THE SURVEY, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913
THE COMMON WELFARE
IN THE WAKE OF THE FLOOD
By the end of last week, according to reports from the Red Cross
representatives in the flood district, the relief situation was being
satisfactorily handled: and out of the chaos a careful survey was
revealing more definitely the extent of the rehabilitation problem. This
unfortunately does not shrink in magnitude, on the basis of later
reports, as does the list of dead. It is clear that large sums will be
needed. Every message from Red Cross agents emphasizes the urgent
necessity for continuing and redoubling the efforts to secure funds.
The New York office of the Red Cross received a despatch at the end of
the week from Ernest P. Bicknell, national director of the Red Cross at
Columbus, which gives the most comprehensive, summary of the situation
thus far received. He says:
“Have just returned from tour of flooded towns with Governor Cox and
Flood Relief Commission. Governor and Commission have requested Red
Cross to take charge of relief operations in Ohio and all money
contributed through governor will be expended under direction of the
Red Cross. This assures absolute freedom from conflict of authority or
confusion in expenditure in Ohio.
“The emergency relief situation in each flooded district in Ohio is
well covered. Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, Piqua, Troy, Ottawa,
Sidney, Hamilton, Miamisburg, Middleton, Zanesville and Tiffin are
covered by Red Cross representatives. Information is being rapidly
accumulated on which to base rehabilitation. Am pushing men into other
flooded towns as fast as water subsides and we can get the men. It has
been most difficult to get reliable information; wires are still down
and transportation extremely difficult. Further rains are impeding
progress.
“The best information we can get indicates the following conditions
throughout state. Four hundred sixty dead in Ohio. 4,200 homes
destroyed, estimated 40,500 people temporarily homeless and 9,000
families, outside of Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati, will need
rehabilitation.
“Col. Miller, chief quartermaster, reports need of underwear of all
sorts, as well as bedding and blankets. Some Ohio towns are just being
heard from. At least thirty cities and towns are inundated in Ohio,
twenty in Indiana and many in Illinois, Kentucky and West Virginia.
Boundary line surrounding flooded territory more than two thousand
miles long. Situation very serious in a number of Indiana cities. I am
going to Indianapolis tomorrow at urgent request of Governor Ralston.
“Following report from Adjutant General F. S. Dickson of Illinois
indicates gravity of situation in that state: ‘We have a flooded
territory on the eastern side of the state along the Wabash River and
its tributaries, and another through the heart of the middle western
part of the state along the Illinois River and its tributaries, but
the most serious situation confronting us is along the Ohio and
Mississippi, particularly the Ohio. The entire territory from above
Mount Carmel on the Wabash down past Cairo is either submerged or in
grave danger of being submerged. Shawneetown has been abandoned and is
now under water to the extent of approximately twenty-five or thirty
feet.
“‘On duty there are two companies of national guard and a division of
naval militia. People driven from their homes numbering approximately
eight hundred to one thousand are in the hills back of the city and
are appealing for shelter and food. Mounds City is making a desperate
fight and there are four companies of national guard working on the
levees. The saving of the people is in doubt because there is no high
ground in their rear to which it is possible for them to go, they are
entirely shut off in the rear by from fifteen to twenty-five feet of
water. Cairo is practically an island and the water from the Ohio has
driven people along the territory I have indicated, away from their
homes and back into the hills to distances of ten to fifteen miles.
This distance is entirely covered by water. The state is furnishing
all the tentage at its command and food supplies to every possible
point within our power. From the reliable reports from my officers who
have personally visited these places, I would say that in the present
flooded area in southern Illinois there are from eighteen to twenty
thousand people homeless and in dire need of food.’”
SMASHING THE LEASE SYSTEM IN ARKANSAS
When Governor Donaghey of Arkansas just before Christmas turned loose
360 convicts as one step in his effort to break up the system of hiring
out prisoners to private contractors, nearly every editor in the country
found space for the story. But when, last month, T. J. Robinson, the new
governor, signed a bill which finally abolished the lease system and
established in its place a state farm where prisoners are henceforth to
be worked, the news was not so picturesque and only a few papers outside
of the state of Arkansas thought it important enough to even publish the
fact.
The new law brings to an end one of the most spectacular campaigns ever
waged against the lease system.[1] “The penitentiary was not designed
for a revengeful hell,” ex-Governor Donaghey said the day he pardoned
360 of the state’s convicts. This extreme measure was taken as the last
means, before his retirement, of rousing the people of Arkansas to
immediate action. By hiring out to contractors persons whom it is the
state’s duty to protect and reform, declared the former executive, the
state was in a way giving its sanction to cruelty and exploitation.
Footnote 1:
See THE SURVEY for Dec. 28, 1912, page 383; also Jan. 4, 1913, page
410.
