[Reprinted from the Jamestown, N. Y., Post]
It is significant of the liberalizing sentiment which is the outgrowth
of the sixty years or more of campaigning which the suffragists have
carried on in New York State and all over the country, not for the vote
alone, but for the recognition of women as co-workers with men in the
affairs of the world, that a woman is for the first time in history a
member of the cabinet of the Mayor of New York City, and is at the head
of one of the most important departments of municipal administration.
Dr. Katherine Bement Davis, the new Commissioner of Correction, is a
good suffragist--her family for some generations have been supporters
of the cause of women--and she is a firm believer in her sex as well as
a splendid monument herself of feminine achievement. The New Year opens
most promisingly with such a woman to inspire hope and courage and
higher ideals in the wayward of this great city.
Buffalo claims the honor of being the birth place of Dr. Davis, who
was the oldest of five children. She was graduated from the Rochester
High School, however. Being naturally a student and a thinker, she felt
that she must have a broader education. Funds were rather scarce at
home and needs many, so the ambitious young girl set to work and taught
school until she had earned enough to go to college. She is now one
of Vassar’s most honored alumnae. Her career there was brief for she
completed her course in two years, graduating with flying colors and
winning Phi Beta Kappa honors.
The following year Dr. Davis--she was Miss Davis then--spent at
Columbia University, studying the chemistry of foods, and the knowledge
that she acquired was promptly put into practice in a most telling
manner.
John Boyd Thatcher, one of the prime movers in the Committee of
Arrangements for the World’s Fair in Chicago, was eager to have a woman
establish and manage a workingman’s model home. He appealed to Miss
Davis, who agreed to take charge of the matter. She built the house
and settled a workingman and his family in it. She looked after every
detail of the house-keeping herself, did the cooking and fed the family
on what she believed to be an ideal diet for their needs, the most
healthful and strength-building. They were pledged to eat nothing away
from home. Each day the diet was posted for the benefit of visitors.
That family was taught scientific house-keeping in such an approved
fashion that the model home proved a most instructive and valuable
feature of the fair.
Next Miss Davis became the head of the College Settlement in
Philadelphia, and was one of the charter members of the Civic Club. It
was not long before she was running for membership in the School Board,
but at that time Philadelphia had not accepted school suffrage. She was
beaten by an Italian saloon-keeper. An amusing fact which gives some
idea of how much a woman of her calibre was really needed in that City
of Brotherly Love, was that when the vote was counted, it was found
that her precinct had polled seven more votes than it was entitled to.
Somewhat later Miss Davis held the first woman’s fellowship in the
University of Chicago, and there she took her Doctor’s degree in
political economy. She then went abroad, as European fellow of the
New England Association for the Higher Education of Women, and took
advanced work in Political Economy and Sociology, in Berlin and Vienna.
Then in January, 1900, Dr. Davis took up her duties as Superintendent
of the Bedford Reformatory. Even before the buildings were completed
she moved in, started the machinery going and by May, 1901, was ready
to welcome and care for wayward girls and women entrusted to her charge
to open up to them a new existence of hope and efficiency.
After eight busy years at Bedford, Dr. Davis took a five months’ leave
of absence, and went to Europe. She spent some time in Sicily and was
at Syracuse at the time of the Messina earthquake. Here just as in her
own country, she found a real need for her fine broad sympathies and
splendid executive ability. The people were overcome by the terrible
disaster. They did not know what to do, and there seemed to be nothing
to do with. Four thousand refugees had been brought to Syracuse and Dr.
Davis promptly took the situation in hand. A woman was found who could
speak English, and with her for an interpreter, Dr. Davis, in what
seemed an almost miraculous way, succeeded in getting money, materials
for clothing--many of the survivors were literally naked--also other
necessities, and meeting the situation most valiantly.
Buildings as well as people she commandeered into service. A little
chapel was turned into a dressmaker’s establishment and here the women
were set to work making clothes. Somewhere else shoe-makers were
gathered together, busily making shoes for the bare-footed fugitives.
Other men were set to work at road making; one of their constructions
is still known as the Davis Road. Red Cross aid arrived and Dr. Davis
was made chief dispenser of it. In the first six weeks, she spent
$15,000, but she did not pauperize the people; instead she encouraged
them to help themselves, set them to work and paid them off regularly
every week. It was that wisely directed, properly compensated work,
that saved those poor people and gave them a new grip on life.
All sorts of people needed assistance. The Archbishop of Syracuse gave
up his palace for a hospital and a convalescent home was established
for those of the upper classes. The men, many of them, were so shaken
by the calamity that they would frequently give way to fits of
hysterics, and more than once on such an occasion, Dr. Davis took a man
by the shoulders and shook him into self-control. At one time a basket,
full of rescued babies, was brought in to her--twelve in all--but the
bottom one was dead.
For her splendid work at this time, Dr. Davis was much honored. The
King of Italy gave her a medal. The Pope of his own accord summoned
her to an interview, and gave her his blessing. The Italian Red Cross
Society bestowed a medal upon her, as did the American Red Cross,
through President Taft.
When the Sicilian earthquake victims were in a position to help
themselves, Dr. Davis returned home, and quietly resumed her duties as
mother, confidant and friend of the inmates of the Bedford reformatory.
She has proved herself to be an all-around friend to those in her
charge and has entered heartily into all sorts of activities, in
pleasures as well as in work; she has been known to get up plays, drill
the actors, paint the scenery, train the orchestra, then go out and
receive the guests and make a speech. During the thirteen years of her
service there, she has lost but two days by illness, and that was a
sore throat.
The International Prison Congress at its meeting in 1910 elected Dr.
Davis the chief of a section. In a space of twenty years, she was the
only woman appointed to such a position; she was also the first woman
to preside over the public meeting. She was also appointed a member of
the Committee which showed the Congress over this country.
Vassar, too, has been delighted to honor this graduate who has lived up
so wonderfully to the ideals of her alma mater, and the four thousand
alumnae have chosen her as one of the twelve members of the Provisional
Alumnae Council.
New York City is indeed fortunate in having at the head of its
Department of Correction a woman who has proved herself to be a modern
penologist, of the most humanitarian order, and has shown such splendid
knowledge of how best to make her sympathy and understanding help the
inmates of our prisons; how to individualize the cases and make the
punishment fit the criminal rather than the crime; to substitute hope
and courage for despair, and to help the unfortunate to amount to
something worth while after all.
Surely it is a step forward in civilization, when a woman is chosen to
an important position like this commissionership, not because she is
a woman, but because it is felt that she is the right person for the
place.