THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE
"I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose
to power and under what institutions and through what manner of
life we became great. We are called a democracy, for the
administration is in the hands of the many, not the few; but while
the law secures equal justice to all, the claim of excellence is
always recognized. When a citizen is in any way distinguished he
is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege
but as a reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may
benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his position.
"We are unrestrained in private intercourse, while a spirit of
reverence pervades our public acts. We are prevented from doing
wrong by respect for authority and for the laws, having an
especial regard for those ordained for the protection of the
injured, as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the
transgressor the reprobation of general sentiment.
"We are lovers of the beautiful, though simple in our tastes, and
we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. An Athenian
citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his
own household, and even those engaged in business have a fair idea
of politics.
"The great impediment to right action is, in our opinion, not
discussion, but the want of that knowledge which may be gained by
discussion.
"We do good to our neighbors not upon a calculation of interest
but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless
spirit."
From the oration of Pericles, 450 B.C.,
as reported by Thucydides.
"Statesmen work in the dark until the idea of right towers above
expediency or wealth. The Spirit of Society, not any outward
institution, is the mighty power by which the hard lot of man is
to be ameliorated.
"Every line of history inspires a confidence that things mend.
This is the moral of all we learn; it warrants Hope, the prolific
mother of all reforms. Our part is plainly not to block
improvement or to sit until we are stone but to watch the uprise
of progressive mornings and to conspire with the new work of new
days."--EMERSON.
"Nations are the citizens of humanity as individuals are the
citizens of the nation. As any individual should strive to promote
the power and prosperity of his nation through the exercise of his
special function, so should every nation in performing its special
mission perform its part in promoting the prosperity and
progressive advance of humanity."--MAZZINI.
"Our country hath a gospel of her own
To preach and practise before all the world,--
The freedom and divinity of man,
The glorious claims of human brotherhood."
--LOWELL.
=The Socialization of the Modern State.=--In a previous book before
mentioned[20] and in many special articles published elsewhere, the
idea has been stressed that society is now witnessing a remarkable
coalescence of two ethical movements which are of special significance
in the new political equality of men and women. These two movements
are, first, the call for the application to women of the principles
embodied in our national Bill of Rights; and, second, the introduction
of what is called social welfare work into governmental provisions and
administration. The first marked the reaction of women, belated but
strong, and at last successful in realization of purpose, to the
eighteenth Century demand for the recognition of human rights
regardless of color, sex, or previous condition of servitude. The
second was a reaction of social sympathy and a growing sense of social
responsibility for the better development of the common life. These
two movements so worked together that as women marched toward the
citadel of political power and responsibility, political action became
more and more permeated by forms of social interest in which women
were already alert, and by forms of social activity in which women
were already proficient. This is particularly noticeable in the United
States. For example, in our country we have changed the common point
of view and the general governmental approach to individual and
private life in the following important particulars:
1. Health--public and private, in matters of prevention of
disease and in care of the sick and the convalescent.
2. Education--in respect to all ages and to all peculiar needs of
special training.
3. Philanthropy, or the social care of the dependent, the
poverty-bound, the defective, and the juvenile delinquent.
4. Penology, or the laws and their administration which deal with
crime and criminals and with both the victims of and the
panderers to vice.
5. Recreation and all manner of publicly provided opportunity for
helpful use of leisure time.
6. Conservation of natural resources in the interest of common
wealth.
7. Checks upon economic exploitation by the greedy and strong of
the young, the weak, and the ignorant.
8. Checks upon those commercialized forms of recreation which tend
to despoil childhood and youth of innocence and refinement.
9. Official standardizing of ways of living found to be conducive
to physical, mental, and moral well-being, and social aids
toward vocational training and guidance.
10. The union of Federal with State and Local efforts for the
general welfare.
=The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political
Change.=--In every one of these new forms of approach to individual
life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or
special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a
large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body
politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power
already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had
helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and
came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized
access of control over their administration. When government was
merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there
might be to many minds an incongruity in women assuming voter's
privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving
and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could
be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.
=Health a Social Enterprise.=--To briefly rehearse this list of
political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We
have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the
better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens.
This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and
medical service, the nurse's vocation, and the lay volunteer support
of all these, the outstanding features of our community life.
Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence
for the people's sins. So they are in essence and in modern
translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws;
experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them.
Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power,
have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to
furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in
childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and
care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and
pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society
is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once
considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now
listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under
Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and
undernourishment, is on its way to be proceeded against as a record of
social neglect. All waste of life's vigor and happiness which is
indicated by lower levels of health and strength in any class or age
than can be secured by the more favored is from now on recorded as
social failure and social fault. Hence, the state and all manner of
private agencies are at work to make physical standards higher and
physical conditions better for all. When we remember that the pioneer
worker in organization of Boards of Public Health and the founder of
the American Public Health Association, Dr. Stephen Smith, has just
passed away after reaching the hundred year mark of life's usefulness,
we can readily see how rapid has been the growth in scientific
attention to health and social agencies for its advance.
=General and Vocational Training for All.=--In education we have not
accomplished all that the leaders in that field outlined for us two
generations ago, but there is a movement all along the line to make it
possible for every person to have at least a fair start toward
education in the compulsory free school; and for adults, younger or
older, to make up for early deficiencies by constantly increasing
later opportunities of special and of general training in the things
every citizen should know. Allusion to new specialties of varied
educational facilities has before been made.
No one can doubt that as teachers and helpers to teachers, as members
of educational societies, and as acting on official boards by
appointment, women have been long serving in the ranks and needed the
ballot only to make their function more inclusive and more commanding
in directive power. When we remember that it is only since 1837, when
Horace Mann published the first Report of a State Board of Education
and began his great work for the Common School of his country, that we
have had even a distinct social goal in this great field of endeavor
we cannot be pessimistic about future accomplishment. When that
educational leader declared in response to those who remonstrated with
him for turning aside from the usual and, for him, brilliant
opportunities of the law, "The next generation is to be my client," he
started a new profession, and the present effort in education is but
the widening of that social furrow. When we recall that Mary Lyon, in
opening Mt. Holyoke Seminary for Girls in that same year of 1837,
offered the first opportunity to girls of limited means of what could
be called higher education, we can better realize how rapid has been
the movement to fit women for educational service. We, at least, now
have a clearer aim in education and are at liberty to use fit men and
fit women alike for its realization. The one great contribution of
later times is the determination to share with all the opportunities
once held sacred to a select few.
