In a store an advertisement reads: "Any kind of tea you
prefer; no charge whatever."
She: "The women look so tired when they come in, and in ten
minutes they are so rested and refreshed."
He: "Ready to go home?"
She: "Why, no--ready to do some more shopping."
_Spectator, The Outlook, December 18, 1909._
Something in motion and something to eat attract the crowd.
The social worker is just beginning to realize what the manufacturer
and the department storekeeper have long since found out.
Why is it not legitimate to "attract a crowd," to do them a good
service in showing them how to save money as well as in impelling them
to spend it? It is wiser to _show how_ before explaining why.
The force of example, the power of suggestion, should be used fully
before coercion is applied. Exhibits and models come before law.
The psychology of influence is an interesting study (see
Münsterberg's article, _McClure's_, November, 1909). Its principles
have been grasped and used by those who exploit human feelings for
their own gain. The student of social conditions should make a wider
and better use of a real force.
Publicity is perhaps first. Exhibits showing existing conditions often
shock people into attention, for it is inattention more than anything
else that prevent betterment.
It is said that "a knowledge of danger is the surest means of guarding
against it," but this knowledge must be translated into belief and the
danger be brought home to the individual as a member of the community.
Exhibits may often suggest for existing evils simple remedies never
thought of before. They should never suggest the one idea without the
other. Even though the remedy is not worked out, it should be called
for. America's inventive power may well be turned on its own social
affairs as well as on adaptation of European machinery.
The man considered in these pages is the man in community environment,
and the discussion is as to what controls this community life. It will
be acknowledged by all thoughtful persons that the prime control lies
in the purpose for which the community exists. If for selfish gain,
then all is sacrificed to that end. Men and women become mere machines
and children are only in the way until they, too, may be put into the
service.
If it exists for mutual help and general advance in civilization, then
the leaders in the community take into account the elements that
contribute to the future as well as those for the immediate present.
In the confusion of ideas resulting from the rapid, almost cancerous
growth of the modern community, made possible by mechanical invention,
the people have lost the power of visualizing their conception of
right and wrong, a power which made the Puritan such a force in early
colonial times. Heaven and hell were very real to him and were
powerful factors in influencing his daily life. The average man today
has no such spur to good behavior. Perhaps the sword of Damocles must
be visualized by such exhibits as the going out of an electric light
every time a man dies, by the ghastly microbe in the moving picture,
by the highly colored print or by a vivid reproduction of crowded
quarters. The social worker has been doubtful of the real value of
such exhibits, but such reminders have their place in a community
accustomed to the advertising of less worthy subjects.
A decided recognition of the value of exhibits is found in the
advertisement of a company: "We design and equip Exhibits on
Tuberculosis, Milk, Civic Betterment, Dental Hygiene, Saner Fourth of
July. Have you our catalogue?" Much of our educational work for the
dissemination of useful knowledge would gain in power and directness
from an adaptation of the methods of the man skilled in promoting
commercial interests. He knows how to apply the right stimulus at the
right time in order to arouse the desired interest.
In many ways the adult is but the child of a larger growth, who needs
something concrete to make him understand. And so have grown up the
great industrial fairs and exhibitions. One comes away from these
wondering that so much, both good and bad, is being prepared for him,
and stimulated, usually, to work out certain suggestions and better
many of the present conditions. Both the manufacturer and the consumer
have been helped.
Wherever it is possible, a working model illustrating the chief
features to be explained should be installed. The expense of this kind
of exhibit has in the past been prohibitive, and moreover the use of
such "claptrap" has been frowned upon; but scientific knowledge is no
longer to be held within the aristocratic circle of the university. It
is to be brought within the reach of the man in the street, and to
make up for the wasted years of seclusion experts now vie with each
other in putting cause and effect not merely into words but into
pictures, and even into motion pictures. The fly as a carrier of
disease is now shown in all its busy and disgusting activity. The
lesson of awakened attention by such means is being learned, and soon
lessons in botany, in gardening, in housewifery, will be given through
the eye, to be the better followed by the hand.
Of all means, that product of man's ingenuity, the moving picture, is
destined to play the greatest part in quick education. It is the
quintessence of democracy.
The extension movement in education is an evidence of a new social
ideal. It is a true expression of democracy that the university and
school can be utilized by the busy working people. Museums that at one
time were only for the educated who by previous training could
understand them now assume as a privilege the educating of all the
people. Schools of art and science, also, through lectures, bulletins,
guides, and special exhibits, extend a generous welcome to the public.
The citizens ought to be a gladder, sadder people, stirred and
delighted and grateful for much that the city affords; sad and shocked
by some of the forbidding, existing conditions. That is the power of
an exhibit, so to visualize a condition that the mind really
conceives it, never again to recover from the shock, to be unmindful
of such possibilities of degraded existence for human beings.
The influence of these great expositions is of a most subtle kind, not
often to be traced, but there is a noticeable change in the estimation
in which Home Economics is held dating from the time of the Mary
Lowell Stone Home Economics Exhibit held at the Exposition in St.
Louis in 1905. This illustrated the application of modern knowledge to
home life, chiefly in economic and æsthetic lines, all bearing upon
the health and efficiency of the people. The Chicago Exposition in
1893 had its Rumford Kitchen, an exhibit under the auspices of the
State of Massachusetts. This practical illustration of scientific
principles modified the ideas of the world as to the place and
importance of cookery in education. Indeed, there seemed a distinct
danger that other lines would be neglected, so that when the
Exposition at St. Louis was determined upon this legacy of fifteen
years before was drawn upon to show the wide scope of the subject as
it had been developed.
Boards of Health might pave the way for a better understanding of
their rules and regulations if they would have temporary exhibits in
public places of some of the conditions known to them but unsuspected
by the average citizen and taxpayer.
Traveling exhibits may show local and temporary conditions and may
call attention to needs demanding immediate remedy--with the remedy
suggested.
Permanent exhibits in museums should, on the other hand, teach a
deeper lesson. They should always be constructive and should be
replaced when the conditions have changed. The modern idea of a museum
is a series of adjustable exhibits with distinct suggestive purpose.
Such are found in the Town Room, 3 Joy Street, Boston, the Social
Museum, Harvard College, the American Museum of Safety, and the
Sanitary Science Section, American Museum of Natural History, New
York.
The distribution of the printed word has become so universal that it
would seem as if every family might be influenced by it; but the
scientific title, or the size of the book, or the scientific terms
seem forbidding, and so the whole question is thrust aside.
In the past, newspaper science was largely discounted as sensational
and only one-tenth fact. Scientific workers were largely to blame for
this. They could not take the time to explain the meaning of their
work, and the few things they were ready to say were worked over out
of all semblance to truth by the writer who must have a "story" and
who had not the training in "suspension of judgment" which the
scientific investigator knows to be necessary.
There is no concern of human life that cannot be made interesting, and
the magazine writers of today understand that art. Read the newspaper
and the world is yours. It is all things to all men. The popularizing
of knowledge is now proceeding on somewhat better lines.
Intermediaries between the laboratory and the people are springing up
to interpret the one to the other. This work is good or bad according
to the individual writer. Most of it is still too superficial. Here is
one of the most fertile fields for the educated woman, since the
evils of which we complain have to do so intimately with woman's
province, the home and the school. There is hope that the trained,
scientific woman will take her place as interpreter. Her practical
sense will give her an advantage over the young man who has never
known other home than a boarding house.
But the expert knows that the man of "practical affairs" wants and
needs certain knowledge, and so seeks another way. Our Federal
government, through the departments of Agriculture and Education; the
State Boards of Health; the educational institutions, have with care
and accuracy formulated this knowledge and are sending to the people,
in the form of bulletins meeting their interest and requirements,
knowledge in concise and readable form, and so most valuable. More
than five hundred thousand copies of Miss Maria Parloa's bulletin on
Preserving have been distributed by the Department of Agriculture.
These efforts by both men and women have meant independent scientific
research, which is often the only available knowledge for the
housekeeper. It is bringing to them in their "business" of life the
same help that the men on the farm and elsewhere are receiving in
theirs.
But the written word, however clearly put, can never reach the
untrained as can the voice and personality of an earnest speaker with
a compelling vitality. Lectures by those who have been engaged in
research themselves, so that they have absorbed the spirit of the
laboratory--not by those who have merely smelled the odors of the
waste jars--are ten times more valuable than even the most
attractively illustrated articles. It is well that the personality of
the human being is an asset, and that there is a stimulus in hearing
and seeing the person who has accomplished things. There is always a
power in the spoken word. The government, with its public lectures,
recognizes this as well as the private organization, and today
ignorance is necessarily due only to indifference.
Illustrated lectures followed by literature are of inestimable value
if rightly and not sensationally given. Even then, the seed must have
time to sprout.
Man has reached his present stage of civilization, however we regard
it, by an incessant warfare against adverse conditions. Enemies, man
and beast, surrounded him; mountains and rivers obstructed his
passage; fire and flood swept away his dwellings; but ever onward the
inward impulse has carried him.
It is interesting to see how the same vocabulary is transferred to the
warfare for social betterment, "campaign," "warfare," "battle,"
"fight," "weapon," "corps," "army." And the fight to be won can only
come through knowledge, its dissemination and then its application.
Publicity today means coöperation and democracy--all to help, all to
be helped.
All the foregoing methods should be used in these campaigns for
health, with the dictum, "Man, know thyself."