The new law replaces the former Board of Penitentiary Commissioners,
which consisted of a number of state officials who had heavy duties in
other directions, with a new Board of Penitentiary and Reform School
Commissioners. This board has only three members and the law stipulates
that two of these shall be experienced farmers. They are to give their
entire time to their new duties.
The law declares that this commission “shall not hire out or lease or
permit any person to hire out or lease any of the convicts of this state
to any person or persons whomsoever.” Instead, it shall “use and work”
all convicts on a state farm, which it is authorized to purchase. A farm
of 8,000 acres is now being used for the purpose, and it is said that
all of the prison population can be profitably employed there the year
round.
Several reasons led to the selection of farm work for prisoners. One was
that there is less competition with free labor in farm work than in
other lines of production. Another was that it gives the men a great
deal of healthful outdoor exercise. A third was that it will enable many
of the men after release to take up work from which there is less chance
that their prison records will exclude them than would be the case in
many of the trades ordinarily followed in prison factories.
GOV. FOSS URGES THREE PRISON REFORM BILLS
Three messages on prison reform in as many weeks were recently sent to
the Massachusetts Legislature by Governor Foss. This is an unusual
record even in these days when a growing list of state executives are
trying to rouse their people to prison reforms. Attention has heretofore
been centered mainly on Governor West of Oregon, whose use of the honor
system among the prisoners of that state has been stamped by many as one
of the two most notable advances during 1912 in the treatment of the
criminal; Governor Hooper of Tennessee who spent one night in prison to
experience some of the conditions of cell life; Governor Donaghey of
Arkansas whose sensational pardoning of 360 convicts has just resulted
in the legal abolition of the lease system in that state; and Governor
Blease of South Carolina, known as the “pardoning governor,” who
complained that Governor Donaghey’s release of 360 prisoners in one day
had “lain him in the shade.”
Governor Foss’s last message was accompanied by three bills. One
provides for new buildings for defective delinquents; another calls for
the appointment of an expert alienist to assist in the proper treatment
of female defective delinquents, and the third directs the prison
commission to report upon the best method of providing institutional
accommodations for those now in prison and state care for all convicted
felons.
The first measure is designed to change the present policy of trying to
reform feeble-minded people by the methods employed for normal persons.
It has been established in recent years that large percentages of those
convicted for law-breaking are irresponsible mentally. The following
table showing the percentage of mentally deficient persons in seven
correctional institutions has been published by the Russell Sage
Foundation:
Per cent.
New York State reformatory, Elmira 37
New Jersey State reformatory, Rahway 33
New York reformatory for women, Redford 37
Massachusetts industrial school for girls, Lancaster 50
Maryland industrial school for girls, Baltimore 60
New Jersey state home for girls, Trenton 33
Illinois state school for boys, St. Charles 20
Governor Foss believes, as do more and more people, that these persons,
if left at large in the community, constitute one of our gravest social
dangers. “But neither the prison nor the asylum,” he adds, “is adapted
to their incarceration, and they are rarely capable of reform.” He
therefore recommends that two special cottage buildings for male
patients of this type be erected at the state farm. In these they can be
under the medical direction of the hospital for the criminal insane. For
female defectives he urges the erection of two or more cottages near the
present reformatory for women at Sherborn.
Declaring that “the county prison has no place in a model prison system
and no logical reason for continued existence,” Governor Foss suggests
that all such jails be taken over by the state, “with complete disregard
of the personal interests and protests of county officials, who depend
largely for their political power and patronage on retaining the county
system intact.” While recognizing that this perhaps can not be done at
once, the governor sees no reason why there should not be an immediate
reclassification of prisoners, so that long-term men can be located in
one kind of institution, instead of in three as now. Likewise those
amenable to instruction and remedial treatment he thinks should be
confined by themselves. The present system, he says, was constructed
mainly at a time when no attempt was made at such a classification. For
these reasons he thinks new prison accommodations must be provided.
Until the county jails are taken over by the state, Governor Foss thinks
they ought to be improved. Accordingly he is in favor of a bill now
before the legislature providing for prison schools. This measure
permits the prison commissioners to maintain, in not more than five
houses of correction, schools for the mental and manual instruction of
prisoners. The state board of education is directed to devise plans for
the organization and administration of these schools and to maintain
supervision over them. The teachers and instructors are to be appointed
by the prison commissioners from civil service lists.
It is declared by many persons engaged in prison administration that
this apparent division of responsibility between the State Board of
Education and the prison commissioners is disadvantageous to the best
administration of prison schools. It is said that while there ought to
be close co-operation between the educational and prison authorities the
actual supervision of the schools should be in the hands of the latter.
NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCES TO PROMOTE RURAL PROGRESS
Conferences devoted to various aspects of rural community life were held
in Boston during the first week in March. Perhaps the most important was
that which drew together professors from the state colleges,
representatives from the state boards of agriculture, directors of the
experiment stations and men in charge of extension work, delegates of
the state granges, and scores of farmers throughout New England
interested in the promotion of agriculture.