=Women's Work in Philanthropy.=--In philanthropy there has been so
great a transformation both in ideal and in method that it amounts to
a change in the centre of gravity. Charity once had for its aim the
easing of unbearable misery, the giving of alms to relieve the
starving, and personal aid of all sorts to those who were not expected
to be lifted out of the category of the poor, those who must be always
helped, but should be helped in a spirit of kindness. Now we have the
command for permanent care for the helpless where they will not
handicap the normal. We have the varied agencies for preventing
delinquency in youth and many a new type of moral rehabilitation for
all who have stepped but a short distance out of the ordered path of
life. We have the ideal of every defective child in permanent
custodial homes, every insane person cared for with humanity and
trained intelligence, every dependent child readjusted to family life
by adoption or trained happily and usefully in residential school,
every aged person protected from want and misery in public or private
homes, every widowed mother helped to take care of her own children,
and every sick person aided by hospital and clinic and visiting nurse
and convalescent home in readjustment to normal activity. Finally, we
have boldly replaced the motto, "Relieve Poverty," by the new slogan,
"Abolish Poverty," and we are impatient with ourselves and with social
arrangements if any considerable number of our fellow-beings are
obliged without fault of theirs to receive material relief. In all
this, what a part has been played by women! Dorothea Dix
revolutionized the care of the insane in the United States. Louisa Lee
Schuyler organized and for fifty years energized and directed the work
of the New York State Charities Aid Association which made over into
humane and intelligent social care-taking the inherited institutions
of a more ignorant and indifferent time. The first woman to serve on
the State Board of Charities in New York, Josephine Shaw Lowell, whose
motherhood in the family and the state knew no bounds and whose
statesmanship comprehended every social relation, is not the last to
so serve. "The lady with the lamp," Florence Nightingale, who
pioneered in trained nursing has had many a follower in this as in
other countries. The annals of all charitable agencies show that at
every step, whether recognized as responsible members of the body
politic or not, women have done the work in large and efficient
measure when the state took over a new job of life-saving and of
life-nourishment.
In the realm of penology we have moved far from the old private prison
into which the noble could cast his enemy and no one question his
acts. We have moved far from the early prison which was easily
neglected in all sanitary as in all moral conditions, since it was
then only a stopping place, often for a short time only, on the way
from court condemnation to hanging or mutilation, flogging or exile.
When the prison became a place for longer sojourn, and sentence to it
became in itself a legal punishment, humane men and women began to
feel the importance of knowing what went on in the places set aside
for offenders against the law, and Howard and others set the tendency
toward a more humane and reasonable treatment of criminals. We now are
at work finding out who are real criminals and who are accidentally
caught in the meshes of hurtful circumstances, who among the offenders
against the law are mentally responsible, and who are but children of
adult bodily size, and what to do for and with the intentional enemy
of social order. We have not yet learned to apply the ideals we have
gained in wise and effective treatment of the small minority of men,
and far smaller minority of women, who cannot or will not walk the
safe and well-outlined road of the law-abiding, but we have some
concepts that promise to guide us in this particular and the new
Penology is born. Men and women alike are working out details of
direction and shouldering the heavy social work demanded. The thing
that is most conspicuous in Penology is the new attitude of courts of
law, of judges and even of juries. This is an attitude of humane
inquiry into causes of moral breakdown, and humane dealing with
criminals as of right entitled to a fair chance. Surely this is a
fatherly attitude taking the place of old punitive ideas.
=Culture Aids to the Common Life.=--When we come to the new work of
making the streets safer for the spirit of youth, and the life of all
more protected and happy by recreative measures standardized for
personal uplift, we are distinctly in the area of parental functions
of the modern state. It takes fatherly men and motherly women to run
the public playground, and to make the parks, the museums, the
settlement clubs and classes, and the children's rooms in public
libraries what we now will that they shall be,--the centres of eager
interest and the nursery of character development. The mention of the
free public library suggests what is probably the most potent of all
the higher social influences in our American life. In the large city
and in the small town alike, and even in remote rural districts served
by the Loan Libraries, the opportunity to find what will feed the mind
and lead toward the delight of the printed page is one that has meant
more to more people who were aspiring and able to become leaders in
any sphere of life than has any other opportunity; perhaps than even
the public school after the main essentials of early grade teaching
have been gained.
To sit in a public library and watch the eager interest of each
newcomer, to see the patience, the understanding, the sympathetic
attitude and the earnest effort to be of utmost service which the
librarian almost invariably shows, and to see the absorbed attention
of the readers in what they have been assisted in selecting, is to
bless the generosity and public spirit of every one who has made the
public library so common a blessing. Not all books are equally
helpful, not all give equal pleasure, it is true, but when one gets a
book with a message in it for him, what a joy!
One often thinks of the lovely song of Emily Dickinson when sitting
thus in a public library:
"He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor
Or that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy ways
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!"
=Many Languages in One Country.=--In this connection must be noted the
effort of many to limit this "bequest" to the language of the country.
In another connection we have noted the difficulty that inheres in
having many differing tongues in one community, the difficulty of
reaching a common ideal and method of living when language is a barrier
and not an aid to companionship. This barrier of language to the
foreign-born is often cited as a reason why the immigrant is
handicapped. It is also a reason why social efforts and religious
influences often fail of success and why so many native-born Americans
fail to understand the newer Americans. If, as many prophesy, the
English language becomes the standard tongue for business and diplomacy
and literature, all the best products of every nation being made
available by translation, at least, for those speaking English, it can
become that ruling tongue only by slow degrees. Meanwhile, the chasm
between citizens of a common country made by differing languages may be
bridged by far greater effort on the part of older Americans gifted in
the use of foreign tongues. We see women by the hundreds flocking to
Europe and the East to "get local color" and perfect themselves in
foreign languages, who might find at their own doors, among those
illiterate in English, but with a wealth of knowledge of their own
native literature and speech, men and women who would be able, if
rightly approached, to exchange national values both in literature and
history to mutual advantage. The need of adult education on the part of
the foreign-born is not always a need to be met by condescending from
above to those of low intellectual estate. It is often a mere
requirement to master another form of speech by those, already
linguists, or at least in possession of a broader use of language than
is the average citizen of the United States. The ways of social helping
in this line are many and of the highest political importance. The
variety of languages spoken in the United States, however, is not so
serious an obstacle to the intercommunication of our population for
political information and in organization for common ends of the public
good as is the shameful condition of illiteracy among the electorate.
The foreign-language publications in the United States numbered, in
1914, 1404, of which 160 were dailies, with total circulation per issue
of 2,598,827, and 868 weeklies with a total circulation per issue of
4,239,426, and other publications to the number of 376 with a total
circulation per issue of 3,609,735. These foreign-language journals are
not all or many of them devoted to "stirring up strife" and do not
prevent absorption of the foreign-born in the body politic. They are,
on the contrary, necessary means of making those who speak foreign
tongues acquainted with facts and conditions which newcomers need to
know and understand. During the Great War our government used these
foreign-language publications to spread broadcast appeals for
financial and personal support. The excellent "Foreign Language
Information Service," still existing and having Federal backing, has in
hand the introduction into the principal foreign-language publications
of information and appeal calculated to make good American citizens.
