sphere of action which lies at least in part beyond the reach of the
State. In all the American cities of large size, you will find
institutions which are called "Settlements,"--a vague word which has
been defined to mean "homes in the poorer quarters of a city where
educated men and women may live in daily contact with the working
people." The first house of this kind to be established was Toynbee Hall
in London, in 1885. Two years later the Neighbourhood Guild was founded
in New York, and in 1889 the College Settlement in the same city, and
Hull House in Chicago, were established. There are now reported some
three hundred of such settlement houses in the world, of which England
has 56, Holland 11, Scotland 10, France 4, Germany 2, and the United
States 207. I will take, as examples, Hull House in Chicago, and the
Henry Street Settlement in New York.
Hull House was started by two ladies who went into one of the worst
districts of Chicago and took a house with the idea of making it a
radiating centre of orderly and happy life. Their friends backed them up
with money and help. After five years the enterprise was incorporated.
The buildings, which are of the most substantial kind, now cover a whole
city block, some forty or fifty thousand square feet, and, include an
apartment house, a boys' club, a girls' club, a theatre, a gymnasium, a
day nursery, workshops, class rooms, a coffee-house, and so on. There
are forty-four educated men and women in residence who are engaged in
self-supporting occupations, and who give their free time to the work of
the settlement. A hundred and fifty outside helpers come every week to
serve as teachers, friendly visitors, or directors of clubs: 9000 people
a week come to the house as members of some one of its organizations or
as parts of an audience. There are free concerts, and lectures, and
classes of various kinds in study and in handicraft. Investigations of
the social and industrial conditions of the neighbourhood are carried
on, not officially, but informally; and the knowledge thus obtained has
been used not only for the visible transformation of the region around
Hull House, but also to throw light upon the larger needs and
possibilities of improvement in Chicago and other American cities. Hull
House, in fact, is an example of ethical and humane housekeeping on a
big scale in a big town.
The Henry Street Settlement in New York is quite different in its
specific quality. It was begun in 1893 by two trained nurses, who went
down into the tenement-house district, to find the sick and to nurse
them in their homes. At first they lived in a tenement house themselves;
then the growth of their work and the coming of other helpers forced
them to get a little house, then another, and another, a cottage in the
country, a convalescent home. The idea of the settlement was single and
simple. It was to meet the need of intelligent and skilful nursing in
the very places where dirt and ignorance, carelessness and superstition,
were doing the most harm,--
"in the crowded warrens of the poor."
This little company of women, some twenty or thirty of them, go about
from tenement to tenement, bringing cleanliness and order with them. In
the presence of disease and pain they teach lessons which could be
taught in no other way. They nurse five or six thousand patients every
year, and make forty or fifty thousand visits. In addition to this,
largely through their influence and example, the Board of Education has
adopted a trained nursing service in the public schools, and has
appointed a special corps of nurses to take prompt charge of cases of
contagious disease among the school children. The Nurses' Settlement,
in fact, is a repetition of the parable of the Good Samaritan in a
crowded city instead of on a lonely road.
These two examples illustrate the kind of work that is going on all over
the United States. Every religious body, Jewish or Christian, has some
part in it. It touches many sides of life,--this effort to do for the
common order what the State has never been able to accomplish fully,--to
sweeten and humanize it. I wish that there were time to speak of some
particularly interesting features, like the Children's Aid Society, the
George Junior Republic, the Association for Improving the Condition of
the Poor, the Kindergarten Association. But now I must pass at once to
the second kind of social effort, that in which the voluntary
coöperation of the citizen enlightens and guides and supplements the
action of the State.
Here I might speak of the great question of the housing of the poor, and
of the relation of private building and loan associations to
governmental regulation of tenements and dwelling-houses. This is one of
the points on which America has lagged behind the rest of the civilized
world. Our excessive spirit of _laissez-faire_, and our cheerful
optimism,--which in this case justifies the cynical definition of
optimism as "an indifference to the sufferings of others,"--permitted
the development in New York of the most congested and rottenly
overcrowded ten acres on the face of the habitable globe. But the
Tenement House Commission of 1894, and the other commissions which
followed it, did much to improve conditions. A fairly good Tenement
House Act was passed. A special Department of the municipality was
created to enforce it. The dark interior rooms, the vile and unsanitary
holes, the lodgings without water or air or fire-escapes, are being
slowly but surely broken up and extirpated, and a half-dozen private
societies, combining philanthropy with business, are building decent
houses for working people, which return from 3 per cent to 5 per cent on
the capital invested.