This was the fifth annual New England Conference on Rural Progress. As
an earnest of its purpose to do actual constructive work along some of
the lines of rural betterment it has heretofore talked about, it changed
its name to the New England Federation for Rural Progress. To further
this purpose, the association enlarged its executive committee and
created a working advisory council to include representatives from each
of the New England states. The new constitution also provides for three
classes of membership: first, state federations and state organizations;
second, local, district and county organizations; third, individuals.
Some of the more important discussions were by H. W. Tinkham of the
Rhode Island State Grange, urging the establishment of municipal
markets; C. E. Embree, general manager of the Farmers’ Union of Maine,
describing its plan to establish consumers’ stores in New York and other
large cities; Leonard G. Robinson of the Jewish Agricultural and
Industrial Aid Society, telling of credit to the sum of $1,500,000 given
by the society to over 2,500 farmers in twenty-eight states; and Kenyon
L. Butterfield, president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College,
setting forth the program to which the organization should hold:
“To secure an adequate inventory of New England agricultural
resources; to carry out educational campaigns for the best use of
every acre of New England soil; to improve vastly our methods of
marketing farm products; to gain a better system of rural schools and
to inaugurate a comprehensive system of public agricultural education;
to try to solve the problem of farm labor; and to maintain upon New
England soil a class of people representing the best of American
traditions—people who have sufficient means of wholesome recreation,
who maintain strong churches, who develop a satisfying home life and
who are content with the work and the life of the farm.”
This emphasis on the human side of the problem characterized the entire
conference. For instance, Mr. Twitchell, after an exhaustive discussion
of the financial aspects of marketing, proposed as the final word of his
report:
“Success in agriculture must be measured not by the magnitude of the
crops grown but by the quality of the men and women developed on the
farm. The sucking power of the town has become a serious menace to our
civilization, and only live organized effort can effect that
readjustment of industrial conditions necessary for the stimulating of
desire for mastery over rural conditions on the part of a steadily
increasing number.... If you would make your cities safe, strong,
secure and enduring, look well to the development of your only source
of supply of fresh blood, the country boy and girl.”
The officers elected were: President, J. R. Hills, director Vermont
Agricultural Experiment Station; vice-president, R. N. Bowen, treasurer
Rhode Island Horticultural Society; secretary and treasurer, James A.
McKebben, Secretary Boston Chamber of Commerce.
The part the church plays in country life, particularly in recreation,
in public health, and in community advancement, was under consideration
in another conference. Ministers and teachers told what individual
churches and schools were doing, and the general discussion indicated a
growing realization of the whole problem as well as notable efforts to
grapple with it.
The various sections of the School Garden Club met in Horticultural
Hall, while at the Twentieth Century Club, under the joint auspices of
the Massachusetts Federation of Women’s Clubs and the New England Home
Economics Association, a mass meeting for home makers was held. The
economic and hygienic aspects of markets were discussed by Mrs. Julian
Health of New York, president of the Housewives’ League; Sarah Louise
Arnold, dean of Simmons College; George C. Burington, manager of the
Charles River Co-operative Society, and others.
ST. LOUIS WINS NEW TENEMENT HOUSE LAW
St. Louis has just won an unremitting fight of five years for a tenement
house law. Though there has during these years been much newspaper
publicity, even an “extra” once when a public hearing ended in a riot,
the final passage has been scarcely mentioned.
This law, social workers feel, marks a great advance for St. Louis. It
requires running water on every floor of every tenement house, and a
light from sunset to sunrise in every common hallway. Further provisions
are that all halls of every tenement house must be kept by the owner in
good repair and free from dirt, filth, ashes, or refuse, and that the
rooms must be so maintained by the tenant. Fruit, vegetables, rags,
junk, etc., may not be stored in a tenement house. For every tenement
dwelling containing more than eight families there must be a caretaker
or janitor.
Other provisions of importance are that cellars may never be used for
living purposes and basements only under certain restricted conditions.
Finally, no apartment nor any room of a tenement-house shall be occupied
by more persons than will allow for each adult 500 cubic feet of air
space, and for children 350 cubic feet each. This does not apply where
the occupants make up a single family. It is designed especially to
reduce the number of lodgers, whose presence results in so much
overcrowding and immorality.
Those who have won this battle look back over as varied a struggle as
social workers have ever encountered. In 1905 Charlotte Rumbold prepared
for the Housing Committee of the Civic League a report on tenement-house
conditions, so vividly written and illustrated that not only St. Louis
but many other localities were stirred and eventually framed reform
legislation. The St. Louis bill as first drawn was changed only in a few
small details during its long career before passage. At the beginning it
was fiercely fought by real estate men, who at one public hearing packed
the house with pleaders, mostly tenement-house tenants, against the
bill. Its defenders encountered hissing and hooting. All the lights were
suddenly turned out, and half a riot followed. After this the crowd
surged to the mayor’s office before it quieted down. The bill was
defeated.
