The Survey,
Volume 30, Number 24,
September 13, 1913

THE BINGHAMTON FIRE
AND ENCLOSED STAIRWAYS

After many conferences and two days of public hearings on the enclosure of factory stairways, following the Binghamton fire—and backed by the attorney-general’s opinion in regard to the scope of its powers—the industrial board of the New York Department of Labor has adopted rules and regulations for the enclosure of stairways in factories of four stories or under. On account of the vital importance of exits, their rules are quoted in full:

Both rules become effective October 1, 1913. The labor law specifically provides for the enclosure of stairways in buildings over four stories.

The attorney-general’s opinion was asked by the Industrial Board in this case, for the purpose of determining at the beginning of its work the question of its powers not only in relation to matters not covered by legislation but also to those covered in part by law. The essential part of the opinion follows:

The attorney-general’s opinion further states that the legislation does not offend any constitutional provisions.

SANITARY SURVEY
OF THE OHIO

The Public Health Service, under the direction of Surgeon-General Rupert Blue, has undertaken a “sanitary survey” of the streams which feed into the Ohio river. It is proposed to test the waters of these streams in order to determine scientifically to what distances the contamination of sewage is carried by flowing water. The object of the survey is to establish standards of pollution beyond which no community will be permitted by the federal government to trespass in dumping sewage into streams.

This is the first time that the federal government has ventured to invade the local police 706 powers of municipalities, except in times of great extremity, such as during the yellow fever epidemics along the gulf coast.

The survey of the Ohio Valley will probably result in the erection by the government of “purification plants.” It has been suggested that such legislation will be deemed constitutional under the law prohibiting the transportation of disease germs in interstate commerce.

OREGON COMMISSION
AS STRIKE ADJUSTER

The Industrial Welfare Commission which was created by the last Legislature to determine and enforce reasonable wages, hours and conditions of work among women and minor employes in Oregon began work June 3 with Bertha Moores representing the employes, Amedee Smith, a retired manufacturer, representing the employers and Edwin V. O’Hara, chairman of the committee of the Consumers’ League which secured the passage of the act, representing the public and chairman of the commission. Caroline J. Gleason, whose investigation of the wages and conditions of women workers in Oregon furnished the chief data in the campaign which resulted in the passage of the law under which the commission operates, is paid secretary.

At the beginning of its work the commission was asked to adjust a strike among the women employes of the Oregon Packing Company at Portland, which employs about 200 girls and women during the summer season. It had no power to make a legal ruling effective in less than 90 days and by that time the packing season would be over for this summer, so its office could be one of conciliation merely. Investigation revealed that with the piece rate in force a large number of the workers were earning as low as fifty to ninety cents a day. The commission succeeded in getting the company to sign an agreement pending the setting of a legal minimum, which fixed one dollar a day as a minimum for all workers except those “old or crippled” who may secure a special permit. Piece rate prices were re-arranged so that the worker of “average ordinary ability” would earn $1 a day, thus enabling the better workers to make more.

Two “conferences” of nine members each have been organized by the commission, one to consider questions relating to mercantile establishments, the other to deal with factory problems. The commission is engaged in forming conferences to deal with laundries, telephone companies and hotels and restaurants.

Interesting recommendations have been made by the conferences already established. The mercantile conference reported that forty dollars a month is required for the decent maintenance of women workers in that occupation. The factory conference has recommended $8.60 a week pay as a minimum for factory workers, and a nine-hour work day. The present legal maximum is ten hours a day. Investigation has shown that one-half of the department store girls receive less than forty dollars a month at present and about the same proportion of factory girls get less than $8.60 a week. If the commission, after holding a public hearing as provided by law, decides to enforce these recommendations, its decision will directly affect the wages of fully one-half the women workers in department stores and factories in Portland.

The commission has authority to regulate the employment of minors without calling a conference, though it holds the usual public hearing. It favors restricting night work of girls under eighteen in all industries, its chief opponents being the department stores.

NEW METHODS IN
MOTION PICTURES

Motion pictures are bringing the scenes and events of distant lands and even of other ages vividly to the eyes. The Durbar, the coronation, the Scott antarctic expedition, the story of “Quo Vadis,” as shown by the “movies,” not to mention a thousand and one travel subjects from a railway trip in the Andes to street scenes in China, are playing a growing part in popular education. Films are being used increasingly to spread information and enlist public co-operation in the struggle against tuberculosis, dirty milk, flies and other menaces to health. And now, as described in The Survey of September 6, Mr. Edison himself is enlisted in the problem of adapting motion pictures to school training.

All this development of course hangs on improvement in the mechanism by which motion pictures are projected on the screen. A new method is announced designed to eliminate all flicker which is clearly one of the serious problems in its strain upon children’s eyes. The inventor of the machine, called the vanoscope, is Lewis C. Van Riper and he essays to show continuous action by having each picture dissolve into the next instead of projecting a series of entirely distinct pictures on the screen. Col. S. S. McClure has been so impressed with the especial adaptability of this new method for educational purposes, that he is now on a trip to Europe to gain what he can for its wide use in this field.

In the prevalent method of motion picture projection, the film movement is in the nature of a series of quick jerks, each taking about one-half of the time given to each picture. Nearly 50 per cent of the time is taken up in moving the pictures forward and 50 per cent in projecting 707 them upon the screen. Hence the flicker and the chance of eye strain.

The principle underlying this present method of projection is that the persistence of vision in the human eye is about one-tenth of a second. It has been found that a speed in projection of from 16 to 17 pictures per second is necessary to enable the eyes to retain the image of one picture until the next is projected upon the screen and to overcome or partially overcome annoyance to the eyes caused by the intervals. This is the rate of projection now used throughout the world on all standard machines for monochrome pictures and photographs for such use have had to be taken at a speed of at least 16 per second in order to appear natural.

Some of the advantages claimed for the new method are that there are no intervals between successive pictures, but each succeeding picture dissolves into the one preceding it in exact proportion as the volume of light shifts from one to the other; that there is no flicker; and less danger of fire because the projecting light does not reach the film directly, but is reflected by the mirrors; and that the front seats in an assembly room would be made as desirable as any other seats.

BOSTON CONFERENCE
ON ILLEGITIMACY

Perhaps in no field of social work are the factors less adjusted, the issues more baffling, than in that relating to unmarried mothers. It has become not only desirable, but positively imperative, to a wise pulling together for the workers in Boston dealing with problems related to illegitimacy to unite in some sort of permanent group for free discussion of aims and means.

The Conference of Workers on Problems of Illegitimacy which was organized in Boston last year has had a fruitful year of discussion. Each month some general question has been up for consideration, the question always being precipitated by the detailed story of some puzzling specific case. In this way have been thrashed out the following questions:

What shall we do with unmarried mothers who are unfitted for housework?

Is it ever advisable to separate the child from a normal mother?

Is institutional or private care best for a pregnant girl and under what circumstances is each preferable?

What shall we do with pregnant girls from other states or countries?

The conference was pretty fully agreed upon the policies of treatment that follow.

It is advisable to keep mother and child together where possible if the mother is in any way capable of bringing up the child. In cases where the mother is unfitted for domestic service it may be decidedly wiser to place her where she is happier and more efficient, in a factory, for instance. But even here financial responsibility for the baby, and at least weekly visits to the child, should be insisted upon.

It is desirable to send back to the states or countries from which they come girls who arrive here pregnant in order that each section may develop care for its own unmarried mothers. Although this may mean old-fashioned care in the individual case because of the lack of modern agencies and institutions in places from which the girls come, it is one of the means of making localities that are not equipped to deal with such situations more alert to their responsibility.

It is difficult to determine in what cases individual care or institutional care is wise. Particularly wayward girls often need the discipline of an institution, while the more innocent type are not helped by association with those they are sure to be brought in contact with, even in institutions that take only first offenders.