The demand that has been made in moments of excitement for the
abolition of the foreign-language press is therefore as stupid as it is
unfriendly. Only by the use of his native tongue can a man who does not
yet understand English be made to feel and act as a genuine part of the
citizenship of his adopted country. It is for those who cherish real
Americanism to try to get into these publications, which are the
strategic point of contact between older and newer Americans, all that
is deemed vital to the welfare of our common country. Through a wise
use of this material in every free public library and in the multiplied
Loan Libraries in remote districts, the newcomers in our country who
read intelligently their own language and are eager to learn, may gain
all that a good citizen needs to know. And if in parallel columns the
English with the foreign language should be used to convey the same
thought, the progress will be doubly fast in true Americanization.
=Personal Conservation.=--In the conservation of natural resources for
the benefit of all the people we have been slow to understand either
our social danger, or our social opportunity, but our Federal
Government is setting us notable lessons and local communities are
trying to learn and follow them, and Women's Clubs all over the
country are staying up the hands of officials and trying to help save
the people's inheritance for the people's wealth; surely a fatherly
and a motherly office if any state function can be. When we enter the
area of protection of the young and weak and ignorant against the
exploitation of vice and greed and selfishness, we are in the very
centre of that parental care which the modern state now seeks to give
to its citizens. When the Great War turned into training camps the
flower of our youth, these agencies for moral protection and social
watch-care which had been so largely developed as volunteer and
private social work, became the resource of a government bent on
keeping men "fit to fight," and on preserving young women in the
vicinity of the camps both from giving and receiving harmful
influences. Since then, more than ever, such agencies for moral
protection have become official in civic life and have the endorsement
and the aid of government. It is one new feature of all modern
protective work that women are employed as members of the police, as
matrons in public places supported by tax, and indeed in places of
commercial recreation, as judges of special courts where parole and
methods of suspended sentence are used, and in all places where boys
and girls are exposed to danger and to temptation. Thus the home
influence is spreading out toward the work-place and the
play-centre--truly a retranslation of family service in terms of the
public life.
=The Children's Bureau.=--Our government at Washington used to be
limited in its function to those political services which no state
organization could accomplish by itself, but now the Federal
departments are busily at work setting standards, if only through
authentic information and suggestion, which aim to raise the average
life in all directions, economic and social. The Children's Bureau is
preëminently a standardizing body, although with no power to issue or
enforce decrees. The Bureaus which have to do with foods and animal
life and farm management are setting higher and higher levels of
attainment for the common people in their home life and in their
vocational work. There is a strong movement to enlarge the educational
influence at the very heart of our national government with a Cabinet
Head to set a high standard of attainment in both the art, the
science, and the administration of education as well as to aid in
equalizing educational opportunity. Moreover, there is a strong
tendency, seen most recently and vividly in the provisions of the
Maternity Aid Bill, for all social efforts to ask and to be granted
Federal financial aid on the fifty-fifty plan. There is not a
consensus of opinion among the thoughtful as to the wisdom of thus
placing upon the general government the burden of social schemes upon
which a minority of the people, be that minority large or small, are
alone agreed. The force of persuasion may secure national legislation
in advance of that which many local communities already have or are
seeking to secure. The increase of national power through the work of
national officials is not deemed politically sound by some persons who
favor specific action by the states alone in such matters as maternity
aid. The tendency is, however, a proof of two things, one that we are
as a people becoming a nation; that is more a centralized and united
governmental force--and the other that more and more people are trying
in every way to secure a more uniform as well as a higher standard of
living for all our citizens.
=A Women's Lobby at the National Capitol.=--It is said that the most
powerful lobby in Washington is "the Public Welfare Lobby backed by
seven million organized American women." This lobby is composed of
representatives of the following organizations of women with number of
members estimated as indicated:
National League of Women Voters 2,000,000
General Federation of Women's Clubs 2,000,000
Women's Christian Temperance Union 500,000
National Congress of Mothers and
Parent-Teacher Associations 310,000
National Women's Trade Union League 600,000
Daughters of the American Revolution 200,000
American Home Economics Association 1,800
National Consumers' League (No number given)
American Association of University Women 16,000
National Council of Jewish Women 50,000
Girls' Friendly Society 52,000
Young Women's Christian Association 560,000
National Federation of Business and
Professional Women 40,000
Women's League for Peace and Freedom 2,500
This represents a formidable influence upon public affairs, one that
may do some harm along with much good, unless it goes to school to
social facts and balances its social sympathy (already shown in such
alert attention to the needs of the weaker and younger portion of the
nation) with sober and sane understanding of the difficulty of getting
progress in any line unless a majority of the people are unitedly in
favor of it and willing to sacrifice something in order to secure it.
There are signs already that among the leaders of women in the new
organization of Women Voters there is a feeling that the pendulum may
swing too far toward philanthropic measures, for some of which the
general public is as yet unprepared. The call is already made for
more concentration upon the better enforcement of existing laws,
rather than upon constant demand for new legislation in the interest
of social welfare.
=Women's Interest in Public Life a Social Asset.=--The fact, however,
that so many women are actively engaged not only in watching
legislation and in learning the character and ability of political
leaders in the national Congress, but also in trying to raise the
average life of the people of the country by and through better laws
and more efficient enforcement, is cause for great encouragement. It
shows that women came into their kingdom of political power just as
the state was ready to take on the functions no longer fully expressed
within the family circle. If we must be shocked by learning that a
baby a day is being given away in New York City through advertisements
in the daily papers, and with a haste and carelessness that proves
lack of responsibility in parents and guardians, we may be relieved of
fear that love of children is dying out when we see what are the
things that millions of women are now banded together to secure for
the betterment of all child-life. Largely owing to such efforts, fewer
babies die during the first year of life now in any listed one hundred
thousand, than ever before in our American history. If we find that
many people are living without the comforts they need and in
conditions inimical to health and morality, we can at least take
comfort in the fact that fewer go to the "poorhouse" than used to be
found there when all sorts of dependents were sent to that one
institution. With the state's new discrimination and graded assorting
of young and old and sick and well and sane and insane and normal and
subnormal, the state care is on lines at once more humane to the
individual and more helpful to social organization.
The state is indeed turning father and mother in its newer agencies
for social conservation and social aid to the distressed and
miserable. And as the state thus does the work that once was attempted
and poorly done by the collective family, it must more and more call
to its service the men and women of parental quality and of fit and
devoted expression of the protective and the nurturing elements of
human nature.
=Social Service in Peace.=--The state has always called for
sacrificial service from its members. It has called most of all for
such sacrificial service when danger seemed to threaten the national
existence, or enemies of the government lifted treasonable intent
against the peace and order to which the majority of citizens were
devoted. Now we are called upon, if only we can realize the new claims
upon the higher patriotism, to make the country we love what all
countries should be, a home of freedom, of mutual helpfulness, of
economic well-being and of incorrupt and progressive political order.
It has been said and truly, "The ideas of great men are apprehended
slowly, and a free and rational society must in part exist before the
dream of such a society can be interpreted." We have a dream of a
free, a noble, a competent, a happy people in our America. We must be
careful at every point lest by carelessness of political forms or lack
of understanding of what those forms should be, we hinder the
development of that free and rational society in which the noblest
thoughts and highest ideals of the best and finest of our leaders can
alone find root and grow.