Shortly after the Civic League and the Real Estate Exchange held a
conference and, to every one’s amazement, found that after all they
disagreed only in certain minor matters. The same bill was re-introduced
in 1911, but failed, owing to contention at the eleventh hour concerning
certain legal aspects. When a new Board of Health was organized in 1912,
its program included the passage of this bill. It was again introduced
in September, 1912, and, in spite of repeated efforts of several
legislative members to let it sleep to death, the constant prodding by
other members brought the bill to final passage.
THE SEATTLE CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION
The committee on organization has been in many respects the keystone of
the National Conference of Charities and Correction. The executive
committee is, of course, the year-round authority, and has as its core
the former presidents of the national body. The committee on
organization has usually been appointed after the conference delegates
are on the ground, but to it has been entrusted a two-fold
responsibility to be mastered in a single week.
The proceedings of the conference are divided into six or seven main
sections. Each section has a committee. Several of these sections have
been more or less permanent, appearing again and again in the make-up of
succeeding conferences. The trend, however, has been away from such a
stereotyped organization. Each year new sections and committees have
been devised to discuss new needs—committees on public health, on
occupational standards, on probation and the like.
In other words, the temporary committee on organization has had
practically to open the channels through which the conference of the
succeeding year was to run, an exacting and fundamental piece of work.
In addition, it has had the nomination of officers for the new year on
its hands and all the turmoil of convention politics has descended on
this committee. The result has been that usually a dozen of the most
active and valuable members of the conference have been busy from early
morning until midnight throughout the entire conference week, some of
them scarcely taking part in the real proceedings at all.
At Cleveland last year a change was made and a by-law was passed
providing that the work of the old committee on organization be handled
by two committees, one on organization and one on nominations, and
requiring that the first should be named by the president at least three
months in advance of meetings. Frank Tucker of New York, president of
the conference which meets in Seattle in June, has carried the reform a
stage farther. The committee on nominations this year will not only have
to choose a president and a slate of committee chairmen, but must find a
successor to Alexander Johnson, who for eight years has been general
secretary of the National Conference, and has resigned to become
director of the new extension department of the Training School for
Feeble-Minded at Vineland, N. J. Mr. Tucker has, therefore, named
committees on organization, nominations, and time and place, in order
that all three shall have ample time for their deliberations.
These three committees are given below:
╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ THE NEW COMMITTEES OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND ║
║ CORRECTION ║
║ ║
║ ║
║ COMMITTEE ON ORGANIZATION ║
║ ║
║Kingsbury, John A., New York Assn. for Improving ║
║ Chmn. Condition of Poor ║
║Weir, L. H. (Capt.) San Francisco Playground Association║
║Field, Parker B. Boston Children’s Mission ║
║Hubbard, C. M. St. Louis Provident Association ║
║Magruder, J. W. Baltimore Federated Charities ║
║McLean, Francis H. New York Assn. of Soc. for ║
║ Organizing Charity ║
║Miner, Maud E. New York New York Probation and║
║ Protective Assn. ║
║Montgomery, J. B. Coldwater, Mich. State School, ║
║ Children’s Inst. ║
║Bowman, H. C. Topeka State Board of Control║
║Tilley, David F. Boston State Board of ║
║ Charities ║
║Deacon, J. Byron Pittsburgh Associated Charities ║
║Abbott, Grace Chicago Immigrants Protective ║
║ League ║
║Amigh, Ophelia L. Birmingham Ala. Home of Refuge. ║
║ ║
║ ║
║ COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS ║
║ ║
║Wilson, George S. Washington Bd. Public Charities ║
║ Chmn. ║
║Persons, W. Frank New York Charity Organization ║
║ Society ║
║Baldwin, Roger N. St. Louis Civic League ║
║Krans, James R. Memphis Associated Charities ║
║Murphy, J. Prentice Boston Children’s Aid Society║
║Ryan, Rev. John A. St. Paul St. Paul Seminary ║
║Lovejoy, Owen R. New York Natl. Child Labor ║
║ Committee ║
║Little, R. M. Philadelphia Soc. for Organizing ║
║ Charity ║
║Taylor, Graham Chicago Chicago Commons ║
║ ║
║ ║
║ COMMITTEE ON TIME AND PLACE ║
║ ║
║Bowen, A. L., Chmn. Springfield, Ill. State Charities ║
║ Commission ║
║Gates, W. Almont San Francisco State Bd. Char. & ║
║ Correction ║
║Almy, Frederic Buffalo Charity Organization ║
║ Society ║
║Fox, Dr. George Fort Worth Charities Commission ║
║Wing, Frank E. Chicago Muncie Tuberculosis ║
║ Sanatorium ║
║Riley, Thomas J. Brooklyn Bureau of Charities ║
║Glenn, Mary Willcox New York ║
║Darnall, O. E. Washington Natl. Training School ║
║ for Boys ║
║Logan, Joseph C. Atlanta Associated Charities ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
FAMILY DESERTER BROUGHT TO BOOK
Probably the first check of its kind ever received by a charitable
organization is for $755.43 reimbursed to the United Hebrew Charities
from the bank account of a deserter who was brought to book through the
action of the National Desertion Bureau.
