In leaving the matter of women’s interest in the reduction of infant mortality and the proper preparation of women for motherhood, mention should be made of the growing recognition of the right of the child to be well born. Realizing the responsibility of the father, as well as the mother, for the physical and mental vigor of children, women in many states are discussing in their associations the proposition for requiring health certificates for those who seek the marriage license. In some states such laws have been already passed. The right of the woman (as well as of the man) to know that her children are to have a proper physical heritage is now included in the new Declaration of Independence.

Mothers there are with no legal husbands and for these and their children the problem is difficult indeed. Mrs. Weston of Los Angeles states that the care of such children and their mothers presents a large and serious question economically and that the ratio of these children and their mothers is very high among the patients visited by the nurses. The infant mortality among children born out of wedlock has been suspected of a high ratio but it remained for the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, of which Mrs. Bowen is president, to undertake an investigation into child mortality among this group. In its summary of the investigation which was carefully made, the Association states that:

“From the facts obtained it is evident that three main causes lie at the bottom of the prodigious child mortality among the illegitimate.

“First: The lack of method in recording vital statistics, some being kept at the city health department, the logical repository for such records, and others by the county clerk, who has no special interest in the matter.

“Second: The laxity of institutions and individuals in reporting promptly and fully the items which the law demands.

“Third: The inadequate provision for disposing of children who cannot be kept by the mothers. This last is perhaps the greatest factor.

“In conclusion, the truth is that thousands of children are lost in Chicago. Physicians and hospitals are careless in reporting demanded facts. Some hospitals give children away indiscriminately. Doctors, midwives and maternity homes do likewise. There is absolutely no check upon such disposition of babies; many hospitals and doctors and others do not want any safe supervision.”

Mrs. Stanley King, of Boston, the Secretary of the Conference on Illegitimacy, is one of the women who insist that the unmarried mother and her child must receive equal consideration with other mothers and children in any sincere plans for the reduction of infant mortality. As for the rest of the Conference, Mrs. King states that^[10] “it has faced the question of segregation (of the feeble-minded of this class) 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 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 of this committee is expected 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.”

The definite proposals of the Juvenile Protective Association and of the Society for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality for proper care of children born out of wedlock include: better systems of records, a better system for the legal adoption of infants, provision for well-organized infants’ homes, better bastardy laws, and a system of probation for the mother of an illegitimate child during the first year of its life in order to secure proper nursing and care of the child.

The district nurse becomes again the most important agent in the real nurture of infants of this group through her supervision of all young mothers among the poor. Owing to the fact that the deserted mother must assume the burden of her own support and that of her child and therefore finds nursing the child extremely difficult if not, in fact, impossible, the whole question of mothers’ pensions comes to the fore in the discussion as to whether widows alone should be the recipients or whether any needy mother should share their benefits. While women do not stand as a unit for recognition of the unmarried mother where they do support home pensions, there is evidence of strong advocacy among women of her inclusion in the benefits of this legislation. At all events women are opening their eyes to the problem.

Being principally responsible for the food of the family as well as the children, women have joined with spirit in what is known as the pure food movement. In many a city, large and small, women’s associations have taken up the question of the proper food supply and by concerted efforts wrought marvelous results. An illustration of an active municipal campaign for pure food carried on by women is described in the American City for June, 1914, by Katherine G. Leonard, secretary of the Pure Food Committee of the Civic League of Grand Forks, North Dakota:

What has been accomplished by the Pure Food Committee of the Civic League of Grand Forks may be equaled or surpassed by any group of determined women in any small city. To be sure, it is somewhat easier to keep clean in a climate which has no excessive heat and moisture and with a population made up for the most part of Americans and Scandinavians. However, vigilance and education will more than make up for differences in climate, but efforts must be ceaseless if results are to be forthcoming.

When this committee was organized under the able leadership of Dr. May Sanders, chairman, the work was new to all, and methods had to be devised. The first step was a consultation with Prof. E. F. Ladd, State Pure Food Commissioner, who was of great assistance in suggesting just and reasonable methods of dealing with the subject of sanitary inspection of foods so that the interests of both merchant and consumer might be safeguarded.

