  Social service is not an exact science and it does not mean the same thing to all people. Charity or philanthropy was more definite and has always been more or less of an official concern in municipalities. In times of crises, floods, panics, fires, earthquakes, extreme cold or excessive heat, cities and towns have supplemented the help rendered by individuals in alleviating hunger, homelessness, illness and want. The municipality thus often makes charitable doles to the victims of the elements, regarding the service as necessary, but temporary; remedial, not preventive. The social investigations which have been made in recent years, together with the revelations made by charitable organizations, have driven home the fact that while intermittent fire and water and industrial crises and heat and cold undoubtedly add to human helplessness or distress, there is a steady and constant helplessness and distress based on underfeeding, homelessness or bad housing, unemployment, lack of vocational training, low wages, ignorance, occupational diseases and accidents, sexual irregularity, and other causes for which spasmodic almsgiving, however tenderly and efficiently applied, is no remedy whatever. Added to this definite knowledge is the knowledge, based on the experience of charity workers, of the opprobrium which is cast upon charity of the personal type, at least, by industrious wage-earners, the products of whose toil, instead of being used to provide them with the creature comforts, are, in many cases, consumed by those who toil not, neither do Partly to satisfy their own intelligence and partly to overcome the resentment among working people at the idea of charity, the social worker has come into being and social service has developed into a philosophy, an education, and to a certain extent into a science. Step by step it has been pushed into municipal departments—notably, the health and educational departments. Where associated charities have been well developed and the city has the idea of social service in its charitable work, the tendency is to use the word “welfare” and to designate this function as “public welfare.” It is the same development which has characterized all other public work—the growth from remedy to prevention—and the growth is stable for the reason that it represents economy in place of the former waste of money and effort and because popular education is leading to the demand for prevention and justice rather than charity. In this expansion of municipal functions there can be little dispute as to the influence of women. Their hearts touched in the beginning by human misery and their sentiments aroused, they have been led into manifold activities in attempts at amelioration, which have taught them the breeding places of disease, as well as of vice, crime, poverty and misery. Having learned that effectively to “swat the fly” they must swat its nest, women have also learned that to swat disease they must swat poor housing, evil labor conditions, ignorance, and vicious interests. Sometimes the mere self-preservative instincts have forced women out to work among their neighbors; for in cities one’s neighbors may murder in innumerable ways besides with the pistol or dirk. Middle- and upper-class women, having more leisure than middle- and upper-class men, have had greater opportunity for social observation and the cultivation of social sympathies, for the latter accompanies the former instead of Just in the proportion that social service develops into public action, and away from private philanthropy and personal interference, is the help of working people secured. With the increase of the demands of working people for the means with which to prevent their own destruction and the undermining of the rest of society, will come, many predict, the absorption of social service into organized public service just as the absorption of the settlement is gradually being accomplished by the school center. Whatever may be the outcome of the present tendencies in social service, it is certain that women are actively engaged in every branch of it: in organized charity, in all the specialized branches of kindred work, such as care for the several types of dependents and delinquents, in organizing women workers in the industries, in making social surveys and special investigation, and in creating the literature of social service. Women have rendered valiant service in various permanent associations concerned in the improvement of social conditions. The largest gift ever given by a single donor to such an organization was that of Mrs. Abram A. Anderson who gave $650,000 to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, for a specific purpose; namely, the founding of a department of social welfare with experimental and demonstrating laboratories. In A study of the work performed by women engaged in the activities of this Association reveals the fact that they prepare many of its important publications. Interior pictures inserted in the last report show large offices filled with women, in one case forty of them preparing their daily reports on visiting. The advisory committees in the Bureau of Rehabilitation and Relief are composed of women who assume the burden, on stated mornings, of meeting applicants and helping with “instruction; with the correction of defects, physical, mental, moral; with patient, careful planning; with continued interest and personal service.” The National Consumers’ League was organized by women and is largely supported by them. This society “is an association of people who believe to buy is to have power, to have power is to have responsibility. Therefore it seeks to better the industrial conditions of the worker, and to insure sanitary articles to the consumer, by educating the public to avoid rush orders, to shop early in the day, early in the week, and early in the Christmas season; by furnishing a label which guarantees the product bearing it to be made under sanitary conditions and without hardship to the workers; by assisting in the enforcement of present laws relating to child labor, women workers, sweat shops, fire hazards, pure foods, and other matters. Locally it makes investigations and reports facts to city authorities.” The Travelers’ Aid Society, a great protective and preventive agency, which assumes large responsibilities in looking after foreigners, women, and girls traveling on railways, Not only do women coÖperate with various agencies for social service. Their clubs and associations of all kinds are turning more and more to the consideration of social matters outside of the range of their immediate interests. Indeed one might say with justice that “social economy” is now one of the chief studies of women’s societies and that social service in an ever broader sense is becoming more and more the goal of their activities. The women’s clubs, singly and in their federations, have now largely outgrown the self-improvement stage of their career and are going into matters of public health, education, recreation, corrections, and labor. For example, the New England Conference of State Federations of Women’s Clubs representing over 55,000 women is a permanent organization of recent formation designed as an alliance for educational and social service. Speeches at this Conference emphasized the need of better housing and divorce laws; vocational training; pure food legislation; a single standard of morality for men and women; the suppression of “nauseous” news in the daily press; health measures; and the enforcement of laws for the protection and conservation of womanhood, childhood and the home. The general trend of club women’s development in the United States as a whole is shown by the following resolutions passed at the Biennial Convention of Women’s Clubs held in Chicago in June, 1914: approval of equal suffrage; better fire protection; increased