Six years ago Elias Zepnick deserted his wife Yetta and their eight
minor children in New York city, leaving them penniless. Their condition
was so serious that the United Hebrew Charities gave rent, clothing and
living expenses to the unfortunate family. For two years Zepnick kept
under cover but in the latter part of 1910 he was located at St. Louis.
He was defiant and the Legal Aid Bureau, in whose hands the case was at
that time, brought proceedings under the Child Abandonment Law. The
arrest of the offender and his extradition to New York quickly followed.
He was convicted and the court was about to pronounce sentence when it
was discovered that the prisoner had a considerable sum of money upon
deposit in a St. Louis bank. The judge pleaded with him to provide for
his wife and his eight little ones and held out the hope of a suspended
sentence. His refusal aroused the court and the maximum punishment, two
years at hard labor in Sing Sing and a fine of $1,000, was meted out to
him.
[Illustration:
CHECK WHICH BROUGHT ONE DESERTER TO BOOK
]
This did not seem to unnerve him. He made repeated requests for release
and the remission of the fine, but when reminded that he had money in
the bank and should evidence his good will by applying part of the funds
to his family, he became sullen and would not yield.
There was one point that Zepnick apparently overlooked. A husband and
father is responsible for the necessaries furnished to the wife and
children if he neglects to provide for them. Any stranger may make the
necessary provision and hold the parent to account. In this case it was
the United Hebrew Charities. After consultation with the National
Desertion Bureau it was decided to institute a civil action and attach
the money that Zepnick had in the St. Louis bank. The necessary papers
were drawn by the desertion bureau. Then, through Bernard Greensfelder,
a St. Louis attorney, a writ of garnishment was served upon the
Commonwealth Trust Company and the money, amounting to $790, was
attached.
Notice was served by the bureau’s representative upon Zepnick at Sing
Sing Prison, and what a change! For once he became meek and tractable.
Realizing the futility of opposition, he defaulted and confessed
judgment. On February 11, of this year final judgment was entered
against him in the sum of $790 which less court costs left a balance of
$755.43. The United States Circuit Court of St. Louis sent a check for
the money, which was at once turned over by the Desertion Bureau to the
United Hebrew Charities. Although the struggle lasted for five years,
some little redress has been secured and now the Zepnick family will be
able to enjoy a legitimate gratuity. Zepnick himself, however, is still
obdurate and is believed to be in London and thus beyond the
jurisdiction of our courts.
THE ITALIAN AND THE SETTLEMENT
Said an American afterward: “It was not a man who spoke but a bewildered
people.” The speaker was Vittoria Racca, professor of political economy
at the University of Rome, and his audience was a gathering of
settlement workers in New York to whom he endeavored to interpret the
protests of the Italian immigrant usually heard only as a grumbling in
dialect. Professor Racca has a two years’ leave of absence in which to
study the opportunities for his fellow country men and women in America
and the efforts that are being made in their behalf. He purposes to
write a book on the subject when he returns.
The speaker described the Italian parent in this country calling his
children to his knee and crying in tragic amazement: “These are not like
the children we had in Italy.” Whence, he asked, came this strange brood
and how was it hatched out under the parents’ wings? With his
explanation was bound up sane advice for many of his listeners.
More stress, said Professor Racca, should be laid on the building up of
human personality by settlements. The buildings should not be so fine
that the Italians do not feel at home. He went on:—
“The settlements should try to learn something about Italian customs,
habits, employments, amusements, traditions—they should feel the
spirit of the Italians and see things from the Italian’s point of
view. For example, one headworker was discouraged because she had
introduced basketry into a club of Italians and they did not like the
work. It would be a good thing for a headworker in such a case to find
out what parents do in Italy, and in that way she might easily find
some handwork which Italians would like to do. The Italian mother
should be enlightened as to what the settlement is doing, so that she
may understand why her daughter is out after dark, which is quite
against Italian custom. If these suggestions were followed, the
settlement would be the center for the whole neighborhood, and not
only for the boys and girls.”
Turning to what the Italian might gain from the land of his adoption,
Professor Racca said:
“It would be a good thing if the young Italian could acquire something
of the strong will of the American and could retain something of the
geniality and taste of his Italian parents. As it is, fathers of boys
who go to settlements make most extraordinary comments showing that
they do not at all understand what is being done at the settlements.