A general educational campaign was inaugurated. The state pure food and drugs act was printed in folder form, and a copy, together with a personal letter calling attention to the provisions of the law and asking coÖperation in its enforcement, was mailed to each of the 128 food merchants then doing business in the city. The portion of the law applying to a special class of stores or goods was red-lined when sent to a man selling that article. For example, sections relating to bakeries were red-lined when sent to bakers; those applying to groceries were marked for grocers. Ten days were given the merchants in which to clean house and prepare for state inspection.

The state inspection continued five days, of eight hours each, and the inspector was accompanied by Mrs. R. A. Sprague, who later became local officer. Each merchant was rated on a score card provided by the state commissioner for the purpose.

It became evident that the only way to secure sanitary inspection of food at intervals frequent enough to make the city food supply reasonably clean was to have a regular city official for the purpose. To that end a second petition was presented to the city council, with the result that an ordinance was passed providing for the office of food inspector. Mayor Murphy was fortunate in his choice of Mrs. R. A. Sprague, as she had proved her ability in the work of general inspector for the Civic League. The ordinance is an excellent instrument and answers many questions that arise in the work of inspection.

Since her appointment as local food inspector, Mrs. Sprague has also been made resident food inspector by the state pure food commissioner.

The work of the food inspector showed conclusively that the education of the public had only begun and that in order to make her labors most efficient the pure food committee must devise means of keeping the subject before the people. The greatest menace during the late summer and autumn is the house fly, and no work along the line of sanitary food supply can be effective that does not emphasize the necessity of doing away entirely with the breeding places of this deadly pest. Grand Forks has a garbage ordinance which, if strictly enforced, would go far toward accomplishing this end.

However, no matter how good the law, public opinion must be back of it to make it effective, and education must be administered in large and frequent doses. The newspaper and motion-picture theater are excellent teachers, since they reach the largest audience, and the one most difficult to interest. Through the courtesy of the Grand Forks Herald, a fly-page was edited by the pure food committee in August, when the fly season is at its height and the dread of typhoid is strong with the parents of the less fortunate classes. Yellow journalism of the most lurid type was resorted to, and so black was the little pest painted in both prose and verse that the public seemed roused to the situation.

Closely following the press exposÉ of the fly came the climax of the season’s campaign for pure food and sanitary conditions. The public-spirited proprietor of one of the motion-picture theaters gave the pure food committee the use of the theater with all proceeds for one day for the presentation of the fly-pest film....

As a result of complaints from dairymen and confectioners that bottle and ice cream cans were returned in bad condition, cards with hints to housewives were printed and distributed by milkmen to their customers.

The subject of a municipal slaughter house was brought before various organizations and committees were appointed to coÖperate in a city-wide effort to solve the problem. The subject of a city incinerator for the disposal of garbage was also agitated.

The pure food committee, through the courtesy of the Minnesota food commission, secured the pure food exhibit of the commission, placing it in a conspicuous place on the grounds during the state fair, with a lecturer in charge. This proved a great attraction, and the space in front of the exhibit was crowded with people from the rural districts who had heard little of the new gospel of pure food. The local food inspector visited each food concession as it was being placed, and explained the pure food law, with a hint that it was to be enforced on the grounds during the fair. Several later visits were made to the concessions, and suggestions were made and many bad practices discovered and stopped. For example, lemonade must be made from lemons rather than from acid powder was one order enforced. It was noticeable that the eating places having screens were the most popular.

The second season of pure food education is naturally less strenuous for the committee, but not so for the inspector, who, if she be the woman for the place, continually finds new problems to be solved. No small part of her time must be devoted to receiving complaints and assisting merchants in planning ways of complying more completely with the law. She should be kind, tactful, firm and resourceful, with a touch of the Sherlock Holmes quality.

It is well to invite the members of the city council and board of health to take an early spring drive to the city dumping grounds and slaughter houses—early enough to find conditions at their worst.

