chemistry of the University of Rochester, at the age of eighty-five,
marks the passing of a notable educator and social worker. Though born
in the central West of southern ancestry, he spent most of his
professional life in the East. He combined in character the courtesy of
the South, the vigor of the West and the conservatism of the East. He
was a real aristocrat, the kind that makes a true democrat. As a
teacher, and even as a friend, he gave the impression one has in the
Alps of distance without remoteness, of aloofness without coldness.
Dr. Lattimore’s reputation as a scientist was such that in the face of
bitter political opposition, his report recommending the present source
of Rochester’s water supply was accepted. This secured to the citizens
an ideal water system. He was one of the organizers of the Western New
York Institution for Deaf Mutes, of the Mechanics Institute and of the
Reynolds Library, three of the most useful institutions of the city. For
several years he was a member of the city Board of Health, of the Monroe
County committee of mental hygiene of the State Charities Aid
Association, and of the board of visitors for that organization to the
state hospital for the insane. He was a pioneer advocate of cremation on
the ground of its sanitary value, and his body was one of the first to
be reduced to its elements in the crematory just completed by his city.
[Illustration:
PROF. SAMUEL A. LATTIMORE
]
The scholar and the gentleman blended in him so perfectly that we think
of him first as a citizen. The community is as much his debtor as the
university. He had unusual opportunities to make large sums of money as
an expert chemist, but never would lower his professional standards for
commercial gain. One of his most conspicuous early services was a course
of free public lectures on science given to large audiences of working
men for several successive years in Buffalo, Cleveland and Rochester.
Professor Lattimore’s mind was keenly alert to the very end of his
career and kept in touch with all of the movements for social welfare.
Only a few days before his death he was deeply interested in the article
in a recent SURVEY by Samuel Fels on The Policeman. He suggested that it
be reprinted in _The Common Good_ and a copy be sent to every policeman
in the city. His wish has been carried out.[3] He was a fine type of the
new citizen-scholar, with a large and keen sense of the duty which
scholarship owes to the community.
Footnote 3:
The Common Good of Civic and Social Rochester. March, 1913. p. 171.
PAUL MOORE STRAYER.
* * * * *
Recently the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company elected Lee K. Frankel sixth vice-president. As assistant
secretary and manager of the Industrial Department, Dr. Frankel has
brought his knowledge of social work and conditions into the industrial
insurance field.
At the summit of his usefulness Prince A. Morrow has been gathered to
his fathers. Worn out by labor for a cause that possessed him mind, body
and estate, he was cut down in the glory of what must almost be
considered martyrdom. His zeal for his endeavor engulfed him, rendered
him oblivious to all minor concerns. He was happy in death because it
occurred when the tidal wave that he had started on its onward course
was sweeping a mighty current throughout the length and breadth of the
land.
Dr. Morrow was born December 19, 1846, and therefore had not reached the
allotted threescore and ten years when death claimed him. He was of
gentle birth, and his mental equipment and capacity entitled him to work
as a peer among intellectual men. His honesty of purpose, strength of
character, and mental courage rendered him a fit champion for the cause
he finally espoused. At the age of eighteen, he won his academic degree
at Princeton College, Ky. He took his professional degree from the
Medical Department of the University of New York in 1874.
His activity in professional work soon brought him into prominence as a
surgeon, lecturer, professor, and author. He was an indefatigable worker
from the first, and a voluminous writer, contributing essays freely to
medical periodicals, translating important works from the French; he
stood out as an authority on dermatology and syphilology. Along these
lines he gained distinction and emolument.
But this goal did not satisfy the cravings of his moral nature. He had
in him the sturdy courage and the indomitable will of a reformer. In his
late manhood he set about the herculean task of cleansing the moral
atmosphere of the community. He opened the door of publicity and let in
the light of knowledge upon the slimy and festering course of the
venereal diseases in their ravaging march among the ignorant and
innocent.