For instance, one says he is so sorry that the boys spend their
evenings with those bad women there.
“The new life of the immigrant is sometimes a tragedy. They must
adjust themselves to a totally different kind of economic life. Wages
are seemingly high, but the cost of living is high also. It would be
much easier for the immigrants if, on their arrival, they had to fight
Indians than for them as now to combat the complexed social and
economic conditions of a strange land. Amusements here are different.
In Italy after work all meet in ‘the coffee house of misery,’ where
there is little to eat or to drink, but where there is a flow of
geniality and conversation. Here everybody stays by himself, and all
wear beautiful hats and dresses, which hide the poverty of their
lives. They are here ashamed to show their lack of success. They are
exploited by employers, by employment agencies, by neighbors, by the
Black Hand, by the police—by everybody with whom they have to do. They
always get the worst of the law. If it is enforced, it is enforced
against them. If it is for their protection, it is not enforced. The
immigrant Italians feel that they are despised, which they often are,
and so they congregate in villages, which makes matters worse, and
they learn American conditions more slowly.
“Here the children learn much in the schools and in the settlements,
but much more in the streets. In the schools they learn that the
United Stales is the greatest nation in the world, and on the streets
they learn that Italy is a despicable nation. So they think that
everything Italian is to be thrown away. There is no family life, so
the children acquire awful habits.”
Not in the school or settlement, but at home, said Professor Racca, we
learn not to steal and lie. In Italy and Russia the home, he said, is
the center of the intellectual and moral life. Therefore the
responsibility is America’s if in America these homes crumble and the
morals of the children crumble with them. To prevent family disruption
the adults as well as the children must be adjusted to the new
environment. This adjustment is to be made, he declared, through the
right kind of settlement. And this is what a social settlement should
be:
“It should be a small institution for all the poor, not merely for the
children. At its head should be one boss—a man. He should be married
or a widower, and have varied experience. He should not be a minister,
for if he is of the same religion as the people he would duplicate the
work of their minister, and if he proselytizes, the people will run
away. He should not be a professor, because he sees through narrow
academic spectacles, and he should not be an amateur who goes into the
work for a few years. He ought to be a practical sociologist, not
necessarily acquainted with the theories, but he should know the
facts. He should be a psychologist. He should know America thoroughly.
If he is working for Italians he should have lived at least two years
in Italy in the very provinces from which immigrants come. He should
know dialect. He should not think that he can learn to know the
Italian and his traditions by “doing Italy”—by visiting museums, art
collections and churches. He should work in a narrow field and should
take the place of the priests in Italy.
“He should visit every person every day, and in this way really be
their friend, father and brother. He should be connected with all
their organizations, so that the settlement could be the bridge
between the organizations and the workers. If he thus knows everybody,
the bad elements would dread this headworker. He would know that
certain men were not working, and he would know that if they were
nevertheless getting a living they are probably blackmailing. He must
know individuals so well that he can handle each in his own way; one
through an appeal to pride, another through a command, and so on.”
Some headworkers, he said, are out of town several days a week. Social
workers should not be “out” so much at lectures and parties. They should
be at the disposal of the people of the neighborhood at every moment of
the day and night. Educational work can be done better through chats
than through lectures. “No one’s system of life is ever changed because
he has heard a lecture,” he said. A headworker once made an appointment
with him, he said, to explain to him what her settlement did and to take
him around. Her telephone called her away every few minutes, and he had
to content himself with reading a folder on the settlement’s work.
Another mistake, said Professor Racca, was to let Italians speak at the
settlement. “Southern Italians speak marvelously before they are born,”
he said; “though what they say may mean nothing. They always speak
against America and praise the old country. And when poor people hear
these hollow words they think this speaker worthy to be their leader.”
Professor Racca in his address expressed the opinion that volunteer
workers should be avoided because they usually have little preparation
and the settlements cannot command them as well as if they were paid.
Not many girls, he thought, should do social work for young men, because
young men, of southern races especially, although they have respect for
women, “do not have enough respect to accept a woman as their leader as
confidentially as they would a man.” For work with women and children he
was of opinion there should be a woman as headworker. “She should be
married and of mature age, so that she may have had varied experience.
If possible, she should also be a nurse.”
EDITORIAL GRIST
IN PROGRESSIVE KANSAS!
ISABEL C. BARROWS
How hard it is for a man who has at heart the principles of prison
reform to carry them out in an old institution that should be leveled to
the ground! J. K. Codding, warden of the Kansas State Penitentiary,
writing in his eighteenth biennial report, expresses a wish to repair
broken men and remake defective ones by plenty of productive labor, wise
and firmly administered discipline, proper bodily care, and such mental
and spiritual training as is possible under the limited opportunities
afforded by a penitentiary. Prison recreations he advocates “not solely
for the purpose of giving pleasure to the prisoners, nor as a prison
fad, but for the same reason that we give them work, discipline and
wholesome food.”