=Problems Voters Must Solve.=--Three special problems are before the
voters of our country, problems commanding in importance and not easy
of solution. They are, first, the problem which inheres in our union
of States, with their wide divergence of climate, soil, industries,
population, standards of action and ideals of national and local
action. The problem is this: what shall we decide is the measure of
wise and useful division between the laws and conditions we shall make
national in extent of social control and in practical functioning of
political administration, and those of smaller autonomous units? What
shall belong to the Federal Government and make field for its
activity? What shall belong to the various States and make up their
separate systems of law and administration? And what shall be left to
each locality, or each county of each State, for its own political
activity? These are not easy questions to answer, and the constant
movement toward centralization of power, not only of standardization
but of control in the National Government (a movement which received
such an immense impetus during the war), is likely to make this a
movable problem of differing answers as our nation grows older. The
division of States may give a geographical symbol of deep inherent
differences of background of culture and even of race, or that
division may mean only a superficial mark of geographic outline
between two sets of communities alike in all their inheritance and
tendency. In any case, how much weight shall still be attached to
"States Rights," and how much shall we press for a uniform life
throughout all the land? What shall be the special duties of each
local community toward its common needs of education, of recreation,
of moral protection, and social order? How much in any given place
shall the tendency of neighbors to be unwilling to testify against
each other when wrong-doing is practised, and unable to withstand any
evil influence when near the centre of its working, lead us to unite
in demanding a larger unit for the Juvenile Court or the enforcement
of laws against commercialized vice or any other social concern where
justice demands a free hand and no favor to any group? These are
questions with which some of our volunteer agencies of social work
have wrestled. The answers that wise and good people have made to them
should have weight in any decision we may make as to the right and
effective divisions of law and its enforcement in our American system.
This problem of division of authority has within it a puzzling
counter-interpretation of our original Constitution and of our history
up to date. The doctrine of "States Rights," it is said, received its
death blow in the Civil War, but the equal political and civil rights
of the negro, which that war was supposed to establish as a national
concern, vary with the varying attitudes of people of the different
states toward the enforcement of the Constitutional Amendments which
were intended to secure those rights. The Southern States, it is said,
still stand for the dignity and autonomy of each Commonwealth in
matters of restriction upon labor and of provision for tax-supported
education, but the inner stronghold of the Federal Prohibition
Amendment is the section of the country south of Mason and Dixon's
line. The new States, again it is said, are more tenacious of national
centralization of government because more evidently drawing their
powers from the federal centre, but in the valley of the Mississippi
from north to south,--that section which promises to have the
determination of the course of American history in its hands for the
next hundred years,--there are signs that the state autonomy and the
state jealousy of invasion of local authority in the interest of
national conformity to federal law are not by any means unknown.
There should be some more carefully outlined and more commonly
understood principles of judgment to lead us to decisions, when a
thing we believe it good to do or a law we desire to set in place and
in operation call upon us for support, as to the best way of using
that support. Whether to try for a federal amendment or a national
statute, whether to work wholly within each State, or whether it is
matter which so depends upon local sentiment and local coöperation
that each smallest community centre must work out its own salvation,
or secure its own advance in independent work,--this is the problem.
=Comparison Between National and Local Effort.=--One reason why some
elements of social progress lag behind others which are not more
firmly believed in is that confusion of effort has followed the
contrary forms of attack upon the national, the state, or the local
governments for the furtherance of the object in which all parties
believe. Instances are not needed in this connection for every person
who has worked or who desires to work for social betterment finds this
question at the gateway of organized effort. Shall one turn to the
centralizing tendency in political life of our country for support of
a given measure, or shall one make a breakwater in that tendency and
concentrate attention upon the smaller political units?
=Preferential Voting.=--The second problem of political science and
art which presses upon the attention of our electorate is one which is
bound up in methods of selection and election of our legislators and
executives. The ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we
vote?"--rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a
chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged
corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an
advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest
office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to
keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into
office. The primary, however, we see, is a very expensive method and
open to many dangers, and progressive students of political methods
are not satisfied with it. Why can we not move, and strongly, for
preferential voting? For some plan by which it shall be the public
purse only which secures the necessary printing and circularizing for
required information, and no personal differences in wealth shall have
any weight in the listing of names on the ballot? To have a law by
which any legally named number of voters (a sufficient number to keep
out lonely cranks, but not a sufficient number to suppress
considerable minorities) should indicate by petition desire for a
chance to vote for a specific representative of their political
ideals? The legal requirement that such persons so named should have a
place on the official ballot and that all voting citizens should be
able to indicate their graded preference for all candidates thus
officially listed, would give the people of a democracy a chance to
really choose the kind of legislators they want and the kind of
executives they think they need. In the present situation the
independent mind and conscientious purpose often has a choice only
between "necessary evils" or the refuge of the political "woods."
=Proportional Representation.=--The adoption of some form of
preferential voting can alone give the voters a chance for
proportional representation of their ideals and aims in legislative
bodies. We are seeing that the limits of useful partisanship in
politics are narrower than was once thought. No sane and sensible
person really believes that all of goodness and of wisdom is contained
in his party and that its success is a valid reason for "turning out
the rascals" of the other party. No sane and sensible person believes
that there is such a thing as "Democratic" economy, or "Republican"
justice, or "Socialistic" efficiency, or "Labor Party" good
government. There are only economy, efficiency, justice, and good
government. Each party may have a different ideal of the best method
of attaining these political necessities, and, therefore, since truth
is not gained by dogmatic assumptions of any one set of persons but by
approach to problems of mind and character from different angles of
experience and of study, each party should have its representatives in
the legislative bodies of nation, state, and community. And every new
idea of political reform and social progress that by dint of hard work
among the intellectual and moral élite has gained a substantial
following in public opinion of even a relatively small minority, has,
in justice, and in demand for constant advance in human affairs, a
right to a place in the high debate of political leadership. It is,
therefore, for those who believe in the worth and use of freedom and
of mutual tolerance and respect, in political discussion and action,
to work for some method of selection of political representatives of
the people which will make our legislative bodies more truly official
sections of the thought and moral ideal of the whole life of the body
politic. This is, perhaps, the greatest of the political calls for
increased wisdom and practical sense in our country.
The third problem which presses for attention, study and possible
solution upon the voters of the United States, and one in which the
new voters, the women, are peculiarly concerned and in a position of
past experience and of present activity to add much weight and value
to the debate it occasions, is this:
=What Shall Public and What Shall Private Social Service
Attempt?=--How far and by what ways shall the varied philanthropic and
educational activities which are named in mass "social work," and
which have been developed and are now so largely operated by private
and volunteer agencies and organizations, be made a part of the
official service of the father and the mother state? In this social
work, so far, the few have set a pattern of aid to individuals, which
public agencies have tended to take over without much serious study of
whether in any particular case the transfer was necessary or wise.
