Chapter I: Front Matter

THE SURVEY, Volume 30, Number 6, May 10, 1913

THE COMMON WELFARE

SOCIAL LEGISLATION AT THE PRESENT SESSION OF CONGRESS

In spite of the fact that the opening week of Congress saw the introduction of the Kern compensation bill for employes of the federal government suffering injuries or occupational diseases, the La Follette-Peters eight-hour bill for women in the District of Columbia, a bill prohibiting the shipment of goods manufactured in plants where women are employed more than eight hours a day, a minimum wage bill presented by Senator Chilton of West Virginia, and several other measures which fall under the head of social legislation, the impression seems to prevail that Congress will devote its chief energies to the consideration of the banking and revenue statutes. In his personally delivered message to Congress President Wilson said:

“It is best, indeed, it is necessary, to begin with the tariff. I will
urge nothing upon you now at the opening of your session which can
obscure that first object or divert our energies from that clearly
defined duty. At a later time I may take the liberty of calling your
attention to reforms which should press close upon the heels of the
tariff changes, if not accompany them, of which the chief is the
reform of our banking and currency laws; but just now I refrain.”

From these sentences, as well as from remarks made by the President to callers, it is inferred that the possibility of taking up anything like the program submitted to Mr. Wilson by the forty-five men and women interested in social legislation is remote indeed. Those familiar with the legislative processes of Congress point out, however, that after the tariff bill or bills leave the House and while they are being debated in the Senate, there may be an opportunity for the discussion of other matters.

It is of interest to note that the House leaders decided to defer the appointment of the majority of the standing committees till the tariff bills shall be out of the way. Only the Committee on Ways and Means, the Committee on Rules, the Committee on Accounts and the Committee on Mileage were selected early in the session.

The Senate, however, fixed the membership of its standing committees some time before the extra session began. With the change in political control, there has been, of course, a thorough overhauling not only in chairmanship but also in memberships. Today the two committees in the upper chamber which will have much to do with social legislation, that on the District of Columbia and that on Education and Labor, are as follows:

Committee on District of Columbia: Messrs. Smith of Maryland
(chairman), Pomerene of Ohio, Smith of Arizona, Kern of Indiana,
Hollis of New Hampshire, James of Kentucky, Saulsbury of Delaware,
Martin of Virginia, Dillingham of Vermont, Jones of Washington, Works
of California, Kenyon of Iowa, Fall of New Mexico and Lippitt of Rhode
Island.

Committee on Education and Labor: Messrs. Smith of Georgia (chairman),
Shively of Indiana, Swanson of Virginia, Martine of New Jersey,
Johnson of Maine, Shields of Tennessee, Borah of Idaho, Penrose of
Pennsylvania, Page of Vermont, McLean of Connecticut and Kenyon of
Iowa.

Among the bills relating to the regulation of labor that have been introduced into Congress at the present session is that by Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, aiming to safeguard the children of the District of Columbia from employments that are dangerous or that are conducted under unsanitary conditions. The measure provides that children under sixteen years of age shall not work in factories, on railroads or on boats. The bill divides occupations into classes, and puts children into groups from the age of twelve to twenty-one, enumerating the prohibited occupations, but permitting exceptions under certain conditions. Discretion is vested in the District health officer to pass upon other employment for children not already forbidden by the proposed law.

The convict-made goods bill, substantially in its original form, has been introduced into the Senate by Senator Thomas of Colorado. This measure, it will be remembered, passed the House at the last session, but was not reported out of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. As Senator Thomas pointed out in a statement, “I propose that prison products shall be divested of their interstate character, leaving them subject everywhere to the laws of the states. Many states have prohibited the sale of such goods. The principle of my measure is the same as that employed in the Webb-Kenyon liquor law.”

While the principle involved in the Thomas bill is now on the federal statute books, thus affording a valuable precedent for additional legislation, it is not generally believed that the Senate will take up this measure at least till later on in the session. The new Senate Committee on the Judiciary is as follows:

Culberson of Illinois (chairman); Overman of North Carolina, Chilton
of West Virginia, O’Gorman of New York, Fletcher of Florida, Reed of
Missouri, Ashurst of Arizona, Shields of Tennessee, Walsh of Montana,
Bacon of Virginia, Clark of Wyoming, Nelson of Minnesota, Dillingham
of Vermont, Sutherland of Utah, Brandegee of Connecticut, Borah of
Idaho, Cummins of Iowa and Root of New York.

Senator Kenyon of Iowa has introduced a bill making it obligatory that all railway employes shall have twenty-four hours consecutively off duty in every period of 168 hours. It is stated that the belief that the existing law, intended to protect railway employes and limit their hours of labor, is being violated because of the impracticability of its strict enforcement prompted Senator Kenyon to draw up this bill.

NEW YORK-BOSTON EXCHANGE OF SETTLEMENT EXPERIENCES

The inter-city settlement conference held the past month in Boston, though not the first of such conferences, was unique in that it brought together settlement residents so widely separated as the New York Association of Neighborhood Workers and the Boston Social Union.

The first meeting dealt with the problem of securing and training workers. Eva W. White, headworker of the Elizabeth Peabody House and lecturer in the Boston School for Social Workers, spoke of the need of such training as schools of philanthropy and settlements themselves can give. Richard H. Edwards of the Inter-Collegiate Young Men’s Christian Association explained the movement for community service by college men. Settlement Scholarships and School and College Chapters for Settlement Work was the subject of a paper by Geraldine Gordon of Denison House.

John L. Elliott of New York contributed the suggestion that young college men and women contemplating social work as a profession might do a half year’s field work in the settlement at the end of the sophomore and senior years in lieu of academic courses.

Mrs. Max Morgenthau of the Henry Street Settlement told how that settlement trained its volunteer workers in clerical work, in regularity in attendance and in actual personal acquaintance with their tenement community. This training has created in that settlement a group of volunteers, who are becoming experts in their work and one of whom has developed a series of pageant plays. The mistress of the wardrobe in these pageants is an authority on costume, and has studied the technical processes of dyeing fabrics in order to obtain the best possible results.