For our present purpose, however, it will be better to take an example
which is less complicated, and in which the coöperation of the State and
the good-will of the private citizen can be more closely and simply
traced. I mean the restriction and the regulation of child labour.
Every intelligent nation sees in its children its most valuable asset.
That their physical and moral development should be dwarfed or paralyzed
by bondage to exhausting and unwholesome labour, or by a premature
absorption in toil of any kind, would be at once a national disgrace and
a national calamity.
Three kinds of societies have been and still are at work in America to
prevent this shame and disaster. First, there are the societies which
are devoted to the general protection of all the interests of the young,
like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Then there are the societies which make their appeal to the moral sense
of the community to condemn and suppress all kinds of inhumanity in the
conduct of industry and trade. Of these the Consumers' League is an
example. Founded in New York in 1890, by a few ladies of public spirit,
it has spread to twenty other States, with sixty-four distinct societies
and a national organization for the whole country. Its central idea is
to persuade people, rich and poor, to buy only those things which are
made and sold under fair and humane conditions. The responsibility of
men and women for the way in which they spend their money is recognized.
They are asked to remember that the cheapness of a bargain is not the
only thing for them to consider. They ought to think whether it has been
made cheap at the cost of human sorrow and degradation, whether the
distress and pain and exhaustion of overtasked childhood and ill-treated
womanhood have made their cheap bargain a shameful and poisonous thing.
The first work of the leagues was to investigate the actual condition of
labour in the great stores. The law forbade them to publish a _black
list_ of the establishments where the employees were badly treated.
That would have been in the nature of a boycott. But they ingeniously
evaded this obstacle by publishing a _white list_ of those which treated
their people decently and kindly. Thus the standard of a "_Fair House_"
where a living wage was paid, where children of tender years were not
employed, where the hours of work were not excessive, and where the
sanitary conditions were good, was established, and that standard has
steadily been raised.
Then the leagues went on to investigate the conditions of production of
the goods sold in the shops. The National League issues a _white label_
which guarantees that every article upon which it is found has been
manufactured in a place where, (1) the State factory law is obeyed, (2)
no children under sixteen years of age are employed, (3) no night work
is required and the working-day does not exceed ten hours, (4) no goods
are given out to be made away from the factory. At the same time the
Consumers' League has been steadily pressing the legislatures and
governors of the different States for stricter and better laws in regard
to the employment of women and children.
The third class of societies which are at work in this field are those
which deal directly with the question of child labour. It must be
remembered that under the American system this is a matter which is
left to the control of the separate States. Naturally there has been the
greatest imaginable diversity among them. For a long time there were
many that had practically no laws upon the subject, or laws so defective
that they were useless. Even now the States are far from anything like
harmony or equality in their child-labour laws. Illinois, Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin are probably in the lead in
good legislation. If we may judge by the statistics of children between
ten and fourteen years who are unable to read or write, Tennessee,
Mississippi, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama are in the
rear.
It must be remembered, also, that the number of children between ten and
fifteen years employed in manufacturing pursuits in the United States
increased from 1890 to 1900 more than twice as fast as the population of
the country, and that the Census of 1900 gives the total of
bread-winners under fifteen years of age as 1,750,000. A graphic picture
of the actual condition of child labour in the United States may be
found in _The Cry of the Children_, by Mrs. John Van Vorst (New York,
1908).
Here is a little army--no, a vast army--of little soldiers, whose sad
and silent files are full of menace for the republic.
The principal forces arrayed against this perilous condition of things
have been the special committees of the Women's Clubs everywhere, the
Child-Labour Committees in different States, and finally the National
Child-Labour Committee organized in 1904. Through their efforts there
has been a great advance in legislation on the subject. In 1905,
twenty-two States enacted laws regulating the employment of children. In
1906 there were six States which legislated, including Georgia and Iowa,
which for the first time put a law against child labour on their
statute-books. In 1907 eight States amended their laws. In the same year
a national investigation of the subject was ordered by Congress under
direction of the Federal Commissioner of Labour.
A bill was prepared which attempted to deal with the subject indirectly
through that provision of the Constitution which gives Congress the
power to "regulate commerce." This bill proposed to make it unlawful to
transport from one State to another the product of any factory or mine
in which children under fourteen years of age were employed. It was a
humane and ingenious device. But it is doubtful whether it can ever be
made an effective law. The best judges think that it stretches the idea
of the regulation of interstate commerce beyond reasonable limits, and
that the national government has no power to control industrial
production in the separate States without an amendment to the
Constitution. If this be true (and I am inclined to believe it is), then
the best safeguard of America against the evils of child labour must be
persistent action of these private associations in each community,
investigating and reporting the actual conditions, awakening and
stimulating the local conscience, pushing steadily for better State
laws, and, when they are enacted, still working to create a public
sentiment which will enforce them.