This change has often been made, also, without determining whether or
not further supervisory work by the private citizen was needed to keep
the social enterprise true to its original and tested principles of
action. The time has come when in all such changes from private and
volunteer work of a few to the demand for support and the dependence
upon guidance of the many, through public officials, we should have
some clear guiding principle. What that principle may be it is not the
purpose here to discuss, but the state that is now doing so much that
only families were formerly expected to do, and is attempting to do so
much that only trained and devoted service of experts chosen by
acknowledged leaders in social service has previously tried to
accomplish, must be tutored and must be supervised by a more
intelligent electorate if it is to do its more ambitious tasks well.
No private agency should allow its finest fruits of longest study and
effort to be absorbed by official provision and control, unless it can
gain assurance that those fruits will be secure in the transfer.
This all indicates that women voters who have, happily, no past
bondage to partisanship to overcome, who entered upon their political
power with no pledges to any one party to hamper their free action,
and who, being indebted to progressive party leaders in every one of
the political divisions, have friends in every one, may and should do
much to help progressive and independent men voters to solve the
deeper problems of our political situation with clarity of judgment
and true patriotic devotion.[21]
=Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen.=--We have the most mixed
of populations. We have the greatest variety of inherited national and
racial backgrounds in the electorate. We have the widest stretches of
country, and therefore the most difficult adjustments to any
centralized system of government. We have the most mobile common life,
our people moving from State to State, and from one sectional interest
to another with bewildering frequency. We have as yet no universal
schooling even in the rudiments of reading and writing of the English
language to serve as common basis for common knowledge. We have a lack
of ethical unity in many basic problems of the family, the industrial
order, the type of tax-supported schooling, and the ideals of
patriotism. These conditions seem to make it more difficult to become
a first-class American citizen than to achieve political competency in
any other government on earth. Even with the confusion in countries
abroad, even in the European tangles of feuds and suspicions and the
horrible weight of starvation and physical weakness of the Old World,
we may yet, if serious in our judgment of American life, soberly
acknowledge the greatest difficulties of all political adjustment
which lie within our own political life. Such acknowledgment is not to
any true American of the older stock and the more noble patriotism a
confession of discouragement or an apology for social failures in our
common life. It is rather, for all nobler and wiser citizens, a
stimulant to constant vigilance in defence of inherited liberties and
a call to deeper consecration and more devoted service in our
political relationship. Finally, the father and the mother state does
not try or want to live to itself alone. We have learned that
selfishness in the private family leads to social ills and weakness
which society in general, which surrounds all private families, must
correct and amend. Are we not learning in the awful light of the
recent world conflagration that selfishness in nations leads to social
ills and weakness which can be corrected only by world organization
for world well-being?
=Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations.=--That America we love
and would serve with a higher patriotism and a wiser political method
is a part of the great family of nations, and if it has learned any
lessons of fatherly and motherly function of state care and
development of the individual life, it has learned those lessons not
for isolated national culture, but as a part of the universal
schooling in the gospel of human brotherhood.
Rightly to understand and rightly to apply that teaching of
race-experience in all the complicated life of international
relationship is more truly to serve the best interests of every
smallest community within our own nation. As Immanuel Kant declared so
long ago, "The constantly progressive operation of the good principle
works toward erecting in the human race, as a community under moral
laws, a kingdom which shall maintain the victory over evil and secure
under its domination an eternal peace."
It has been urged that patriotism is the piety of the school, and
brotherhood is the gospel of the church, and justice is the righteous
law of industry, and mutual reverence and mutual affection are the
heart of the family life. If this be true, then patriotism itself is
the working-out in ever-widening circles of that ideal of coöperation
for the common good, which shall at last make every Father and Mother
State a worthy member of the Family of Nations.
=Vows of Civic Consecration.=--The Athenian youth took a solemn pledge
when he arrived at the age when his relation to the City became
consciously one of loyal service. This vow may be translated as
follows: "We will never bring disgrace to this our City by any act of
dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our comrades. We will fight
for the ideals and sacred things of the City both alone and with many.
We will revere and obey the City laws and do our best to incite a like
respect and reverence in others. We will strive unceasingly to quicken
in all the sense of civic duty, that thus in all ways we may transmit
this City, greater, better and more beautiful to all who shall come
after us." Should not some such solemn act of consecration mark the
advent of each youth into the actual citizenship of his town and his
country? A modern writer, Thomas L. Hinckley, has summed up a
"Municipal Creed" as the utterance of the "Spirit of the Modern City,"
as follows:
"I believe in myself--in my mission as defender of the liberties
of the people and guardian of the light of civic idealism.
I believe in my people--in the sincerity of their hearts and the
sanity of their minds--in their ability to rule themselves and to
meet civic emergencies--in their ultimate triumph over the forces
of injustice, oppression, exploitation and iniquity.
I believe that good food, pure water, clean milk, abundant light
and fresh air, cheap transportation, equitable rents, decent
living conditions and protection from fire, from thieves and
cut-throats and from unscrupulous exploiters of human life and
happiness, are the birth-right of every citizen within my gates;
and that insofar as I fail to provide these things, even to the
least of my people, in just this degree is my fair name tarnished
and my mission unfulfilled.
I believe in planning for the future, for the centuries which are
to come and for the many thousands of men, women and children who
will reside within my gates and who will suffer in body, in mind
and in worldly goods unless proper provision is made for their
coming.
I believe in good government and in the ability of every city to
get good government; and I believe that among the greatest
hindrances to good government are obsolete laws--which create
injustice; out-grown customs--which are unsocial; and antiquated
methods--which increase the cost of government and destroy its
efficiency.
I believe that graft, favoritism, waste or inefficiency in the
conduct of my affairs is a crime against my fair name; and I
demand of my people that they wage unceasing war against these
municipal diseases, wherever they are found and whomsoever they
happen to touch.
I believe that those of my people who, by virtue of their
strength, cleverness or thrift, or by virtue of other
circumstances, are enabled to lead cleaner lives, perform more
agreeable work or think more beautiful thoughts than those less
fortunate, should make recompense to me, in public service, for
the advantages which I make it possible for them to enjoy.
I believe that my people should educate their children in the
belief that the service of their city is an honorable calling and
a civic duty, and that it offers just as many opportunities for
the display of skill, the exercise of judgment or the development
of initiative as do the counting houses and markets of the
commercial world.
Finally, I believe in the Modern City as a place to live in, to
work in, and to dream dreams in--as a giant workshop where is
being fabricated the stuff of which the nation is made--as a
glorious enterprise upon whose achievements rests, in large
measure, the future of the race."[22]
We may think that these utterances stress too much the city life and
fail to visualize the wide stretches of rural communities and the
small towns where a few people only make the atmosphere and administer
the laws. The spirit, however, must be the same, whether one dwells
with the crowd or on some lonely farm. The spirit of that genuine
patriotism which is not satisfied to have one's country less noble and
less unselfish than its own ideal of what a country should be.
=The Children's Code of Morals.=--It is in the spirit of such a
patriotism that _The Children's Code of Morals_ has been prepared by
William J. Hutchins, and is sent broadcast by the "National Institute
for Moral Instruction," In this code, boys and girls are enjoined and
pledge themselves to be good Americans by obeying the following laws:
"The Law of Health; The Law of Self-control; The Law of Self-reliance;
The Law of Reliability; The Law of Clean Play; The Law of Duty; The
Law of Good Workmanship; The Law of Friendly Coöperation in Good
Team-work; The Law of Kindness; The Law of Loyalty."
Though children and youth may learn these laws by heart and understand
and agree to the fine statements by which they are expounded and make
through them a detailed promise to obey the laws of "right living" by
which alone the citizenship of our country may serve its best
interests--that in itself could not make all citizens what they should
be. It is, however, a lesson of the past that youth needs some outward
and visible sign of its "coming of age." Now, as in the past, youth
needs some form of consecration to high ideals. It needs some ceremony
that shall fix the lessons of patriotism, of social responsibility and
of community service, and stir to noble purpose. The education that
begins in the home is not finished by any college graduation or even
by vocational training for a useful career. Its great "Commencement"
is that which ushers the young man, and now also the young woman, into
conscious and responsible relationship to the body politic. This
Commencement should have its solemn and beautiful ritual and should be
made the great event of all young life.
QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE
1. What changes in legislation and in law enforcement is the
entrance of women into the electorate likely to effect?
2. Should the State be more and more charged with responsibility
for care of the weak, the defective, the delinquent, dependent,
and sick, the out-of-work, the aged, and those heavily burdened
by parentage of young children, and if so, how can society
escape a tendency to remove from individuals and from the
family that sense of personal responsibility upon which the
best things in our inherited social order have been built?
3. Should women voters particularly address themselves to
increasing public welfare provisions or should they try to
solve difficult problems of adjustment between public and
private effort for the common good? If both, how can they
adjust effort to party politics on the one side, and to
independent use of the power of the vote on the other side?
4. When volunteer organizations of charity, correction, and
education transfer their work to official boards and legal
provisions, that work, experience shows, sometimes is lowered
in standards and loses in efficiency. How can voting women
prevent this? How can a new class of voters, hitherto specially
interested in getting things desired done by others, best help
others to do things through their own political action?
5. The army intelligence tests showed that our white drafted army
contained 12 per cent. superior men, 66 per cent. average men,
and 22 per cent. inferior men. This statement, made by Cornelia
J. Cannon in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1922, leads
the author of the article to the conclusion that "our political
experiments, such as representation, recall, direct election of
senators, etc., are endangered by the presence of so many
irresponsible and unintelligent voters." Is there a remedy for
this, other than waiting for the slow process of education? If
so, what is it?
6. _The Neighborhood: A Study of Social Life in the City of
Columbus, Ohio_, by R.D. McKenzie, of the University of
Washington, gives a good example of what such a study of one's
own locality should be. Is it not the duty of those having the
leisure and the ability to inaugurate such a study in the
locality in which their political relation is most immediate?
If so, how can a Women's Club, or a League of Women Voters,
start such a study?
FOOTNOTES:
[20] _Woman's Share in Social Culture._
[21] See _A Course in Citizenship_, by Ella Lyman Cabot, and others.
[22] Printed in _The Survey_ of October 31, 1914.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
INTRODUCTORY NOTE AND CHAPTER I Page 5, 19
Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis.
The Evolution of Marriage, by Le Tourneau.
Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, by Otis T. Mason.
The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thompson.
The History of Matrimonial Institutions, by George Elliott
Howard, University of Chicago Press.
Sex and Society, by W.I. Thomas.
Descriptive and Historical Sociology, by Franklin H.
Giddings.
The Family as a Social and Educational Institution, by
Willystine Goodsell.
Social History of the American Family, by Arthur W.
Calhoun.
Sociology and Modern Social Problems, by Charles A.
Ellwood.
The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, by Arthur
J. Todd.
Woman and Labor, by Olive Schreiner.
The Family, by Elsie Clews Parsons.
The Family, by Helen Bosanquet.
Women and Economics, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Love and Marriage, by Ellen Key.
The Family in Its Sociological Aspects, by J.Q. Dealey.
The New Basis of Civilization, by Simon Patten.
Social Control and Social Psychology, by Edward A. Ross.
Children Born Out of Wedlock, by George B. Mangold,
University of Missouri.
The Federal Children's Bureau, Publications 42 and 77.
Report of the Committee on Status and Protection of
Illegitimate Children of the National Conference of
Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1921.
Normal Life, Chapter V, The Home, by Edward T. Devine.
Taboo and Genetics, by Knight, Peters, and Blanchard.
A Social Theory of Religious Education, Part IV, Chapter,
The Family, by George Albert Coe.
CHAPTER II Page 46
Conveniences for the Farm-home, Farmers' Bulletin No.
270.
The Farm Kitchen as a Workshop, Farmers' Bulletin No. 607.
The Business of the Household, by C.W. Taber.
CHAPTER III Page 69
Agamemnon, The Choephori and The Furies, The Tragedies of
Aeschylus.
Native Tribes of Southeast Australia, Chapter on The
Education of the Australian Boy, by A.W. Howitt.
The Patriarchal Family, by Sir Henry Maine.
Pure Sociology, Chapter XIV, The Androcentric Theory, by
Dr. Lester F. Ward.
Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, by Mary
Hinman Abel.
CHAPTER IV Page 90
Danish Care for the Aged, by Edith Sellers.
The State and Pensions for Old Age, by J.A. Spender.
Report of Bureau of Census, Department of Commerce.
Old-age Support of Women Teachers, by Lucille Eaves,
Department of Research of Educational and Industrial
Union of Boston, Mass.
The Trade Union and the Old Man, by John O'Grady,
_American Journal of Sociology_, November, 1917.
CHAPTER V Page 116
Deuteronomy, The Bible.
Tembarom, F.H. Burnett.
CHAPTER VI Page 124
Early Massachusetts Laws, quoted by Howard in Matrimonial
Institutions.
CHAPTER VII Page 141
Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, by M.H.
Abel.
CHAPTER VIII Page 164
A Uniform Joint Guardianship Law, Conference of
Commissioners for Uniform State Laws.
The Sheppard-Towner Act for Maternity Benefits, U.S.
Children's Bureau.
Infant Mortality Rates, U.S. Children's Bureau.
Extra Family Wage, _The Survey_, November 12. 1921.
National Endowment of Motherhood, English Authors.
Reports of the National Child Labor Committee.
Report of Division of Child Hygiene, New York City, Dr.
Josephine Baker.
The Soul of Black Folks, by Doctor Dubois.
Chicago Study of 1,500 Families, Dr. Alice Hamilton.
Summary of Child Welfare Demands, by Julia C. Lathrop, in
_The Child_, August, 1920.
CHAPTER IX Page 189
The Hygiene of Mind, by Dr. T.S. Clouston.
The Social Cost of Unguided Ability, by Professor Woods.
Hereditary Improvement, by Francis Galton.
Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics, by Dr. Lester F. Ward,
_American Journal of Sociology_.
Hereditary Genius, by Francis Galton.
Euthenics, A Plea for Better Living Conditions as a First
Step Toward Higher Human Efficiency, by Ellen H.
Richards.
The New Party, by Andrew Reid.
Charting Parents, by Caroline Hedger, Elizabeth McCormick
Memorial Fund Publications.
Observation Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in
the Elementary Schools, by Julia A. Badenes.
Universal Training for American Citizenship, by William H.
Allen.
Books for Parents Listed by Federation for Child Study, 2
West Sixty-fourth Street, New York.
Social Organization, Chapter on Democracy and Distinction,
by C.H. Cooley.
CHAPTER X Page 205
Mental Diseases in Twelve States, by Horatio M. Pollock
and Edith M. Forbush, _Mental Hygiene_, April, 1921.
The Kallikak Family, Dr. F.H. Goddard.
Treatise on Idiocy, by Dr. Edward Seguin.
Proceedings and Addresses of Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth
Sessions of American Association for Study of the
Feeble-minded.
Experiments to Determine Possibilities of Subnormal Girls
in Factory Work, by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, _Mental
Hygiene_, April, 1921.
Vocational Probation for Subnormal Youth, by Arnold
Gesell, _Mental Hygiene_, April, 1921.
Report of Mental Examination of 839 Women and Girls, by
Anne T. Bingham, New York Probation and Protective
Association.
Colony and Extra-institutional Care of the Feeble-minded,
by Charles Bernstein, _Mental Hygiene_, January, 1920.
Human Nature and the Social Order, Chapter on Personal
Degeneracy, by C.H. Cooley.
Psychology, by William James.
Brain and Personality, by F.E. Thompson.
CHAPTER XI Page 219
Concerning Prisoners, by Bernard Glueck, _Mental Hygiene_,
April, 1918.
Report on the Draft Examinations, by H.W. Lanier.
Out-of-school Activities, _The Survey_.
Moral Equivalents for War, by William James.
The Socially Inadequate, by Harry H. Laughlin.
CHAPTER XII Page 233
Sociology and Modern Problems, by C.A. Ellwood.
The Divorce Problem, by W.F. Willcox.
Problems of Marriage and Divorce in Woman's Share in
Social Culture, by Anna Garlin Spencer.
Marriage and Social Control, by Anna Garlin Spencer, in
_Harvard Theological Review_, July, 1914.
CHAPTER XIII Page 246
History of Factory Legislation, by Hutchins and Harrison.
Census Estimates of Women Wage-earners.
Code for Women in Industry, by Department of Labor,
Division of Women in Industry.
Democracy in the Household, by Lucy Salmon, in _American
Journal of Sociology_, January, 1912.
CHAPTER XIV Page 269
Ethical Culture School and Pioneer Manual Training School,
New York, Reports.
Democracy and Education, by John Dewey.
The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, by Arthur
R. Todd.
Sex-Education, by Maurice A. Bigelow.
Moral Education Lessons, by F.A. Gould.
Categories of Moral and Civic Instruction, French School
Book.
Principles of Sociology with Educational Applications, by
Frederick C. Clow.
Dynamic Sociology, Chapter on Types of Education, by
Lester F. Ward.
A Social Theory of Religious Education, Chapter on The
Learning Process Considered as the Achieving of Character,
by George Albert Coe.
CHAPTER XV Page 290
First Report of Massachusetts State Board of Education, by
Horace Mann.
Songs, by Emily Dickinson, The Book.
Publications of the Foreign Language Information Service.
Publications of the Children's Bureau.
List of Representatives of Women's Organizations in the
Public Welfare Lobby at Washington.
Publications of the Societies to Further Preferential
Voting and Proportional Representation.
A Course in Citizenship, by Ella Lyman Cabot, and others.
The Pledge of the Athenian Youth.
A Municipal Creed, by T.L. Hinckley, in _The Survey_,
October 31, 1914.
The Children's Moral Code of American Citizenship, by W.
J. Hutchins, National Institute for Moral Instruction.
Army Intelligence Tests, by Cornelia J. Cannon, in
_Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1922.
The Neighborhood, by R.D. McKenzie.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES UNDER CHAPTER HEADS
Chapter First, The Family:
The Ethics of the Family, James S. Tufts, Ph.D.,
_International Journal of Ethics_, Chicago, Illinois.
College Women and Race Suicide, by William M. Sadler,
M.D., in _Ladies' Home Journal_ of April, 1922.
Applied Eugenics, by Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill
Johnson.
Program of a School for Homemakers, by L.D. Harvey, of
Stout Institute, Menominee, Wisconsin (a pioneer
movement for special training of women in higher
institutions of learning), published by Bureau of
Education, Washington, D.C., in 1911.
The Sex-Factor in Human Life, by T.W. Gallaway, Ph.D.,
American Social Hygiene Association, New York City.
Can the State Solve the Marriage Problem? by Gordon
Reeves, in _Physical Culture Magazine_ of May, 1918,
summing up 400 answers to 60 questions concerning
government financial aid to mothers.
Mothers' Pensions, For and Against, in _The Independent_
of November 9, 1914. A brief summary with bibliography.
Chapter Second, The Mother:
On the side of Birth Release, address by Louis J. Dublin,
Ph.D., Statistician of Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company, at Sixth Annual Meeting of American Social
Hygiene Association, October, 1919. Library American
Social Hygiene Association, 370 Seventh Avenue, New York
City.
Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes, by C.
Gasqueine Hartley.
La Question Sexuelle et la Femme, by Doctour Toulouse.
Bibliotheque-Charpentier.
The Logical Basis of Woman Suffrage, by A.G. Spencer, in
_Annals of American Academy of Political and Social
Science_, February, 1910.
Equal Pay and the Family: A Proposal for the National
Endowment of Motherhood, published by Headley Bros.,
London, England.
Chapter Third, The Father:
What Makes a Man a Husband? by Havelock Ellis, in
_Pictorial Review_ of September, 1919.
Chapter Fourth, The Grandparents:
Old Age Dependency in the United States, by L.W. Squier.
Chapter Eighth, The Children of the Family:
Program of Nutrition Clinics for Delicate Children, 44
Dwight Street, Boston, Mass.
Text of Bill H.R. 15400, to Create a Department of
Education in the Federal Government with a Cabinet Head.
Chapter Twelfth, The Broken Family:
Resolution for Uniform Divorce Legislation Introduced in
Senate by Wesley Jones, of Washington, with Hearings
before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Judiciary,
Senate Proceedings, Washington, D.C.
The Broken Family, Jane Colcord, Russell Sage Foundation.
Chapter Thirteenth, The Family and the Workers:
The Labor Contract from Individual to Collective
Bargaining, by Margaret Anna Schaffner, Ph.D., _Bulletin
of University of Wisconsin_, No. 182.
Women and Economic Revolution, by Theresa Schmid McMahon,
Ph.D., _Bulletin of University of Wisconsin_, No. 498.
The Industrial Training of Women, by Florence Marshall, in
_Annals of American Academy of Political and Social
Science_.