This led to a broadening of the lines of his endeavor and the inclusion
of the sex problem in his crusade. More and more he recognized the
necessity of imparting correct information upon sex matters to the
budding curiosity of youth and of giving honest food to clean young
minds, rather than the distorted nourishment they had been wont to
receive. His studies, his writings, his teachings, and his special line
of practice and hospital work, all had served to fit him peculiarly for
his chosen task. The final outcome of it all was the crowning glory of
his life, the formation of the Society of Sanitary and Moral
Prophylaxis, of which he was the life and the soul and which above all
else is worthy of record among his achievements.
After months of thought and much counsel and consultation among his
friends, who furnished him scant support and at best only lukewarm
approval, he finally called a meeting on February 8, 1905, at the New
York Academy of Medicine. A handful of men, twenty-five in all—timid,
half-hearted associates—gathered around him to discuss the propriety of
organizing a society for “the study and prevention of the spread of
diseases which have their origin in the social evil.”
A movement of this nature was already under way abroad, notably in
France, Belgium, and Germany, but England was nearly silent on the
subject and not a ripple of the current had started on this side of the
Atlantic. The medical profession of New York was indifferent, if not
passively hostile, to the new movement, while the country at large was
apathetic. But Dr. Morrow struggled in season and out of season against
indifference, opposition, and ridicule. From this small beginning he
pushed ahead, until death snatched his tired body from the arena. Yet
his accomplishment lives and is his monument—and practically his
alone—for he was its life and its spirit.
Today the society in numbers approaches 2,000 and embraces in its
membership individuals in every quarter of the globe—Canada, England,
Scotland, Mexico, Asia, Africa, New Zealand. Largely from the seed sown
by the pioneer society, there have sprung up in the United States over
twenty kindred bodies, most of which were helped in organization by the
literature of the New York society and the kindly counsel and
encouragement of Dr. Morrow. The laity even more than the profession,
and notably women, have put their shoulders to the wheel and assisted.
The press is no longer timidly hostile, but opens its columns and lends
its editorials to spreading the idea which is now slowly sweeping over
the land.
Dr. Morrow has been recognized as the general at the head of the
advancing army, a recognition which may be epitomized by quoting the
words of a resolution passed by the International Congress of Hygiene
and Demography at Washington, September 27, 1912:
Be it resolved: That the participants of this section on sex hygiene
of the Fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography,
consider it a privilege to make public record of their sense of
obligation to Dr. Morrow for his courageous and unflinching attitude
in the fact of difficulties that would have discomfited an ordinary
man, and of admiration for the achievement that has culminated in
the prominent position that education in sex hygiene has commanded
in the deliberation of this congress.
“Be it also resolved: That the delegates here assembled join with
rare pleasure in the attempt, inadequate though it be, to express to
Dr. Morrow the gratitude not only of the American people, but of the
world of nations.”
Dr. Morrow’s gracious manner and courtly dignity, the balanced charm of
his cultured and deliberate diction, a combination that quite justifies
the seeming pretension of his praenomen—these things, and many others,
will long be remembered by those who have the honor to believe that they
may be classed among the number of his friends.
E. L. KEYES.
* * * * *
Prof. Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago was again elected
alderman of his ward on April 1. The circumstances of the victory give
it unusual significance. All Chicago watched the struggle so closely as
almost to forget the aldermanic battles in other wards. The way in which
he took up the cudgels shows again Professor Merriam’s high degree of
civic courage. For scarcely a man who had served with distinction as an
alderman and then as the leader in a mayoralty campaign that attracted
the nation’s attention, would have entered an aldermanic fight again
with the odds against him. His ward, the boundaries of which were
recently changed, no longer includes the university as it did when he
was previously elected alderman. It now stretches far to the south, and
takes in some industrial sections. Professor Merriam not only had an
able opponent but, in making non-partisanship a main issue, he decided
to run solely as an independent candidate nominated by petition.
His opponents all ran on party tickets. There was even a candidate under
the Progressive Party designation despite Professor Merriam’s prominent
identification with that party during the last presidential campaign.
The progressives in Chicago tried hard to arrange an agreement between
all the parties to abandon party names and leave the field throughout
the city clear for nominations solely by petition. When this failed they
nominated their own candidates. The candidacy of a “progressive” against
Professor Merriam is said by some to have been part of a scheme to beat
him.