Wherever there are not very positive reasons to the contrary, it is of great importance to tell a girl’s family of her approaching confinement in order to enlist their co-operation and to enable the girl to have the most natural and helpful relationships possible at a time when she needs every constructive influence to build up courage for her life ordeal and determination to keep her child and give it every opportunity within her power. Her family ought to be, and if properly approached and dealt with, often is, the social worker’s greatest asset in this effort.

It was discovered that little provision, other than that in almshouses, is made for people who have had cases of venereal disease, as the good private institutions caring for prospective mothers exclude, and naturally, such cases.

The Conference have also discussed at each meeting various aspects of the greatest single cause of illegitimacy—feeble-mindedness. They have tried to formulate more definitely the indicia of the high grade feeble-minded cases, and to determine more clearly the relation of the social worker’s investigation and history to the doctor’s analysis. They have debated the desirability of domestic service under supervision for these defective girls. The high grade feeble-minded girls if cared for in an institution probably cost the state more than the same girls doing domestic service, even allowing for the immense amount of surveillance necessary on the part of the visitor to keep them out of harm’s way. Neither institutions nor philanthropic agencies have enough equipment adequately to deal with this class of delinquents. The conference has faced the question of segregation in institutions and of sterilization as a means of preventing a continuance of this evil in future generations. They have asked whether it was ever safe to return a feeble-minded 708 girl to the community. While agreeing that marriage of feeble-minded persons ought not to be permitted, they have not reached a final conclusion as to the best means of prevention.

A committee has been appointed to make an investigation of the causes other than feeble-mindedness that are at the root of illegitimacy. This committee has already done valuable work as a by-product of its main purpose in suggesting important points which agencies are apt to omit in their histories, and in aiding in a greater standardization of work. A full report is expected of this committee next year.

Study groups are being organized to take up the questions of legislation, venereal disease, the efficiency and range of existing institutions, public opinion, feeble-mindedness and statistics. Any further information about the Boston Conference may be had from the secretary, Mrs. Stanley King, 295 Beacon Street.

Minor in St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“What have you got against me?”

“Nothing. But our masters have ordered us to fight.”

PROBING
FOR PEACE

The investigational method has proved of such demonstrated worth in all-American situations—whether of civic conditions or strikes—that its application to the peace movement will be watched with interest. The reference is of course to the appointment by the International Peace Endowment, through Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, acting director of the endowment, of an international commission of inquiry into the Balkan war. The first move toward this is said to have come from Bulgarians who in consequence of attacks on them by the Greek and Servian press demanded a public inquiry into the extent and responsibility for atrocities committed during the war. The New York Evening Post calls the proposed work of the commission a “diagnosis of war,” and congratulates the peace movement on the greatest opportunity that has been presented it to win the world’s serious attention to the nature and implications of war. The topics of investigation include the responsibility for the outbreak of war, the economic waste caused by it and the truth about the outrages committed by non-combatants. Of these, the last appeals most strongly to the popular imagination, but the first, the responsible cause, is, in the opinion of the Post , the most fundamental. The main point of attack on war by peace advocates says the Post “lies in the direction of ascertaining who or what is responsible for war. Is it being fought for a worthy cause, or is it being fought because certain leaders or certain interests desire war? It makes all the difference in the world whether the mangled bodies on the hillsides in Thrace and Macedonia are the price 709 paid for the liberation of the Balkans from Turkish misrule, or whether those dead bodies and shattered limbs are incidents in the ambitions of a king or a commander-in-chief, and a testimonial to the skill of travelling salesmen from the gun factories at Essen and Creusot.”

Cesare in New York Sun.

THE WORLD IS OVERCROWDED AND OVERARMED.— London Economist.

A list of names has been suggested as members of the commission, but the final make-up will not be known until the meeting to discuss the work of the commission which is to be held soon in Paris. The proposed membership includes:

• Prof. John D. Prince, of Columbia University, representing the United States.
• Francis W. Hirst, editor of the London Economist , representing Great Britain.
• Baron d’Estournelles de Constant, senator and president of the French parliamentary group favoring international arbitration, representing France.
• Prof. Philipp Zorn, of Bonn University, representing Germany.
• Prof. Paul N. Milukoff, editor and leader of the Constitutional-Democrats in the Russian Duma, representing Russia.
• Prof. Heinrich Lammasch, of the University of Vienna, well known as a jurist, representing Austria-Hungary.

PEACE IN
WEST VIRGINIA

The West Virginia coal strike, which lasted sixteen months, and was marked by the violence and bitterness of a civil war, has come to an end, and contracts have been signed on both Paint and Cabin creeks. The Paint creek agreement, which was signed on July 24, accords full recognition to the United Mine Workers, and grants practically all their demands, including the check-off; that is, the deduction in the office from the miner’s wages of his union dues and the payment of them to the union officials. On Cabin creek the agreement signed on July 29 did not grant recognition to the unions, but it is stated in the Coal Age that by the change from the long ton to the short ton the miners have secured an increase in wages, amounting to about 12 per cent. They have gained also the nine-hour day, a semi-monthly pay, the right to employ check weighmen and to trade where they please. The Paint creek contract is to run until March 31, 1914, while that of Cabin creek is to continue a year longer, coming to an end April 1, 1915. The Coal Age sums up the cost of the bitter struggle, now ended, as follows:

WM. ANTHONY AERY

Negro farmers, bankers, merchants, contractors, cotton brokers, insurance men, real estate dealers, social service workers, town and community builders, caterers, engineers, undertakers, educators—these men, representing the entire country and especially the South, told at the recent session of the National Negro Business League held in Philadelphia, with eloquence torn of simplicity and hard experience in the school of life, thrilling stories of success won through struggle, persistence, and good-will toward their white neighbors. The Philadelphia meetings furnished abundant proof of the statement that quality and service count in business and that men buy good products and efficient service without regard to color or race.

“Forward to the land!” In thundering tones did this command and entreaty ring out through the Academy of Music to the thousands of Negroes who had assembled to hear Booker T. Washington deliver his annual address to the league. There are some 200,000,000 acres of unused and unoccupied land in this country. Will the American Negro, especially the city Negro, acquire his share through hard work and thrift? Will young Negroes quit the poolrooms with their debasing effects and march into usefulness and comfort on the land? Will the Negro seek the signs of civilization—the automobile and the dress suit—and miss civilization as it is represented in the home and the bank account? Will the Negro forego some pleasures today so as to enjoy richer treasures tomorrow? Will the Negro allow others to think and plan for him instead of thinking and planning for himself? These vital questions of business and of life itself were put squarely to the thoughtful Negroes who had come great distances at their own expense and in many cases at considerable sacrifice of time and money. They also reached some of the city Negroes who had come out of mere curiosity to hear Mr. Washington urge a return to the Negro’s richest opportunity—the land.

Mr. Washington is far-sighted enough, however, to see the need of better Negro business enterprises. There is, indeed, according to his opinion, room in this country, without conflicting with the interests of white people, for 900,000 more Negro farms; 1,000 sawmills; 1,000 brickyards; 4,000 grocery stores; 2,000 dry goods stores; 1,500 shoe stores; 1,500 millinery shops; 1,000 drug stores and 90 banks.

Successful “demonstrations”—human interest stories—were a conspicuous feature of the sessions.

The organization of a $100,000 old-line legal-reserve 710 insurance company by Negroes, headed by H. T. Perry, and its heroic struggle during five years to secure the paid-in capital, was told simply and dramatically by H. H. Pace. It shows what can be done in the South. Perry’s experience in Atlanta should put fresh courage into the hearts of ambitious Negroes who really want to give their people better stores, better banks, better insurance companies, better hotels, and better country life. The story of Perry’s defeat in collecting the paid-in capital, required by the Georgia law for the starting of the Standard Life Insurance Company of Atlanta, followed by his victory, through hard work and faith, emphasizes the importance of teaching men to act co-operatively when they wish to do big things. This story will long be remembered by the delegates and their friends, for it contains real “education for life, in life and by life,” as Dr. Wallace Buttrick has phrased the thought—the underlying aim of Hampton and Tuskegee.