No one factor can make for the health of a community more surely than a strict enforcement of the pure food laws. This enforcement by a special officer makes it possible for bad practices of all kinds to be traced and eliminated, either by persuasion or fine. It makes it possible for the poor to be supplied with clean, pure food, and this is really the greatest good that can come of the law, since the well-to-do, who buy at large, well-kept stores on main business streets, where neatness is an asset, can more easily influence the food merchants. The poor, buying in small quantities, patronize the small, ill-kept store in the vicinity of the home, and have little influence. With food inspectors, one store is as rigidly scrutinized as another, and the small buyer at the small, out-of-the-way store has equal protection with the large buyer at the large store in the center of business.

In response to an inquiry the following report comes later from Mrs. Leonard:

The municipal abattoir was built in Grand Forks, and, by dint of all the pressure the Civic League could bring to bear, it was put in working order after being carelessly constructed. After working for years to get the abattoir and telling the Council what features were necessary to make it efficient and sanitary, not one of the women was put on the advisory committee, even, when it was being built. It is still far from perfect and yet scarcely a week passes that the food inspector does not receive inquiries for plans and advice from towns all over the West, such is the interest in the smaller Western cities in doing things for themselves. With all the bad management, the abattoir has some months paid expenses, which is an excellent showing for so new an institution.

The activity of Indiana women was a large factor in the establishment of a state laboratory of hygiene under the Board of Health charged with the examination of food and drugs and assistance in the enforcement of health laws. The chief of the food research laboratory in Philadelphia is a woman—Dr. Mary Pennington.

Missouri women pledged their efforts to a pure food crusade some time ago, while the excellent laws in Texas reflect the interest of the women of that state. In 1906 the women of Iowa drafted a pure food bill which they presented to the legislature. In Ohio where fair legislation existed, the women worked to have it enforced.

In Kansas State Food Commissioner Fricke appealed to the club women to aid him in enforcing food regulations of that state by acting as volunteer inspectors. Where they have not been asked by city and state officials to act, women have often proceeded to act on their own initiative. An official inspection and report on dairy products were recently undertaken by Chicago Club women during the session of the National Dairy Show. Women in Louisiana are active in the inspection of bakeries, meat markets and dairies. It is largely due to the work of women that fruit stands and markets are screened in New Orleans, a city in utmost need of such care. This is true of many other cities. Louisiana has a woman as state health inspector—Agnes Morris.

In Wheeling, West Virginia, the club women have been asking for a woman food inspector. Tacoma, Washington, is one of those cities which already have a woman serving in that capacity. Such a clean food supply is reported from that city that other communities in the state are imitating its example. The women of Seattle, Washington, transformed some old plants into five large modern sanitary bakeries.

Mrs. Sarah Evans was in 1909 Inspector of Markets in Portland, Oregon, and her publication of clean market requirements was the inspiration of more than one organization of women for better civic conditions.

The Housewives’ League, organized and directed by Mrs. Julian Heath of New York, has the twofold aim of securing pure food uncontaminated by dust and flies and of securing it at a lower cost. In the general pure food war, Mrs. Heath and her assistant, Miss M. E. McOuat, have, among other things, sought to interest girls in their teens in the purity and cleanliness of the candy and soda water they buy. Open-air meetings in the poorer districts of New York City, where cheap and dangerous wares are on every hand, have been held to warn young children against poisons of various kinds. At the same time this organization has assisted those officials who have sought to induce storekeepers to carry better varieties. They have also reported violations of the law as they have been discovered.

The Women’s Health Protective Association of Philadelphia had a Bakeshop Committee which visited bakeries and consulted with the bakers themselves over conditions. The state of affairs that was revealed to the women led to a public agitation and legislation controlling the most unsanitary features of these places.

A new bakeshop code secured by the women of Cleveland requires absolute cleanliness and a ten-hour day for employees. A “White List” is published showing those bakers who best observe the code.

Mrs. E. E. McKibber, chairman of the Food Sanitation Committee of the General Federation of Clubs, has sent a letter to the clubs of each state to this effect:

“Do you as club women keep yourselves informed and discriminate against poor food as you do against poor clothing?

“Have you helped pass an ordinance looking to a better food supply, to the better handling of food?

“Have you any organization in your town that looks after the food supply?”

This pressure by the chairman of the Food Sanitation Committee of the clubs indicates that hundreds of committees representing thousands of women are instituting a constructive campaign for better and cleaner food.

