light Brigade”; “Scots Who Ha’e Wi’

Wallace Bled,” and other stirring poems of war, and see only the

glory of it. Death by shot and shell and sabre stroke is heroic; but

the question of a little child startles us with the question of our

individual responsibility; we are brought face to face with the words

engraven on the tablets of stone, “Thou shalt not kill.”

Universal peace is no longer a dream. The peace court at The Hague

is established, and marks an epoch in international law. Let us not

cease in our efforts until the pressure of strong public sentiment

becomes so compelling, legislation will be favorable. Our country is

the beacon light; she stands for justice, for freedom, for God; she

is the messenger of the Prince of Peace, is elected to proclaim with

trumpet call, peace to all the nations of the earth and the islands

of the sea.

I cannot let this opportunity pass without asking this influential

body of men to throw the weight of its great influence in favor

of another matter taken up by the Daughters of the American

Revolution—the desecration of the flag. I was appointed by our

President-General Mrs. McLean, to speak on the subject before a

committee of the United States Senate, and, with representatives

from other patriotic societies, urged legislation upon it. It is a

matter of sentiment, but what is life without sentiment? With you men

laboring for your country’s welfare, see to it that our country’s

emblem is held sacred, shall not be used as an advertising medium

by the soulless money-maker, who cares for naught save personal

gain, who does not consider that this banner stands for this great

country—“your flag and my flag.”

“And Oh! how much it holds,

Your land and my land

Secure within its folds,

Your heart, and my heart,

Beat quicker at the sight,

Sun-kissed and wind tossed the

Red and Blue and White;

The one Flag—the Great Flag—the Flag for me and you

Glorified all else besides—the Red and White and Blue.”

Wherever we fling it to the breeze, it carries a breath of freedom

into every land and unto every people. Should we not hold it a sacred

thing? (Continued applause.)

The CHAIRMAN—For the past two years the next speaker has been

working in the General Federation as Chairman of the Department

of Conservation. We have worked so closely together, I, as her

adviser, and she doing the large work of the organization, that it

is almost like speaking of one’s own family in introducing this

speaker. I shall not try to tell of her work. We are the very best

of Conservation friends to this day—Mrs. Marion A. Crocker, of

Fitchburg, Mass.

Mrs. CROCKER—Madam Chairman, and Mr. President and Members of the

Convention: Conservation is a term so apt that it has been borrowed

and made to fit almost all lines of public work, but Conservation as

applied to that department bearing its name in the General Federation

means conservation of natural resources only, and that is a field so

vast that we have found it all that can well be handled under one

head without a chance of neglecting the very principle for which the

Conservation movement was established. And then it is always easier

to come back to simpler things. I do not mean exactly “simpler,”

but to those that touch our lives from day to day, of which we may

see the effect almost from hour to hour, and therefore it seems so

unnecessary to dwell on these things that are far away. The problem

of Conservation of natural resources is so wide and far extended that

much of it must be solved on great government plans, and that seems

to make it even more remote.

Now, we all concede that there is nothing so important as the

conservation of life, of health, education and vital force, so

closely connected with the life. We all grant that, and it is only

because the conservation of natural resources is so closely related

to these other lines that it is of any vital consequence. But,

with the other side having been so strongly emphasized, and, to my

sorrow, a few times I have noticed it even being decried in this

conference, it seems to me it has become my bounden duty to emphasize

the other side, because if we do not follow the most scientific

approved methods, the most modern discoveries of how to conserve and

propagate and renew wherever possible those resources which Nature

in her providence has given to man for his use but not abuse, the

time will come when the world will not be able to support life, and

then we shall have no need of conservation of health, strength or

vital force, because we must have the things to support life or else

everything else is useless.

Do not think I am pessimistic. I should not feel this so strongly,

but I feel that this Congress was originally established for the

conservation of natural resources, because the other side had

received so much greater recognition and it is naturally nearer to

our hearts. You do not know how much harder it is to appeal to people

for these far-away things than to those that are so near and dear to

them, and the things they can take hold of in an animate way.

I would like you to review with me just a few of the natural

resources and the result of their Conservation, or the result of a

lack of Conservation.