Another interesting event of the past year, in the Negro business world, has been the opening of the $100,000 cotton-oil mill at Mound Bayou, Miss., a Negro town which was founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery, an ex-slave of Joseph Davis, brother of Jefferson Davis. This Negro enterprise shows what Negroes can do when they pull together and turn their disadvantages into advantages.

Nineteen years ago, J. H. Blodgett began his up-hill climb with $1.10 in his pocket and a suit of underwear in a paper bag. Further, he was arrested as a tramp for wearing a straw hat in winter time. Today, he owns 121 houses in Jacksonville, Fla., having a rental value of $2,500 a month. Blodgett got his start as a railroad window washer at $1.05 a day. He and his wife worked hard, saved their money, and finally built their own home. He declares that there is no excuse for young, able-bodied Negroes to waste their time in hotel work at $20 to $30 a month and tips when they can grow tomatoes in Florida at $1,000 an acre.

What is a correct formula for success on the farm? Henry Kelley, of Belen, Miss., who has been hard at work since 1873 and is now worth some $50,000 offers a reasonable one: “Industry, economy, education.” Kelley started out independently in 1886 with 520 acres of land which he cleared as quickly as he could. He built a home, and by degrees established a good business in cotton ginning, grist milling, and log sawing. Then he began to build tenant houses and to deal with his own people in the spirit of the Golden Rule. Today, he works 1,750 acres and has fifty tenants. His payroll ranges from $800 to $1,000 a month and he has work for his hands “from January through December.” He produces about 500 bales of cotton each season. He has no trouble, on account of his color, in doing business. His Mississippi white friends, he says, have always been good to him. Kelley is a hard worker still. His day—and that of his hands—is “from sun to sun.”

J. T. Kirklin, of Columbia, Mo., started in 1873 as a handy boy on the State University farm and received thirty cents a day. Out of his own wages he had to board himself. He was glad to keep his job because he was learning how to farm scientifically. In 1903 he began to take first prizes, in competition with white farmers, for his fine strawberries, carrots, watermelons, and garden truck. His first market wagon was an ordinary wheelbarrow. Later he bought two buggy wheels and made a wagon—a push cart. While some of his own people were laughing at his crude outfit, Kirklin was saving his money and improving his small truck garden. Today he is worth $20,000 and is a quiet and respected citizen.

Has the Negro building contractor who knows his business a fair chance to succeed in the South? B. L. Windham, of the contracting firm of Windham Brothers, Birmingham, Ala., declares that efficiency and not color determines the kind of work that Negroes receive. His firm has built a $100,000 apartment house for white people in Birmingham, Ala. It employs, on an average, 100 people—all Negroes—throughout the year to handle some $300,000 worth of contracts. The business of this firm of Negro contractors has grown from $50,000 in 1903 to $265,000 for seven months in 1913 and is carried on from the Mason and Dixon line to the Gulf of Mexico.

The annual meetings of the Negro Business League give some striking stories of Negro success and progress to men and women who need courage and inspiration for their work. Other stories could be cited to show that the Negro who applies himself to business and refrains from whining wins the patronage and good will not only of his own people but also of the white people. Courage, initiative, and persistence are indeed required for the task of establishing any business.

The resolutions, adopted at the final session of the league, summarized the progress of the Negro during fifty years of freedom. Ten million American Negroes now pay taxes on over $700,000,000 worth of property and own 20,000,000 acres of land (that is, about 31,000 square miles). They own 63 banks, capitalized at $2,600,000 and doing an annual business of $20,000,000. Today there are Negro business leagues in twelve states.

Facts of Negro progress need to be better understood by white and black people. One of the best sources of information is the Negro Year Book, edited by Monroe N. Work of Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.

This spring, ten-year-old Ralph in one of the Rochester public schools wrote a letter to his teacher:

Ralph had been to the Child Welfare Exhibit and come away with one important truth thoroughly impressed upon him. The exhibit was held during the second week in April. Everyone helped, and as their part the public and parochial schools offered their children as living demonstrations of Rochester school work. There were dances, drills, and games every afternoon and evening. Children sang together, and other children formed small classes of sewing, carpentry, electric wiring, cooking, rug weaving, drawing, etc., and worked steadily under the direction of teachers. The school children of Rochester were constantly in touch with the exhibit; they were given special holidays in which to see it; and their interest was keen. The following week those in the upper grades were asked to write letters telling about what they remembered.

Some 553 of these letters were examined for the purpose of ascertaining first, the most effective form of presentation for exhibit material, and second, the degree to which children understand and remember the lessons which different exhibits are designed to teach. In making the tabulation, only those letters were used which were written by the children themselves, without outside help. Several had to be discarded because they showed evidences of suggestions and corrections from the teacher. Every reference to an exhibit feature was counted, even where the child spoke of the same thing more than once.

The most popular feature among the children were the entertainments each afternoon and evening. These consisted of dances, drills, games, and chorus singing by the children themselves. Sarah, of the eighth grade, writes:

while Charlotte ungrammatically adds,

The school children not only joined in dances and drills, but with the help of their teachers formed classes which worked and recited as living exhibits. All the children found the classes interesting. Says little Michael Ettiopia:

Particular attention was paid to the work of the boys from the “Shop School.” There was a class in electric wiring where the children loved to watch the work. Here is a paragraph from nine-year-old Raymond’s description:

The children were quick to recognize the ability of others, in such expressions as:

One twelve-year-old reports:

The most impressive single exhibit seems to have been that of the tidy and untidy home, which received 8 per cent of the 3,123 references. The moving picture show and the library received 712 6 per cent each, and the dairy, playground, and market 3 per cent.

The moving pictures appealed strongly to children in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades; they are mentioned only half as frequently by those in the seventh and eighth. The other exhibit features received practically the same amount of attention from children in all different grades.

Many children devoted two pages or more to a description of the bedrooms and kitchens in the tidy and untidy home. Here is an account given by a ten-year-old girl in the fourth grade:

The same child goes on to describe the clean and dirty dairy.

Twelve-year-old Meta draws a lesson from the homes and the dairy. She says:

The clean and dirty markets held a peculiar fascination for the children, and there are vivid accounts of the cat that was “walking over the meat and licking the meat” and the “cow’s head with a disease that made it all lumpy, lying in the corner, with the blood dripping out.” As Helen remarks:

Finally, we have this manly confession from an eleven-year-old boy:

All the children saw the moving-picture show, which they take care to tell us was a free show. The film dealing with the care of the teeth, that telling the story of a boy’s camp, one vaguely described as “he knocked his wife down and he knocked his children down, and they all fought,” and the clean milk film received the most attention.

In the center of the armory a small playground was erected, and there the older children took their little brothers and sisters. One of them writes:

The library proved a great attraction to the children. One after another tells of “reading most of the afternoon, and when I got out it was most night,” or of starting a book “which I came back the next afternoon to finish. It was a book of engineers.” The general feeling of the children is expressed by Sarah Sedita when she says:

Near the library was a booth showing the guns, cards, jimmies, daggers, etc., taken away from small boys in the children’s court. There was also a lurid collection of dime novels from the same source. Of these Katherine writes:

This booth and the explainers in charge—the explainers seem to have done effective work in the Rochester exhibit—impressed the boys very seriously. Moses states the case:

Tabulation was made showing the distribution of references among the four main types of exhibit material—entertainments, models, motion exhibits, and photographs, maps, diagrams, charts, etc. To reach conclusive results, it would be necessary to secure the exact number of exhibits shown in each of the four classes. We know, however, that there were more photographs, cartoons, charts, maps, etc., in the Rochester exhibit than numbers on the program, or different models, or motion exhibits. Donald tells us—“There was charts of the teeth, mind, nostrils, ears, throat, various organs, limbs, and feet.”