The Women’s Municipal League of Boston has been very active. “The cleanliness and hygienic condition of markets seems to me to belong peculiarly to woman’s province,” writes the chairman of its market committee, “and I confess it gives me a certain feeling of shame that a comparatively small and new city like Portland should be more civilized in this respect than Boston. It is, however, encouraging to think that Portland has been brought to this standard from a lower condition than Boston’s by the efforts of a few women.”

The Boston League in connection with its market work made a study of oysters last year in their relation to the transmission of infectious diseases, and cold storage.

For an investigation of provision shops, twenty-four Radcliff students were used who conducted the investigations “with enthusiasm and success, bringing to the committee papers of decided ability. Could this plan, modified perhaps in some details, be extended successfully over the whole city there would result from it such a mass of information respecting the small shops as would cast a very strong light upon the whole problem of the proper marketing of the food supply in a big city. As far as we know no such investigation has been undertaken before.”

The Boston League has very positive ideas about legislation and enforcement, as the analysis in its 1913 report indicates.

Sometimes despairing of securing the sanitary conditions that they deem essential in the handling of food, women seek to establish public markets under stricter surveillance. In Pasadena, California, for instance, the Shakespeare Club sought to persuade the City Fathers to establish a free public market under conditions satisfactory to intelligent housewives. The City Fathers ignored the plea and the women are raising money with which to finance the enterprise themselves. The Pasadena Elks have donated a lot and the women will pay an overseer and make rules for the sale of foodstuffs.

Market conditions in New Orleans are being closely studied by a committee of housewives, headed by that very able woman, Mrs. J. C. Matthews. Among the recommendations are:

The repeal of all restricting ordinances which militate against healthy competition in the handling of produce—game, fruits, fish and meats.

That the city maintain two or three model sanitary central markets for the wholesale and retail handling of supplies.

That a market commission composed of men and women be appointed to coÖperate with the commissioner in charge of the markets, so as to secure the best possible sanitary and distributing conditions.^[11]

In connection with this battle for pure food and drugs, it is interesting to see open credit given, in a conservative and anti-feminist paper in New York like The Times, to a woman for securing the new drug law in 1914. Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt led the fight for this new legislation which goes further than any other in stopping the sale of habit-forming drugs in that it provides a simple and effective way of discovering and punishing the sellers of such drugs as cocaine and opium. Chloral, morphine and opium and any compounds and preparations derived therefrom can no longer be sold except on the prescription of a regularly licensed medical practitioner or dentist or veterinarian. Prosecutions have already taken place under the new law. While the new drug law was due to Mrs. Vanderbilt, according to the newspaper headlines and the discussion of its passage in the above mentioned paper, influential men and women were her active aiders and abettors. Among these were judges of the New York courts, men and women probation officers, representatives of both sexes from reformatory institutions, the prison associations, and others. Dr. Katharine B. Davis, the city commissioner of corrections, worked for the success of the measure.

Pure water as well as pure food and drugs has been the starting-point of many a woman’s organization formed for civic purposes or for a combination of cultural and civic endeavor.

National recognition was won by the women of New Orleans, members of the Era Club, in their successful efforts for a municipal sewerage, water and drainage system. The yellow fever epidemic that raged in that city a few years ago and its attendant sacrifice of life aroused the women even more than the men to the imperative need of a pure water supply and a scientific drainage system adapted to the peculiar conditions of that city.

The women seem to have felt the need; the men to have appreciated the difficulties in the way of securing the system. The Era Club believed that, where there is a need, there is a way and the men finally agreed. Practically every house in the city at the time of the epidemic had a cesspool. “The drainage system was incomplete and inadequate, dependent upon a few drainage machines which paddled the water through troughs into the canals and eventually into Lake Ponchartrain. After a heavy rainfall the streets were flooded; in some sections the water would stand for days.”

Still the men hesitated to undertake the kind of an enterprise that local conditions demanded. For the first and only time the women of New Orleans, who were qualified, voted, instigated and led by that splendid Southern woman, Kate Gordon.