The subject of an evening meeting was Standards and Stipends for Work and Workers, and was under the leadership of Lilian D. Wald, president of the National Federation of Settlements. Miss Wald held that there should be flexibility in methods of work and a true equality between the administrative officers of the settlement and the specialists who give so much distinction to its work. She spoke of a university teacher who came back to the settlement to “recapture the freedom of her method.” M. deG. Trenholm, to whom very much of the success of the conference was due, urged strongly the necessity of proper compensation for settlement service, if standards are to be maintained.

The Sunday afternoon meeting was devoted to the subject of federation in relation to standards of work. Henry Moskowitz of Madison House asked that the settlements keep in mind their primary duty of furnishing opportunity for the manifestation of local social spirit. He showed that in an increasing number of neighborhoods the neighbors are forming federations of their own, made up of representatives of the various local societies. While this sort of community organization is sometimes sporadic or indefinite the settlements should be willing to support it both with money and workers. He warned the neighborhood worker never to forget that the primary duty of the settlement is to build up neighborhood life. He must, therefore, not permit what sometimes seems the larger aspects or implications of neighborhood life to sap his work at the roots.

Philip Davis of the Civic Service House suggested directions in which federated action among settlements might be directed. He showed that, outside of such oversight as the licensing of minors engaged in the street trades involved, the great mass of the minors of the community and the street merchants themselves are free to run into danger without possibility of interference or guarding from the outside. Immigrants are another class who will in the future be more and more in need of constructive human service, especially at the point of entrance on citizenship. The city, either through its officers or by delegating the work to others, should surround the gift of citizenship with appropriate safeguards and should make the process itself educational. The minimum wage is now becoming a significant problem all over the country and Mr. Davis believed that settlement workers should take their place among the pioneers in endeavoring to push its benefits.

Elizabeth Williams, of the College Settlement, New York, spoke of the enthusiasm of the pioneers and outlined some of the means of making the settlement ideal today as great a challenge to young men and women of capacity as it was to these early leaders.

Albert J. Kennedy of South End House discussed the question of federations of settlements in relation to the problem of club and class work. The chief task of the settlement is in his opinion to bring about the democratic organization of local communities in order that the people themselves may in time assume the task of local organization. The chief function of club work as such must be that of building up standards toward this end. The fear of rigidity which has oppressed certain critics of federation is, he believed, unfounded and there are, he held, great possibilities for settlement federations in enlarging and bringing to a high standard certain forms of craft work, dramatics, pageants and large recreational events.

At the evening meeting Jane E. Robbins spoke in behalf of definite work in training young Italian Americans as social workers who would contribute their enthusiasm for and knowledge of their own people definitely to the task of social re-construction and Americanization.

Vida D. Scudder believed settlement work should be made more fundamentally democratic and should give itself more definitely to the task of fostering and championing working class movements as such. The great danger of the settlement, she held, is that it will become one of the regular philanthropies rather than an advance station, as it were, in the progressive democratization of the national life. Settlement residents should be free at times of crisis to drop detail work for the larger task of assisting in the great forward movement of the people themselves.

George Hodges, dean of the Episcopal Theological School, believed that the church also should work along the lines suggested by Miss Scudder. He believed, however, the best achievement could be secured only on the high levels of personality.

John L. Elliott of the Hudson Guild held that it should more and more be the final effort of the settlement to bring the mothers and fathers into the streets, into the schools and into the dance halls that they may come to understand the conditions under which their children live, and contribute of their own experience and power in reorganizing communal life.

The meeting on Monday morning was opened by Abraham Rosenberg, the president of the Cloak and Suit Makers’ Union, who spoke of the work of the various settlement leaders in securing the New York protocol. He admitted a growing recognition on the part of labor leaders of the factor of public good will and service.

Mary P. Follett of the Roxbury League urged the continued necessity for social workers in the civic centre, and Gaylord S. White suggested the need of such influence in enlarging the scope and horizon of church work. Robert A. Woods summed up the more telling lines of interest opened up in the meeting. He urged that the significance of the settlement for the future, as for the past, lay not in any specific type of service or reform—valuable as nearly all such effort is—but in the development of social self sufficiency among the people from neighborhood to neighborhood throughout the country.

The use which the younger element made of a question box as the meeting ended led to the motion that at future conferences the junior speakers should have the floor for at least one session.

“BOXING” THE COST OF LIVING

The cost of living was the very live subject taken up by the seventeenth annual meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science held in Philadelphia in April. With the exception of the tariff, which was omitted for lack of time, the session may be said to have covered the whole field.

The first paper in the session on Family Standards was by Prof. Simon N. Patten of the University of Pennsylvania. His analysis of changes in woman’s dress is worth quoting:

“In the early history of America, the dress, the habits, the morality,
the relations between men and women could be predicted with certainty.
This uniformity has been broken up by recent industrial changes
through which the working population has been transferred from the
farm to shops and factories. City life makes new demands and excites
new wants.

“A new woman is appearing who differs in many ways from her
predecessor. She is stronger, more healthy, more ambitious and with
moral qualities that match the new vigor. With greater physical vigor
and more ambition, women love activity and cut out the contrasts in
color and design in which the primitive woman indulged. The man-made
woman dresses to emphasize her sex; the self-conscious woman
subordinates her clothing to the needs of her own personality and her
activity.

“The active, healthy woman creates a spiritual impress by simplifying
her dress and thus enhancing her facial beauty. Her less advanced
sister clings to the older dress forms, through which a lower appeal
is made. Out of the struggle is coming a new womanhood with higher
morality and more beauty. Dressing is thus more than an economy; it is
the essence of moral progress.”

Martha Bensley Bruère of New York city, author of Increasing Home Efficiency, maintained that twelve hundred dollars a year was the lowest standard for decent family living. This twelve hundred dollars she found from her study of family budgets to be distributed as follows:

“Food, $447.15, on the basis of 35 cents per day for an adult male and
a sliding scale for others in the family; shelter, $144; clothes,
$100, based on New York prices “where clothing is cheaper than any
other place in the country,” she said; operation of household,
including light, heat, etc., $150; advancement, meaning education,
recreation, charities, church, savings, etc., $312; incidentals, $46,
a total of $1,199.15.”