Professor Merriam has aggressively worked for public rights and welfare
and the newer methods of bringing the control of government back to the
people. His election is a triumph for this type of public service as
distinguished from the “business administration” type which his chief
opponent personified.
G. R. T.
* * * * *
Karl DE Schweinitz, for nearly two years secretary of the Pennsylvania
Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, will shortly become head of
the Bureau of Advice and Information of the New York Charity
Organization Society. This bureau undertakes to investigate, at request,
agencies and institutions accepting donations from private individuals.
Mr. de Schweinitz brings to his new task experience in investigation,
publicity and social work. He has been a reporter on both the
Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ and _Press_, and has served in the
circulation department of the Curtis Publishing Company. For a year he
engaged in publicity work at the University of Pennsylvania.
* * * * *
Olive Crosby has been appointed office secretary of the Society of
Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Miss Crosby was formerly secretary of
the New York Diet Kitchen Association, and earlier, head of the
investigating department of the New York Charity Organization Society.
TREND
LEADERS IN THE MONTH’S MAGAZINES
WHY CHILDREN WORK. By Helen M. Todd. _McClure’s._ The answers of eight
hundred of the little workers who were questioned by Miss Todd as
factory inspector in Chicago. A little less than half the Chicago
children gave their father’s illness or death by industrial accident
or disease as the reason. An almost equal number said they liked
work better than school, and their reasons, as given by Miss Todd,
constitute a pretty serious criticism of our educational system.
SAFETY BY SANCTION. By John Anson Ford. _Technical World Magazine._
Tells of the “safety first” campaign set on foot by R. C. Richards,
claim agent of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, which, in
less than two years, has resulted in saving the life of one trainman
out of every two who under former conditions would have been killed
under the cars; saving similarly one out of every three of the
trackmen formerly doomed to death in the performance of duty;
reducing the accident toll among passengers by 152 more passengers
saved from death and almost 5,000 more spared from injury than the
year before.
This novel and enlightened effort to reduce claims by preventing
accidents has now spread to forty-six railroads operating 60 per
cent of the railroad mileage in the United States.
THE FIRE INSURANCE TRAP. By William B. Ellison. _Pearson’s._ As the
expert chosen by Governor Sulzer to frame a new form of the
insurance policy for New York, Mr. Ellison tells of the sixteen
“teeth” by which policy-holders can be caught at the present time.
These teeth are clauses in the policy by which the companies can
escape from their liability.
A UNIVERSITY THAT RUNS A STATE, by Frank Parker Stockbridge, and
WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO, by Adolph O. Eberhardt. Both in the _World’s
Work_. In Wisconsin, the university “writes many of its laws,
directs much of its public service, increases its crops, makes
better farmers and housekeepers, conducts correspondence schools,
and carries a college education to the door of every citizen who
wants it.” In Minnesota a governor who writes of his own plans, is
trying to keep farmers on their farms, by using a generous state
educational fund, with further grants by the Legislature, to make
the country school houses centers for social intercourse for
recreation and for practical instruction in agriculture and
household economics.
CONSUMERS’ CO-OPERATION, by Albert Sonnichsen, and CO-OPERATION IN
WISCONSIN, by Robert A. Campbell. Both in the _Review of Reviews_. A
résumé by the secretary of the co-operative league of the progress
of the co-operative movement in Europe and America, supplemented by
the intensive study of one state by an official of the State Board
of Public Affairs, created last year with instruction, to make a
special study of the state experience in this field.
INDUSTRIAL PEACE AND WAR. By Everett P. Wheeler. _Atlantic Monthly._ A
plea for a compulsory arbitral tribunal, which would substitute
continual peace for recurrent warfare in the relations of labor and
capital. Mr. Wheeler does not believe such a method of settling
labor disputes would be impracticable or unsuited to American
conditions or that the compulsory powers of such a tribunal should
be any more repugnant to our ideas of liberty than is the power of
our courts to decide disputes between individuals.
* * * * *
THE FOOL
Mary Eleanor Roberts in the _Independent_
There’s a fool runs the mission, that place on the pike,
For darkies, and dagoes, and bums, and the like,
And if I had his job, why I’d go on a strike.