The Survey thus describes the attitude taken by the women:

Under the Louisiana Constitution women property-holders may vote at elections for authorizing municipal bond issues, and any woman who objects to going to the polls may send a proxy, provided that the proxy be given in the presence of two witnesses, which witnesses, by a strange mingling of the old and the new order of things, must be men. The work undertaken by the Era Club was to get the signature of one-third of the taxpayers to a petition praying for a special election; to arouse sufficient interest among both men and women to induce them to vote at the special election, and to furnish proxies to those ladies who feared that by going to the polls they might incur the stigma of being called a new woman. And all this the Era Club accomplished. The special election was held, the women voted or sent proxies, and the necessary sum was authorized. As three-fourths of the property-holders of the city were women, the significance of this work is apparent.

The area that had to be drained and properly supplied with sewers comprised 37½ square miles and 700 miles of streets, and it is claimed even by outsiders that this undertaking was the largest public work of this character ever put through at one time in the United States.

That the women of New Orleans have not voted since that occasion is no evidence of their discouragement at their first vote. Municipal bonds are not issued at every election and these alone entitle any of them to vote. Suffrage conferences are held in New Orleans and the agitation for a wider suffrage in Louisiana is being carried on by the same women who so ably fought to secure pure water for New Orleans.

This would seem like the most direct kind of health work, for we learn that “the death rate has been reduced 20 per cent., business confidence has been restored and New Orleans is today one of the healthiest and most delightful cities of the country,” according to one of the lovers of the city.

One of the papers on the Pacific Coast, the Pasadena Star, recently reported that:

[United States] Surgeon-General Blue pays a handsome, but deserved, tribute to the efficiency of women in practical aid in making cities sanitary, referring particularly to the excellent work of women in San Francisco, in their invaluable assistance in eradicating the plague from the bay city, a few years ago.

From the southern extremity of the continent we pass almost to the northern, noting on our way many a successful attempt of women in towns and cities, to improve water conditions.

In Woonsocket in the dry region of South Dakota the women of a club requested the Town Fathers to supply them with pure and more abundant water. Regret was expressed by the fathers that they could not comply with the request. The women, nothing daunted, organized an Improvement Association, collected money and hired an expert to drill an artesian well. When plenty of pure water gushed forth, the town officials consented to lay mains through the streets and allow the people to receive water from this excellent source. The women were then successful also in persuading the fathers to plan a beautiful park, or accept their own plans for the same, with a charming artificial lake as the crowning pleasure.^[12]

In New Mexico the Woman’s Club of Roswell behaved in much the same way. It was irrigation that seemed the crying need of that region. The club had a well dug and erected a tank which holds several thousands of gallons of water. As the women had previously planted some hundreds of trees in their town, they were thus able to maintain them also in a healthy condition.

One who reads the following somewhat casual report of a victory in a fight for better water might have no appreciation of the fact that it was the women of New Canaan who did the fighting, and hard fighting it was, for the filtration plant in their vicinity:

Agitation by the local Civic League for an improved water supply for New Canaan, Connecticut, recently won, through the Public Utilities Commission, a victory which may lead to important results throughout the state. The League, aided by an engineer and a sanitary expert, after a three-day hearing at Hartford, secured an order directing the private water company to install a filtration plant and equipment to purge the water of all odor and color.

The lawyer for the water company in his brief declared that if the request of the petitioners were granted the previous railroad work of the Commission would be small in comparison with what was ahead in adjudicating similar appeals relating to water supply in other towns. “The Commission,” said one of the petitioners after the verdict had been handed down, “has rendered this decision, so let us hope that good days are ahead for Connecticut in regard to water supply, and that it may lead to an efficient system of state inspection.”

It was the women who refused to accept the findings of the male authorities with reference to the purity of the water and proposed methods for its control. Experts were engaged by them and their activity at the hearings at Hartford made their determination to have better water so clear that the men yielded and now New Canaan is proud of its achievement—so proud that notices of the same necessitate an inquiry into the personnel of the Civic League for a complete story.