But most of the children who attended the exhibit have only a vague memory of the photographs which lined the walls, and every reference of this kind is capped by three references to the program numbers. Models and motion exhibits receive practically the same amount of attention in all the grades. The lower grades were more impressed by the entertainments than the higher, and the higher were more impressed by the photographs than the lower. The per cents for all the children run: entertainment 35, models 28, motion exhibits 26, and photos, maps, etc., 11.

There were 271 favorable comments and 44 unfavorable comments on the exhibit. The favorable run from one little girl’s reiterated exclamation of “Oh, it was grand!” to Ralph’s dignified statement:

With a few exceptions, the unfavorable comments have to do with the overcrowding, from which the children suffered greatly. As a natural result of such a throng, the halls became stuffy, and there seemed to be no adequate system of ventilation. One of the boys writes:

A twelve-year-old girl makes this scathing comment:

There were many general comments, and lessons drawn, such as “Many people will say ‘Oh, I can’t afford milk, it’s too expensive.’ But this is all foolish, as in the end milk is the cheapest and best of foods.” An eleven-year-old girl writes:

Finally comes this simple tribute to the success of the exhibit:

The children speak frankly in their letters, often telling more about themselves than they realize. There is something pathetic in the following glimpse of home life which Maurice affords us:

One feels a throb of sympathy for the boy who says:

Many of the children are quite sure that the exhibit was for the instruction of the “lower classes” only, and have a pleasant feeling of superiority as they speak of its influence. Says one with some indignation:

And finally ends a mournful letter with the conclusion many other observers have reached before her:

It is of course impossible to draw any hard and fast rules as to the effect of exhibit material upon an adult audience from these letters of school children. Certain things, however, are of enough significance to warrant attention on the part of exhibitors. With the exception of the moving picture exhibit all these different features were about as interesting to the children in the seventh and eighth grades as to those in the fourth, fifth and sixth. Difference in age seems to have little to do with the strength of the impression received. The fact that children acted in the entertainments and motion exhibits probably accounts in part for their interest in these two forms of exhibit material, but it cannot account for the high per cent of attention paid to the tidy and untidy home, the moving pictures, the library, the clean and dirty dairy, or the clean and dirty market. Entertainments interested them most, models next, then motion exhibits, and photographs least of all. Difference in age becomes a factor when considering the type of material rather than the individual exhibit, and we find interest in entertainments lessening, and that in photographs and diagrams increasing towards the higher grades. Through all the grades, however, models and motion exhibits receive very nearly the same amount of attention, and together receive more than half of all the references made. Among adults, it seems safe to assume that the relative order of interest would be the same.

A little over three years ago, in the spring of 1910, a newcomer to the little town of Amenia, Dutchess County, New York, inspired perhaps by the glorious sweep of the twenty-five acre field on his recently acquired possessions, summoned to his home a handful of his neighbors and laid before them the germ of an idea which a few weeks later was to blossom into the full-blown Amenia Field Day. At the start, the newcomer offered the community his field, his time, his assistance in every way possible, and asked and obtained of them that spirit of co-operation which has made Amenia Field Day stand for what it does today. In 1910 the attendance was 3,000; each succeeding year, it has increased; in 1913, it was 10,000, and 1914 will doubtless see it bigger yet.

The Amenia idea has been described as “an experiment in co-operative recreation”; a high-sounding phrase, which means simply that the people of Amenia get together, plan together, work together to the end that one day a year they may play together.

Simple though this idea is, it has not been an easy one to inspire in the hearts of New York and Connecticut farmers (for Amenia is less than three miles from the state line). The rural population is admittedly composed for the most part of conservatives, unimpressionable, and slow to arouse to anything which savors of innovation, and which does not bring in its train anything of palpable, material benefit. For generations past, they have had their county fairs, with concomitant cattle and poultry exhibits, horse-racing, fakers, and side-shows of rather more than a questionable nature. They have had farmers’ picnics, for the most part small affairs, of purely local interest. But the Amenia idea was conceived in a spirit bigger and broader, and, it is believed, more truly democratic and more representative of what public spirit in a rural community ought to be. To quote from the program of the fourth annual Amenia Field Day, “The Amenia Field Day offers, as a substitute for the commercialized fair, a free day of wholesome enjoyment, supported by the united efforts of a whole community. One day a year the people of Amenia invite the whole countryside to such a day of clean and simple recreation, without gamblers, fakers, intoxicating liquors, or vulgar sideshows. Admission to our festival is free to all.”

This year, the committee strained every nerve towards including in the day’s entertainment features that should take in everyone, young and old, of both sexes. For boys, they planned a series of athletic events, running and jumping contests, open to all comers, without limitation save as to age. Prizes were generously donated by a leading citizen of Amenia, but the committee is seriously considering doing away with all prizes next year, except the simplest of silk badges, commemorative of the event.

The scope of athletic sports, in which it is wise for girls to participate, is so limited that this year for the first time folk-dancing was instituted. The committee imported a teacher from the Bureau of Recreation, Department of Parks, New York City, and entrusted to her not merely the task of teaching the graceful and quaint dances, that have been imported from over the seas, to the maidens of Dutchess County, but the far more difficult task of organizing the classes, of getting the girls to join, of persuading the mothers to allow their daughters to join. Nowhere are social strata so well-defined, nowhere religious and racial lines so closely drawn as in the country community; nowhere are barriers of caste so hard to break down. To level the ranks of prosperous and poor, to bring about harmony between Catholic and Protestant elements, requires a very large measure of diplomacy and tact, combined with human sympathy.

For small children of both sexes, under mature leadership, were arranged the games which city children for generations past have known and loved, and in turn handed down to their smaller brothers and sisters; games such as “cat 715 and rat,” “farmer-in-the-dell,” etc., which for some inexplicable reason seem never to have penetrated the school playgrounds of Dutchess County.

DANCING ON THE GREEN, FIELD DAY AT AMENIA, DUTCHESS COUNTY, NEW YORK.

On Field Day, August 19, for miles around Amenia, the holiday spirit was in the air. Everybody with his wife and family, in automobile, farm wagon, or on foot, took the road that led to Amenia Field; even those who professed no interest in the events of the day, came “just to see who was there!” Everybody brought lunchbaskets and spread the contents under the trees, in true picnic style, since nothing but soft drinks and sandwiches were sold on the grounds.

Throughout the day, a band of musicians played patriotic and popular airs. The old folks gathered together contentedly in groups, listening to the music, while keeping an admiring eye on the prowess of their athletic sons, the grace of their daughters dancing on the sward. Young and old participated in the grand march that took place immediately after lunch-hour.

Afterwards, in a tent-covered auditorium, men and women of national prominence addressed an attentive audience on subjects chosen for their interest to a rural population. Suffragists, from Poughkeepsie and New York, by way of propaganda, presented an open-air pageant portraying the advance of women’s education in modern times. Meanwhile, a demonstration of alfalfa-growing, under the supervision of the Dutchess County Farm Bureau, and the State Department of Agriculture, was given in a neighboring field. Enthusiastic “fans” of Dutchess County were given an opportunity to cheer at a baseball game between two local teams.

The day finished with a band concert held in the Post Office Square, of Amenia, which had been decked with hundreds of lighted Chinese lanterns, strung from adjoining buildings. The expense of this concert, as of all the other features of the day, was met by popular subscription. Everybody was invited, nobody solicited, to contribute, according to his means.

On every program of Amenia Field Day has been printed these principles:

Some of the concrete results of the Tuskegee experiment in reconstructing the interior of the Negro rural home, were told in The Survey of August 30. Paine College, Augusta, Ga., a school for Negroes, supported for thirty years by southern white people, who feel that the Negro question can only be solved when the white descendants of slave owners set their hearts and heads to the task, is endeavoring to experiment on the reconstruction of the Negro city home by change of material environment If a $50,000 endowment can be raised the college will put into effect a plan of housing designed to prove it profitable, not only morally but financially, to provide the Negro an exterior environment which shall make the task of educating him for life easier. The scheme and the demand for better housing on which 716 it is based is described by Mrs. John D. Hammond, wife of and co-worker with the white president of Paine College.