appropriations for city and state boards of health; university extension work for the prevention of disease; federal bureau of Home Economics; the use of school buildings as social centers; the support of The large and influential Council of Jewish Women is also concerned with these lines of social service. Some of their special activities and interests will be considered in other chapters. If we turn to localities and study the work of single clubs, we find an ever-increasing interest in social service and that interest accompanied by practical action. For instance, the Woman’s Club of Paducah, Kentucky, proved so efficient in its administration of funds for relief of the poor that the mayor and council asked its assistance in other lines: inspection of dairies, slaughter houses, etc. The social service work of such a specialized society as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union reflects a wide range of interests and activities, its development being an inevitable response to needs growing out of its study of the evils accompanying the liquor traffic. It has worked among all races and industrial groups of men and their families; it has done prison visiting, reformatory and prisoners’ aid work; it has helped courts and probation work; it has helped to secure police matrons and policewomen: it has stood for the single standard of morals and the suppression of the white slave traffic; it has helped to secure playgrounds and other recreational facilities; it has tried to teach thrift through school savings banks; it has done rescue work; and it has drafted and urged and watched the enforcement of legislation relating to industrial education and vocational guidance, child labor, liquor and narcotics and cigarettes, gambling, curfew, polygamy, segregation of prostitutes, labor, and all similar problems. It has opposed segregated districts and worked whole-heartedly for woman suffrage. The National Civic Federation has a woman’s department interested in “securing needed improvements in the Everywhere among women’s associations the call for social service is sounding forth. The spirit of this movement is admirably illustrated in an article bearing the title of “Women and Social Service,” written by Mrs. R. R. Cotten, of North Carolina, for the Social Service Quarterly: The term Social Service means work for the welfare of humanity, and there can be no doubt as to the relation between that work and women. Primarily and ultimately it is work for women. As the givers of life, as the mothers of humanity, their activities must be unremitting in the effort to promote the welfare of humanity. In the past their efforts were devoted to the welfare of their families, and to a limited extent reached the communities in which they lived, but now few fields of service are closed to them. The world has realized that the welfare of a few cannot be assured except by securing the welfare of all, while the security of all assures the safety of our own special few. Christian effort is no longer limited to the churches. The human heart has overflowed with a great yearning to make this earth better by filling it with healthier, happier, more human people. In response to this yearning everywhere heads are planning and hands are clasping in a determined effort to accomplish this result. This desire led to the formation of the North Carolina Conference for Social Service, the aim of which is “to study and improve social, civic, moral, and economic conditions in our State, especially conditions that injuriously affect child life, or tend to perpetuate preventable ignorance, disease, degeneracy, or poverty among our people.” Every woman’s heart responds to this call to service for the benefit of the children. Every woman is interested in the investigation of the conditions which surround child life, and every woman will coÖperate in seeking to remedy such conditions as are injurious. In educational progress; in the promotion of public health, which necessarily includes individual health; in prison reform; in the study of eugenics; in the improvement of country life, and in all social, civic, and economic problems men need and welcome the help of women. Neither can accomplish much alone; together they must strive and overcome, together they must win or lose. Together they must attack “the conditions which injuriously affect child life” until all children shall have opportunity for development into useful citizens. This being true no one can deny that Social Service is woman’s work. The day is past when we deluded ourselves with the thought that our responsibility ceased with the performance of our individual duties. We are jointly responsible for the existing conditions, and only by a joint effort can they be improved. Our neighbor’s welfare is our business and our neighbor is all mankind. The power of environment to influence the life of an individual is known to all, and it is the natural duty of all women to see that all children are surrounded by conditions under which they can develop into good men and women. It may be a difficult task, it doubtless will require a long, persistent effort, but the object is well “worth while.” In the stress of busy lives men may sometimes forget these obligations, but women must ever bear them in mind, doing their own part toward improving conditions, and stimulating to renewed effort on these lines the men who forget. Together they can strive and win, remembering that the welfare of the next generation should be the very highest ambition of this generation. It is a challenge to the Church to prove her right to social mastery by a universal and unselfish ministry. It is a challenge to fathers and mothers and all social workers to lift the burdens of labor from childhood and to make education universal. It is a challenge to all citizens to rally to the leaders of social reforms, so as to secure for the nation civic righteousness, temperance, and health. It is a challenge to American chivalry to see that justice is guaranteed to all citizens regardless of race, color or religion, and especially to befriend and defend the friendless and helpless. It is a challenge to the present generation to show its gratitude for the heritage bequeathed to it through the toil and blood of centuries, by devoting itself more earnestly to the task of making the nation a universal brotherhood. It is a challenge to the men who make and administer laws to organize society as a school for the development of all her citizens, rather than simply to be a master to dispose of the dependent, defective, and delinquent population with the least expense to the State. It is a challenge to strong young men and women to volunteer for a crusade of social service, to be enlisted for heroic warfare against all destroyers of social health and justice, and to champion all that makes for an ideal national life. Outside of their own clubs and associations, constructive, organizing ability in social service has been shown by women, first, in their desire to consolidate social work for reasons of economy and efficiency. Josephine Shaw Lowell conceived the idea of a New York Charity Organization Society and took the lead in establishing it in 1882, but chose a man for the executive position. The Associated Charities of Mt. Vernon, now known as the People’s Institute, was initiated by women, and they are large factors in it still. The second vice-president, recording secretary and treasurer are women, and the Visiting Nurse Association, the Consumers’ League and the Westchester Woman’s Club are members. In Denver, the Jewish Social Service Federation has been made a permanent organization to work in the field covered by United Hebrew Charities in other cities. Women predominate in this Federation. Under the inspiration and guidance of Miss McKnight, of the Civic Club of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, organized