Women were instrumental in establishing public baths in several cities; notably in Pittsburgh, where The Civic Club of Allegheny County led in the agitation. The Woman’s Institute of Yonkers campaigned for baths in that community and some were secured. In cases where women have been directly interested in having baths arranged for the people, better sanitary conditions seem sometimes to have prevailed than in cases where they just passively approved and the city established the baths. In Newark, New Jersey, for example, a few women made an examination of the conditions of the public baths which had been established in that city for some time. To their horror they found them in a positively infected condition and their task therefore was the purification of existing bathing places. This they had to bring about by public sentiment and its concentration on the officials responsible for the condition of affairs. A water supply in every home, therefore, interests many women far more than any public bath proposal.

There is more foundation for the arguments in favor of public wash houses than for the arguments in favor of public baths. Whatever the equipment in individual homes for bathing, and however excellent the individual water service, there are health considerations of a very different character to be met in connection with the family laundry work. In large towns and even in small towns in congested areas there are no facilities for drying the clothes and the sanitary conditions which result from indoor home drying are deplorable and dangerous. In addition to health considerations, the mental effect of sitting in rooms filled with damp clothes is so depressing that many a man and many a boy or girl has fled from home to the saloon and dance hall as a more cheerful place to spend the evening. The poor mother who has done the washing must bear its company in solitary submission.

In an effort to alter this pathetic condition of affairs, some attempt has been made to establish public laundries with drying rooms attached and every facility for rapid and sanitary disposal of the weekly laundry. There are economic features which add reasonableness to the agitation for public laundries, for the waste of fuel and energy involved in individual fires for washing and ironing is incalculable and useless, for the most part.

The Civic Club of Allegheny County has laundries in connection with its bath houses, but their use is a matter of gradual education as the masses are slow to give up cherished customs, however harmful and wasteful. Where day nurseries exist side by side with the public wash house or in close proximity the situation is more easily met as then the mothers can leave their babies in safe hands while they are at work in the laundry. Philadelphia, Buffalo, Baltimore and Elmira and a very few other cities have already these public wash houses.

Woman’s historic function having been along the line of cleanliness, her instinct when she looks forth from her own clean windows is toward public cleanliness. Her indoor battle has been against the dirt that blew in from outside, against the dust and ashes of the streets, and the particles of germ-laden matter carried in from neglected refuse piles. Ultimately she begins to take an interest in that portion of municipal dusting and sweeping assigned to men; namely, street cleaning.

A volume itself could be written on the activities of women for clean streets and public places. Little towns have needed and received the treatment even as the great cities—not every little town nor every large city but countless numbers of them. Lack of space prevents the recounting here of many significant or typical cases of women’s work for public cleanliness as an aid to general health.

The Women’s Civic League of Baltimore originated in that city the idea of a “Clean City Crusade,” and its application was acknowledged by city officials to have been of great assistance to various departments: street cleaning, fire and health. Chief Engineer August Emrich of the Fire Department said, in 1913, that the fire losses for 1912 were less than they had been for the previous 34 years, and he gave much of the credit for this result to the Clean City Crusade which led to the removal of rubbish and other inflammable materials.

That Pennsylvania women generally are alert to the needs of greater public cleanliness is evidenced by the publication issued by the Civics Committee of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women of which Mrs. Owen Wister was chairman. This is a list of suggestions for the “Observance of Municipal Housecleaning Day,” and consists of practical directions for this work with a list of civic activities closely allied with “housecleaning day” which should be undertaken as rapidly as possible.

The Civic Club of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, says: “It is no longer necessary for us to maintain at our own cost the practical experiment we began in street cleaning or to advocate the paving of a single principal street as a test of the value of improved city highways, nor is it necessary longer to strive for a pure water supply, a healthier sewerage system, or the construction of playgrounds for the pleasure of our fellow-citizens. This work is now being done by city councils or the Board of Public Works and by the Park Commission.” That was in 1906 and it proves that, after one or two demonstrations of the possibilities and practical advantages of cleanings, the city proves ready to assume the responsibility for them.

The next great problem is how to keep the city clean, for real health protective work is not a matter of annual and sensational hauling away of miscellaneous rubbish, but an every-day-in-the-year campaign for the elimination of disease-breeding germs and dust provokers. As they volunteered to show the wisdom of better disposal of rubbish and of street flushing and oiling, so women are volunteering to educate the people to desire permanent cleanliness. The inherited instincts of the cleanly housekeeper thus become a valuable municipal asset.

In Philadelphia, Mrs. Edith Pearce, a club woman, is a city inspector of street cleaning. The Woman’s Home Companion thus described the way she goes about her work:

First she planned for making the children her aids, teaching them not only to refrain from throwing fruit skins, paper and other rubbish into the street, but also to prevent others from so doing. She reached the children and awoke in them a wholesome interest in the city’s appearance by means of addresses in the public schools and the distribution of simple circulars. Then she urged clubs, neighborhood groups and whole communities to coÖperate with the street cleaners. In one week she addressed ten of the city’s leading clubs for women on her chosen theme. In the crowded poorer sections she speaks from a soap box to corner gatherings of the housekeepers of the neighborhood, telling them, often with the aid of an interpreter, how to handle their waste, and inspiring them to do their part in keeping their surroundings clean and sanitary. She has found that the Italian, Polish, and Russian mothers whom she addresses become deeply interested in municipal housecleaning; some of them “point with pride” to alleys, formerly reeking with filth but now clean and orderly.

The American Journal of Hygiene recently printed a paper by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards of Boston on “Instructive Inspection,” elucidating the advantages to be derived from the Board of Health’s appointment of a teacher to be sent with power like any other inspection officer “wherever ignorance, usually diagnosed as stubbornness,” is found.

Detroit club women are asking to be appointed as instructive inspectors to do this kind of work while women in the Municipal League of Boston are already performing a somewhat similar service, clothed with official authority. Fifty St. Louis club women have volunteered and been accepted as city inspectors “to help make St. Louis the healthiest city in the country.”

In the sphere of municipal housekeeping, which forms such an easy transition from domestic housekeeping, women have proved themselves interested and efficient in suggesting reforms and helping to see them completed to the minutest detail.

The sanitary survey of a municipality has had to precede, of course, any large constructive proposals for improvement. One of our leading experts in this field is Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane, who has been pressed into service far and wide for this purpose. A number of her reports on sanitary and social conditions have been published, describing such places as Nashville, Tennessee; Erie, Pennsylvania; Saginaw, Michigan; Rochester, New York; and seventeen cities in Minnesota. These reports represent comparative studies on different topics; such as, water works, sewers, street sanitation, garbage collection and disposal, the smoke nuisance, milk supply, meat supply, markets and food factories, hygiene and sanitation of school houses, housing problems, almshouses and jails. These surveys were made at the request of local associations and officials, usually instigated, we believe, by women. The surveys in Minnesota, for example, were made at the invitation of the State Board of Health and the Federation of Women’s Clubs with the coÖperation of the State Medical Association, the local medical societies, and the commercial clubs of some of the larger cities. In Rochester the survey was undertaken at the invitation of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union seconded by the mayor and a number of official and civic organizations. Mrs. Crane has written on “Factors of the Street Cleaning Problem,” and similar questions, in a way that shows intimate acquaintance with the technique of road-making and other municipal enterprises.

The organization of junior leagues for guarding the streets has seemed to some persons, women included, as a very trivial public activity. They have had an impression that budget-making or public accounting were far more intellectual operations and of more social value. Are they?

One of the most expensive of public departments is the street cleaning one. Shall any sum demanded by the present incumbent in the office of chief of that department be granted lightly and the books be well kept and the affair end? Or shall causes of dirty streets be investigated to the full and the problem of heavy expense for cleaning be tackled perhaps by some measure for the prevention of dust and refuse? The education of the people so that they may desire permanent cleanliness instead of the mere excitement of a spectacular clean-up week is of the most fundamental concern. No element in that education is too insignificant to deserve attention.

Children, through ignorance, are habitual misusers of city streets, but they are also the most enthusiastic clean-up crusaders and rubbish preventers when they are once aroused. All sections of the country announce the formation of these children’s leagues to assist the women and the city officials in cleaning-up enterprises, and in carrying home the messages of prevention and the feeling of public interest which they have acquired at school or at their little meetings. In New York, circulars were printed recently in Yiddish, Italian, and English and distributed to children by women’s clubs, teachers, churches, and civic organizations, to aid the Health Department in its annual clean-up program.