The whole plan is based upon the belief that the Negro is himself eagerly striving for a decent living. The Negroes’ own fight, individually, for better homes is said to be little short of heroic. All through the South, in city and country, Negro-owned homes witness to the increasing prosperity of a large class, and to the effort and self-denial of thousands more, whose income would seem to many of us, to put house-owning utterly out of the question.

But most Negroes belong to that economic class which, the world over, pays the heaviest rent in proportion to its income and yields the landlord the largest return on his investment, yet which receives in return little which is compatible with health or decency.

This is the tragedy of the Negro slum. Nobody is trying to abolish it, because nobody believes it can be done. We believe the Negro breeds the slum—instead of the slum breeding many of the Negro’s defects. Everywhere else people are re-creating the slum-dweller by abolishing the slum. We make no effort, partly because, as yet, few of us know of the widespread struggle for better housing the Negro is himself making.

What is needed, Mrs. Hammond believes, is an experiment station in Negro housing in the South. When it is proven, as it surely can be, that Negro day laborers and washerwomen can be decently housed at a fair profit to the landlord, southern money will be invested in houses of the right kind. But somebody must prove it, and advertise the proof far and wide.

The plan by which Paine College hopes to prove it is, in brief, to buy a city block of about six acres in Augusta, Ga., and build on four acres little three-roomed houses, such as day-laborers and washerwomen rent. The houses are to have a sink in every kitchen (water in the house is to this class a luxury unknown), and a toilet, ample window space, closets, and the porch so necessary to family comfort in a warm climate. By building double houses, and four acres full of them at a time, they can be put up for $850 per double house. [1] The rent would be two dollars the room per month, the current rent for that district. The lot for each family would be 20 x 105, which would afford a little garden-space in the rear—a privilege highly esteemed by many of the poorer Negroes, and one which, under the plan proposed, would be a powerful aid in the upbuilding of home and family life.

Four acres of the six-acre block would give room for forty double houses. The other two acres Mrs. Hammond designs to use as a playground for the children, and a site for a community house. This house should contain a kindergarten room and a room for boys’ clubs which could be thrown together at night and used for the recreation and the instruction of the grown people. It should have a room for cooking classes, one for sewing classes, a few free baths for men and women; and a small laundry and drying room, like those in the East End of London, a small weekly payment for the use of which would relieve the mothers from the heaviest of their drudgery, and set free much of their time for home-making. It would also make possible a war of extermination against the accumulations of trash about the ordinary Negro home, where so many abominations are claimed to be necessary for the sake of the pot and fire in the yard “to boil de clo’es.”

Rent would be collected on the Octavia Hill plan, with its concomitant thrift clubs, mothers’, men’s, children’s, and home-improvement clubs, and these clubs would do for the tenants just what it does elsewhere for slum-dwellers of other races. They would, Mrs. Hammond believes, be built up in character, the houses would be saved from the usual degeneration of property rented to this economic class, a good return would be realized on the investment, and the children ultimately turned over to the community as self-respecting and law-abiding instead of furnishing, as is inevitable under present conditions, their full quota of paupers and criminals, to be carried by the taxpayers of the city.

Three rooms would be reserved for the Negro worker, who would not only keep them as a model home, but would use them to train the girls in housework. This would leave seventy-nine three-roomed homes for rent, at six dollars each monthly, a yearly total of $5,688.00. This sum would pay the salary of the social worker, who is a necessity to the success of the plan, and yet yield 10 per cent gross on the investment, though two acres of the land and the settlement house, representing one-fifth of the sum invested would he unproductive from a commercial point of view. This is on the basis of an expense of $9,000 for land, $34,000 for forty double houses and $7,500 for the settlement house, a total investment of $50,500.

Rentals from Negro property now yield a larger gross return than this, as do rentals from similar property elsewhere; but the houses deteriorate so rapidly from misuse that the landlord feels that only an extraordinary profit while they last can insure him against actual loss. A gross return of 10 per cent where the buildings suffered only the depreciation caused by rational use would be as attractive to the ordinary business man here as elsewhere.

Mrs. Hammond’s scheme would be considered part of the educational system of Paine College. Good housing and good living as taught in the settlement and practically applied in the model housing plan would become a part of the school curriculum. The raising of the endowment fund is the present problem of Paine College. The peculiarity of this, as of all other Negro schools, is that the more students it has the poorer it is. Few of the pupils can pay the full amount asked of them, which is itself less than the actual cost of their board and tuition. Some work is furnished them—in kitchen, laundry and household for the girls, in grounds and 717 garden for the boys—by which they partly pay their way. The plan is to have the income from the model housing endowment used to pay poor students for work done and so provide with an education many whom the college is forced now to turn away.

The homes, playground and settlement would furnish a practical field where young Negro women could be trained as social workers in order to meet the growing demand from white people in several southern states for trained Negroes to work among the poor of their own race.

[1] The houses would be of wood, as local conditions make the expense of brick or cement prohibitive.

BOYS’ “PETITION FOR INDEPENDENCE”

A “Petition for Independence,” signed by representatives of the boys and girls of Ithaca, expresses the principles of the Junior Municipality organized in that city the latter part of June by William R. George, director of the National Association of Junior Republics. The object of the “municipality” is the practical training of younger citizens in their rights and responsibilities by the formation of a government of junior officials who shall act in matters of the public welfare in co-operation with the city officials. Already the mayors of Cortland, N. Y., and Jersey City have asked Mr. George to start like organizations.

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Spare the Slum and Spoil the Child.

Give them Playgrounds Instead!

From the Cleveland Humane Society Bulletin

WHAT ONE SMALL TOWN IS DOING

Zona Gale in a pamphlet, Civic Improvement in the Little Towns, tells how first the women and then the men and women of one small community inaugurated an unusually successful campaign in the field of public social service. This town is described as one of 6,000 inhabitants, probably Portage, Wis., where Miss Gale lives.

In her opinion the civic problem of the small town is threefold: first to get into touch with the current of new understanding that the conservation of physical and moral life is largely economic; second, to find practical ways of applying this understanding to the present and future of the town; and third, to do all this with exceedingly little money.

The Women’s Club called a meeting at the City Hall of all women interested in town development. At this meeting the constitution of the Wichita, Kan., Improvement Association 718 was adopted and work mapped out for five committees: sanitary, educational, art, children’s auxiliary, and streets and alleys.

Among the concrete results obtained through the work of these committees were the inauguration of a system of garbage disposal; the grading and planting of a small park at the end of a bridge at the turn in a river; the establishment of a rest room in the town for farmers’ wives from the surrounding country, although owing to a misunderstanding permission to use a small committee room in the City Hall was revoked by the Town Council; the establishment of a charity co-ordination committee; a town lecture course; public bath houses; a sane Fourth, and medical and dental inspection of school children.

The recent action of Congress and President Wilson, under the specific encouragement of both railroad managers and employes, in placing industrial mediation and arbitration on a wider and stronger basis, is a long step toward the realization of a definite ideal which has been cradled in the mind of Charles P. Neill, the former commissioner of labor.

CHARLES P. NEILL

Former President Roosevelt discovered Mr. Neill. Mr. Neill discovered the Erdman Act, which platted a narrow pathway through the industrial jungle in the United States. Congress put the Erdman Act on the statute books, but Charles P. Neill placed it definitely in the imagination of the American people and focused upon it the hope of the nation for industrial peace. It is to Mr. Neill’s credit that he found and took advantage of the possibilities of the Erdman Act in spite of its limitations.

