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diff --git a/15487-h/15487-h.htm b/15487-h/15487-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ed12ac --- /dev/null +++ b/15487-h/15487-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5444 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams</title> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Democracy and Social Ethics + +Author: Jane Addams + +Release Date: March 28, 2005 [EBook #15487] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS *** + + + + +Produced by Alicia Williams, Joel Schlosberg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<center><h2><a name="page_i">The Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and +Sociology</a></h2> + +<h6>UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF</h6> + +<h4>RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D, LL.D.</h4> + +<p><small><i>Director of the School of Economics and Political Science; Professor of +Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin</i></small></p> + +<h5>12mo. Half Leather. $1.25, net, each</h5></center> + +<hr width="25%"> + +<p><b>Monopolies and Trusts</b>. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D.<br> + +<small>"It is admirable. It is the soundest contribution on the subject that +has appeared."—Professor JOHN R. COMMONS.<br> + +"By all odds the best written of Professor Ely's work."<br>— +Professor SIMON N. PATTEN, <i>University of Pennsylvania</i>.</small><br> + +<b>Outlines of Economics</b>. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D., author of +"Monopolies and Trusts," etc.<br> + +<b>The Economics of Distribution</b>. By JOHN A. HOBSON, author of "The +Evolution of Modern Capitalism," etc.<br> + +<b>World Politics</b>. By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Assistant Professor +of Political Science, University of Wisconsin.<br> + +<b>Economic Crises</b>. By EDWARD D. JONES, Ph.D., Instructor in Economics +and Statistics, University of Wisconsin.<br> + +<b>Government in Switzerland</b>. By JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, Ph.D., Associate +Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University.<br> + +<b>Political Parties in the United States, 1846-1861</b>. By JESSE MACY, +LL.D., Professor of Political Science in Iowa College.<br> + +<b>Essays on the Monetary History of the United States</b>. By CHARLES J. +BULLOCK, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, Williams College.<br> + +<b>Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order</b>. By EDWARD +ALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D.<br> + +<b>Municipal Engineering and Sanitation</b>. By W.N. BAKER, Ph.B., Associate +Editor of <i>Engineering News</i>.</p> + +<hr width="25%"> + +<center><h3>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</h3> + +<h5>66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK</h5></center> + + +<hr> + +<center><h3><a name="page_ii"><b><u>In Preparation for Early Issue</u></b></a></h3></center> + +<h3>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</h3> + +<blockquote><p>By JANE ADDAMS, Head of "Hull House," Chicago; joint author of +"Philanthropy and Social Progress." (<i>Now ready.</i>)</p></blockquote> + +<p><small>Miss Addams' Settlement Work is known to all who are interested in +social amelioration and municipal conditions. As the title of her book +shows, it will be occupied with the reciprocal relations of ethical +progress and the growth of democratic thought, sentiment, and +institutions.</small></p> + +<h3>CUSTOM AND COMPETITION</h3> + +<blockquote><p>By RICHARD T. ELY, LL.D., Professor of Political Economy and Director of +the School of Economics and Political Science in the University of +Wisconsin; President of the American Economic Association; author of +"Monopolies and Trusts," etc.</p></blockquote> + +<p><small>Topics treated under Custom include the Rent of Land and Custom; +Interest and Custom; The Remuneration of Personal Services and Custom; +Custom and Commerce.</small></p> + +<p><small>Competition is first discussed with reference to the biological aspects +of the question, and the significance of subhuman competition is +confined and a careful classification of its various kinds is presented. +One of the main topics of the book is Competition as a Principle of +Distribution, and its treatment of the subject of price admirably +supplements the theoretical discussion in "Monopolies and Trusts."</small></p> + +<h3>AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS</h3> + +<blockquote><p>By CHARLES ZUEBLIN, B.D., Associate Professor of Sociology in the +University of Chicago.</p></blockquote> + +<p><small>This work takes up the problem of the so-called public utilities, public +schools, libraries, children's playgrounds, public baths, public +gymnasiums, etc. The discussion is from the standpoint of public welfare +and is based on repeated personal investigations in leading cities of +Europe, especially England and the United States.</small></p> + +<h3>COLONIAL GOVERNMENT</h3> + +<blockquote><p>By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Professor of Political Science in the +University of Wisconsin; Author of "World Politics at the End of the +Nineteenth Century as Influenced by the Oriental Situation."</p></blockquote> + +<p><small>By the author of the "World Politics," which met so cordial a reception +from students of modern political history. The main divisions of the +book are: Motives and Methods of Colonization; Forms of Colonial +Government; Relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies; +Internal Government of the Colonies; The Special Colonial Problems of +the United States.</small></p> + +<hr width="25%"> + +<center><h2>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</h2> + +<h4>66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK</h4></center> + + +<hr> + +<center><a name="page_iii"></a><h4>THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY</h4> + +<h6>OF</h6> + +<h3>ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND SOCIOLOGY</h3> + +<h5>EDITED BY</h5> + +<h4>RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.