But what can he do to carry out such a program in a prison where the
cells are “little dingy, dark holes in the wall, damp, musty and disease
breeding—an absolute disgrace to Kansas”? The prison physician echoes
this complaint:
“If the institution hopes to make its inmates strive for better things
in life it will have to set a better example. Compelling a man, after a
day’s work to go into one of the little cells now provided, and sleep on
a bag of straw only half wide enough, and almost as unyielding as the
floor, will certainly never do it.”
Yet the power of personality is felt in spite of this. The officers are
all under civil service and selected only for fitness. The warden says
“a more courteous, prompt and efficient lot of prison officials cannot
be found in any other penitentiary in the United States.” The prisoners
themselves respond to the wise treatment they receive and show it “in
their willingness and ability to do the work assigned them; in their
almost uniformly kind and courteous treatment of the officers; in the
absence of any destruction of prison property; in the few punishments
and in their general cheerfulness and obedience.”
Kansas ought to give a good warden a good prison with plenty of land
about it.
CHILD LABOR AND POVERTY
A. J. McKELWAY
Child labor is even more a cause than an effect of poverty. This was the
point emphasized at the ninth annual conference of the National Child
Labor Committee, which was recently held at Jacksonville, Fla. The
meeting Was characterized by fearless and frank descriptions of
conditions in the different states and especially in the South. Apology
and defence, based on a comparison of child labor conditions from the
sectional point of view, found no place at the conference. Delegates
from the North and from the South vied in acknowledging the shame of a
common sin.
The other distinctive note was that co-operation among all classes of
social workers is needed to gain this reform. This note was sounded in a
strong resolution which called upon many national organizations to
supply not only the active sympathy of their membership but special
investigations of child labor conditions from the different points of
view which these organizations have taken in their respective spheres of
work. Mention was particularly made of the National Education
Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of
Medicine, the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis,
the American Red Cross, the American Bar Association, the General
Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women, the
Social Service Commission of the Federation of Churches, the Russell
Sage Foundation, the Conference of Catholic Charities, the National
Conference of Charities and Correction, the American Association for
Labor Legislation, and the American Federation of Labor. Finally, since
the child-employing industries, while forming only a small percentage of
industrial establishments, have brought the reproach of child labor upon
American industry itself, the National Manufacturers’ Association was
also mentioned.
At the opening meeting four questions were discussed: Is the immature
child a proper object of charitable relief? Shall the state pension
widows? Shall the school support the child? Shall charitable societies
relieve family distress by finding work for children? The last question,
so far as it was referred to at all, was emphatically answered in the
negative, as the first was in the affirmative. The discussion turned
chiefly upon the question of mothers’ pensions and the respective value
of public relief and private philanthropy. The sentiment of the
conference was plainly for a carefully guarded form of mothers’ pension
by the state. This, it was felt, should be considered in relation to
other remedies such as the minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, and the
prevention of those industrial accidents which so often deprive the
family of the chief breadwinner. It was also felt that such pensions
should be regarded from the standpoint of justice rather than of
charity, the mother to be looked upon as rendering service to the state
as the bearer and rearer of children.
A thorough acquaintance with the recent discussions of the problem in
THE SURVEY was displayed and there was some apprehension expressed of
the many failures through ill-considered legislation probable before
success would be finally reached. The majority apparently believed that
pensioning mothers was not simply a problem of relief but one comprising
other elements, as the word “pension” rightly indicates. While it was
recognized that hungry children make poor pupils, it was felt that any
further weakening of parental responsibility for the child by the school
would be unfortunate. The discussion along these lines included talks by
Sherman C. Kingsley of Chicago; Jean Gordon of New Orleans; Mrs.
Florence Kelley of New York; Grace Strachan of New York; Mrs. W. L.
Murdoch of Birmingham; A. T. Jamieson of Greenwood, S. C., president of
the South Carolina Conference of Charities; R. T. Solensten of the
Associated Charities, Jacksonville, Fla.; Leon Schwartz of the B’nai
B’rith, Mobile, Ala.; Mary H. Newell of the Associated Charities,
Columbus, Ga., and others.
Rabbi David Marx of Atlanta added a touch of scholarly research to one
session in his paper on Ancient Standards of Child Protection. Economic
factors were discussed by Miss Gordon, who spoke on the eight-hour day
and by Richard K. Conant, secretary of the Massachusetts Child Labor
Committee, who dealt convincingly with the fact that the textile
industry in Massachusetts no longer depends upon child labor in spite of
the numerous plaints concerning the ruin of the industry of the sort
which Dickens satirized in Hard Times.