It is one thing to love your own children and care for them. It is
another thing to have a wise, tender, protecting regard for all the
children of your country. We wish and hope to see better and more
uniform laws against child labour in America. But, after all, nothing
can take the place of the sentiment of fatherhood and motherhood in
patriotism. And that comes and stays only through the voluntary effort
of men and women of good-will.
The last sphere in which the sense of common order in America has been
expressed and promoted by social coöperation is that of direct and
definite reform accomplished by legislation, as a result, at least in
part, of the work of some society or committee, formed for that specific
purpose. Here a small, but neat, illustration is at hand.
For many years America practised, and indeed legally sanctioned, the
habit of literary piracy. Foreign authors were distinctly refused any
protection in the United States for the fruit of their intellectual
labours. A foreigner might make a hat, and no one could steal it. He
might cultivate a crop of potatoes, and no one could take them from him
without paying for them. But let him write a book, and any one could
reprint it, and sell it, and make a fortune out of it, without being
compelled to give the unhappy author a penny. American authors felt the
shame of this state of things,--and the disorder, too, for it
demoralized the book-trade and brought a mass of stolen goods into cheap
competition with those which had paid an honest royalty to their makers.
A Copyright League was formed which included all the well-known writers
of America. After years of hard work this league secured the passage of
an international copyright law which gave the same protection to the
foreigner as to the American author, providing only, under the
protective tariff system, that his book must be printed and manufactured
in the United States.
But the most striking and important example of this kind of work is that
of the Civil Service Reform Association, which was organized in 1877.
Here a few words of explanation are necessary.
In the early history of the United States the number of civil offices
under the national government was comparatively small, and the
appointments were generally made for ability and fitness. But as the
country grew, the number of offices increased with tremendous rapidity.
By 1830 the so-called 'Spoils System' which regarded them as prizes of
political war, to be distributed by the successful party in each
election for the reward and encouragement of its adherents, became a
fixed idea in the public mind. The post-offices, the custom-houses, all
departments of the civil service, were treated as rich treasuries of
patronage, and used first by the Democrats and then by the Republicans,
to consolidate and perpetuate partisan power.
It was not a question of financial corruption, of bribery with money. It
was worse. It was a question of the disorder and impurity of the
national housekeeping, of the debauchment and degradation of the daily
business of the State.
Notoriously unfit persons were appointed to responsible positions. The
tenure of office was brief and insecure. Every presidential election
threatened to make a clean sweep of the hundreds of thousands of people
who were doing the necessary routine work of the nation. Federal
office-holders were practically compelled to contribute to campaign
expenses, and to work and fight, like a host of mercenaries, for the
success of the party which kept them in place. Confusion and
inefficiency prevailed everywhere.
In 1871 the condition of affairs had become intolerable. President
Grant, in his first term, recommended legislation, and appointed a
national civil service commission, with George William Curtis at its
head. Competitive examinations were begun, and a small appropriation was
made to carry on the work. But the country was not yet educated up to
the reform. Congress was secretly and stubbornly opposed to it. The
appropriation was withdrawn. The work of the commission was ridiculed,
and in his second term, in 1875, Grant was obliged to give it up.
Then the Civil Service Reform Association, with men like George William
Curtis, Carl Schurz, Dorman B. Eaton, and James Russell Lowell as its
leaders, was organized. A vigorous and systematic campaign of public
agitation and education was begun. Candidates for the Presidency and
other elective offices were called to declare their policy on this
question.
The war of opinion was fierce. The assassination of President Garfield,
in 1881, was in some measure due to the feeling of hostility aroused by
his known opposition to the Spoils System. His successor, Vice-President
Arthur, who was supposed to be a spoilsman, surprised everybody by his
loyalty to Garfield's policy on this point. And in 1883 a bill for the
reform of the Civil Service was passed and a new commission appointed.
The next President was Grover Cleveland, an ardent and fearless friend
of the reform, who greatly increased its practical efficiency. He fought
against Congress, both in his first and in his second term, to enlarge
the scope and operation of the act by bringing more offices into the
classified and competitive service. In his second term, by executive
order, he increased the number of classified positions from forty-three
thousand to eighty-seven thousand.
Presidents Harrison and McKinley worked in the same direction. And
President Roosevelt, whose first national office was that of Civil
Service Commissioner from 1889 to 1895, has raised and strengthened the
rules, and applied the merit system to the consular service and other
important departments of governmental work.
The result is that out of three hundred and twenty-five thousand
positions in the executive civil service one hundred and eighty-five
thousand are now classified, and appointments are made either under
competitive examination or on the merit system for proved efficiency.
This is an immense forward step in the promotion of common order, and it
is largely the result of the work of the Civil Service Reform
Association, acting upon the formation of public opinion. I believe it
would be impossible for any candidate known to favour the Spoils System
to be elected to the Presidency of the United States to-day.
A moment of thought will show the bearing of this illustration upon the
subject which we are now considering. Here was a big, new, democratic
people, self-reliant and sovereign, prosperous to a point where
self-complacency was almost inevitable, and grown quite beyond the reach
of external correction and control. They had fallen into wretched habits
of national housekeeping. Their domestic service was disorderly and
incompetent. The party politicians, on both sides, were interested in
maintaining this bad service, because they made a profit out of it. The
people had been hardened to it; they seemed to be either careless and
indifferent, in their large, happy-go-lucky way, or else positively
attached to a system which stirred everything up every four years and
created unlimited opportunities for office-seeking and salary-drawing.
What power could save them from their own bad judgment?
There was no higher authority to set them right. Everything was in their
own hands. The case looked hopeless. But in less than thirty years the
voluntary effort of a group of clear-sighted and high-minded citizens
changed everything. An appeal to the sense of common order, of decency,
of propriety, in the soul of the people created a sentiment which was
too strong for the selfish politicians of either party to resist. The
popular will was enlightened, converted, transformed, and an orderly,
just, business-like administration of the Civil Service became, if not
an accomplished fact, at least a universal and acknowledged aim of
national desire and effort.
It is to precisely the same source that we must look with hope for the
further development of harmony, and social equilibrium, and efficient
civic righteousness, in American affairs. It is by precisely the same
process that America must save herself from the perils and perplexities
which are inherent in her own character and in the form of government
which she has evolved to fit it.
That boastful self-complacency which is the caricature of self-reliance,
that contempt for the minority which is the mockery of fair play, that
stubborn personal lawlessness which is the bane of the strong will and
the energetic temperament, can be restrained, modified, corrected, and
practically conquered, only by another inward force,--the desire of
common order, the instinct of social coöperation. And there is no way of
stimulating this desire, of cultivating this instinct, at least for the
American republic, except the way of voluntary effort and association
among the men and women of good-will.
One looks with amazement upon the vast array of "societies" of all kinds
which have sprung into being in the United States during the last thirty
years. They cover every subject of social thought and endeavour. Their
documents and pamphlets and circulars fill the mails. Their appeals for
contributions and dues tax the purse. To read all that they print would
be a weariness to the flesh. To attend all their meetings and
conferences would wreck the most robust listener. To speak at all of
them would ruin the most fluent orator. A feeling of humorous
discouragement and dismay often comes over the quiet man who
contemplates this astonishing phase of American activity.
But if he happens also to be a conscientious man, he is bound to
remember, on the other side, that the majority of these societies exist
for some practical end which belongs to the common order. The Women's
Clubs, all over the country, have been powerful promoters of local
decency and good legislation. The Leagues for Social Service, for
Political Education, for Municipal Reform, have investigated conditions,
collected facts, and acted as "clearing-houses for human betterment."
The White Ribbon, and Red Ribbon, and Blue Ribbon Clubs have worked for
purity and temperance. The Prison Associations have sought to secure the
treatment of criminals as human beings. The City Clubs, and Municipal
Leagues, and Vigilance Societies have acted as unpaid watchmen over the
vital interests of the great cities. The Medical and Legal Societies
have used their influence in behalf of sanitary reform and the
improvement of the machinery and methods of the courts.
There is no subject affecting the common welfare on which Congress would
venture to legislate to-day until the committee to which the bill had
been referred had first given a public hearing. At these hearings, which
are open to all, the societies that are interested present their facts
and arguments, and plead their cause.
Even associations of a less serious character seem to recognize their
civic responsibilities. The Society of the Sons of the Revolution prints
and distributes, in a dozen different languages, a moral and patriotic
pamphlet of "Information for Immigrants." The Sportsmen's Clubs take an
active interest in the improvement and enforcement of laws for the
protection of fish and game. The Audubon Societies in many parts of the
country have stopped, or at least checked, the extermination of wild
birds of beauty and song for the supposed adornment of women's hats.