Report of Committee on Elimination of Waste in Industry of
the American Engineers' Council, appointed by Herbert
Hoover, in Publications of the Society of Mechanical
Engineers, 29 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York City.
Women in Industry in War-Time, by Frederick Warren
Junkins, a bibliography in _Bulletin of the Sage
Foundation Library_, 130 East Twenty-second Street, New
York City.
Chapter Fourteenth, The Family and the School:
A National Program of Education, by Hugh S. Magill, Field
Secretary of the National Education Association, Address
at Commission on Reconstruction, Headquarters N.E.A.,
1201 Sixteenth Street, Washington, D.C.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CURRENT PUBLICATIONS, WITH SUGGESTIONS
In pursuance of the practical aim of this book, an up-to-date study of
current social problems is urged and the use of reports and literature
issued by National and State organizations is recommended.
In addition, therefore, to the list of books and articles cited or
referred to in the text, the following special sources of information
concerning current activities and the discussion of immediate social
problems are given as aids to class study or to individual reading:
1. The Reports and Bulletins issued by the Federal Departments;
especially the Children's Bureau, Bureau of Education,
Vocational Education Board, Department of Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.
2. Reports from State Departments in the fields of Labor,
Education, Charity, Correction, Employment Agencies, and
Health.
3. Reports of the National Conference of Social Work (formerly
called the National Conference of Charities and Correction),
Office, 315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, Illinois. These Reports
constitute the best record of social movements we possess.
Since 1873 the attempt has been made each year to take account
of social stock and show what is being done for all classes
needing help toward better living. Alexander Johnson prepared
a Topical Index which serves to guide the student through the
earlier volumes, and there are now arrangements for securing
separate papers on particular subjects.
4. The Russell Sage Foundation, office, 130 East Twenty-second
Street, New York City, aims at the improvement of living
conditions and issues valuable publications which are
generously distributed. Enquiries are answered in a helpful
manner.
5. The American Social Hygiene Association, Office, 370 Seventh
Avenue, New York City, offers aid to all who seek to check
vice, sustain family life, and lessen diseases related to
prostitution. It publishes both a Quarterly and a Bulletin and
shares in a special library open to students.
6. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene at the same Office
Headquarters, publishes a valuable Quarterly and is a source
of information respecting the treatment and prevention of
mental diseases.
7. The American Association for Organizing Family Social Work,
Mrs. John M. Glenn, Chairman, with Office at 130 East
Twenty-second Street, is able to advise in relief work and
organized efforts toward family rehabilitation.
8. The Child Welfare League of America, C.C. Carstens, Director,
at the same Headquarters, 130 East Twenty-second Street, New
York City, can be consulted as to standards of child-care and
the status of child-helping in various parts of the country.
9. The National Child Labor Committee, Owen Lovejoy, Secretary,
with Office at 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City,
furnishes information and practical aid in any part of the
United States and publishes valuable pamphlets showing
child-labor conditions.
10. The Community Service Agency, headed by Joseph Lee, with
Office at 315 Fourth Avenue, New York City, will help local
communities anywhere in organizing for better use of leisure
time.
11. The Consumer's League, Mrs. Florence Kelley, General
Secretary, with Office at 44 East Twenty-third Street, New
York City, promotes legislation for enlightened standards for
women and minors in industry and publishes important material
for students and workers.
12. The American Home Economics Association, which publishes the
_Journal of Home Economics_ at 1211 Cathedral Street,
Baltimore, Maryland, is an organization devoted to
standardizing the housemother's task and helping toward
efficient home-making.
13. The National Woman's Trade Union League, with Office at 311
South Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, publishes a
journal and other material of special interest to women
wage-earners.
14. The National Health Council, with Office at 370 Seventh
Avenue, New York City, and at 411 Eighteenth Street,
Washington, D.C., issues valuable publications.
15. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, with Office at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and the
National Urban League for Social Service among negroes aim at
helping in problems of race adjustment.
16. The General Federation of Women's Clubs, with headquarters in
Washington, D.C., at 1734 N. Street, N.W., has centres of
influence throughout the country and furnishes the personnel
of many leaders in local social enterprises.
17. The National Council of Women of the United States, member of
the International Council of Women of the World, has
headquarters at the home of its President, Mrs. Philip North
Moore, Lafayette Avenue, St. Louis, Mo., and includes in its
membership all the leading bodies of organized women in the
country. At its Biennial gatherings reports of work are
presented from all these Associations and afterward published.
18. The National League of Women Voters, the child of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association, has its headquarters at
532 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., with Mrs. Maud
Wood Park as President, and energizes and directs a large
force of women in numerous local Leagues in non-partisan work
for better government.
19. The Woman's Party, with Headquarters also in the National
Capital, aims to secure a Federal Amendment which will wipe
out all sex-discriminations. It publishes much interesting
material.
20. Among the most valuable publications for constant reading for
those who would keep in touch with important social movements
in all fields is _The Survey_, published at 112 East
Nineteenth Street, New York City, Paul U. Kellogg, Editor.
21. The _American Journal of Sociology_, published by University
of Chicago Press, and the _Journal of Applied Sociology_,
published by the University of California, give more extended
treatment of the principles underlying social service.
22. The Council of Jewish Women, the National Catholic Welfare
Council, the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian
Associations, and the Federal Council of the Churches of
Christ, together with the Federation of Religious Liberals,
The Laymen's League, and Women's Alliance of the Unitarian
body, and other church organizations, have departments or
committees engaged specifically in work for the stability of
the family and the betterment of the home, as well as for the
ennobling of the common life and for the organization of the
world for permanent peace.
23. The Educational interests of the country are served by many
agencies and organizations, chief among them the U.S. Bureau
of Education, the Federal Board of Vocational Education at
Washington, D.C., which publish invaluable material, and the
National Education Association, with office at 1201 Sixteenth
Street, Washington, D.C., membership in which keeps one in
touch with progressive movements.
The vital thing for one who would prepare for practical service in
any line of social work is to study people and conditions in
one's own locality and then compare what is done or attempted
in that locality with what is considered by those best fitted
to judge to be the best and most efficient standards for
service of the kind considered.
The vital thing for those who would help in the educational field
is to know their local schools, their teachers, buildings,
equipment, management, and financial support, and then to
secure all possible national, state, and local aid in making
those schools the best they can be.
24. If the newest movements in education are chosen for study,
read The New Education, by L. Haden Guest, and other articles
in _The New Era_, published by Hodder and Co., London,
England. Also Nursery School Experiment, by Bureau of
Educational Experiments, 144 West Thirteenth Street, New York
City.
For comparison with these, read Talks to Teachers, by William
James, and also pamphlets of Home Education Series, by
Charlotte Mason, published by Parents' National Education
Union, 26 Victoria Street, London, England.
25. For economic reform especially helpful to family life, study
the publications of the Coöperative League of America, Doctor
and Mrs. Warbasse, Directors, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
26. For political reform, study the publications of Proportional
Representation League, 1417 Locust Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Family and it's Members, by Anna Garlin Spencer