ELEMENTS ENTERING INTO COST OF FOOD

Edith E. Smith, president of the Pennsylvania Rural Progress Association, asserted that the fallacy that lessened production is the chief cause of high prices has been exploded and there is ample food produced if waste were eliminated. Said she:

“While city people are complaining of the prices paid the farmer, it
is an absolute fact that the farmer has a hard time to make a living
profit on his business. The farmer has to face the combined problems
of production and distribution and he runs the gamut of both. If any
manufacturer were compelled to face the difficulties of the farmer ...
attempted it on so small a margin of profit, he would quickly go to
the wall.”

Mrs. Smith showed that it costs a Pennsylvania or New York farmer about 50 per cent more to raise a hog or a steer than it costs the Iowa farmer and that the latter can ship his cattle to the New York market and sell them cheaper than the Pennsylvania farmer.

Mrs. Frank A. Pattison of Colonia, N. J., who was for some time in charge of the experiment station maintained by the New Jersey women’s clubs, spoke on Scientific Management in Home-Making. She showed how, by the introduction of mechanical devices, such as patent dish-washing machines or vacuum cleaners, it might be possible to minimize household drudgery without employing a servant and without using paper dishes or bare floors.

Everett P. Wheeler of the New York bar laid the high cost of living to increases in rent, due to governmental requirements and increased taxation; increases in the cost of food because of governmental inspection and regulations; legislation shortening the hours of work and increasing wages; the syndicalist movement and other influences that add to cost of production.

An interesting comment on the general discussion was made by Christine M. Frederick, national secretary of the Associated Clubs of Domestic Science, and consulting household editor of the _Ladies’ Home Journal_, who pointed out that the whims of women were in no small way responsible for the high cost of living.

H. B. Fullerton, of Medford, L. I., director of agricultural development for the Long Island Railroad, was the first speaker at the afternoon session on Public Control. He told of the development of the “Long Island Home Hamper,” which is a system of delivering, direct from producer to consumer, standard hampers containing food products at an established price.

Mrs. Elmer Black, member of the advisory board of the New York Terminal Market Commission, discussed Communal Benefits from the Municipal Terminal Market.

Dr. Mary E. Pennington, chief of the Food Research Laboratory of Philadelphia, showed in a masterly fashion the contribution made by cold storage warehouses by providing mechanical means of food preservation and thus equalizing supply and demand regardless of seasons. Dr. Pennington pointed out that chickens kept for twenty-four hours under average ice-box conditions of the private family, changed more chemically than those kept for months in cold storage warehouses.

Clyde L. King, instructor in political science, University of Pennsylvania, urged municipal control of wholesale terminal markets to reduce cost of distribution. Said he:

“This plan of placing terminal wholesale facilities under municipal
control and operation will unquestionably make for the elimination of
certain of the middlemen, will make for the payment of higher prices,
because of the large number of buyers present, and will give to
retailers a greater choice of goods.

“The situation as to the retailers of food products in the city can
well be illustrated by the situation in Philadelphia. There are at the
present time in this city about 490 chain stores, 700 members of the
Retail Grocers’ Associations and 4169 independent grocers. In addition
there are 258 delicatessen stores, 200 butchers, handling some
groceries, and 1923 variety stores.

“This makes 1190 chain stores as compared with 6550 independent
stores. It is clear that the maximum point to which prices can be
boosted by the retailers is that fixed by a subsistence wage on the
part of these small independent stores.”

Irving Fisher of Yale University, in his opening remarks at the evening meeting, emphasized the growing belief that the real significance of the increased cost of living was to be found in changing the value of money.

The most striking address of the evening was an appeal by Frances Perkins, executive secretary of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York, for the living wage.

“HIRING A SHEET FROM A MISSUS”

In a recent strike Miss Perkins found that many of the girls in factories lived away from home, many coming from rural districts, and that most of them lived by “hiring a sheet from a missus.” That means that two or three of the girls slept in one bed, with a cup of coffee thrown in with the “hiring” in the morning. Many of these girls had coffee and rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with an occasional extravagance, such as a fifteen-cent dinner. Their wages ran from $4 to $5 a week. Other girls, according to Miss Perkins, buy bread and bananas for meals, the bananas being great fillers.

Another speaker on this subject was Paul U. Kellogg, editor of THE SURVEY, who talked on the Wage Scale and Immigration. He outlined the proposal of transferring the economic regulation of immigration from the seaboard to the centers of congested industry by applying the minimum wage to unnaturalized citizens after the manner of child labor legislation. It would go far, he argued, toward bringing the common labor market to normal.

Margaret F. Byington, associate director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, pointed out at the session on Waste and Extravagance, that scientific ratios of nourishment, while probably accurate quantitatively, in the number of calories to be supplied to the different age groups, might justly be criticised on the side of cost, as various elements tend to make assimilative power different in different cases. The sedentary worker cannot, for instance, digest the heavy, cheap food of the manual worker, and the infant’s modified milk makes its food not cheaper, as scientific ratios would make it, but dearer than the older child’s.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Home: Its Work and Influence, in a paper on Waste of Private Housekeeping, stated that:

“Industrial progress follows lines of specialization, organization and
interchange. Domestic service is unspecialized, unorganized and
self-supplied. For all men and women to perform their own
house-service separately would be the lowest line of industrial
efficiency; for each man to require one whole woman, with more if he
can afford it; to perform his house-service is next to the lowest.

“The waste of labor involved is over 40 per cent of the world’s full
output; fifty women doing work for fifty men, which could be done by
ten women if specialized, organized and interchanging their products.
The ‘waste of plant,’ the kitchen space, cooking apparatus, dishes and
utensils, fuel, with breakage, etc., is at least 90 per cent. The
waste in purchasing is the difference between the cost of a steady
supply at wholesale and the entire expense of all retail service and
delivery equal to at least 60 per cent. The waste in efficiency is the
difference between highly specialized professional work, and the grade
of labor possible to the lowest average—practically all women, under
conditions of overwork, if it is done by the housewife, or, of eternal
apprenticeship, if done by servants.”

Mrs. Julian Heath, founder and president of the National Housewives League, explained the work of the league. H. W. Hess of the University of Pennsylvania raised active discussion by his paper on Advertising: Waste or Necessity, Which? He claimed that advertising was a necessity and socially advantageous. Samuel H. Barker, financial editor of the _Philadelphia North American_, discussed the effects of false capitalization.

At the session on the Minimum Wage, Henry R. Seager, professor of political economy, Columbia University, pointed out the social factors involved in the introduction of a minimum wage, showing that we must be prepared for the elimination from industry of certain groups now employed and their maintenance in some fashion. The minimum wage to Professor Seager is only part of a general scheme including social insurance.

H. La Rue Brown and Mathew B. Hammond discussed the minimum wage from the experience of Massachusetts, of Australia and New Zealand. Scott Nearing, instructor in economics, University of Pennsylvania, discussed the existing wage scale and pointed out that to a large extent the wages paid in the United States are not up to the necessary minimum.

The first address at the closing session on How Can the Cost of Living be Reduced? given by Dr. Shaw, editor of the _Review of Reviews_, traced the development of the co-operative movement in this country and abroad and indicated the role that productive co-operation might well play in the development of our industrial institutions. He maintained that poverty is decreasing, while wants increase.

Martha Van Rensselaer, chief of the Department of Home Economics of Cornell University, who told wittily of the difficulty of securing women’s interest in household affairs, they frequently failing to recognize as do their husbands their own importance in our economic institutions.

The last paper was by Amos R. E. Pinchot, a lawyer of New York, who pointed out the relationship which exists between overcapitalization and the cost of living and the necessity for regulating monopolies.

COMPENSATION LAWS IN TWENTY STATES

The 1913 legislative session has so far raised the number of state compensation acts in the United States to almost a score. West Virginia was the first this year to pass such a law, which was signed by the governor on Washington’s Birthday, though it will not go into effect until October. It creates a pseudo-elective insurance fund contributed by employers and employes, to be administered by a Public Service Commission created at the same time, all administrative expenses to be met by the state and not out of the fund. The commission shall each year determine the premium rates of the twenty-three classifications into which the law divides the industries of the state. Election to pay to the fund, on the part of employer and employe—10 per cent only is to be paid by the latter—does away with the right to go to law.

Medical benefit under the law shall not exceed $150, and funeral expenses shall not exceed $75. The money benefits, which do not begin till one week has elapsed, are 50 per cent of wages or wage loss for disability. In case of death the benefits in some cases are 50 per cent of wages and in others a sum of $20 a month for one dependent and $5 additional for each additional dependent with a maximum of $35 is reached. Non-resident aliens are in express terms included as beneficiaries.

In Oregon a law establishing a state accident insurance fund was passed shortly after that of West Virginia. This is to be administered by a commission of three whose salaries are to be paid out of the fund. The fund is made up of contributions by employers and employes—in hazardous occupations the former furnish twice as much as the latter in amount—to which the state adds an initial contribution of $50,000 and one seventh of the total amount each year thereafter.

This act like that of West Virginia is pseudo-elective, election being presumed on both sides in default of written rejection. In case of accidents due to failure to provide proper safeguards, however, this election can be waived and the workman can then sue under a liability law with the customary defenses removed. Benefits which begin immediately are more generous than under the West Virginia law. In case of death one surviving dependent is to receive $30 a month, with $6 for each additional dependent up to $50; parents of a minor workman to receive $25 a month until he would have reached his majority.

Payments for total disability are much the same as to dependents on decease. Partial temporary disability is to be compensated for a limited period with “that proportion of the payments provided for total disability which his earning power at any kind of work bears to that existing at the time of the occurrence of the injury.” Lump sum payments may be made to beneficiaries out of the state, a provision which must include non-resident aliens.

The Oregon law provides funeral expenses not to exceed $100 and contains a clause, such as was defeated in the Washington law on which it was modelled, giving the commission authority to provide first aid to workmen entitled to benefits under the act, together with medical and surgical expenses up to the sum of $250.

In March a further step in compensation legislation was taken by the Ohio legislature when it established, in place of its elective law, a compulsory state insurance fund contributed by employers in all industries. Comment on this act by the state actuary will be published later. According to latest reports laws were on the eve of passing in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas.

In New York a compensation bill was passed at the close of the session. It is pseudo-elective in form and provides benefits of 50 per cent of the employe’s wages up to $10 a week.

SOCIOLOGY’S WELCOME IN THE NEW SOUTHLAND

Genuine enthusiasm and interest on the part of nearly a thousand social workers, who gathered in Atlanta from April 25–29 to attend the sessions of the Second Southern Sociological Congress, tended to disprove the statement of a speaker at the opening session that “when sociology came south it met with a cold reception.” At Atlanta sociology received a hearty welcome. Signs that a spirit of “constructive criticism” is awake in the South were present on every side, in the newspaper, the pulpit and in conversation.

Though the South is still a section and in some respects probably wishes to remain one, still, in the words of Acting President A. J. McKelway: “Broadly speaking, all our problems are American problems. There is no peculiarly southern problem of poverty, illiteracy or crime; our problems of the city, of rural life and child welfare are the same throughout the nation.”

The spirit of introspection was apparent on the floor of the different conferences. The boastful paragon of knowledge was lacking. The frank admission of all was: “We want to know.” Dr. John E. White, of Atlanta, expressed this when he declared: “We have come at last to the conclusion that to rid ourselves of criticism, we must first criticise ourselves. We here propose constructive criticism at the hands of southern men.”

But the southerners at the conference were willing to receive the message of those from the North who went to counsel and advise. Both Owen R. Lovejoy and Walter Rauschenbush declared, in essence, “The North is farther along in industry and consequently has more of the evils incident thereto than the South—evils which the South is sure to suffer unless it is more wise than we. We come south, not to criticise, but to warn—confessing our own failures and urging upon you the exercise of wisdom and common sense.” These men, together with such speakers as Francis H. McLean, Charles S. MacFarland, Hastings H. Hart, Alexander Johnson, Clifford G. Roe, John Ihlder, Mornay Williams, as well as Miss Lathrop, were listened to with a true regard which made itself apparent later. “I confess with shame that we have no adequate laws in the state of Tennessee,” said one member, “and that is the reason I am here—to learn as much as possible even at the risk of making myself obnoxious with questions.” The statement expressed the attitude of a large number of the delegates.

A striking feature of the departmental conferences of the congress was the series of thirty-five recommendations or principles adopted at the conference on the church and social service. Several of the more important recommendations follow:

1. We would recommend a more aggressive policy on the educational side
of civic matters. Such questions as sanitation, the milk supply, meat
inspection, social hygiene and other important matters can be taught
with tremendous effectiveness by the use of the moving picture
machine.

2. We would recommend that each church make a social survey, getting
complete possession in systematic form of the various needs of the
community in which they work and listing possible types of social
effort.

3. We would recommend that each church elect a social service
committee for the whole congregation and a social service assistant
superintendent for the Sunday school, whose business it shall be to
direct the expressive activities of the whole body.

4. We recommend the unification of our church forces upon one
concerted effort at evangelizing the down-and-outs in a thoroughly
equipped union mission.

5. Unify the charity forces of the city. Let the churches do their
miscellaneous charity work through the regular organized charity
forces of the city.

6. We would urge the cities to organize their churches into
federations to meet at regular intervals for the discussion of social
problems and plans.

7. Encourage wider use of church buildings.

8. We would urge the exchange of delegates by ministerial bodies with
the labor unions, and the observance of Labor Sunday in all the
churches.

9. We should be glad to see all of our cities have a woman’s boarding
home, where, under safe conditions, the working girl who comes to town
may be supported and directed at small cost while she learns her new
trade.

10. We would recommend a down-town social center for men, with
Christian influences.

11. Help in the fight against preventable disease, and for the art of
living intelligently.

12. Let the country churches make wider use of their buildings,
providing circulating libraries. Let them help provide better
highways, better schools, better comforts and conveniences for the
home, better culture forces in general and better living conditions on
the whole.

The remaining twenty-three recommendations are practically elaborations of the ones given above, and all touch upon the same phases of work that are outlined above.

RURAL EDUCATION IN THE NEW SOUTH

The Conference for Education in the South, meeting in Richmond April 15–18, brought together more than 2300 men and women. Farmers and business men, college presidents and country school teachers, men interested in local credit associations, men bent upon improving tax systems, and ministers of churches—all met together to tell what they themselves out of their experience had gathered of the ways to make life better.

The coming ambassador to the Court of St. James, a southern man, and a freckled, sunburned Virginia boy stood in the great auditorium at Richmond before thousands. Walter Page, the ambassador, introduced Frank Brockman, the boy, who told slowly and carefully how he had raised 167 bushels of shelled corn on one acre of Virginia land, how he had made $175 upon that acre thereby breaking the corn growing record of a state. He had listeners who understood and appreciated. In front of the boy sat southern farmers, teachers, demonstration leaders and superintendents of schools. Behind him, upon the platform sat the men who have made possible his work and the success of thousands like him in southern states. The men on the platform, like the boy, told their story simply and slowly to the men on the floor.

The immediate aim of the conference, as its name implies, was to stimulate progress in the South, but the speakers were not drawn from the South only. From New York and Ohio, Minnesota and Canada, men had come to bring their expert knowledge of improved farming, of co-operative agencies for buying and selling, and of more efficient schools. The men and women whose names were on the program talked not theories but facts which they themselves knew and had demonstrated and about the value of which they were intensely enthusiastic.

One humorous illustration of this came one morning during a session on co-operation. A. V. Nelson, a Swede from Minnesota, was telling of the farmers’ co-operative enterprise in his home town. As he proceeded, with enthusiastic impetuousness, faltering now and then in his use of English and then plunging on again, someone in the audience called out “Take your time!” Someone else at the same time asked him a question. “But dey von’t let me take any time,” he exclaimed ruefully, looking at the chairman who stood firm for the time limits of his program—“but I tell you vat I do! I stay here till tomorrow morning if you want to ask questions—I did not come here yust to talk, but to get you to go home and do somethings too!”

A third fact about the conference was the great emphasis it laid upon the present opportunities for life in the country. The long program contained only incidental references here and there to city conditions. No addresses in the whole conference were listened to with more attention than the earnest account by Frank Brockman of the way he raised his prize-winning crop of corn and the stories by two girls of how they won their prizes for growing and canning tomatoes. Their enthusiasm gave an added human interest to all the other discussions in the conference of how the work on the farm can be made more profitable and attractive.

Men and women from the rural schools gave actual instances in which the schools are being conducted to fit boys and girls for intelligent citizenship in their own country communities; school superintendents told of the new emphasis which is being laid on the proper training of teachers for the rural work; physicians detailed the activities of boards of health and of the Rockefeller Commission in fighting typhoid, the hookworm and other diseases. Still others told of the ways in which, by labor saving devices and by the promotion of a closer social life, the drudgery for women in the country homes can be alleviated. Business men from the cities told how chambers of commerce, railroads and other organizations centering in the city could help to stimulate the prosperity of the country. Throughout the conference the chief emphasis was not so much upon benefits for individuals, but upon the chance for individuals to work together for the benefit of whole communities.

What may be called the religious spirit of the gathering was not confined to this general ideal of co-operation. There were well-attended and enthusiastic conferences on the opportunities of the country church. Without dissent it was assumed that the church is concerned with every agency which makes for the finer development of country life—with better schools, better system of land ownership, better health, better recreation, a closer knit and happier society. It was recognized that the country minister, as a natural leader in his community, has an almost unequalled chance to promote co-operation for community good. He must be, as one speaker put it, “a man of piety walking with God, a man of humanity walking with men.”

During the conference there was an exhibit in the old high school building. Here the kind of progress in rural education which the speakers in the conference had talked about was visualized by pictures and charts and whole rooms full of the work turned out in the manual training and domestic science classes.

EDITORIAL GRIST

MARKETING AND FARM CREDITS

HERMAN N. MORSE

Though little that was new on the subjects under discussion was brought forward, the First National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits, through the papers presented and the official resolutions adopted, called attention to certain highly important facts. The conference agreed that a number of conditions detrimental both to the farmers and the general public are prevalent, and that certain constructive remedial policies are necessary. One proposition to which there was general agreement was that the margin between the price which the producer receives for his product and that which the consumer pays for it is too great. The farmer receives too little and the consumer pays too much. The market for farm products is too unstable and the fluctuations and variations in price are too great and too uncertain. Competition has failed adequately to control and regulate prices.

The present marketing facilities, it was stated, are utterly inadequate to bring the supply and the demand together. Quantities of farm produce rot in the fields because they cannot be gotten to those markets in which there is an active demand for them. This is partly because of the lack of properly distributed shipping facilities; partly because the producers are not sufficiently in touch with the markets; partly because storage firms, commission men’s associations, etc. interfere with the normal operation of the markets; and partly because certain kinds of products are not provided to the mass of consumers at prices which they can afford to pay, though that price would give the producer an ample profit if exorbitant middleman’s profits were eliminated.

B. F. Yoakum estimated that every year fruit and vegetables worth $35,000,000 rot on the ground from the lack of shipping and storage facilities and of knowledge of receptive markets. The annual loss from corn stalks, rice, flax and other grain straw which is now burned he estimated at $250,000,000. The additional amount which the farmers could receive for their products, if by co-operation they knew when and where to sell their products, he placed at $1,500,000,000 per year, making a total loss of $1,785,000,000. In the judgment of the conference this was not an over-statement of the facts.

The delegates to the conference also agreed that the average farmer has a total income disproportionate to his importance in the national economy. W. J. Spillman, chief of the Bureau of Farm Management of the federal Department of Agriculture, estimated that the average farm income in this country is about $655 a year; of this amount about $1 a day is the entire return for labor. This labor income, he asserted, holds throughout the states. After computing the interest on his investment, the farmer averages $1 for every day he works. In states such as Illinois, he said, where the investment is greater, the farm family has a larger sum to use without impairing the capital than in a state like New York. The difference, however, is in the interest on invested capital not in labor income.

Even in sections where the farmers generally are satisfied with the return which they get for their labor, they are unable to get products to the consumers at a reasonable price. This works a great and unnecessary hardship upon the poor.

Farmers generally, and especially small farmers, it was agreed, are at present unable to secure for sufficient time and at a reasonable rate, the capital with which to purchase land or proper equipment and materials for the most effective and economical operation of farm property. In this connection the European methods of rural credit were discussed at some length.

In considering the remedies for these conditions, certain general principles, it was decided, should control whatever policies were advocated.

It was urged that farm products ought to be generally standardized as commercial products are. There should also be organization among farmers for the raising of particular standardized products in different communities or in different parts of the same community to which they are especially adapted. Scientific farming and soil conservation were assumed.

The key-word emphasized by the speakers for all efforts to improve agricultural conditions was co-operation. This co-operation, they declared, must have the dual purpose of giving the producer a fair and consistent profit and of giving products to the consumer at the lowest possible price. The producer and the consumer must be taken into complete partnership. Combination must never be on the principle of the industrial combinations or trusts. This will require some little revision of our present anti-trust laws to permit combinations except “in so far as they are detrimental to the interests of the people.”

Finally, the conference in its formal resolutions advocated the following constructive measures:

(a) The passage by Congress of a currency system which will permit
farmers to obtain currency on their land in much the same manner that
national bankers obtain currency by depositing bonds as security.

(b) Taking government crop reporting out of the hands of “stock
gamblers” and making it a public matter.

(c) The rapid development of the government Bureau of Markets about to
be established.

(d) The organized co-operation, both of consumers and producers, under
proper supervision, to promote effective distribution, economical
marketing, and to reduce expenses between producer and consumer.

(e) Organized co-operation properly supervised to secure more
advantageous systems of rural credit.

(f) The extension and improvement of the parcel’s post as a potent
factor in reducing the cost and facilitating the distribution of the
products of the farm to the ultimate consumers.

SOUTHERN SCHOOLMEN AND THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER

You can’t be wise on an empty stomach. You can’t fill that stomach until you are wise. Nor can you be educated or fed until you are good, happy, clean—nor good, happy or clean until you are educated and fed. In the individual, then, life is a complete circle, every part of which is integral. In the whole group of individuals, there is the same circle, no part of which is complete in itself, or even significant unless considered merely as a segment.

This fundamental fact, so obvious, yet so seldom fully recognized, gave form and force to the Conference on Education in the South, recently held in Richmond. Farmers, business men, country preachers, officials, writers, editors, physicians, plain citizens, and school teachers—some 2,300—met together to discuss the problems which are common to them all. Wonder of wonders, the “conference” was a real conference; spell binding addresses were conspicuous by their absence. To a remarkable extent, the program consisted of concise and vigorous statements of actual accomplishments and constructive pleas for needed accomplishments. At one meeting Virginia Pearl Moore of Tennessee would tell how a mountain girl had made at the cost of a dollar or so a home canner with which she had won a prize—and rebuilt a whole community; at another E. M. Tousley of Minnesota would tell how the farmers’ corporation at Dassel in his state had procured for the consumer his share of the price of his crops—and rounded out and made full the life of the neighborhood.

These men and women who met at Richmond had their faces set toward the village and the open country. They realized that American life was becoming a pyramid set wrong end up. To turn the pyramid over, so that at the bottom supporting the whole structure will be a satisfied and satisfying country life, was the large task to which these southerners gave vigorous attention. The conference took note of the fact that the “great American contortion” of the fed trying to support the feeder cannot be perpetuated. It realized, too, that the general assumption that all country people are or are to become men is wholly wrong; that it is many generations past the time when in an organized and comprehensive way, educational and social agencies should have begun to help the farmer’s wife and daughter so that they could help themselves. To be sure, wife and daughter will not have their due until the farmer is economically efficient, but what are the chances that he will increase his yield if he has to eat poorly cooked food, to say nothing of putting up with a nagging wife and a discontented daughter?

As the most tangible and immediate method of making the farmer more efficient economically, the conference emphasized better business methods. Here again Dr. Albert P. Bourland, executive secretary, showed discernment, in that he related the subject of agricultural co-operation and better farm credits to the other topics discussed—school, church, home and business in the large. The conference had the right to preach co-operation for it was practicing it!

All the discussions were illuminated by honesty—the recognition of problems and the characterization of evils by their right names. Indeed, this meeting made the few visitors from north of Mason and Dixon’s line again wish that in their sections of the country there were the same hearty frankness joined to tact.

Since this conference discussed the whole of the circle of life, what right had it to be called a conference for _education_?

In the South, the machinery for social amelioration is to a large extent educational. Whether it be the hook worm in South Carolina or bad housing in Texas that is attacked, efforts to make the South a better place in which to live emanate to a surprising degree from state departments of education, agricultural colleges, state universities, sectarian colleges, secondary schools, and—praise be!—one-room rural schools. Whether or not these institutions have the help of individuals, they do their work in the name of all of the people.

LESSONS FROM OHIO RESERVOIRS

MORRIS KNOWLES
Pittsburgh Flood Commission

Early reports of the recent Ohio floods gave many the impression that the disasters were due to the failure of reservoirs; and as these reports were not generally corrected later, this impression no doubt remains in the minds of some. An investigation made during the week following the disasters showed this to be incorrect; but the escape was so narrow in some instances that the lesson of reservoirs of this sort is driven home almost as strongly as if they had failed and caused an enormous destruction of life and property.

Most of the reservoirs in the flooded districts belonged to the Ohio state canal system and were constructed to supply water for the canals in the dry seasons. In addition, the Columbus water supply storage dam on the Scioto river, was reported to have failed, causing a panic in Columbus. A number of power dams in various parts of the state were also the subjects of similar rumors. But these reports were either entirely without foundation, as in the case of the Columbus dam, or else the dams were relatively unimportant, so that this article may well be confined to the canal reservoirs.

The Ohio canal system, built in the second quarter of the last century, consists of two main divisions—the Ohio Canal, or eastern route, connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio river by way of the Cuyahoga, Tuscarawas, Muskingum, Licking and Scioto river valleys; and the Miami and Erie Canal, or western route, connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio river by way of the Maumee, Auglaize, and Miami river valleys. In addition, the Muskingum river was slack-watered below Zanesville. Numerous lateral, feeder and tributary canals completed a system which had cost approximately $16,000,000 and which comprised in 1850 over 1,000 miles of canals, more than 300 lift locks and half a dozen reservoirs.

In the case of each of the main canal routes, water was lacking on the summit level during the dry season, and the reservoirs were constructed to supplement the normal flow at such times. The Portage Lakes, just south of Akron, were dammed about 1840, to supply the summit of the eastern route; Loramie and Lewistown Reservoirs about 1850–60, for the western route; and the Licking Reservoir, or Buckeye Lake, about 1832, for the Licking summit. In addition, Grand Reservoir, the largest in the state, was built about 1841, to supply the northern slope of the Miami and Erie Canal.

LOOKING DOWN THE EAST RESERVOIR CREVASSE
In the wreckage are the remains of a saloon and of a concrete bridge.
]

During the middle of the last century, just prior to the Civil War, these canals were very active, and brought in a gross revenue, during some years, of over $500,000. In 1851 the gross earnings were over $799,000, and the net earnings almost $470,000. But later, the decline came, as it did on all of the old canals. As the canal section and lock dimensions were out-grown by the demands of modern traffic, a gradual abandonment of navigation followed, until now, for many years, there has been no canal freight traffic at all. Some of the branch and feeder canals have been officially abandoned, and either left to deteriorate without attention, or else filled up. Several of the reservoirs were dedicated by the legislature, by several acts passed since 1894, to use as public parks and pleasure resorts, with the provision, however, that they must be maintained for canal purposes.

For the past few years, therefore, the only revenues from the canals have been from the leasing of lands for oil well drilling and from the sale of water or water power to private or municipal water works and industrial plants. An annual appropriation has been made, in addition, to assist in meeting the expense of maintenance. There has, therefore, been no great stimulus to comprehensive and thorough work, and probably a great deal of the maintenance has been of a perfunctory character. The canals and reservoirs are in charge of a Board of Public Works of three members, but neither this nor any other state body or official appears to have had the specific duty of investigating these reservoirs from the sole point of view of public safety.

The Portage Lakes, about six miles south of Akron, were provided with no spillway whatever. The only way water could be discharged from them was through a thirty-six inch pipe. At the beginning of the rain-storm, the level in the reservoirs was within about one foot of the top of the embankment. It was not surprising, therefore, that the lakes filled up, overflowed the low embankment and washed out a crevasse about twenty-five feet deep and nearly 200 feet wide. The water overflowed a considerable area of low farm lands.

At the Lewistown Reservoir, which covers 6,000 acres, about a quarter of a mile of the west embankment was overflowed continuously for a day and a half. Waves dashed over the top of the south bank for several days. Both banks were almost despaired of, and a large force of men, including cottagers and citizens from neighboring towns, worked hard, placing logs and sand bags, to save them. In this they were successful, but a large area south of the reservoir was overflowed.

The Loramie Reservoir of 1,830 acres was already filled to above the spillway level when the rain started, and the water reached a maximum elevation of about four feet above the 200 foot spillway. Two small crevasses about twenty and twenty-five feet wide respectively and five or six feet deep, were washed out at a low portion of the embankment.

The Grand Reservoir is one of the largest artificial bodies of water in the world and covers about 13,400 acres. The water rose to about two feet above the ninety-five foot spillway. The water did not come near overtopping the banks, but heavy waves were driven against and over them, eroding them seriously at some points, and softening and furrowing their backs at others. A large force of volunteers worked with the laborers, filling and placing bags of sand, while a company of state militia patrolled the banks. No breaks occurred at any point, but the situation was critical for two or three days.

REPAIRED BREAK IN LORAMIE RESERVOIR EMBANKMENT.
When the break occurred the water was about four feet over the
spillway.
]

* * * * *

These situations teach a lesson that ought never to need repetition. Reservoir failures did not contribute measurably to the flood damage in Ohio. The trouble was caused by excessive and extensive rains.

But even if the reservoirs did not fail with disastrous results, the margin was a narrow one and the lesson is equally plain. It has long been an engineering principle that an earth embankment must not be overtopped. Twenty-four years ago, the Johnstown disaster, due to insufficient spillway capacity, impressed this upon the whole world. And it is an interesting parallel, that this was caused by an old reservoir originally built by the state for canal purposes, and later abandoned and used for pleasure purposes. Yet in Ohio there were four earth embankment reservoirs, one of which had no spillway and a far from sufficient discharge pipe; two of which filled up so that the banks were overflowed; and one which did not overflow, but which filled up sufficiently so that waves were driven over the embankments. Nor was the rainfall one beyond the range of probability. The March storm probably broke all records for combined intensity, duration and extent. But for small drainage areas such as these (52 to 114 square miles) the rainfall was not unprecedented. At least two storms have occurred in Ohio during the past forty years in which the rainfall in forty-eight hours was greater than that recorded in any forty-eight hours of the late storm, at any station, excepting Piqua, which is below the reservoirs in question. And in at least one storm in the same period, the rainfall for twenty-four hours was within .06 inch of the highest twenty-four hour rainfall of last month.

The faults in these reservoirs, then, were not due to a lack of knowledge as to what to expect, but only to failure to apply knowledge already gained. In this case, of course, state ownership put an extra responsibility on Ohio to see that its property was not a menace to its citizens. But, in any case, the state is the only institution which can see that such structures are provided with the necessary facilities to make them safe. Johnstown ought to have taught the necessity of examining reservoirs and dams, and of enforcing suitable standards of design and construction. Yet if we examine the statute books of Ohio we find no legislative provision of this kind whatever. Nor is there any provision for the study, mapping and gauging of the water resources. This is a necessary preliminary to a full understanding of the possible menace from uncontrolled waste.

With only two or three exceptions, conditions are precisely the same throughout the country. Even in Pennsylvania, which has probably suffered more grievously from dam failures than any other state, there is as yet no public knowledge of the design and condition of all dams, and no authority in any official or body to correct a dangerous condition.

Must we wait for another Johnstown or an Austin to change these things? Or will we learn from what might well have occurred in Ohio, and make a repetition of such disasters impossible? The lesson is plain. Will we profit by it?

BOOKS

MODERN PHILANTHROPY

By WILLIAM H. ALLEN. Dodd, Mead & Co. 437 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of
THE SURVEY $1.64.

During 1910 and 1911, the years immediately succeeding the death of her husband, Mrs. E. H. Harriman received many thousands of appeals from as many individuals, charities, churches or other enterprises, most of whom either felt that they had some claim upon her generosity or hoped that their individual desires or necessities were particularly worthy of support. These appeals, to the number of 6,000, Mrs. Harriman turned over to the New York Bureau of Municipal Research for analysis and study. They came from all corners of the globe. The plans and remedies proposed ranged from a sage’s advice to a cheap cure-all emanating from a freakish brain.

Using the results of this study as a text, the author has written this volume, a part of which is a discourse on the relation of philanthropy to the functions of government. Another part is more like a manual on will making and successful appealing for private funds. The final section is an argument in favor of a national clearing house for appeals and charitable causes.

The details with which the analysis and classification of the 6,000 appeals is presented are so elaborate that they become tiresome and confusing. Besides, many of them are so exceptional that while they might be texts for discussions in social ethics, few general conclusions of value can be reached from them.

The discussion of will making has greater value for our various communities, and is receiving increasing attention among lawyers, social workers and civic reformers. The author proposes that lawyers recognize this value and equip themselves as experts or consultants for those who in increasing number wish to leave of their resources a contribution toward the betterment of social and civic conditions. He calls attention to the fact that the terms of a will are generally an expression of a previous generation’s interest and that it is altogether too commonly true at the present time that the will maker’s thought is not kept abreast with the development of the community and the needs of the times. For instance, the important work in scientific research of the present day is not provided for to any large extent by bequests but is largely financed by gifts from the living.

The continuous education of prospective givers is urged so that their bequests may express a vital interest of the donor’s present instead of his past. The tendency of men to make their wills in middle life will, however, always prove to be an obstacle to this desired result, and hence the terms of a will must be made as general as a careful description of the donor’s interest allows it to be, rather than so restricted that its usefulness will soon be so lessened that the state must set a limit to the life of the bequest.

The list of nation-wide needs that the book presents is certainly a formidable one. Many of them require a paragraph while others ought to have a whole chapter if not a whole volume to elucidate them and show their value to the skeptical reader or legislator. In the shape in which they are presented they bewilder all except the expert social scientist or social reformer. That the needs have diverse values is easily seen by examining two in the list of 4 per cent to 6 per cent investments, combining public service and private profits. Here we find the enigmatic suggestion that we discover the “application of the Child’s Restaurant idea to boarding houses” placed side by side with the need of a “model factory system that would net capital 4 per cent or 5 per cent and let the earnings above that limit go to make high wages, shorter hours and lower prices.” Many utopias are contained in these lists. The enumeration is impressive and suggestive but not convincing.

The author’s tendency to question every social fact, every community habit and every form of benevolence is found throughout the volume. This undoubtedly arouses thought. It is nowhere better exemplified than in the following statement: “It is doubtful whether the philosophy of giving formulated by Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller rings truer than does that of begging letters. After all, philosophy is not much more than straight seeing, and a person in trouble, needing help, can see almost as much and as far as a person wanting to get rid of money. Neither a multi-millionaire nor a professor of ethics could surpass the good wife whose husband is harassed to pay $200 debts.” These half truths challenge one to find the whole truth, but they do not much enlighten him who is seeking to find a safe social policy.

Mr. Allen’s mind is fertile. He has the unusual gift of throwing out sheaves of questions for arousing one’s interest, and for this purpose the volume in question is particularly noteworthy.