charities became an accomplished fact in Pittsburgh and Allegheny. Word comes by letter from clubs and civic organizations of women, where charities are yet to be organized, stating their agitation with this in view. When it was discovered in 1907 in New York that the care of babies was distributed among some fifty societies, a step was taken toward coÖrdination of activities for babies. Social facts thus attacked at a thousand points gradually converge in one more harmonious and unified effort. A plan for “benevolence by coÖperation in place of benevolence by competition” was recently put into effect in Cleveland when the Federation for Charity and Philanthropy was formed as an alliance of fifty-three social organizations. In the formation of the alliance three hundred social workers, mainly women, toured the city to explain its purpose and secure the concentration of funds in the hands of its board, as well as wider participation in charity-giving. Economy of time and effort, it was felt, would thus be coupled with larger gifts when they came in the bulk. The experiment proved the theory to be sound. The purpose of the Cleveland Federation is to provide The results are more than financial or time saving. What small organizations cannot accomplish in the way of social investigation and education, united they can go far toward accomplishing. The women who do so much of the actual daily labor in connection with social service thus are getting an economic and educational training by their own experiences which render them valuable assets to any community. That which some cities attempt to secure through coÖrdinated private activities, the City of Los Angeles, California, now undertakes as a municipal experiment in its newly created Municipal Charities Commission. This Commission, established by city ordinance, “aims not only to protect the public in its expenditure of money, but to prevent the overlapping and misdirection of philanthropic endeavor. That this is made possible is due to the broad power conferred on the Commission and to the appointment of members who are familiar with all phases of social work.” Two women are members of this Commission. It will be watched with interest: hopefully by those who believe The skillful organization of private charity and its success in gathering financial support has led to a comparison of state, county and municipal charitable institutions with those under private management. This comparison has generally revealed an astonishing disproportion in values; in Pennsylvania, for instance, it was shown, “that a single hospital under private management had received a larger subsidy from the legislature than the Eastern Penitentiary, with an average of 1,400 convicts; that of $16,000,000 which had been appropriated at the last session to charitable and correctional institutions nearly half had gone to 273 agencies under private management, and that 263 of these were local in sphere and yet received over $6,000,000; and that there was almost no coÖrdination or articulation among the state, county, municipal and private agencies that have been multiplying of late, some of which were declared to be utterly superfluous; the need was felt for some strong standardizing influence that should bring order out of the chaos, put the state’s care of its wards on a non-political and scientific basis and act as the originator of new and modern ways of fighting poverty, degeneracy and crime.” To meet this situation men and women came together and formed the Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania. Private support will still be necessary but its aim will be to secure united support for a state-wide plan of charitable distribution. Pennsylvania needs, it is claimed, a woman’s reformatory, an institution for feeble-minded women, one for inebriates, and more extensive provision for the insane. This Association hopes to keep the public informed of these and similar needs. The organizing committee which becomes the first board of managers includes Martha P. Falconer, Mrs. Louise C. Madeira, Mrs. Edward Biddle and In other states there are state boards of charities for the establishment of which women have worked and on which they usually serve officially. The powers of these boards vary greatly, from a pure advisory function which is of little avail, unrecommended institutions winning subsidies over its advice, to a department of control carrying on preventive work against insanity, tuberculosis, inebriety, feeble-mindedness and similar evils. The service of women on charity commissions and as public relief officers has so long been an accepted fact that it scarcely needs notice here, but the argument for it advanced by the Massachusetts Committee on Women as Overseers of the Poor, a committee composed of both men and women, is so emphatic that it deserves special notice: The experience of the town of Brookline since 1877 and Winchester since 1891 and the city of Boston since 1891 has made it apparent that it is desirable to elect women upon the Boards of Overseers of the Poor—desirable for the following reasons: Because the time necessary for this important work is more often at their disposal. Because the classes to be aided are largely composed of women and children. Because of their special fitness to advise with the matrons of almshouses about the domestic arrangements of these institutions. Because of their fitness to discharge the duty now devolving upon Boards of Overseers of the Poor of towns, as well as of cities, of finding suitable homes outside the almshouse for dependent children. The Legislature at its In many places, women officials in charge of public charities have shown that directness in action, that promptness, and that efficiency which characterize the new type of public official generally. For instance, Kate Barnard, the secretary of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, is Commissioner of Charities in Oklahoma. The legal department conducted under her direction has wrested from incompetent or dishonest guardians and returned to orphans some $950,000 in cash, in addition to land probably several times the value of that cash return. The number of orphans involved is 1,373. The department also acts as public defender to prevent miscarriages of justice as far as possible for the poor. This work has been with a very limited appropriation and equipment. Amelia Sears, the Director of the Cook County, Chicago, Bureau of Child Welfare, has under her direction a corps of assistants trained by her largely, who are to do personal work with the inmates of public institutions and their dependent families. The Juvenile Protective Association will thus be relieved of its volunteer work for prisoners in the county jail, and their dependents. The families of children committed to or released from institutions are to be studied in the hope that their after-care may diminish the “in-andout” Whenever there is a single piece of relief work on a large scale to be undertaken, women are always to be found on the spot. One of the most conspicuous pieces of immediate relief on a rehabilitation basis was carried out in Dayton, Ohio, after the recent devastation wrought by the river floods. Newspaper accounts told of tragic losses, the dashes of important federal officers to the scene, and the like, but very little has leaked through the press as to the tedious, yet faithful, skillful, and intelligent work of rehabilitation which alone has pulled out of the wreckage the individuals affected and set them on their feet not only once more, but in many cases more firmly, than they had stood before. Of this unobtrusive local work, The Survey said: “While Edward T. Devine and Eugene T. Lies went to Dayton originally for the Washington Headquarters of the Red Cross, they also are doing their work under the authority and with appropriations from the local committee. They are assisted by Amelia N. Sears, secretary of Woman’s City Club, Chicago, who took part in the San Francisco rehabilitation work; Rose J. McHugh, secretary of Funds to Parents Committee, Chicago; Ada H. Rankin and Johanne Bojesen of the New York Charity Organization Society, who helped in the relief of the victims of the Triangle shirtwaist fire and the Titanic disaster; Grace O. Edwards of the Chicago United Charities; Edna E. Hatfield, probation officer, Indiana Harbor, Ind.; Edith S. Reider, general secretary, Associated Charities, Evanston, Ill.; Helen Zegar of the Compulsory Education Department, Chicago, who was in special charge of the relief of Polish and other immigrant families at the time of the Cherry Mine disaster. These Red Cross agents are in turn aided by a corps of local citizens, especially principals and teachers in the public schools, members of spontaneously organized local committees, and others.” Charity TransformedActive and efficient as women have shown themselves in high offices in public and private associations for charitable work, they have not lagged behind in the movement that is transforming the relief of the needy into a war on poverty. Little by little as the work of associated charities has widened, forces within the very organizations themselves necessitated the expansion of the idea of charity into one with broader implications. The organization of relief and the centralization of funds bring about a greater demand for relief because they abolish much of the personal succor of the old type. Instead of more or less lavish care of a few families intimately, all cases of relief that come to the notice of charitably minded persons are, through an organized system of relief, referred to the central agency which is expected when it receives thousands of dollars to do marvelous things with them. The very centralization of charity, however, creates the necessity for offices, clerks and stenographers, investigators, perhaps a training school, salaried heads, publications, and the like which consume funds rapidly. Indeed it has been estimated that in New York City under the system of the Charity Organization Society, it costs several dollars to distribute every single dollar in relief. The system of charity therefore breaks down of its own weight in time, or is transformed, much of the relief money being used for social workers instead of the poor, and the little money that is left being spread over a larger group of recipients. Of course a centralized bureau of charities can make appeal for money and get responses, but here again it has been estimated that for public movements it often costs a large portion of a dollar to bring in one, even when the greatest care is used in selecting probable donors. Owing to the financial situation within organized charity, the inquiries into efficiency in relief, and the criticism of almsgiving, charity workers have sought to alleviate distressing Gradually they realized that the remedy for lack of education was not charity, but schools, and many charity workers went over to vocational education and guidance activity; the remedy for unemployment they found to be a labor issue and many of them joined the working class movement or social reform movements having as their goal continuous labor, well requited; the remedy for sickness they found to be prevention and many of them went into public health work in all the ramifications described in Chapter II; the remedy for intemperance they found to be complex and many of them joined in prohibition or recreational or labor activities in the hope of checking its ravages; the remedy for preventable poverty they found to be its abolition and charity workers studied and divided into groups according as they thought it might be abolished—political groups for the most part. For example, Josephine Shaw Lowell, who was for years a member of the New York State Commission on Lunacy and Charity, saw that “she was giving the best years of her life to the service of the sick poor in the public institutions. Meanwhile, honest working people were being made sick by overwork in the service of the Christmas shopping mob. Mrs. Lowell proceeded, without loss of time, to invite to her home some leading retail merchants who were her friends, and some working people acquainted with the effects of The Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, soon after its establishment, formed a Housing and Tuberculosis Committee. The field workers in all such associations have helped to educate the executive bodies of the organization and the Executive Committee has helped to educate the people and municipal officials, and thus the whole social movement verges toward an increase of public functions. Indeed, everywhere charity workers are saying: “The people who come to us should be thrown back upon industry. It is a poor sort of an industrial system that cannot support those willing and able to work in it.” Finally social workers have come to the conclusion, many of them, that in most cases these are not private problems at all but socio-economic ones for which the social system, through government, is responsible. They therefore talk “community and public responsibility” and insist more and more that there shall be no public shirking or shrinking. With the trend toward public social service, organized charity itself becomes more and more a clearing house for other agencies or, in its effort to maintain itself through the self-preservative instinct that all institutions have, it assumes also the task of prevention by offering employment; opening hospitals and rest homes, milk stations, day nurseries; circulating educational pamphlets and the like. Thus duplication of work is occasionally found where the social workers of a hospital, of a settlement, and of a charity branch visit in the same day a tenement mother and force her to repeat the story of her problems. The only way in which such duplication can be avoided is through the organization The beginnings of the coÖrdinated social service under municipal control are already on the horizon. Take, for instance, the Board of Public Welfare of Kansas City, Missouri. This Board is four years old. Women are active on it as district superintendents, investigators, factory inspectors; in the social service department, parole department, department of lunches and unemployed, and women’s reformatory. The establishment of this Board makes possible an intensive district study in which is listed every special agency, school, church, institution, foreign, or negro colony. It provides for the teaching of sex hygiene in the schools and has all the up-to-date machinery, like school nurses. The work of the Board comprises studies of housing, recreation, health, temperance, vice, wage-earning women and women employed in industries, labor conditions, welfare work and industrial accidents. In short, its field is as broad as social needs. “What good does it all do?” asks the Bureau, and then answers the question itself: Well, in the first place, 4,517 people are living in better homes today because of the work done by our housing inspectors during the past year. Daily 40,000 men and women go to safer places to work because of the 693 orders issued by our factory inspection department and complied with by the employers of Kansas City. Thirty-one thousand times during the year have eager Over 3,000 families have been guided, inspired or comforted by our social workers in the Social Service Department. To over 2,000 prisoners applying for parole our Board has answered with freedom and a chance. Fifty thousand pleasant evenings were spent in social center meetings last winter, and most of these would not have been except for the efforts of the Board of Public Welfare. Twenty-six hundred public dances, with an aggregate attendance of over 500,000, were cleaner and safer because of the presence of Board of Public Welfare Inspectors. For the past few months there has not been a day when the 25,000 attendants on our motion-picture theaters have not, many of them, been shielded from vulgar or brutal scenes eliminated from the shows by the hot educational campaign carried on by our Recreation Department. Fifteen hundred people, frightened or worried by some crisis in their battle for bread and butter, have turned to the Welfare Loan Agency and found relief in a temporary loan. About 6,000 people, embittered by fraud, deceit, and oppression, turned to our Legal Aid Bureau for justice, which is often sweeter than any food. If human life, if morality, health and financial prosperity have any value, then these paragraphs answer what good has been done. The accomplishment of large results is due to the fact that organization on such a plan frees more money for relief than it consumes in salaries. All employees of the Board are chosen by civil service examinations. The Board “believes that social action should be based on accurate knowledge and investigations should both precede and accompany all efforts to improve social conditions. It strives for harmonious coÖperation with all existing agencies, both public and private, and does not duplicate the work of any. The Board gives no public outdoor relief except in cases where the breadwinner of the family is a city prisoner, and then only on the basis of actual destitution, The policy of the Board is briefly summarized in its annual report as follows: “It lays emphasis on justice before charity and on prevention rather than cure. It agrees that the burden of caring for the poor should be laid upon the entire community through taxation rather than be provided for by the voluntary gifts of the generous minority.” This very gradual transition from private to public control is especially apparent in the development of child-helping agencies. The Children’s Clinic in Chicago, for example, was first established by the Children’s Hospital Society. The county looked upon it, saw it was good, and assumed responsibility for it. Then social workers backed by philanthropists went a step further and established a psychopathic clinic with an alienist in charge to examine the children for mental weaknesses. “Of course,” says Jane Addams, “women interested in these children are not more interested in the psychopathic feature, which is philanthropic, than they are in the medical clinic, which is political. They are not more interested in the children who are dependent and are sent to one of the homes which are supported partly by public funds and partly by philanthropy than they are in those children who are sent to the homes which are supported altogether by public funds. And there you are—the whole thing absolutely mixed! Now a child may be paroled in care of its mother and paid by Court—where it once was dependent on private charity. We are not quite out of charity for the judge is often assisted by a committee composed of representatives of various city charities, but it is hard to tell what is philanthropy and what public service.” The spirit of this whole movement from old-fashioned charity to coÖrdinated social service was abundantly manifested For the sake of the whole Pacific coast the Seattle charity workers advertised this conference far and wide. Under the Central Council of Social Agencies, representing the fifty-six leading public and private social agencies of the city—from labor unions to the chamber of commerce, with the mayor at the head—active local committees were formed [consisting of men and women]. The Rotary Club, a business men’s body, raised the necessary $2,000, a corps of speakers was sent to organizations all over the city and state, even into Idaho, and a vigorous advertising campaign was conducted by means of billboards, 50,000 circulars, and columns of newspaper publicity. Country newspapers were reached by news-letter service. Letters sent out along the entire coast brought in three hundred new conference members. In the midst of this glowing setting the fortieth conference camped on July 5, registering at the close, July 12, an attendance of paid members numbering from outside the state of Washington over 450, and from Seattle and Washington 350 more. Seattle people fairly swarmed to the evening meetings, and the conference sermon drew a packed house of between 3,000 and 3,500. President Tucker estimated the total attendance at the thirty meetings during the week at between 25,000 and 30,000. Enthusiasm was no less remarkable. Through all the seven days the conference was “live.” The newspapers gave it practically unlimited space, one paper running two extra conference pages almost every day containing When the conference got down to work, it was clearly evident that social welfare, not charity, was the spirit of the delegates and speakers. Preventive measures, standards of living and labor, the relation of commercial organizations to social welfare, and the distribution and assimilation of immigrants were predominant over talk of mere relief. Courts, city officials, lawyers, and teachers were drawn into the conference as an evidence of its wider appeal and public importance. While the conference program was well rounded and covered every accustomed subject and many new ones, the response of the audiences brought out the trend of conference thought. And that trend was unmistakably economic—the challenge to the industrial order for sweeping readjustments. However keen the interest in other topics, this was one which never failed to elicit enthusiastic response. It broke out at the opening meeting when President Tucker sounded the call for a more fundamental and largely economic interpretation of social justice; it rose almost thunderously when Dr. McKelway in the conference sermon declared that at the bottom of the whole problem we now face is the question of wages, and added: “Men do not always know what justice is, and their thoughts widen with the process of the suns, but if there is any current of American thought today, it is the demand among the masses of men for justice. We can tell its course by the ripples on the surface, when some obstacle rears its head. Privilege of any kind must go down before the rush of that current.” The same response rose with every utterance of the slogan “Not charity but justice.” Appreciation of the industrial situation was voiced by speaker after speaker, even though his topic lay in other fields. The new radical labor groups, the I. W. W., Socialism and the single tax were frequently brought into discussion as movements to be reckoned with practically and studiously by social workers. The industrial Many of the organizations represented at the conference had initiated valuable civic institutions like public baths, recreational provisions, medical inspection in schools, and, in discussing development of new instrumentalities of social welfare, the delegates of such societies asked for the further extension of municipal functions to meet the needs of the city’s people. Significant of the new spirit actuating the charity workers of the country is the fact that three committees were discontinued at this national convention—Immigration, Commercial Organizations and Social Welfare, and Church and Social Work—while two new committees were formed—Social Hygiene and Defectives (including defective delinquents). The Committee on Families and Neighborhoods was renamed the Committee on the Family and the Community, including community programs. A new committee was created on Neighborhood Development, including recreation, which is a very different thing from the old type of charity committee in a neighborhood. The part played by women in this forward movement of social workers, who began as charity workers, is only partly revealed in the list of officers and chairmen