With coal at eight dollars, and working alone,
All smiling, and eager, and thin as a bone,
“For the Lord,” so he says, “will take care of His own!”
And the ghost of a coat, and a stitch in his side,
And his eyes bright and starved, and his boots gaping wide—
I got tired of waiting for Thee to provide.
So I sent him a check; just to shame, it might be
Such a God by an out and out sinner like me;
But he fell on his knees and gave thanks unto Thee!
HOW THE FACTORY GIRL IS BETTER OFF THAN THE STORE GIRL
A GRAPHIC PRESENTATION IN THE REPORT ON WORKING GIRLS AND WOMEN OF
ROCHESTER OF THE RELATIVE POSITIONS UNDER THE LAW OF TWO GROUPS OF GIRL
WORKERS.
FACTORY MERCANTILE
Law requires one seat to each girl. Law requires only one seat to every
three girls.
60 minutes for meals. 45 minutes for meals.
Indifferent appearance. Must dress well.
Many sit to work. On legs most all the time.
MINORS MINORS
8 hours a day, 6 days a week. Not 9 hours a day, 54 hours a week. Not
before 8 a. m. or after 5 p. m. before 8 a. m. or after 7 p. m.
WOMEN WOMEN
9 hours a day, except when making Over 21, no limit to hours she may
up for a holiday. work. Up to 21, 10 hours a day,
60 hours a week.
54 hours a week. (Law does not apply between Dec.
18th and 24th)
Not before 6 a. m. or after 9 p. m. Not before 7 a. m. or after 10 p.
m., if under 21.
—_From the Common Good._
_The Common Good_, a civic and social periodical of Rochester, devotes
its February issue to a compilation by its editor, Edwin A. Rumball, in
collaboration with Catherine Rumball, of the facts in regard to the
working girls and women of that city who numbered at the 1900 census
about 19,000, or over 31 per cent of all the women of Rochester. The
facts are for the most part taken from the last census or from the
Federal Report on Women and Child Wage-Earners and other authoritative
sources, and are handled so as to show Rochester people just how high up
or low down in the scale of cities, Rochester stands in its treatment of
its women workers. The report is also issued as an “equal pay” document
by the woman suffrage organization.
* * * * *
Among the answers to the question why they quit school which Helen M.
Todd put to Chicago factory children are the following from Why Children
Work in _McClure’s_:
“Because you get paid for what you do in a factory.”
“Because it’s easier to work in a factory than ’tis to learn in
school.”
“You never understands what they tells you in school, and you can
learn right off to do things in a factory.”
“They ain’t always pickin’ on you because you don’t know things in a
factory.”
“You can’t never do t’ings right in school.”
“The boss he never hits yer, er slaps yer face, er pulls yer ears, er
makes yer stay in at recess.”
“The children don’t holler at ye and call ye a Christ-killer in a
factory.”
“They don’t call ye a Dago.”
“They’re good to you at home when you earn money.”
“You can go to the nickel show.”
“Yer folks don’t hit ye so much.”
“You can buy shoes for the baby.”
“You can give your mother yer pay envelope.”
“Our boss he never went to school.”
“School ain’t no good. The Holy Father he can send ye to hell, and the
boss he can take away yer job er raise yer pay. The teacher she can’t
do nothing.”
* * * * *
Running the Home, by Martha Bensley Bruère in _Good Housekeeping_, is an
argument for the use of public utilities in place of certain
old-fashioned forms of “elbow grease,” on the ground not merely of the
saving of labor but of expense. Mrs. Bruère’s conclusion is that the
city, with its superior facilities for using centralized facilities for
heating, lighting, etc., co-operatively, comes out far ahead of the
country. In the budgets she studied the percentage of income spent for
the “operation of the household—heat, light, repairs, services, etc.”—in
the city was only half what it is in the country.
* * * * *
In Parenthood and the Social Conscience, Seth K. Humphrey (_Forum_)
recommends the lifting of the burden of the hereditary defective from
society by “parenthood laws” which would not force sterilization on
defectives but would give them the choice of sterilization or
segregation. The much controverted Indiana institutional experience is
the basis of Mr. Humphrey’s conclusion that many defectives will accept
the former method of “ending their miseries with themselves.”
* * * * *
Following up Burton J. Hendrick’s narrative last month of the Jewish
invasion of America, Abraham Cahan, “editor, author, and general
counselor of the Jewish East Side of New York,” this month begins in
_McClure’s_ the material and spiritual history of David Levinsky, a
Russian Jew who became an American millionaire.
* * * * *
Frank Barclay Copley in an article in the _American Magazine_, which
receives the commendation of Frederick W. Taylor in an introductory
note, thus defines the position of the new science of management toward
trade unionism:
“The only way the workers, herded into gangs and treated as machines
for grinding out dividends, can defend themselves is through
organization. Ordinary unionism, therefore, finds its justification
as a war-measure. Scientific management, however, by establishing
that community of interest between capital and labor which has so
long been obscured by ignorance, creates industrial peace, and the
only persons who have reason to oppose it are those who have a
personal interest in the continuance of warfare. Under scientific
management the workers are not subordinates, but coordinates, and
each individual is free to earn, learn, and rise as the Almighty has
given him the power. No form of collective bargaining would seem to
be called for, because tasks are set and wages fixed, not by
arbitrary action, but by knowledge. The only real boss, in fact, is
knowledge; and if anyone can speak with knowledge, he will be
listened to, and he will have his reward. On the other hand, the
tongue of ignorance must be still; and so it follows that to the
extent that unionism means the placing of ignorant men in the
saddle, or to the extent that it involves high labor costs, to that
extent must scientific management always be against it.”
As an indication of those interferences with shop administration which,
with the growth of scientific management, the unions will be called upon
to abandon, the passage is significant. But progressive labor men will
fail to find in it any glimmer of understanding on the part of the
scientific managers of the larger democratic safeguards of unionism.
Who, for example, is to set the base rates from which the wages of any
given line of craftsmen are to be scientifically built up and
calculated?
* * * * *
_Character_ (Boston) publishes the following resolutions adopted by W.
E. Wroe and Company, a Chicago paper house. They are written in the
first person, thus making them apply to the man who runs and reads as
well as the man who formulated them:
I will be square, fair, and just towards all my fellow-men, and by
fellow-men I mean, not only those I meet in a social way, but my
associates and employes in business.
I will keep myself clean and decent, and my desires worthy of a true
man.
I will listen to the dictates of my conscience.
I will do my best in everything I undertake, and will undertake
nothing unless I can give it the best there is in me.
I will speak only optimistic, uplifting words—nothing which can
possibly bring pain to my fellow-men merely to give gratification to
my own fancies.
I will remember that life embodies _giving_ as well as _taking_ and
that what I receive depends entirely upon what I give.
I will be thankful for life because it gives me a chance to work and
accomplish.
I will despise nothing but meanness. I will fear nothing but
cowardice.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy Rochester Common Good._
WORKING AFTER HOURS
A Rochester woman collecting fire wood. This is a regular part of the
daily housekeeping of poor families.
]
* * * * *
The beginning of a homesteading policy for Egypt is thus described in a
Consular Report:
“Lord Kitchener laid the foundation stone of an agricultural school
in the Egyptian Delta on November 6 and initiated a scheme for the
distribution of land which has become available for cultivation
through drainage. As an experiment, 610 feddans (or acres) were
distributed in five-feddan lots to the landless fellaheen
(peasants), the idea being to help the poor fellaheen and at the
same time to increase the number of small landholders and to create
family homesteads. During the first three years, when they must do
work of reclamation, the fellaheen will receive the land practically
free, and in the following ten years they will pay a moderate
rental, after which the holding becomes theirs for life. Afterward
the land descends in the families if the government approves.
Alienation is forbidden, except with the consent of the State.”
JOTTINGS
ST. LOUIS SCHOOL OF PHILANTHROPY
A plan contemplated for over a year to make the St. Louis School of
Social Economy a department of Washington University has just been
consummated. The university now assumes full direction and control of
the school, but the relationship which has always existed between the
school and the Russell Sage Foundation remains unchanged.