</h4> + +<h6>DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF +WISCONSIN</h6> + +<hr width="10%"> + +<h4>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</h4></center> + + +<hr> + +<table width="60%" border="1" align="center" summary="The Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and Sociology"> +<tr> +<td align="center"><a name="page_iv"><b>THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND +SOCIOLOGY.</b></a><br> + +12mo. Half leather. $1.25 <i>net</i> each.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="center"><b>MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS.</b><br> +BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.<br> + +<b>THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTION.</b><br> +BY JOHN A. HOBSON.<br> + +<b>WORLD POLITICS.</b><br> +BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.<br> + +<b>ECONOMIC CRISES.</b><br> +BY EDWARD D. JONES, PH.D.<br> + +<b>OUTLINE OF ECONOMICS.</b><br> +BY RICHARD T. ELY.<br> + +<b>GOVERNMENT IN SWITZERLAND.</b><br> +BY JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, PH.D.<br> + +<b>ESSAYS IN THE MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.</b><br> +BY CHARLES J. BULLOCK, PH.D.<br> + +<b>SOCIAL CONTROL.</b><br> +BY EDWARD A. ROSS, PH.D.<br> + +<b>HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.</b><br> +BY JESSE MACY, LL.D.<br> + +<b>MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION.</b><br> +BY M.N. BAKER, PH.B.<br> + +<b>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS.</b><br> +BY JANE ADDAMS.<br> + +<b>COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.</b><br> +BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.<br> + +<hr width="25%"> + +<i>IN PREPARATION.</i><br> + +<b>CUSTOM AND COMPETITION.</b><br> +BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.<br> + +<b>MUNICIPAL SOCIOLOGY.</b><br> +BY CHARLES ZUEBLIN.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,<br> +66 FIFTH AVENUE.</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<hr> + +<center><h4><a name="page_v"><i>THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY</i></a></h4> + +<hr width="15%"> + +<br> + +<h1>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</h1> + +<br> + +<h5>BY</h5> +<h3>JANE ADDAMS</h3> +<h6>HULL-HOUSE, CHICAGO</h6> + +<br> + +<h4>New York</h4> +<h3>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</h3> +<h5>LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.</h5> +<h5>1902</h5></center> + + +<hr> + +<p><a name="page_vi"></a>Set up and electrotyped March, 1902. Reprinted +June, September, 1902.</p> + +<center><p>Norwood Press<br> +J.S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith<br> +Norwood Mass. U.S.A.</p></center> + +<hr> +<p>To: M.R.S.</p> + +<hr> + +<center><h2><a name="page_vii">PREFATORY NOTE</a></h2></center> + + +<p>The following pages present the substance of a course of twelve lectures +on "Democracy and Social Ethics" which have been delivered at various +colleges and university extension centres.</p> + +<p>In putting them into the form of a book, no attempt has been made to +change the somewhat informal style used in speaking. The "we" and "us" +which originally referred to the speaker and her audience are merely +extended to possible readers.</p> + +<p>Acknowledgment for permission to reprint is extended to <i>The Atlantic +Monthly</i>, <i>The International Journal of Ethics</i>, <i>The American Journal +of Sociology</i>, and to <i>The Commons</i>.</p> + +<a name="page_viii"></a> + + +<hr> + +<center><h2><a name="page_ix">CONTENTS</a></h2></center> + +<br> + +<center><h4>CHAPTER I</h4></center> + +<table width="100%" summary="Introduction, page 1"> +<tr> +<td></td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_001">INTRODUCTION</a></td><td align="right">1</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<center><h4>CHAPTER II</h4></center> + +<table width="100%" summary="Charitable Effort, page 13"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_013">CHARITABLE EFFORT</A></td><td align="right">13</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<center><h4>CHAPTER III</h4></center> + +<table width="100%" summary="Filial Relations, page 71"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_071">FILIAL RELATIONS</a></td><td align="right">71</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<center><h4>CHAPTER IV</h4></center> + +<table width="100%" summary="Household Adjustment, page 102"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_102">HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT</a></td><td align="right">102</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<center><h4>CHAPTER V</h4></center> + +<table width="100%" summary="Industrial Amelioration, page 137"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_137">INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION</a></td><td align="right">137</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<center><h4>CHAPTER VI</h4></center> + +<table width="100%" summary="Educational Methods, page 178"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_178">EDUCATIONAL METHODS</a></td><td align="right">178</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<center><h4>CHAPTER VII</h4></center> + +<table width="100%" summary="Political Reform, page 221; Index, page 279"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_221">POLITICAL REFORM</a></td><td align="right">221</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#page_279">INDEX</a></td><td align="right">279</td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<hr> + +<center><h2><a name="page_001">DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</a></h2> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h4>INTRODUCTION</h4></center> + + +<p>It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but +another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of +every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life +becomes meaningless.