of standing committees, interesting as they are. Mrs. John M. Glenn is one of the three vice-presidents and the following is a list of standing committees for 1914 with their chairmen: Social Hygiene, Maude E. Miner; Children, Mrs. Mary Vida Clark; Standards of Living and Labor, Including Social Insurance, Charles P. Neill; Health, Dr. Richard C. Cabot; Public Charities, Dr. J. T. Mastin; Defectives, Including Mental Hygiene and Defective Delinquency, Dr. Llwellys Barker; Family and Community, Eugene T. Lies; Charity workers have thus evidently grown into one definite group of social workers. Another large group is composed of settlement and neighborhood workers who cooperate with, but are distinct from, charity workers. A few may have gone into settlement work from motives of pure philanthropy, but settlements have never been confined to communities of pauperized people and have often been located in communities of industrial workers representing many nationalities affected by the ups and downs of the industrial and social life of our day. Philanthropy, therefore, has been carefully tabooed as a phrase or an ideal by the leaders in the settlement movement, however slowly they have actually been able to lead their colleagues away from instincts of mere pity and charity. No one can deny that the social functions which have evolved out of the experiments and studies of settlements are in a very large measure the work of women. Jane Addams, Louise Bowen, Julia Lathrop, Lillian Wald, and other social leaders, who have originated many movements, see distinctly that city functions must be extended to absorb their activities as well as those more directly connected with charity. An example is furnished by the work they have done for schools. They feel that private aid should not obscure public responsibility for the welfare of all the people of a community, but rather that interested citizens with constructive programs should but point the way to better assumption of public duties by the city. The spirit of all these women workers we see in an appreciation of the contributions of Lillian Wald written by the late Jacob A. Riis: No woman, since Josephine Shaw Lowell, has been able to do what she has done. They trust her absolutely, trust her head, her judgment, and her friendship. She arbitrates in a strike, and the men listen; she sits as one of the Board of Sanitary Control in the cloak and suit trade that has In the strife that rages forever around our public schools her feet are planted on solid ground. She pleaded for cooking and housekeeping schools and got them; she believes in vocational guidance. She labored for medical school inspection and when it did only half of what was expected of it, it was Miss Wald who put life into it by giving the doctors backing. Perhaps nothing she ever did gives one a better grip on the woman and her work. Having discovered the wide ramification of the social diseases which call for social service and come more and more to a recognition of community responsibility in such matters, social workers, men and women, have realized the necessity of educating the public to a sense of that responsibility. Hence the “social exhibit” of every type, and wherever we find an exhibit, even if it be under the direction of men, we also discover a group of patient, skilled, energetic women workers. Child welfare exhibits took precedence of some of the constructive programs for child nurture that are now coming into prominence and in all these exhibits, from the first to the last, most ardent labor has been contributed by women toward their success. Often they have themselves been the instigators and main support of an exhibit. Through the first large exhibit of the New York Child Welfare Committee in the 71st Regiment Armory, and Charles F. Powlison thus summarizes the leading results of Child Welfare Exhibits: 1. The city increased its appropriation to the division of child hygiene of the health department by $167,705. 2. The Department of Parks set aside an old mansion in Carl Schurz Park for child welfare work. 3. The city appropriated $235,000 for a new children’s court building. 4. The children of the city were stimulated to a greater use of the children’s department of the public libraries. 1. Establishment of the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund. The work of this foundation is primarily child welfare. 2. Introduction of course on Children’s Welfare in the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. 3. The City Welfare Exhibits conducted in the public schools and neighborhood centers of Chicago under the auspices of the Woman’s City Club of Chicago used material shown at the Child Welfare Exhibit. Two days after the Exhibit closed the citizens were able to get passed an ordinance requiring the appointment of factory inspectors, thus making operative the laws regarding child labor, etc. L. A. Halbert, general superintendent of the Board of Public Welfare, writes: “I believe that the popular understanding of the work of the Board of Public Welfare and other social work which was begotten by this Exhibit has been a very important element in protecting this kind of work from any sordid political influences.” Northampton, Mass.1. A $25,000 school building is now being constructed in the congested Polish district. Conditions had been reported for six years without result. Four photographs in the Exhibit did the work. 2. The formation of a Central Advisory Council (to be made up of one delegate from each church, civic, charitable or religious organization), to confer monthly and arrange a program for concerted action in all problems touching civic and child welfare. 3. Radical change of policy on the part of one large manufacturing concern relating to work put out in families. 1. A close partnership formed between a newly aroused public and existing agencies working for the welfare of children. 2. The Exhibit is continued as a part of the traveling libraries department of the public library. 3. Sections of the Exhibit, dealing with particular subjects, loaned for circulation in churches, schools, settlements and clubs. 4. The Children’s Agencies and the churches stimulated to a stock-taking of progress and furnished an exact basis for mapping out the next steps ahead. One of the women social workers at an Exhibit said: “We are all of us learning, for the first time, what place our work has in the city’s life. We have worked over our exhibits, trying to state in concrete terms our purpose and our success; then we see our organization placed here beside all the others, and we find out how inadequate we all are, and yet how important, each at our own job. We find out where there is overlapping and where we can use each other in the future. And then we walk over to the section on industrial conditions, or on housing, or on infant mortality, and we see the big underlying problems, that we haven’t any of us touched yet. And we realize that no private organization ever can touch those problems. Only all the Dr. Anna Louise Strong, the director of exhibits of the National Child Welfare Exhibit Committee, upholds the service of the Exhibit in the face of certain critics: “I believe in the exhibit method, whatever its risks, through the faith that when the widest publicity possible is secured, truth will win out. The light that beats around a throne is no fiercer than the light that has beat around disputed statements in a child welfare exhibit. And because of this, however and whenever individual exhibitors fail, I feel that the exhibit method is, in spite of its dangers, one of the safest, just because of the wideness of its reach, and the many-sidedness of the comments aroused.” It is not alone in such more or less spectacular educational work as exhibits of various kinds, that women have participated with such success. They are helping to create the scientific literature of social service which is based upon accurate observation and generalization. To enumerate even the important contributions of women to this literature would be impossible here, but by way of illustration we may cite simply the contributions made by women to the studies issued under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation: The Evening Post of New York said of “Women and the Trades,” by Elizabeth B. Butler, who made her study in the Pittsburgh Survey, that it “represents the most complete and careful study ever made in any country of the actual working conditions of the wage-paid women of a great city.” Miss Butler has also made a study of saleswomen in mercantile stores. The Scientific American said of “Work Accidents and the Law,” by Crystal Eastman, who made this important study The Literary Digest said of “Homestead: the Households of a Mill Town” by Margaret Byington: “Miss Byington brought to the task excellent training and made her studies after the most approved methods. It is a book legislators, ministers, editors, and story writers should ponder before they preach to, or write at or about, the wage-earners and their wives, from apprentices to superintendents.” “The Delinquent Child and the Home” by Sophonisba P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, according to the Boston Evening Transcript, is “a storehouse of information to the individual or society seeking to know better the needs of children and to provide them with decent homes, fresh air, education and recreation.” “Fatigue and Efficiency” by Josephine Goldmark furnishes the basis for arguments in favor of governmental control over health conditions in industry and has already produced results. “Among School Gardens” by M. Louise Greene is a valuable propaganda for open-air exercises for children. “One Thousand Homeless Men” by Alice Willard Solenberger, until her death an active leader in the Chicago Bureau of Charities,—a study of original records—is approved by Ernest P. Bicknell, director of the American Red Cross as follows: “A confidence-impelling power was hers which often led to the most unexpected results. Beggars and tramps, confirmed in their manner of life, gave her the real facts about their homes and families and transgressions. More than one hardened fellow became her ally, and helped her search out the young boys and persuade them to go home to their parents. She had so many sources of information that her power of securing hidden facts from the lodging houses and saloons and dark places seemed almost uncanny.” “Our Slavic Fellow Citizens” by Emily Greene Balch is thus praised by the Chicago Record-Herald: “Miss Balch has given us one of the most valuable books on immigration that we know of, a work full of guidance, of truth, of understanding.” “Visiting Nursing in the United States” by Ysabella Waters completes these studies at present and is a “convincing argument,” according to the Nurses’ Journal of the Pacific Coast, for nursing and educating in their homes some of the sick who will not or cannot go to hospitals. Wherever social welfare work reaches the stage of legislation we find women supplying data for intelligent action, arguing before legislative committees, and impressing upon lawmakers their competence to deal with social problems in a large way. Moreover, in every important battle over legislation, women have their own special contributions to make. Space forbids anything like a survey of the legislative work of women in social service, but some notion of their interest and labors is to be gathered from the current discussions of mothers’ pension laws. On account of the fact that the major portion of charitable relief has always gone to poor widows with young children to support, family rehabilitation has been a main study of social workers. Charity and institutional relief have combined forces—orphan asylums taking the children in many cases of destitution while work for her own support was found for the mother. The slight assistance that could be rendered in each case to supplement the mother’s earnings and the necessity of her putting the children to work too early or overtaxing the oldest child in family labor soon showed the ineffectiveness of this method of Thus arose a general demand for public aid for mothers as a preventive measure, for the sake of the family, and for greater economy, much of the institutional care of delinquents, sick, orphaned, in day nurseries and the like being saved thereby. Mothers’ pension laws now exist in seventeen states, the great majority of which passed the laws within the past year, a year in which women have been their busiest in urging this legislation. In Pennsylvania the law creates an entirely new set of administrative officials—unsalaried boards of women, from five to seven in number, appointed by the governor—in all counties which elect to make use of the act. New York passed a bill for a commission instead of the pension act itself, being conservative enough to desire further investigation. Two women who have worked for mothers’ pensions in that state are on this commission—Mrs. William Einstein and Sophie Irene Loeb. The New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs asked for this commission. The Federal Children’s Bureau has taken a great interest in state aid for dependent mothers with children and has published a study by Laura Thompson of laws relating to the same in the United States, Denmark and New Zealand, with all the legislative technicalities so much discussed. Perhaps more women have agreed on the wisdom of mothers’ pensions than on any other single piece of social legislation. They have even been accused of rushing heedlessly into the support of such laws on purely sentimental grounds, and they are vigorously opposed by many charity workers. Public relief for mothers strikes at the very vitals of private philanthropy which makes its most effective appeals for funds for dependent widows. Dr. Devine, of the New York Charity Organization Society, vigorously Dr. Devine’s article As far as care and time and money for children’s needs are concerned, they, and they alone, feel that they know how imperative those needs are, and from the mere fact of being able to gain more aid for more mothers by state subsidies the idea seems to them of value. They, and perhaps they only, can also feel the importance of preserving self-respect as an asset to be saved by the new attitude of the states. It is not, for them, “a mere sentiment and solemn pretense of changing the names of things.” Why, to most of us, is a marriage service a wholesome formality, if changing the name, if deriving comfort from legal sanction (even sometimes of a bad husband), is merely “a solemn pretense”? The question seems to me to touch the social evil and the housing problem (as shown in Chapter IV of Miss Addams’ “A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil”), the menace of child labor, of the sweat shops, and neglected childhood and starved motherhood on many sides. Why is a free chance to live and grow, for a child, any worse than free education? A child does not ask where things come from, at first. He only knows that he is cold, or hungry, or neglected. In the nature of the case he is dependent on someone. They are, if I am permitted to answer what I believe, the old-fashioned givers, the passing of whom Dr. Devine goes on to deplore. They are the people, too, whom Dr. Devine and The Survey are waking up, who are not satisfied to go all through life having their ideas predigested for them; more than all, they are social workers, who have come to distrust some of the methods of social work. Starting out with a blind faith in philanthropic methods, I have found, time and again, not that the work was so much hampered as some have found it, by “investigation, the keeping of records, discriminating aid, etc.,” but that the work was not exact, and not careful and that its faults were not mitigated by that human sympathy which would atone for human faults. This is not always true, but it has become proverbial, and we see why. If we could have always with us the great people of the earth, like Miss Addams, Miss Lathrop, Judge Mack, and others, there would be no such proverbs as those the poor now murmur among themselves. State aid, to my mind, is an advance, as showing the policy of the nation, to conserve its children and its homes, and in recognizing the mother as a factor in that campaign, for the welfare of all. Mrs. Park is a member of the Massachusetts commission on widows’ pensions which proposed legislation on the subject, not all the members agreeing on public aid, however. The existence of this commission was largely due to Mrs. Park but Miss Helen Winslow helped by lecturing on the subject before more than sixty women’s clubs in Massachusetts. All women, however, are by no means committed to the With indications that the “public” is being swayed by appeals to protect motherhood through pensions, the presentation of “Motherhood and Pensions” by Miss Richmond is a relief. Aside from the economic waste of human energy which a “pension” system may induce, it is likely to lessen individual initiative, to reduce its possible recipients to the condition of petitioners for favors, and hence to weaken the social structure. It is unfortunate that our city, state and national treasuries bear so impersonal a relation to the members of society. Intelligent citizens know that the poor and ignorant pay an indirect tax out of all proportion to their resources, that this condition is fostered by those who have in hand larger resources, and that poverty and ignorance are necessary factors in the explanation of human energy. The poor and the ignorant are paying the price of that which is to be returned to them as pensions. If the time, money and energy now being used to establish pensions could be directed into the establishment of fair conditions of industry, of sanitary conditions of living, of greater opportunities to acquire knowledge, of equal privileges and duties for men and women, might not the nation’s integrity be better safeguarded? Where mothers’ pension laws are enacted, women are called to aid in their administration. Massachusetts has a “Mothers’ Act,” the enforcement of which is under the Special Committee of the State Board of Charity, with Ada Eliot Sheffield as Chairman. Overseers of the poor administer the law under the direction of this Special Committee, and Emma W. Lee has charge of a corps of women who will work with the overseers. Caroline B. Alexander is a member of the New Jersey State Board of Children’s In all the states where home assistance has been secured for dependent mothers, women have agitated and lobbied for the measure. In states which do not yet have such legislation, women’s clubs and organizations have this legislation as one of their demands. The Association of Neighborhood Workers and many leaders in the women’s clubs of New York are among those who have labored for home assistance in that state. Recognizing the importance of enlightened coÖperation in the matter of law making, a Committee on Social Legislation was recently formed in Chicago to act as a clearing house for bills intended to improve social conditions. The constituent organizations include the following: Anti-Cruelty Society, Associated Charities of Danville, Associated Charities of Rock Island, Associated Jewish Charities, Bureau of Associated Civics and Charities of Freeport, Bureau of Personal Service, Central Association of Charities, Evanston, Central Howard Association, Chicago Federation of Churches of Christ, Chicago Medical Society, Chicago Playground Association, Chicago Tuberculosis Institute, Chicago Woman’s Aid, Chicago Woman’s Club, Citizens’ League, City Club of Chicago, Committee on Institutional Visitation, Conference of Jewish Women’s Organizations, Consumers’ League, Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, Federation of Settlements, Illinois Association for Labor Legislation, Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Jersey social workers have formed a similar bureau, similarly constituted. “At the meeting there was some sentiment in favor of lobbying, but those who initiated the plan had no intention that it should act as a lobbying agency. It was pointed out that members of the bureau might differ as to the wisdom of legislation. Participation in the bureau will not commit a member to any definite stand on various measures. But, it is expected that through the clearing house and information service of the bureau, those favoring a given measure will be enabled to conduct their legislative campaign with greater efficiency.” The development of organized charity and social service with their investigations and legislative and institutional activities has produced the need for workers trained for research and the preparation of data—trained in sociology, economics, and industry; in health, education and hygiene. In response to this need have risen schools for the education of social workers. The New York School of Philanthropy is one of the largest of these professional schools. A partial list includes the School of Social Economy of Washington University, St. Louis; the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy; the Boston School for Social Workers; and the Philadelphia Training School for Social Workers. In all of these schools, women help to instruct as well as As private philanthropy advances to social service and then to public action, women all over the country are asking, “Shall the control which we have hitherto been exercising be turned over to the men voters alone?” They are, in increasing numbers, answering this question in the negative. Club women and women teachers and doctors last summer (1914) declared emphatically that social activities must continue to be the joint work of men and women and that political equality is a prime essential in the evolution of social service. Sophronisba Breckinridge succinctly explains this point of view in an article in The Survey designed to answer Dr. Simon Patten’s strictures on suffrage and social service: In his editorial comment of January 4, Professor Patten not only addresses certain questions to the social workers of the country, but draws vivid contrasts between “dozens of little coercions” and “doses of freedom.” It is not my purpose to undertake to answer his questions. The program of the social workers has been so definitely outlined by action taken at Cleveland in June at the time of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, and is so definitely formulated in the platform of the Progressive Party, to which Miss Addams gave her adherence, that further reply seems superfluous. I should be glad, however, to ask Professor Patten in return to consider more carefully the nature of certain “small coercions” against which the women of the country and the social workers as well are now protesting. Professor Patten contrasts the value of a “suffragette agitation” with the value of a “clearer vision.” He cannot, however, be ignorant Political action without philanthropy is of course like the human skeleton equipped perhaps with muscle but lacking the nervous and circulatory systems. Philanthropy on the other hand without political capacity is like an invertebrate structure, inert and incapable of efficient self-direction. It seems entirely in accord with her general experience of helplessness when relying on philanthropy alone and with her observation of the social aimlessness of the older political parties that Miss Addams should demand that the strength and stability of one be added to the life and persistence of the other. |
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