W. H. Swift, secretary of the North Carolina Child Labor Committee, who
had just come from a struggle with the Legislature, vigorously attacked
the contention that mill work is better for children than the squalor of
some of the mountain towns. He described his own childhood in an
“average mountain home” in the South as the oldest of ten children, all
of whom, he said incidentally are now doing pretty well in life. He told
of the sacrifices by his father for their education and said that any
time within the past twenty years, his father might have moved to a
cotton mill town and lived on the labor of his children if he had been
willing to do so. In all probability in that case the children would
have been doomed to the common fate of cotton factory workers, with the
low wages and hopeless outlook of an unskilled trade. Then he said that
he was the father of three children and had lived for years next door to
the best cotton mill in North Carolina. But if he should lose his means
of livelihood and be forced to labor with his hands, rather than put his
three young children in a cotton mill, he would “take them back to the
mountains, build a shack by the side of a spring and plow with a
brindled steer on the barren, ivy-covered plains of the Pick-Breeches.”
His reference was to a well-known area in North Carolina where no one
has ever been known to make a living. Mr. Swift’s partial defeat in the
legislative fight—the abolition of night work for children under sixteen
only was secured—has made him all the more determined to continue the
war until his state shall adequately protect its working children from
exploitation.
One especially significant address was by Rev. C. E. Weltner of
Columbia, S. C. After many years’ experience in charge of the
“betterment work” of one of the noted mills of Columbia, Mr. Weltner
said he had come to the conclusion that a better way to spend any
surplus earnings is in adding to the pay envelope so that the people may
do a few things for themselves. The message of the conference was
carried to many sections of the city through a series of parlor
conferences, eleven in all, held on one of the afternoons.
The principal speakers at one of the evening meetings were John A.
Kingsbury, of New York, who spoke on the poverty caused by child labor,
and Julia C. Lathrop of the Federal Children’s Bureau, who gave an
admirable outline of the functions of the new bureau and of its first
effort to secure birth registration laws and to learn the causes of
infant mortality. Lewis W. Hine, social photographer, threw upon the
screen pictures of child labor conditions among the canneries of the
Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, showing children of tender ages engaged in
shucking oysters and shelling shrimp. Child Labor and Health occupied a
morning session. Dr. W. H. Oates, state factory inspector for Alabama,
made a forcible protest as a physician against conditions which tend to
cause diseases of the throat and lungs in the children of the cotton
mills. Mr. Brown spoke of the evils of the night-messenger service and
Dr. Lindsay discussed improvement in child labor legislation.
A successful new feature of the conference was a meeting for children
held at the Imperial Theater. It developed into two meetings, for the
thousand children expected were doubled in number. Children themselves
gave the stories of different child-employing industries, with the help
of the stereopticon.
At the final meeting Senator Hudson, of Florida, presided. The writer
made his annual protest against cotton mill conditions in the South, the
subject this time being Our Modern Feudalism. Jerome Jones of Atlanta,
prominent in southern labor circles, spoke of the connection between
child labor and low wages. Mrs. Kelley gave one of her vigorous talks on
the child breadwinner and the dependent parent. Owen R. Lovejoy appealed
for more effective support of the cause of child labor reform by showing
how widespread the evil is, how fearful the abuses are in many
instances, and explained that the resources at the command of the
committee, in the face of the enemies and obstacles to be overcome, are
very meager.
Florida conditions and legislative problems were discussed at an
informal gathering and this culminated in the organization of the
Florida Child Labor Committee, with Dr. John W. Stagg of Orlando, as
chairman and Marcus C. Fagg of the Children’s Home Society,
Jacksonville, as secretary. The Florida Legislature is now in session.
MORALS COMMISSION AND POLICE MORALS
GRAHAM TAYLOR
It is as obvious in New York and Chicago as it has been in some other
cities that the effort to secure a morals commission for city
governments is intended not only to repress and prevent the social evil
but also quite as much to protect and improve the morals of the police,
which are corrupted under the present conditions.
Indeed, this is directly stated in the Report of the Citizens’ Committee
appointed at the Cooper Union meeting held in New York last August,
after a commanding officer of the police force had been implicated in
the murder of Rosenthal by the “gun men”:
“The corruption is so ingrained that the man of ordinary decent
character entering the force and not possessed of extraordinary moral
fiber may easily succumb.... Such a system makes for too many of the
police an organized school of crime.... We know that the connection
between members of the police force and crime, or commercialized vice,
is continuous, profitable and so much a matter of course that explicit
bargains do not have to be made, both the keeping and breaking of
faith being determined by these policemen for their own profit.
“Our recommendations on the excise and prostitution problems are
intended to benefit the police situation.... While improvement in the
police department will incalculably improve the tone of the city’s
morals without any change in the statutory standards, nevertheless we
have throughout hewn to the line of police reform and not of vice
suppression.”
The Chicago Vice Commission came to a similar conclusion: