Chapter II: Part 2

There were not lacking men who “spoke by the book,” men who had participated in the Hague Conferences, senators and representatives, authors of books on international problems—men like former Vice-President Fairbanks, Dr. James Brown Scott, Senator Burton (president of the American Peace Society), Congressman Bartholdt (president of the congress), Congressman Ainey, Dr. Benjamin F. Trueblood (for over a score of years secretary of the American Peace Society), Prof. Paul S. Reinsch, Prof. W. I. Hull, Dean W. P. Rogers; the United States commissioner of education, Dr. Claxton; college presidents like David Starr Jordan, C. F. Thwing, S. C. Mitchell, A. Ross Hill, Laura Drake Gill, Frank L. McVey, Booker T. Washington, and others; business men like Andrew Carnegie, Leroy A. Goddard, J. G. Schmidlapp and Eugene Levering; the secretaries and directors of various peace offices from Bunker Hill to the Golden Gate; the official head of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Mrs. Pennypacker, and her predecessor, Mrs. Phillip N. Moore, under whose administration was created the peace department of the women’s clubs. British America was represented by such distinguished men as Hon. Benjamin Russell, justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, and John Lewis, editor of the _Toronto Star_.

In connection with the congress inter-collegiate oratorical contests were conducted, the coming Hundred Years of Peace Celebration described, special church services held, and social courtesies bestowed through receptions and dinners.

Should one ask what is the most characteristic feature of the peace movement in 1913, perhaps it might truly be said that pacifism more and more is being formulated into a science. The organized peace movement began ninety-eight years ago purely as a moral reform. It is no less a moral reform today. But it has accumulated a vast amount of historic, economic, juridical, biological and general sociological data.

When one considers the movement of the human animal from the day of the man whose bones recently were dug up from the Sussex gravels; when one measures the progress of human beings from cave-dwelling to Universal Postal Unions and Hague Conferences and Courts; when one notes the marked decrease in the number of wars, the total abolition of private war, the almost revolutionary mitigation of war practices (so that today one finds it comparatively comfortable to “get his living by being killed”); when one remembers that the world is beginning to think in economic terms; when one examines the beginning already made towards the substitution of judicial procedure for fist law; when one counts up the half hundred things actually being done officially by governments acting internationally; when one perceives that the man animal is specializing in two things—rational thinking and morality—then one can easily believe that, having so progressed from jungleism towards internationalism, the race probably will not stop now and here.

Direction and distance are prophetic. Only by some unforeseen and catastrophic and utter extinction of the human species can man escape his blessed and inevitable and rapidly approaching terrestrial destiny of organized pacifism and world-wide scientific and industrial co-operation. The tiny mountain rill of pacifism has become an ocean-seeking river, on whose mighty current the war-afflicted human race is being borne on towards the ocean of a real civilization.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See THE SURVEY for March 30, 1912.

[2] See THE SURVEY for May 10, page 212.

[3] It would be desirable if a sufficient number of persons interested would contribute so that it would be practicable to print in full the discussions, properly edited with bibliographies and notes, so as to make a really authoritative booklet on the questions under discussion.

BOOKS

THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE

By H. G. WELLS. B. W. Huebsch. 61 pp. Price $.60; by mail of THE
SURVEY $.65.

This is a small book, sixty-one pages of large type, containing an address delivered at the Royal Institution in England. But the value of the publication is out of proportion to its size. Here is the abundant Wells literature of the last two decades in a compact and highly concentrated extract form. And this means, as every lover of this English author will know at once, a wealth of suggestive speculation and stimulating idealism.

The thesis of the book is that we now have the materials in hand for a systematic and accurate “exploration of the future.” There is no reason why we should not be able to forecast the future development of society, by a critical study of operative causes, as definitely as we now reconstruct the past conditions of the race by a critical study of the geological and archeological record. What the scientist now does in the fields of physics or astronomy, we ought to be able to do just as easily in the field of social life. “Suppose,” says Wells, “that the laws of social and political development were given as many brains, were given as much attention, criticism and discussion, as we have given to the laws of chemical combination, and what might we not expect?” Here, evidently, is the philosophical justification of The War of the Worlds, Anticipations, The Future in America, New Worlds for Old, and many another fascinating volumes from Wells’ pen which might be mentioned.

This thesis, however, constitutes only a part of the book’s abundant material. A keen psychological discussion of the two divergent types of mind, the forward-looking and the backward-looking, into which all men may be divided; a passing glance at the pragmatic standard of “it works”; a survey of the great-man theory versus the economic theory of social determinism; an incisive critique of positivism; a bold and eloquent prophecy of the future destiny of man upon this planet—here are only a few of the “extras” which are contained in this distillation of the Wells philosophy. About as good an example of _multum in parvo_ as I have ever seen!

JOHN HAYNES HOLMES.

SOCIAL WELFARE IN NEW ZEALAND

By HUGH H. LUSK. Sturges & Walton Co. 287 pp. Price $1.50; by mail
of THE SURVEY $1.62.

Looking back as an old man upon the record he himself has helped to shape, Hugh H. Lusk, in his Social Welfare in New Zealand, points out the significance, particularly for the United States, of that method of government which he calls State Socialism. Nothing so annoys New Zealanders as the ever-recurring criticism that their experiments have been carried out upon too small a scale and under conditions too unusual to be of value to the great remote countries whose single cities contain more people than the whole dominion of New Zealand. Yet doubters still will question, and standpatters will refuse to be moved, by this account of actual accomplishments. He who is not blind, however, to the evils which have followed private profit in public utilities, and who has seen governments conferring special privileges upon the few at the expense of the many, as he turns here again to New Zealand may well find inspiring faith in the ability of a whole people to legislate toward the common good.

Mr. Lusk shows how in New Zealand, government-built railroads became a necessity in a sparsely settled country where private capital would not venture, and how an extensive scheme of legislation for the benefit of settlers on the land was forced upon a people whose appetite for mutual help grew with what it fed upon. Each piece of legislation had in view no more than the meeting of a definite difficulty as it arose. Yet step by step New Zealanders went on in the same direction, until they had reached the point where, somewhat to their own surprise, they found themselves famous and envied in the world at large. Some of that surprise is due to the fact that politics, even as we know them here, are there recognized to have played an important part in shaping the destinies of those islands. “Dick” Seddon and his followers appreciated to its full, the vote-getting value of land reform, progressive taxation and public improvements. Mr. Lusk makes too little of this significant lesson from New Zealand.

And by one who understands the “States” so well, and who is writing for our encouragement and warning, it is surprising that more emphasis is not placed upon methods of administration. To me, as I came to appreciate the New Zealand civil servant, his integrity, his ability, the esteem with which he is held, it always seemed that in him more than anywhere else was to be found the secret of such success as New Zealand has attained. Turn the present corps out and put in such incompetents and grafters as we have in many of our state departments in America, and the whole New Zealand structure would come tumbling down immediately. Not until law and public opinion make it possible, can we have here such administration of labor laws, for instance, as Edward Tregear has given these many years to New Zealand, and not until then will new labor laws be of much more avail to us than old ones are now.

Mr. Lusk’s moral is, “Go thou and do likewise.” By law prevent the accumulation of inordinate riches and provide for the general diffusion of the sum total of prosperity. But when we find that, putting the best construction upon available data, the definition of a man or woman not in receipt of an income of more than $975, “in New Zealand, practically includes all classes and persons engaged in laboring or mechanical pursuits as well as junior clerks or school teachers,” we wonder, after all, whether New Zealand’s road is the one for others to follow. There is many and many a man and woman in that country to whom $975 a year is undreamed of comfort. If this is all that reform can do under the best of circumstances, is this particular game worth the candle? The New Zealand worker just now is saying rather vociferously that it is not. There lies the real hope for reform, that it does not stop, even though it falters. The final lesson from New Zealand is beyond what we are here told. Surely it is that those who will may preach reform and State Socialism to their hearts’ content, but that the workers of other countries must not imitate the mistakes of their New Zealand brothers, neglecting political and industrial organization and leaving it to others to decide what is the public welfare.

PAUL KENNADAY.

FIRE PREVENTION

By EDWARD F. CROKER. Dodd. Mead & Co. 354 pp. Price $1.50; by mail
of THE SURVEY $1.

Fire Prevention, by Edward F. Croker, formerly chief of the New York Fire Department for almost twelve years, is a presentation of the principal safeguards against loss by fire. In it ex-Chief Croker tells in a readable way what, from his long experience as a fire fighter, he considers the most effective ways to extinguish fires.

Most of all he emphasizes the necessity of preventing fires. “If I had my way about it,” he says, “I would not permit a piece of wood as big as a man’s finger to be used in the construction of any building in the United States which had a ground area larger than twenty-five by fifty feet and was more than three stories in height.” He calls attention also, to a point which has been emphasized many times when he declares that “it is not so much the buildings which should receive added protection but the contents and the inmates of them. We must add to the term ‘fire-proof,’ the terms ‘death-proof’ and ‘conflagration proof.’”

Perhaps to a lay reader to whom some of the intricacies of steel construction, high pressure, and fire-fighting apparatus are not plain, the most interesting chapters are those which deal with housekeeping whether in the home, store or workshop.

In his chapter on Prevention of Fire in the Dwelling, Mr. Croker gives a number of simple suggestions which would prevent most of the thousands and thousands of fires in the 11,000,000 wooden buildings in this country and save a financial loss which in two years equals the cost of the Panama Canal. Concerning these suggestions there can be little disagreement, although those which he makes for additional laws may not win as unanimous support.

JAMES P. HEATON.

THE CHILDREN IN THE SHADOW

By ERNEST K. COULTER. McBride, Nast & Co. 277 pp. Price $1.50; by
mail of THE SURVEY $1.62.

THE AMERICAN CHILD

By ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN. Houghton Mifflin, Riverside Press. 191 pp.
Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.35.

To gain the sympathetic and accurate knowledge of children shown in his book, Mr. Coulter stood on the reviewing stand for ten years. His was the eye to see and the heart to feel from the first, but as clerk of the Children’s Court in Manhattan for ten years he had the unique opportunity of looking into the faces of a procession of 100,000 dependent, neglected and delinquent children as they filed by the judge and told their stories.

These stories he often verified in alley, street, tenement, station house, reformatory and prison. He shows how crowded streets, lack of play space, poverty, sickness, insanitary houses, criminal companions and parental neglect provide a fruitful soil in which to breed neglected and delinquent boys and girls. These conditions he charges to the greed of individuals and to the careless, neglectful indifference of society.

As a means of helping individual boys who need the personal touch of a friend right now, Mr. Coulter started the Big Brother Movement, which is spreading all over the country. His permanent remedy for the woes of children, however, requires not only the love of Big Brothers, parents and friends, but also sanitary houses, good food, playgrounds, fresh air and sky. Mr. Coulter’s pen pictures of Children in the Shadow challenge us all not to rest until all such children are brought out into the sunlight.

* * * * *

Miss McCracken’s book is a reprint of articles which originally appeared in the _Outlook_, and deals with actual children and parents of rather exceptional intelligence in both city and country. What these exceptional American parents do for their children in home, play, school, library and church is told in such a way as to appeal to and educate parents who are not exceptional.

What children do for their parents is also set forth. The real message of the book is that the reciprocal relation of children and parents can be and should be one of the most beautiful and helpful that this old world knows. The title might have been True Stories of Parents Who Knew How to Live with Their Children.

HENRY W. THURSTON.

CO-OPERATION IN NEW ENGLAND

By JAMES FORD. Introduction by Francis G. Peabody. Russell Sage
Foundation Publication, Survey Associates, Inc. 300 pp. Price
$1.50, postpaid.

Individualism is generally assigned as the primary cause of the failure of co-operation to gain a more extensive foothold on American soil. But to the student of the subject this off-hand explanation is far from conclusive. For not only have Americans been the leading exponents of political, social and religious co-operation, but they have likewise shown marked aptitude for economic co-operation. Our very national life is purely co-operative. Our big business is, though not in a strict sense, in a large sense co-operative. Furthermore, were the traditional American individualism the sole or even the main cause, why has co-operation in this country met with no wider acceptance or greater success among the immigrants coming from countries where co-operation is practiced to a very high degree? We must therefore look for other reasons to account for the bankruptcy of co-operative effort in this country. These are set forth by Dr. James Ford in his book Co-operation in New England.

The first co-operative movement in the New England States, the New England Protective Union stores, began in 1845 and ended in 1857. The second movement, the Sovereigns of Industry, which was launched in 1874, had an equally brief history. The first had at one time as many as 700 stores, of which but two remain; while five are left of the 280 of which the latter movement once boasted. At the present time urban co-operation is practically confined to immigrants, largely non-English speaking. Their efforts have not met with much greater success than those of New England’s native sons. All told, there are about sixty co-operative stores throughout New England. Most of them are too young, too small, and too isolated to be dignified as a movement.

The meagre results of distributive co-operation are only exceeded by those of co-operation in manufacture. All effort in that direction has been abortive, and “true co-operative production does not exist in New England.”

The author finds greater cause for encouragement in rural co-operation. “The farmers’ movement,” he says, “which is much more influential in the industrial world, not only penetrates, by means of co-operative creameries, almost every township of western New England, but through association for co-operative sale extends to many other large territories.” Co-operation among farmers consists of co-operative buying of supplies, co-operative marketing of products, and co-operative production in the way of butter and cheese making. He estimates the number of more or less co-operative creameries throughout New England at 125, although probably not more than twenty-five of these are purely co-operative. “There are many indications today,” continues the author, “that rural New England has reached a point not only desirable but increasingly practicable.” With a large American commission now abroad for the special purpose of studying agricultural co-operation, it is to be hoped that this movement will be accelerated.

The really important part of Dr. Ford’s hook is his discussion of general co-operative principles. The economic conditions for successful co-operation are wanting in this country. People will co-operate either because they are driven to it by necessity, as is the case in Europe, or because they see in it special inducement to make it worth their while. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, these conditions do not exist in the United States so far. In a country where every workingman carries the baton of a captain of industry in his dinner pail, it is not surprising that he will not set aside the opportunities of individual effort in favor of the uncertain, remote, and, at best, meagre returns of co-operative endeavor. All other reasons, such as the mobility of our population, our improvidence, and our lack of co-operative spirit must give way before this one fundamental reason.

The conditions that are responsible for the heavy mortality of co-operative enterprises in this country are rapidly changing. The obstacles in the way of co-operative success are gradually disappearing. Once the point is reached in New England as it has been abroad, at which societies of like interest federate for educational and trade advantage, these smaller federations “will in turn unite in a general co-operative union with common funds to sustain societies that are weak, and promote development on lines of common importance, an immense force will be set at work for the moralization of trade, the reduction of the cost of living, and the socialization of the people.”

As the title indicates, the book deals only with co-operation in the New England states. The author further limits his research to “associations for the production and distribution of the immediate necessities of life.” Notwithstanding this limiting of the inquiry both in scope and extent the book should prove of value to the student of co-operation in this country. The facts have been painstakingly collected. The author’s insight is keen and penetrating, his deductions are clear and logical, and his hopeful tone is most invigorating.

LEONARD G. ROBINSON.

THE CASE OF OSCAR SLATER

By A. CONAN DOYLE. George H. Doran Co. 103pp. Price $.50; by mail
of THE SURVEY $.57.

The case of Oscar Slater, sentenced in the High Court of Edinburgh to life imprisonment for the murder of an old lady in Glasgow, was some time ago brought to the attention of the famous writer of detective stories, together with certain circumstances which cast doubt on Slater’s guilt. With a sincere desire to clear the man, the creator of Sherlock Holmes set to work to examine the evidence and testimony presented at the trial, and to analyze the conduct of the case and the decision of judge and jury.

The result is a convincing argument for the man’s innocence of the offence for which he was convicted and an arraignment of the ineffective methods of the police who were engaged in the investigation, both in Scotland and in this country.

The undeniably bad character of the suspect created so strong a presumption of guilt that even the total refutation of the strongest piece of evidence and an obviously false accusation by the judge in his final charge, secured only a commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment when an appeal was made.

It will be interesting to know whether the detective knight’s efforts toward securing justice meet with success.

MAY LANGDON WHITE.

PERSONALS

The first woman judge of delinquent girls sits on the bench in the Chicago Juvenile Court. She is Mary M. Bartelme, a Chicago lawyer. Previous to her present connection she was for eighteen years public guardian of Cook County, acting in this office, in the words of the _Continent_, as “official mother to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children” who had no other parents and whose persons or estates were in the care of the court. Guardianship of their persons meant actual custody and education, and this for a period of many years; it meant also in many cases interest and love for the child and always, in the tangled relations of life, an understanding of human nature, as well as a thorough knowledge of the institutions best fitted for special cases. All this experience has thus been excellent preparation for Miss Bartelme’s present delicate task of reconstructing the lives and characters of delinquent girls.

Up to the time of her appointment cases of delinquent girls were heard, like those of boys, in open court. The effect is thus described by Judge Pinckney of the Chicago Court, whose assistant Miss Bartelme is:

“The delinquent girl, unlike the delinquent boy, is generally
brought to court for some sexual irregularity. This means that the
story of her shame and downfall is told openly, publicly. There are
often present at such times curiosity seekers, sensation hunters,
and now and then among the latter, I am sorry to say, are newspaper
reporters looking for a story. Frequently the name of the girl, the
names of her parents, of her brothers and sisters, and her home
address appear in the newspapers, with all the harrowing details of
her trouble. She is fortunate if her picture is not surreptitiously
taken for publication.

“After such an exploitation of her trouble, you tell the
unfortunate child that you want to do something for her—you want to
help her. Is it any wonder that she does not readily respond to the
proffered aid? Her feelings shocked, her sensibilities blunted, her
sense of justice outraged, she is more apt to refuse than accept
your suggestions for her future welfare. To my mind this procedure
is unnecessary, is wrong, is barbarous. Even under the most
favorable conditions possible to a public hearing, it is difficult
to get into sympathetic touch with the child so that she will be in
a receptive mood and willingly amenable to helpful suggestion and
treatment.

“The plan proposed is to have the case of each delinquent girl
heard by a woman, who shall act as the representative and assistant
of the presiding judge. To this woman assistant, in the presence of
the girl’s father and mother, the witnesses will tell the girl’s
story. Every consideration will be shown the girl and her family.
In so far as it is possible to do so, this darkened page in their
lives will be guarded from the public gaze.

“It is believed that these delinquent girls will the more readily
unburden their souls to one of their own sex, and especially if
allowed to so do out of hearing of the public and surrounded by
father and mother and those in sympathy with her and them.

“This is the all-important work for delinquent girls which Mary M.
Bartelme is expected to do—will do. She is the unanimous choice of
the judges of the Circuit Court for the position of assistant to
the judge of the Juvenile Court.”

* * * * *

At the recent annual meeting of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, Dr. Edward L. Keyes, Jr., was elected president, to succeed Dr. Prince A. Morrow, founder, and until his death the head of the society.

Dr. Keyes is a charter member of the society and was for many years its secretary. He has also been a member of the Executive Committee, and worked in close touch with Dr. Morrow. Dr. Keyes is a professor at the Cornell Medical School and president of the American Association of Genito-Urinary Surgeons.

Professor Maurice A. Bigelow of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, and Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton were elected to fill the vacancies in the Executive Committee. Mr. Marshall C. Allaben of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions was chosen chairman of the Executive Committee.

* * * * *

The Italian Club of New York is an interesting center. In the low-ceilinged basement opera singers, art importers, physicians, orchestra leaders and the like rub elbows at the club tables.

In the three rooms on the main floor an exhibition is being held this month of the drawings of Joseph Stella, an Italian artist of more than ordinary promise. He is a brother of Dr. Antonio Stella, a pioneer in the tuberculosis movement and a leader in New York’s civic life. The artist himself was a member of the staff of the Pittsburgh Survey, and readers of this magazine will remember the striking character sketches of the steel workers he drew in black and white. An entire room is given up to these Pittsburgh drawings, which in many respects represent the artist’s most forceful workmanship. In another room is his earlier work with East Side types, and in another the canvasses he has produced in Rome and Paris, where he has spent the last two years. These have the color and method of the post-impressionists.

A hitherto unpublished sketch by Joseph Stella.]

It is perhaps natural that the social workers who attend the exhibit drift back to the central room, where the artist’s pencil has so sympathetically and vigorously transcribed the writings, which stress and want and hope and striving spread over the faces of the steel district, immigrant and native-born alike.

There are also some charcoal sketches of Pittsburgh at night which did not lend themselves to magazine publication, but reflect marvelously the smoke and energy of the river valleys.

* * * * *

Steadfast and resourceful, with a strong body, a kind heart, a reverent spirit, combining rare judgment with knowledge, a leader well equipped for the service of her fellows has been lost to the Pacific Coast in the death of Dr. C. Annette Buckel of Oakland, Cal. Dr. Buckel was born in Warsaw, N. Y., in 1833. Earning the means for her medical education by teaching, she rendered efficient service in the United States military hospitals of the Southwest during the last two years of the Civil War. She selected and supervised the nurses, kept records in the absence of clerks, wrote letters for sick soldiers, obtained furloughs for convalescents, and comforted the dying.

Dr. Buckel is perhaps better known to readers of THE SURVEY, however, for her work in other warfare: as president of the first milk commission in California, which excluded tuberculous cows from the dairy. In all her work she emphasized prevention rather than cure. Through her efforts a school of cookery was opened, which resulted in manual training becoming a part of the public school system in Oakland. She was a director in the Mary R. Smith Trust from its beginning, and took a personal interest in each little girl in the cottage homes. So keen was her concern for handicapped children that at her death she gave her home that the proceeds might help in providing special training for such children.

S. I. S.

* * * * *

Dr. John S. Fulton, secretary of the International Congress on Tuberculosis, since 1907, has resumed at a personal financial sacrifice, the secretaryship of the Maryland State Board of Health. Dr. Fulton has already been connected with the State Board of Health of Maryland and was its secretary for several years before he resigned to accept the position he has just vacated. He succeeds Dr. Marshall L. Price who was medical assistant of the board up to 1907 when he was elected secretary.

COMMUNICATIONS

RELIEF OF WIDOWS

TO THE EDITOR:

I thoroughly disagree with Porter R. Lee’s appraisal of the report of the Massachusetts commission on the children of widows, and regret that the report will be seen by only a part of your readers.[4]

Mr. Lee holds the commission’s conclusions to be of little value because derived “in almost every case from inadequate data.” Yet he adds later: “The report of the commission gives us much that suggests the fact of our failure to provide adequately or helpfully for the families of widows, a fact of which we had already become conscious. What we need, however, is not so much evidence of the fact of failure as a clear understanding of why we have failed.”

It might be honest to state that some of our figures are inaccurate and yet not dishonest to recommend legislation. Wholly accurate figures were never expected and not needed. The heads of the leading charitable organizations met us in conference to determine a method of investigation. The schedule method was recommended. Before the schedules were printed they were approved by several of these persons. Criticism began to appear when it seemed likely that legislation would be recommended. In June the appropriation could still have been saved. It was not saved because useful results were expected.

How inaccurate are the results? Mr. Tilley is cited as saying that a re-examination of one hundred cases disclosed “facts ... totally at variance with the reports.” Half of these records we already had discredited. Some cases resulted in reports closely like our own, sometimes lower, sometimes higher. The re-examination was in December, months after the first study. How absurd it is to suppose that the results would not be different! Everybody knows that the earnings of the poor fluctuate. Usually the overseers of the poor give special aid in winter. A page of our report explains Mr. Tilley’s one hundred cases; he makes only a blanket statement.

But again, how inaccurate are the results? The recommendations of our Minimum Wage Commission were accepted when it showed that $6 or $7 a week was the typical sum earned by an adult woman with a family which had also an adult male worker. Many such women received charity in addition. All of our widows received charity. From charity and wages together, our figures showed that they typically received $6 or $7 a week when there was not also an adult male worker and when several children had to be supported. It is not possible that our figures were so far wrong that these families were better off than the former group. And if they were so far wrong—what an indictment that would be of the accounting of the public and private charitable officers of Massachusetts!

No, the figures do not err so far. Our charities constantly protest that they have insufficient funds. Before me lies a circular of the Associated Charities of a city of 100,000 people, which has many well-to-do persons and few recent foreigners. The resources “to meet the needs of families in distress are wholly inadequate, as is well known to all familiar with the conditions.... We still use existing resources to the utmost.... Still we fall far short of being able to meet the demands upon us. Must we allow widows with young children to be overburdened and underfed,” etc? Are such stories untrue? Of course not! Most communities in Massachusetts have a poorer population and a weaker organized charity for dealing with the problem.

But, further, our opponents suggest an alternative bill, providing for “adequate” aid for all mothers with dependent children. If existing relief is adequate, this bill is a sham. The only alternative is to regard these opponents as agreeing that existing relief is inadequate.

The Legislature that gave us $1,000 hardly expected a wealth of figures. Mr. Lee does not in other matters rely on figures, I am happy to observe. “During recent years,” he says, “our enlarging conceptions of social treatment [not our figures—they are impotent] have condemned utterly much of our supposedly efficient work in family and individual reconstruction.” And for widows he grants: “There is a widespread conviction of sin in this matter and an earnest searching for the remedy.”

Our analogy (with its implications) of widowhood through industrial accident and through disease, Mr. Lee mistakenly, I believe, regards as disproved by ourselves. For, he says, we reject the principle of payment by way of indemnity for loss. We reject it as a determining principle; another principle is more fundamental. Workmen’s compensation measures, like sickness and old-age insurance, spring fundamentally from a desire to establish or maintain the conditions of efficient living. Nobody attempts really to measure the loss through death by accident. It cannot be done.

But a man’s wages can be studied to learn his standard of living, and then an expedient degree of comfort provided. The Washington act does not even relate the award to the dead man’s wages. Usually the award increases with the number of children. German statutes have all had the comfort of the survivors in view. No abstract desire to compensate for loss would ever secure legislation if, as a consequence, the efficiency and comfort of the population were to decrease.

Not only is Mr. Lee anxious to find whether relief is now adequate or not, but he wants to know where the flaw in the service is. Both questions are answered by our information as to the policies of the child-helping and relief-giving agencies. He doubts whether child-helping agencies are “competent witnesses” to the causes for the removal of children. Are they likely then to remove children for competent cause? Persons incompetent to discern the presence of factors that make non-removal desirable will scarcely remove for proper cause only. The letters of these agencies would repay reading.

What these letters say about local relief resources is more than borne out by the reports of policy contained in the letters from the overseers. Most widows are in their hands. Our schedules, further, show that actually $2 to $2.50 a week per family is usually given. None of our critics attack these statements. There is a problem and present agents do not cope with it.

Suppose we had sent into the field experts to find out whether relief is adequate. We should again face the issue of standards. Responsible persons have not accepted Mr. Carstens’ interpretation of the Chicago plan. One of the visitors of the State Board of Charity whom Mr. Tilley sent to verify records reported one case: “Widow for nine months. Four children, fourteen to seven years.... Complains of work being slack and has not had a full week’s wages for a long time.... Is terribly overworked; there seems to be nothing but skin and bone to her. The standing on her feet all day in the shop is what kills her.... _Could stand a little more aid until the combined earnings of herself and daughter show a little increase._” A little more aid! Just how much more will be differently fixed by different people. Most widows’ families in Massachusetts are not within sight of Mrs. More’s and Mr. Chapin’s standards.

The conclusion remains that the overseers and many child societies are not working well. We have a thousand overseers, elected for short terms, and receiving little or no pay. Often they serve also in other capacities and carry on private affairs. If ordered by an expert commission to make specified payments to widows fit to bring up their children they might apply the standard to other cases. The commission would select its widows. Mr. Lee wholly misrepresents our intention when he notes “incidentally that the cause of a husband’s death is not always a satisfactory test of a wife’s moral habits.”

Mr. Lee objects that we offer nothing for the children of disabled fathers, etc. If a third of the charity problem—widows—were to come under the care of a new commission, that commission would be able to work out its specialized technique. Later, we might know better what to do about desertion and other problems. Meanwhile existing charities, having a lighter load, could deal better with their remaining cases.

Then as to our use of the word “worthy.” It is old-fashioned, but convenient. No person works long in charities who acts on the notion that one person is actually as good as another—else it would be folly to try to make a person better! Mr. Lee supposes us to regard the children of the disabled and similar groups as “unworthy.” Where such an implication is even suggested I cannot discover.

In conclusion, I suppose that Mr. Lee and I differ fundamentally in our approval of a proposed method of dealing with widows, and that his criticism is derived from his point of view.

ROBERT F. FOERSTER.

[Chairman Massachusetts Commission on the Dependent Children of
Widowed Mothers.]

Cambridge.

* * * * *

I have read Professor Foerster’s letter with much interest. His last sentence: “I suppose that Mr. Lee and I differ fundamentally in our approval of a proposed method of dealing with widows and that his criticism is derived from his point of view,” a clear-cut statement of the possible reason for my criticism of the Massachusetts report, is not wholly accurate. The agitation for widows’ pensions has caught so large a measure of popular support that we begin to think that every person must be for pensions, against pensions, or on the fence ready to jump to one side or the other. Such a choice of alternatives has little attraction for any one who approaches the question out of thoughtful experience with relief problems and the long struggle to procure for the widow and others who live in misery adequate reinforcements—reinforcements of income, health, recreation, education for children and decent living conditions.

Those who have been most concerned to do justice to the widow with children have seen most clearly the failure of our relief measures. The indictment which they have brought again and again has rehearsed the fact of our failure which is suggested anew by the Massachusetts report.

But an indictment is not a remedy. The evidence behind it is not even valid always in the search for a remedy. What we need to know now is why have public and private relief failed. Professor Foerster mentions several statements of mine which do not seem to him successful arguments against widows’ pensions. I am not arguing against widows’ pensions. I merely recognize many considerations growing out of ten years’ experience in social work which make me both dissatisfied with what we are doing and suggest the need for the most careful study before we can be sure of a remedy.

I realize that many people grow impatient when the question of widows’ pensions is related to the problem of relief. Perhaps the movement, as some people hope, will be the entering wedge of a system of state endowment of motherhood. We cannot wisely, however, begin experiments for the sake of their expected future value with a total disregard of their certain present effect. Widows’ pensions as projected by the commission would be in fact a relief problem. The responsibility of the public outdoor relief machinery for their administration as proposed by the commission’s bill would indicate this even if there were no other indications, which there are.

I have found the Massachusetts report of the greatest interest, but in my judgment it does not justify widows’ pensions. The figures and the expressions of opinion secured from various agencies are significant. They are significant of the need for a deeper probe, however, not for an extension of an unsatisfactory system of relief. A recommendation that this deeper probe be undertaken is the one recommendation to which it logically leads.

It is because states which regard Massachusetts precedents with respect are likely to consider this report as the long-needed scientific and comprehensive study of the status of outdoor relief that I have tried to estimate it from this point of view.

The commonwealth of Massachusetts gave Professor Foerster and his associates on the commission a tremendously difficult task and gave them hopelessly inadequate facilities with which to perform it. Under the circumstances, perhaps none of us could have done any better. But Massachusetts should have done better.

PORTER R. LEE.

[Contributing Editor Family Rehabilitation.]

New York.

CASUALTY COMPANIES AND COMPENSATION

(_From a personal letter to the editors of The Survey published with permission of the author._)

TO THE EDITOR:

Allow me to say that I absolutely endorse the article in a recent issue by Paul Kennaday entitled Big Business and Workmen’s Compensation.[5] I have been acting for the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, a body corresponding to your National Association of Manufacturers, but more highly organized and representing a much larger proportion of its constituency than the American body. In fact, we represent about 85 per cent of all the manufacturers of Canada. I say this to indicate the probability that the Canadian body would not adopt any policy without the most careful consideration and investigation. This body has adopted the same view as that expressed in the article and is devoting a large amount of energy and considerable money promoting a workmen’s compensation system of the type of the Washington system.

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that such a system is the only satisfactory solution ultimate or even temporary to the problem. This view is of course opposed by the liability insurance interests who are conducting a carefully planned and well financed campaign against “state insurance.”

Time and again we have had to deal with the representatives of these insurance interests in connection with the investigation in Ontario preliminary to the drafting of a Workmen’s Compensation Act for that province, and I am glad to state that, generally speaking, the motives and arguments (perfectly legitimate perhaps) of the insurance interests are understood and rated at their proper value. I think I have a pretty broad view of the situation in the United States and I am sorry to say that the true position of affairs does not appear to be generally appreciated by either the politicians or the leaders of labor and industry. I should think it might well be one of the functions of THE SURVEY to open up this matter.

F. W. WEGENAST.

[Counsel Canadian Manufacturers’ Association.]

Toronto.

WAGES FIXED BY LAW

TO THE EDITOR:

In his letter to THE SURVEY on the subject of fixing wages by law, James Deegan says: “The report of the United States Bureau of Commerce and Labor for 1910 states how labor received only 20 per cent of the value of the product which it served to create.”

Considering carefully this rather surprising statement, I came to the conclusion that the writer referred to the report of the Census Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor, presenting the results of the manufacturers census of 1910. To be sure, this report does not make any such statement as that which Mr. Deegan attributes to it nor could the statement be properly based upon the statistics which it publishes. On the contrary, the census figures conclusively disprove this statement, showing it to be a gross perversion of the facts.

It is true that the total value of products reported by the census of manufacturing industries was a little over $20,000,000,000, while the amount paid out for wages and salaries was a trifle over $4,000,000,000, so that the latter amount was about 20 per cent of the former.

If Mr. Deegan had stated that the amount paid to labor employed in manufacturing industries represented 20 per cent of the total value of the products turned out by these industries, the statement would have been formally accurate, although it probably would be misleading even then. The statement is, however, that labor received only 20 per cent of the value of the product which it served to create.

Even with a superficial knowledge of economics and industrial processes one ought to perceive that the laborers employed in manufacturing industries by no means create the full value of the products which these industries place upon the market. The laborer in the factory does not create the raw material which the factory uses; labor on the farm, in the mine or in the forest entered into that.

Now the report of the census shows that while the value of the product produced by the manufacturing industries of the United States was $20,700,000,000, the cost of the materials consumed in the manufacture of these products was $12,200,000,000 and that the value of the products, less cost of materials, was therefore about $8,500,000,000. The value created by the laborers employed in these industries could not possibly exceed this sum and would be considerably less than this if any allowance were made for wear and tear or depreciation of plant and machinery or fuel consumed or for other expenses which enter into the value of the final product.

If, however, we credit laborers with having produced the full value represented by the difference between the cost of materials and the final value of products it follows that the $4,000,000,000 which they received represented not 20 per cent but about 50 per cent of the value which they created.

If we deduct from the final value not only the materials purchased but also the miscellaneous expenses reported by the census, none of which represent values created in these industries, the proportion received by the laborers advances to about 65 per cent. And still no allowance is made for replacement of capital.

Mr. Deegan’s proposition for regulating wages proposes to award the laborers a minimum of 33⅓ per cent. It is evident that they are much better off than this under the present regime and without any state regulation of wages.

Mr. Deegan further states that the report referred to “also shows that after all expenses and charges are levied, there still remains over $2,000,000,000 surplus to be divided as profits among the employers.” It is true that after deducting from the value of the products reported by the census, the aggregate of all reported expenses, the remainder is a little over $2,000,000,000; but the census report is careful to point out that this difference can not be regarded as representing profits for the simple reason that the expenses reported by the census did not include all the expenses incidental to the process of manufacture. Among the expenses left out of account is the important item of depreciation.

If Mr. Deegan had consulted the census report itself, such statements as he made would be reprehensible as well as inexcusable; but I presume that he got his information at second hand from some newspaper paragraph or article originating no one knows how or where.

But THE SURVEY, however, ought not to be made the agency for the further promulgation of such misinformation. It might be said, perhaps, that such gross misstatements do not deceive thinking and well-informed people; but even well-informed people do not always know the facts which refute such statements; and thinking people do not have time to think about everything.

More than that it seems to me that some consideration should be shown for the unthinking people that they may not be deceived or misled.

Some of them have a vote.

JOSEPH A. HILL.

[Bureau of the Census.]

Washington.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] The report is for free distribution and may be had by writing to the Commission to Study the Question of the Support of Dependent Minor Children of Widowed Mothers, State House, Boston, Mass.

[5] See THE SURVEY for March 8, page 809.

JOTTINGS

HALVING THE TAX RATE

The Salant-Schaap lower rents bill, which provides for submitting to a referendum vote the gradual lowering of the tax rate on all buildings in New York city to one-half the rate on land, was killed in committee in the New York Legislature. This is the bill which was advocated at the Lower Rents Exhibit described in THE SURVEY of March 15 last.

RELIEF FOR BEDFORD REFORMATORY

In the final hours of the New York Legislature the sum voted to Bedford Reformatory to relieve overcrowding was $414,000 and not $500,000 as was stated in THE SURVEY of last week.

THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

By unanimous vote both the Senate and the Assembly in New York passed the bill to incorporate the Rockefeller Foundation for the dissemination of knowledge, the prevention of suffering, and the promotion of the well-being and civilization of the peoples of the United States. The bill which is very similar to the one urged before Congress in 1910 has not yet been signed by Governor Sulzer.

HUNGARY PROTECTS ABANDONED CHILDREN

Hungary maintains seventeen institutions for indigent, abandoned, delinquent and abused children. It is the custom to receive every child applicant, to give him a bath and clean clothes, and then to investigate his condition. If the investigation warrants the state’s interference the child is admitted. Seventeen thousand children were thus received in 1908. Most of them are placed out in the country or smaller cities with farmers or artisans of good character and in moderate circumstances. Five reformatories have been established for delinquent or absolutely unruly children. They have room for a thousand inmates, who live together in family groups of twenty-five, learning a trade under the supervision of the head of the household. Corporal punishment is still administered. Up to 1908, 2,331 inmates had been released on parole, 86.6 per cent had worked steadily and had kept straight, 5.4 per cent had committed crimes and 8 per cent had disappeared.

Country Property

Owners having Property For Sale or To Rent for the coming season are invited to write for our advertising rates.

THE SURVEY
105 East 22d Street, New York

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 247 Changed: be reckoned as the most throughly
to: be reckoned as the most thoroughly

pg 255 Footnote removed due to no anchor:
See The Survey, February 8, 1913, p. 653.

pg 256 Changed: institutions for indigent, abandoned, deliquent
to: institutions for indigent, abandoned, delinquent