We will begin with the forests, because in our natural conservation

we consider that the foundation of the fundamental principle of the

conservation of natural resources. And what does the forest for us?

What is the purpose of the forest? Why must we have them? Well, the

forest makes soil in a way; that is, it makes humus matter, which

is so large a portion of the soil that it may well be termed the

soil. The forest is the only crop that grows that gives to the soil

more than it takes from the soil. It also conserves the mineral in

the soil that it takes Nature ages to produce by its slow processes

of disintegration, and at the same time prevents the filling up

of reservoirs, lakes and streams, and to that extent prevents the

pollution of the waters. The forest is a great health resort, and

why? Because it actually purifies the air. Its action is just the

reverse of animals. It gives the air what we need and takes from it

that which is detrimental to our health.

We must look a little into plant life and see what nature does that

we may fully appreciate that point. I cannot take time tonight

because of the late hour to go into the whole life of the tree, but I

will say that its principal constituent is carbon, and it takes from

the air the carbonic acid gas which is so detrimental to human beings

and to all animals. It has a way of converting it into its own life

blood in combination with the sap taken up from the roots, by the

marvelous process in the leaves, by this little understood substance

called chlorophyll, that has the power of converting this poisonous

substance for us into the life of the tree, and then taking so much

from it and giving it to the soil. That is a most important factor

which is so often overlooked.

Then the forest is valuable as a wind shield for crops. And for the

wood supply. Wood is demanded in all the industries or the arts, for

almost all things we use.

These are the fundamental things the forest does for us. Are we not

working for conservation of strength and health and human life when

we are working for the forest?

While the General Federation takes up many phases of water

Conservation, perhaps I may just say that we have irrigation,

drainage, waterways, the deep canals for transportation, we have

water power, which is the coming thing. This is something to be

conserved, and which conserves our coal, which conserves the purity

of our atmosphere by not having all the gases turned into it by the

burning of the coal.

All these things it does for us.

And then the very last and most vital is the pure continuous supply

of water, which all human beings and which all animals demand. It

is, next to the air we breathe, the most important factor in animal

existence. Are we not working for health, for strength and for life

when we are working for this pure plentiful water supply, and does

not that come pretty near working directly for conservation of human

life? Have you anything you can bring forward that touches much more

nearly the health, life, strength of human beings, the child, than

this same conservation of water, which is a natural resource?

The soil is indirectly our staff of life. From it does not come our

bread? Must not this seed fall into the ground, spring from the earth

and be protected until it reaches maturity, and we have food? Many

other instances might I bring forward had I time.

Then the animal kingdom is much more nearly related to human

existence than we would think at the outset; but when we come to look

more deeply into it we find this close relationship.

I so often come up against the saying, “Oh, I am so much interested

in human life. I have no time, no thought, no desire to give to the

animal kingdom. It is all right enough for you sentimentalists, but I

am not interested.” Yes, but even from a selfish point of view, if we

do not care at all for any suffering, or anything which may come to

the animal kingdom beside ourselves, it is of economic value to us.

I will choose but one example of the animal kingdom, and that is the

birds, because it is said that all vegetation from the earth would

cease if the birds existed no longer. It is very interesting to know

that Longfellow appreciated this economic value of insectivorous

birds long before there was any movement on foot for bird protection,

and I wish you would all read the poem, the last of the Wayside Inn

stories.

This very conservation of bird life is one of the things that is the

great new problem of conservation of natural resources, and one in

which you women take a hand and have the real control. I know you

have heard so much about that I am not going to give you statistics

as to what the birds do for agriculture. I am going to ask you a

personal favor: that this fall when you choose your fall millinery,

will you not think of your Chairman of your Conservation Department

of the General Federation, and I beg you choose some other decoration

for your hats. This is not sentiment. It is pure economics. You

have no idea what you do when you wear these feathers, until you

think really deeply into it, and I am not speaking of the egret,

of the paradise feather, wholly, but of the less choice feathers.

There is only one exception to this rule, and that is the wearing

of the ostrich plume. That is a legitimate business and one to be

encouraged. There is no reason why we should not use ostrich plumes

if so we deem it best, but in regard to everything else in the way

of feathers, let us turn over a new leaf for the fall. Will you

not spread this gospel, not only to yourselves, but all the other

women need to be asked to do the same thing? There are so many other

articles, all the jets, the laces and ribbons. Will you not consider

those things, even leaving out the sentiment?

I might cite for you many examples where conservation of natural

resources works for the betterment of the human race, but I have just

brought up a few of the most important.

Now, I want to say just a few words about the way to go to work to

do some of these things. I will not go into the larger fields of

forestry, or even into shade trees, except to emphasize the fact that

while the shade tree is a very important one, and especially in the

cities, we must never lose sight of the larger fact that after all it

is not forestry, it does not stand for that, and that our arbor day,

where we plant the one tree, should extend far beyond that. But I

think one of our primary ways of working is to begin with the school,

perhaps begin with the normal school. Many of the States have made

great progress in that. I really have not the record of Indiana in

that regard. I may be carrying coals to Newcastle to bring up this

subject in Indiana. My own State, Massachusetts, stands very high in

this line. Still I know there are many States that need this message.

There is a great work to be done with the children, in making the

school garden, and then the home garden; to teach the children to

know what the soil is made of and how it should be treated, to make

them love the growing flower and to make them respect the property

of others. There we are laying the foundation of things for the next

generation.

I know perhaps of no better book on the subject than that fine book

for children, “The Land We Live In.” I sent a copy into each State

of the United States last year, with a request to each of my State

chairmen that she do all she could to introduce that work into the

libraries of her State, and the schools, feeling sure that if every

child could read that book or hear it read, he would have a different

idea of the natural resources and the need of natural Conservation.

Some of the States have hundreds and thousands of copies of this

book, and I am sure it is doing a great propaganda work.

I am going to tell you a little story of how I became interested in

these things. It was before I was out of school myself, although

pretty nearly so. It was when the welfare work began of taking the

children out in the country from the slums in the north end. I was

personally acquainted with one of the teachers, who was among the

first to take the children out in the fresh air to breathe and see

the grass and flowers and trees that they had never seen before.

One little boy, after he had looked around in amazement—it was in

the fall of the year—saw the bright red apples on the trees, and he

looked up and said, “Apples on trees, by God!”

It is overwhelming, isn’t it? I don’t wonder that you gasp at it.

But look a little more deeply into it and see the pity of it. That

child had been born and bred in the slums of the north end of Boston

and actually had never seen apples on trees. He had seen apples in

barrels. How did that poor child know that they did not grow in

barrels? No, it had never occurred to him. They did not teach, in

those days, the principles of horticulture in the schools. Was it not

pathetic? Doesn’t that teach a lesson? That has come home to me many

and many a time. I actually believe that was the foundation of my

interest in Conservation. I think I was born with a love of the soil.

And the story of the boy added to that, made me feel that I must know

something about nature, about the fundamental principles, about the

other side of life, the vegetable kingdom that supports the human

life. Those two things combined taught me a lesson that I never,

never could forget, and I wish you would think them over.

I will say to you this one message, while you are working for this

thing of prime importance, the conservation of life, for which this

Congress has stood at this fall meeting, do not forget that the

conservation of life itself must be built on the solid foundation of

conservation of natural resources, or it will be a house built upon

the sands that will be washed away. It will not be lasting. I thank

you. (Great applause.)

President WHITE—I want to have read into the record of this evening’s

proceedings, by title only, a paper which was intended to have been

read by Mrs. Elmer Black, of the International Peace Congress. She

was expecting to be here and was on the program originally, but

we learned that she could not get back from Europe in time to be

present. She sent on her contribution in the way of a paper. It will

be published in the Proceedings. The title is “War is the Policy of

Waste—Peace the Policy of Conservation.” (For Mrs. Black’s paper, see

Supplementary Proceedings.)

President WHITE—I wish to say further that your very gallant

Sergeant-at-Arms, Col. John I. Martin, wants to address the ladies

for just three minutes.

Col. MARTIN—Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen: For the very

cordial manner in which you have carried out the suggestion made by

our popular, esteemed and whole-souled President of the National

Conservation Congress, the Hon. J. B. White, that I briefly address

this association, and for your kind invitation, I return my most

profound thanks.