Junior leagues may greatly reduce the cost of the street cleaning department and the work of the courts in enforcing city ordinances and thus materially assist in the city budget-making; but it requires tact and patience and more than a mere bookkeeper’s mind to make them effective.

Jane Addams and other members of the Woman’s Club of Chicago on their own initiative gave a practical demonstration of their ability to keep hitherto neglected streets clean and of the wisdom of the municipal exercise of such a function. Two members of the Club later were appointed on the Municipal Garbage Commission which helped to solve Chicago’s problem in an expert and comprehensive way. Miss Mary McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement made effective contributions to this work through a personal study of refuse disposal systems in Europe. The story of the efforts of Chicago for a proper refuse disposal system here reprinted from The Survey is well worth study:

Recent municipal purchase of a private company’s reduction plant provides a temporary plan for the disposal of Chicago’s garbage and ends a hard civic struggle to overcome exploitation of the public on the one hand and amazing lack of official foresight and planning on the other. But it is merely an escape from a bad muddle. The struggle is still on to secure for the city a scientific and adequate city-wide system of garbage collection and disposal.

During most of the time prior to this crisis the issue had been mainly a plaything of politicians. But it began to assume a new aspect when the vote was given to women and they thus came to have a voice in municipal housekeeping.

The care of the city’s waste had been a serious matter to the Woman’s City Club, whose committee on the subject had been for three years urging the wisdom of preparing for the day, September 1, 1913, when the contract with the reduction plant would end. For nineteen years the University of Chicago Settlement had protested against making the twenty-ninth ward the city’s dumping ground, but without avail.

In the midst of the intense political fight over the garbage question there seemed to be no one with courage to lead toward any constructive plan. The administration and the aldermen played battledore and shuttlecock with the question of responsibility. At this crisis—when the summer’s heat was intense and no definite plans were in sight for caring for the daily six hundred tons of garbage—the Woman’s City Club’s Waste Committee sent a series of pointed questions to the city officials whom they held responsible for this situation. The press published these questions and, as the questioners had secured the vote, the city officials were much disturbed. They then brought the matter before the city’s Health Committee, making an adequate and scientific city-wide plan for the collection and disposal of the city’s refuse. The chairman of the Health Committee, Alderman Nance, backed by Alderman Merriam, from that moment became the leader of the movement to secure a scientific report and plan.

The members of the City Council, glad to have a definite thing to do to save themselves politically, created a City Waste Commission with an appropriation of $10,000. Two women from the Woman’s City Club were appointed on this commission, Mrs. William B. Owen, chairman of the Clean-up Day Committee, and Mary E. McDowell, chairman of the City Waste Committee. The club for the three years had carried to every section of the city its welfare exhibit. In connection it gave stereopticon lectures showing the city dumps and noxious garbage wagons overloaded with reeking garbage and then in contrast the motor garbage wagon of the city of Furth, Bavaria, and the model incineration plants which Miss McDowell had seen in Germany. By this method the average citizen was made more intelligent and wideawake than the city government. He had been educated to look upon dumps as antediluvian and intolerable.

The Woman’s City Club has issued bulletins to educate a public that will demand the best collection and disposal system known, one that will not be an unpleasant industry in any community, and a collection system that will make short hauls, with frequent collections in wagons that are closed tight and fly-proof. This is possible to any people who demand sanitation first and economy second, who take municipal housekeeping out of the hands of politicians, put at the head of “the cleansing department” a sanitary engineer and give the city the right to collect all garbage from hotels and restaurants as well as households. According to the data shown by the Woman’s Club, the city can in this way make enough money to pay for the whole system of collection and disposal.

The movies which are being utilized all along the line have been brought into play in several places for sanitary education. In Boston one of the theaters is coÖperating with the Women’s Municipal League “by giving an eight-minute picture act showing striking facts about children playing on top of sheds, in dark alleys and in the refuse from overturned garbage cans; about dirty and unsanitary streets and unsightly and obnoxious dumping at sea and on land; showing, also, better ways of doing things and better places to play, and giving the theater-goers something interesting and worth while to think about.”