From 1898, when the Erdman Act was passed, to 1906, only a single attempt was made to utilize its provisions in industrial warfare. That attempt, which was in June, 1899, failed. Mr. Neill became commissioner of labor in 1905. Within the five years, December, 1906, to January, 1912, the provisions of the law were invoked in nearly 60 interstate commerce disputes. Between 1908 and 1912 there was but one period as long as three months during which mediation was not sought in a railroad dispute. The threatened strikes which were averted during these five years involved over half a million miles of railroad and 163,000 railroad employes. These figures include duplicates since the same railroad was sometimes involved more than once.

In all this work as mediator Mr. Neill enjoyed the unlimited confidence of railroad managers, and employes alike. Whatever the bitterness, the differences in codes of industrial ethics, and the misunderstandings of fact which separated into bitter opposition the railroad managers and their employes, there was no time when both parties failed to give absolute confidence to Commissioner Neill and to rely with unquestioning trust on his judgment, on his personal character, and the practical wisdom of his suggestion. This extraordinary tribute to him was primarily a tribute to his character, but it was earned in part by the marvelous accuracy with which his imagination seized situations and all their parts, and enabled him to talk the minutely technical language of railroad operation. The rare assemblage of mental and moral gifts which characterize Mr. Neill was fully recognized and nothing clouded that recognition during his term of service. These extraordinary features of his career will offer but little consolation to the few lonely critics whose voices were recently heard in high circles.

Mr. Neill was made commissioner of labor in 1905. He was re-appointed in 1909. His third nomination was sent to the Senate by President Taft in January, 1913. Confirmation was withheld because of the Democratic policy toward President Taft’s nominations in general. Mr. Neill’s name was sent back to the Senate by President Wilson but it was not acted upon at the short session. It was again sent to the Senate at its extraordinary session. Meantime Mr. Neill’s term of office had expired, and on February 1 he surrendered his office. Confirmation was delayed, apparently because certain southern Senators seemed to have views of the humanities of industry which were not in accord with those of Commissioner Neill. His appointment, however, was finally confirmed and Mr. Neill resumed his office. After a few weeks of service he resigned to take the position of director of welfare with the American Smelting and Refining Company. He has taken charge of the welfare of approximately 20,000 laboring men in the employ of this corporation. The delay of the confirmation of Mr. Neill’s appointment brought forth from the labor press generally, from the railroad managers of the United States and from the American press generally, tributes to his character, to his power, and to his achievements which have been rarely equaled and more rarely exceeded in the industrial history of the nation.

In addition to the annual reports and bulletins issued by the Bureau while Mr. Neill was commissioner of labor, which publications form 719 a very valuable contribution to the literature dealing with labor conditions, the bureau made a number of important special investigations at the direction of Congress, the results of which are embodied in various reports, notable among them are the Report of the Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States (in 19 volumes), the Report on the Conditions of Employment in the Iron and Steel Industry, and the Reports on the Strike at Bethlehem and the Strike at Lawrence, Mass. Acting as special commissioner under Roosevelt Mr. Neill investigated the packing house industry and the Goldfield strike. In spite of the handicap under which he was placed by his mediation work, Mr. Neill gave most careful supervision to the planning and the executing of the work of the Bureau of Labor, and in many cases tested the accuracy and completeness of work of his agents by personally inspecting the fields in which they labored.

Mr. Neill was born in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1865. His college education was obtained at Notre Dame University, at the University of Texas, at Georgetown, and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he took his Ph.D. in 1897. He served as an instructor at Notre Dame University from 1891 to 1894. He was professor of political economy at the Catholic University from 1898 to 1905. While occupying this position he prepared and installed an exhibit of the Catholic charities of the United States at the St. Louis Exposition. He was United States commissioner of labor from 1905 to 1913, vice-president of the Board of Charities of the District of Columbia, 1900 to 1908; assistant recorder of the Anthracite Strike Commission in 1902; recorder of the Arbitration Board for the Birmingham strike in 1903; member of the U. S. Immigration Commission, 1907 to 1910. As member of the International Institute of Statistics, he has actively furthered plans for the adoption of international standards for the compilation of industrial statistics and has been active in working toward international conventions to promote that end.

Nature, grace and environment conspired to prepare Mr. Neill for his work. Ideals governed him from his early boyhood and gave him the courage to overcome a typical range of obstacles in working them out. Everything taught Mr. Neill. He had the rare capacity and the temperament to profit by experience. His ideals of social service and his Christian sympathies have been so powerful that nothing frightened him and nothing side-tracked him from his path. There is no way of knowing fully the pressure that was brought to bear upon him, or the dust that was stirred up to obscure the practical ideals that governed him in his work as an investigator of the industrial battlefield. Whether in a congressional hearing where a none too kindly spirit sometimes cropped out, or in protecting the accuracy and good faith of his bureau reports, some of which aroused fierce antagonisms and were subject to bitter attack, Mr. Neill displayed the same intelligent fearlessness, the same restrained idealism and the same self reliance which his friends have always noted and admired in him. He has had severe academic training, yet he has remained a thoroughly practical man. He is a brave and honest fighter, without any love of fighting for its own sake.

A personal feature of Mr. Neill’s career remains to be noted. Under the law he, as commissioner of labor, was associated with Judge Martin A. Knapp in adjusting railway disputes. Originally Judge Knapp acted in his capacity as chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission. When he was transferred to the Court of Commerce a change in the law was made, permitting the President to select as second mediator any member of the Interstate Commerce Commission or of the Commerce Court. In this manner it was possible to continue Judge Knapp in the mediation work. Fortunately he remains to carry into the newer epoch just entered upon, the splendid traditions of the work as developed by himself and Mr. Neill. These two men worked together in a spirit of mutual understanding and trust which made their mediation work a happy experience for themselves, no less than for the railroads and the employes. It is impossible to separate them in attributing credit for the great results which have been achieved. Each has been most gratified when the public honored the other. Both will be associated in the discriminating memory of the nation as precursors of the era of industrial peace for which the nation’s heart is longing.

Wm. J. Kirby.

Charles Stelzle , pioneer in church social service, who was the founder and has for ten years been in charge of this phase of the work of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, will leave that board on October 1. Mr. Stelzle plans to set up offices of his own as consulting sociologist and efficiency engineer for national church organizations, social service agencies and industrial enterprises.

The broader field which he proposes to cover on severing his connection with purely denominational work Mr. Stelzle outlines as furnishing “Expert service with reference to Sociological and Religious Surveys; Exhibits; Social Service Campaigns and Conferences; Social and Religious Work among Immigrant, Industrial, and Rural Populations; Publicity, Educational, and Evangelistic Campaigns; Efficiency Methods for Local Churches and National Organizations; General Industrial Problems.”

CHARLES STELZLE

Mr. Stelzle came to the church, when he was ordained minister about eighteen years ago, as a worker who in his twelve years in the machine shop had been made painfully conscious of the lack of understanding and co-operation between the church and the workingmen. He organized the Department of Church and Labor of the Presbyterian Church, and this was subsequently expanded into the bureau from which he is resigning. The Labor Temple in lower Second Avenue, New York, a religious labor center which he organized a few years ago, has so evidently responded to a need that the board has recently bought the property and put the temple 720 on a permanent basis. Labor Sunday, a nation-wide campaign for temperance carried on through the trade unions and a press service on social, religious and industrial topics which is used by 350 of the principal labor papers, are other activities of the bureau. Mr. Stelzle has served as arbitrator in many industrial disputes and has established a permanent connection between the church and organized labor through ministerial delegates to the trade unions.

In addition to this industrial work he was for a year executive secretary of the Commission on Social Service of the Federal Council of Churches, had charge of the social service features of one of the Men and Religion Forward Movement teams and directed the surveys made by the movement in seventy cities. He conducted the recent publicity campaign for the Home Missions Council and the Council of Women for Home Missions.

Mr. Stelzle’s successor in the bureau has not yet been appointed.

The appointment of Louis F. Post, founder and for fifteen years joint editor with Alice Thatcher Post of The Public and worker for many public causes in Chicago, to the assistant secretaryship of the Federal Department of Labor has been generally recognized, to use the words of a fellow journalist, as something more than the dropping of a plum into the gaping mouth of a hungry politician. Mr. Post is no politician and was by no means hungry for the position, which he at first peremptorily refused, feeling that he could not give up his work on The Public . He consented only after pressure had been brought to bear upon him from all sides and he had been brought to realize that a still larger duty called him to the service of the nation.

The ideals which animated Mr. Post as editor and which he brings to his work in the Department of Labor, he thus himself expresses in a recent valedictory editorial:

James Mullenbach’s appointment as superintendent of the great Cook County infirmary for the poor of Chicago at Oak Forest is as creditable to President Alexander A. McCormick of the Board of County Commissioners as it is to Mr. Mullenbach.

With his experience as settlement resident at Chicago Commons, as superintendent of the Municipal Lodging House, as assistant superintendent of the United Charities, as secretary of the Land, Labor, and Immigration Officials’ Conference, and as the representative of the social agencies reporting social legislation at the Illinois Legislature, Mr. Mullenbach is regarded as the ideal head for the greatest county institutions west of New York.

It is significant of the new times to find a college educated man who rounded out his professional training on a fellowship in a German University, being sought for and accepting a position, to which only a political appointee has hitherto been appointed. No higher token of the triumph of patriotism on partisanship has been registered in America than this, and many another, achievement of Mr. McCormick in rescuing the County of Cook from the spoils exploitation of his predecessor and in establishing the efficient business management and the humane social standards of his own administration.

The recent death of Edna P. Alter in a trolley wreck near Pasadena, Cal., removes one of the younger workers in the field of organized charity. Miss Alter knew every phase of work in the homes of the poor for she entered the 721 Hudson district of the New York Charity Organization Society as district nurse in 1908, later rounded out her preparation for the work of organized charity by a summer course in the New York School of Philanthropy, and became assistant agent in that district. In the fall of 1910 she rose to the responsible position of secretary of the Associated Charities of Pasadena.

Leo G. MacLaughlin, president of that society, speaks of her work as “sympathetic, kindly, warm-hearted and keenly intelligent. She was one of the founders of the local Associated Charities and her work won favorable attention over a wide area.”

A few years of school dental clinics have made “toothbrush drills” a fairly familiar idea in many cities. It took the Toronto public nurses, or rather their supervisor, Lina L. Rogers, to originate another drill quite as unique and important.

Since last October the school children of Toronto, in squads of twenty have practised daily “nose-blowing drills” and the effect on the freshness of the atmosphere of the schoolrooms has been so noticeable that the teachers have become assiduous in seeing to it that no child comes to school unprovided with a pocket handkerchief. They often, indeed, themselves order the drills without waiting for the coming of the nurse. The effect of the drill is perceptible already on individual children, in cases of catarrh, and the doctors predict that it will have an appreciable effect in time in lessening adenoids and other throat and nose affections.

It was Miss Rogers, who has recently become Mrs. W. E. Struthers, who, when a nurse at the Henry Street Settlement in New York in 1902 was chosen to demonstrate at the expense of the settlement in four local schools the need of municipal school nurses. This she did with such success that within a month the Department of Health took over the financial responsibility and extended the work, making her supervisor.

With a subsequent seven years’ experience in this capacity she went to Toronto in 1909, where she has done pioneer health work in the schools. These are now fully equipped with school nurses and with dental care, one of the four clinics now carried on in connection with the school system having been equipped with a model outfit at the expense of the enthusiastic nurses themselves.

MRS. W. E. STRUTHERS

Besides nose-blowing drills Toronto has undertaken another departure in school health work, in establishing a real open-air school, on the model of the Forest School at Charlottenberg in Germany. To a private park on the outskirts of Toronto, which has been loaned for this purpose and equipped with shacks, fifty anaemic or delicate children were taken for three months last winter by special trolley cars each morning and not returned till twelve hours later, thus living and learning in the open air. No tubercular children were taken, sanatorium care being provided for them. Five meals are furnished, the trolley service is given free by the street railway company, a nurse is in attendance and three teachers, lessons are given for three and one-half hours in the open air. There is a great deal of outdoor play, and nose-blowing and toothbrush drills and a weekly bath form part of this school course, as well as a two-hour nap each day. The experiment has been so successful that the number of children will be increased next year to one hundred and the school term lengthened to six months.

As wife of Dr. W. E. Struthers, chief medical inspector of the schools, Mrs. Struthers will continue her interest in the physical care of school children. She will also have the direction of the work until her successor, not yet appointed, is broken in.

To make charity administration measure up to strict tests of business efficiency—this has been the ideal that Howell Wright has put in practice as superintendent of the Cleveland Associated Charities. He has succeeded so well that Mayor Baker has recently appointed him superintendent of the City Hospital, with instructions to use the same methods there.

Mr. Wright has no medical training. He is a social worker with a business twist. His new 722 appointment illustrates the growing tendency today to put at the head of great specialized institutions, men who have a broad social outlook combined with executive power, but minus specialized training.

HOWELL WRIGHT

The City Hospital has been a bit too professional in the past. It has looked very closely to its diagnosis and temperature charts and instruments. But almost no thought has been given to the human and social background of its patients, and patients “cured” of physical ills have been turned out with all their social ills still festering, the inevitable result being that they speedily returned to the City Hospital to be “cured” again.

The hope is that Mr. Wright will make of the City Hospital a social institution, looking backward and forward into causes and effects.

Since Mr. Wright received his master’s degree from Yale University in 1907 he has served as special agent of the Massachusetts S. P. C. C. and as general secretary of the Norwood Civic Association. During the past year as superintendent of the Cleveland Associated Charities his chief move has been the abandonment of the general employment bureau for the unskilled, which had been conducted by the Associated Charities since 1886. After a searching study of the charitable field and a special study of such bureaus in other places it was decided to transfer this work to the State Employment Bureau in the city and the experiment has so far justified itself. Mr. Wright’s service has also been notable in bringing into use simple records, centralized purchasing and smoothly systematic office methods.

Sidney B. Bock , acting head resident of Pillsbury Settlement House, Minneapolis, has been elected head resident of Neighborhood House in Detroit, Michigan. This settlement is just completing a new building, having been in rented quarters since its founding in 1909.

Berkeley G. Tobey , until recently secretary of the National Council Boy Scouts of America, has become business manager of the Masses Publishing Company.

VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS

To the Editor :

Recently the writer noticed several communications in The Survey , in reference to the proposition of establishing a separate system of vocational schools, distinct from the existing traditional public school system.

As a reason for the establishment of this so-called “dual” system of vocational education the claim is advanced that, since manual training had been emasculated by being in contact with the public school, so likewise would vocational and industrial education be emasculated if these forms of education were to be carried on side by side with the other schools under the old organization.

The writer having seen the retarding effects of such a “dual” system in one of our larger industrial cities, and Massachusetts having tried and abandoned it, and since the writer is firmly convinced that such a divided system of education will, before long, react injuriously upon the social and ethical life of a state and her communities, and will plague the industries with its uneconomic and unsocial consequences, he is decidedly opposed to such a separated system of vocational schools.

It is a shrewd move to get entire control of the education of the masses of industrial workers, a mentally narrowing, mind killing education which, in its effects, would pull the intelligence of a community down to a lower level, being re-enforced by the ossifying influences of extreme specialization, which are noticeable in shop, store and office in all our industrial centers even now.

Manufacturers and business men do not take kindly to the idea that they should be made responsible for the mental, moral and aesthetic development of their employes and under these circumstances industrial education would soon degenerate into a feudal appendage of our industrial system. Manufacturers, corporations and business men are certainly entitled to a share in the management of our educational system and industrial schools and it is highly desirable that they should claim their share.

But they can accomplish all they need either 723 as members of school boards, or as advisory committees on industrial education.

As to the danger of vocational schools being emasculated there is no such danger. No one who understands anything about the matter expects to have vocational or industrial schools articulated with the elementary or high schools in the manner manual training has been and is articulated, but have these lower schools separate in just the same manner as manual training high schools or technical high schools are separate from the academic schools, yet are under the same organization and management without any detriment to their usefulness.

It is true that, if specific industrial education is yoked together with academic education in the high school, industrial education will be emasculated. But then it is due to a managerial blunder of trying to straddle two horses and there is no excuse to make such a managerial mistake the pretext for the creation of an expensive separate system of education. Manual training, as we understand it, was never emasculated because neither by the originators, and the writer is one of them, nor subsequently, was manual training in the elementary and high school considered anything else but an adjunct to academic schools for cultural purposes and down to the N. E. A. meeting at Boston in 1903, Professor Woodward, the father of the American system of manual training, disclaimed any other but cultural purpose for manual training, without any distinct vocational aim.

At the above meeting Dean Woodward, in referring to the manual training work done at St. Louis said: “The secondary school should enable a boy to discover the world and find himself. I use the word ‘discover’ in the sense of uncover—that is lay bare—the problems, the demands, the opportunities, the possibilities of the eternal world. A boy finds himself when he has taken a correct inventory of his inherited and acquired tastes and capacities”. While many friends of manual training were disappointed in finding it did not revolutionize trade education, it never intended to do that and therefore was not emasculated.

Paul Kreuzpointner.

[Chairman Committee on Industrial Education, American
Foundryman’s Association.]

Altoona, Pa.

THE I. W. W.: AN OUTLAW ORGANIZATION

To the Editor :

I wish to express my hearty appreciation of John A. Fitch’s article in The Survey of June 7, on the I. W. W. It is illuminative. The I. W. W. is the one organization that is both hated and feared by our most eminent leaders in business, politics, and religion. There are good reasons for this. The I. W. W. pays no homage to heroes and great men of the past; it has little respect for the laws of the land, because it believes these laws were made to keep them in bondage; and it entirely ignores and repudiates the church, as it holds that the church has always been an instrument to keep the people in ignorance and subjection.

Small wonder it is that this “outlaw” organization receives the contempt and anathemas of conventional, respectable people, who have been taught that everything that makes civilization better than barbarism, is due to the genius and greatness and goodness of a few men, who in turn were but the instruments of Providence. The I. W. W. tells its members to stop bowing the head and the knee to great men and even to God, and to assert the right and power that is theirs, and to depend on themselves alone for the establishment of a new system of industry.

Sound and staid business, political and religious leaders are deeply concerned with what seems to be the trend of thought and action on the part of the “lower” classes. This trend appears to be decidedly in the direction of the very principles and methods of the I. W. W. The “better” class of people believe chaos and anarchy will result if the principles and practices of the I. W. W. predominate; the I. W.W. believe they will always be oppressed, and matters go from bad to worse, if our method of doing business is not fundamentally changed. They believe so fully in the justice of their cause that they willingly accept the scorn, the contempt, the inhuman treatment inflicted on them in jail and out, that is meted out mercilessly for their uncompromising speech and attitude.

This bitter feeling of the “best” people toward the I. W. W., and the dogged persistence of the I. W. W. in their revolutionary tactics, constitute the most acute phase of what the Socialists call the class struggle. This class war will continue till one side or the other is victorious. One reason that the whole matter is so generally misunderstood is that nearly all the newspapers distort and suppress most of the news concerning the activity of the I. W. W.

Mr. Fitch’s article radiates light rather than heat.

A. E. House.

Spokane, Wash.

RIGHT IDEAS ON INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

To the Editor :

I have read the various contributions to your symposium on the work before the new Commission on Industrial Relations. In my opinion it is the duty of the employer to provide the necessary safeguards and protection for his employes, such for instance as good light and air, sanitary surroundings, protection against fire and other dangers, reasonable hours of labor, adequate wages, no child labor, facilities for education and self-improvement, healthful living quarters, opportunity for recreation, etc. These and other advantages should be supplied under all circumstances, and there should be co-operation and good feeling between employer and workingman. It seems to me quite probable that the better results which would thus be obtained through the greater efficiency of the employes would more than compensate the employer for any extra outlays which he may have to make to provide such protection, so that in the end it would cost him nothing. The hearty co-operation and friendly spirit which would thus be engendered between the employer and his workingmen would be apt to prevent strikes 724 and other troubles and would decidedly be to the interest of both employer and employe. Any excuse that a manufacturer or other employer of labor might make that if he had to provide this protection to his employes he could not make his business pay seems to me similar to the excuse of one who contemplates putting up a building but says he cannot afford to make the necessary expenditures to provide for the safety of those who will occupy it because with such extra cost the income from the building would not be sufficient to pay a good interest. If he cannot make it pay he should of course not undertake it, but under all circumstances he must build safely. In the same way an employer should see that his employes and workmen receive the necessary protection and he should provide for their absolute safety and do the right thing by them all the time.

Adolph Lewisohn.

[President General Development Company.]

New York.

ALCOHOLISM

To the Editor :

I am greatly pleased to see on the cover page of The Survey issue of August 9, a copy of the first Municipal Poster against Alcoholism in the United States. I have wondered in reading The Survey , that so very much attention was given to different phases of welfare by excellent writers, and the subject of liquor business was not emphasized. It is conceded to be the greatest economic problem of the age, and is the cause of the need of charity organizations, police courts, etc. It is estimated by scientific and prison boards that 75 per cent of the insane, and a greater per cent of criminals, and defectives are now at the mercy of the tax payers of the country as a result of liquor drinking, and liquor heredity. Certainly with such a preponderance of evidence against, and interest in, the subject of alcohol, it makes us rejoice that The Survey has decided to give a front page to the publicity of municipality interest in this subject.

Luella F. Mc Whurter.

[President Indiana Federation of Clubs.]

Indianapolis.

BIBLE STORY FILMS

To the Editor :

While I was staying at Hull House, I saw in their theater a moving picture of the life of Moses. The dial of time turned back, we all became spectators of the events of that great life, almost as though we had been his contemporaries. From the basket in the river to Sinai and the golden calf, it was all there, vivid, true to the Bible story and reverent in tone. I left the theater with much the same feeling as though I had heard a great oratorio, and even today the picture which ran its course in fifteen minutes is more vivid than the story which I have read and taught from childhood.

At a lecture in the University of Chicago last summer, the pastor of a Congregational Church in Madison, Wisconsin, came to me and said that he would like to put the moving picture into his Sunday School room, if I could tell him where he could get the films. All that I could say was to get in touch with the film companies and endeavor to get the ones that he wanted, but I knew that he would have trouble.

There are a considerable number of churches that have already introduced the moving picture into their evening service or their Sunday School. But the difficulty is the same everywhere, it is hard to get films that are suitable. Undoubtedly all the Bible stories can be taught more effectively through the moving picture than in any other way. The church ought to teach its lessons by the most effective means at hand, and many churches would be using the moving picture if they could secure suitable films at a reasonable rate. Mr. Edison has already made a good beginning on a series of films to illustrate the work of the public school.

Inasmuch as the churches need a special type of films, why should not the church federations ask the film companies to produce films of this type and start a church exchange? The churches should indicate which pictures they wanted and furnish Bible experts to supervise the making of the films, so as to secure an accurate and reverent reproduction of the stories. These films might then go out with the approval of the federation like a Sunday School lesson leaf. The film companies would be merely the printers of the material furnished them by the federation.

Besides the Bible stories the great morality and passion plays, like Oberammergau, might well be given, and representations of the great social movements, such as recreation, child labor, tuberculosis, and the like, the films for which are largely available at the present time.

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