</p> + +<p>Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the +community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from +stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much +voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal +would be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and +expectation which makes virtue easy. In the same way we have been +carefully reared to a sense <a name="page_002"></a> of family +obligation, to be kindly and considerate to the members of our own +households, and to feel responsible for their well-being. As the rules +of conduct have become established in regard to our self-development and +our families, so they have been in regard to limited circles of friends. +If the fulfilment of these claims were all that a righteous life +required, the hunger and thirst would be stilled for many good men and +women, and the clew of right living would lie easily in their hands.</p> + +<p>But we all know that each generation has its own test, the +contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately +judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately +use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed +include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no +more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have +"arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.</p> + +<p>To attain individual morality in an age <a name="page_003"></a> +demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of +personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to +fail to apprehend the situation.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us +that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of +the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are +not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the +poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed the hungry?</p> + +<p>All about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to +their attitude toward the social order itself; toward the dreary round +of uninteresting work, the pleasures narrowed down to those of appetite, +the declining consciousness of brain power, and the lack of mental food +which characterizes the lot of the large proportion of their +fellow-citizens. These men and women have caught a moral challenge +raised by the exigencies of contemporaneous life; some are bewildered, +others who are denied <a name="page_004"></a> the relief which sturdy +action brings are even seeking an escape, but all are increasingly +anxious concerning their actual relations to the basic organization of +society.</p> + +<p>The test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. They +fail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal +obligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand +involving a social obligation; they have become conscious of another +requirement, and the contribution they would make is toward a code of +social ethics. The conception of life which they hold has not yet +expressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a +mental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between +their consciences and their conduct. They desire both a clearer +definition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a +part in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality. +In the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is +becoming clear: if the latter <a name="page_005"></a> day moral ideal +is in reality that of a social morality, it is inevitable that those who +desire it must be brought in contact with the moral experiences of the +many in order to procure an adequate social motive.</p> + +<p>These men and women have realized this and have disclosed the fact in +their eagerness for a wider acquaintance with and participation in the +life about them. They believe that experience gives the easy and +trustworthy impulse toward right action in the broad as well as in the +narrow relations. We may indeed imagine many of them saying: "Cast our +experiences in a larger mould if our lives are to be animated by the +larger social aims. We have met the obligations of our family life, not +because we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because +of a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation +naturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare +ourselves for the larger social duties." Such a demand is reasonable, +for by our daily experience we have <a name="page_006"></a> discovered +that we cannot mechanically hold up a moral standard, then jump at it in +rare moments of exhilaration when we have the strength for it, but that +even as the ideal itself must be a rational development of life, so the +strength to attain it must be secured from interest in life itself. We +slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and +that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of +one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a +conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the +well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the +essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a +rule of living as well as a test of faith.</p> + +<p>We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by +travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common +road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size +of one another's burdens. To follow the path <a name="page_007"></a> of +social morality results perforce in the temper if not the practice of +the democratic spirit, for it implies that diversified human experience +and resultant sympathy which are the foundation and guarantee of +Democracy.</p> + +<p>There are many indications that this conception of Democracy is growing +among us. We have come to have an enormous interest in human life as +such, accompanied by confidence in its essential soundness. We do not +believe that genuine experience can lead us astray any more than +scientific data can.</p> + +<p>We realize, too, that social perspective and sanity of judgment come +only from contact with social experience; that such contact is the +surest corrective of opinions concerning the social order, and +concerning efforts, however humble, for its improvement. Indeed, it is a +consciousness of the illuminating and dynamic value of this wider and +more thorough human experience which explains in no small degree that +new curiosity <a name="page_008"></a> regarding human life which has +more of a moral basis than an intellectual one.</p> + +<p>The newspapers, in a frank reflection of popular demand, exhibit an +omniverous curiosity equally insistent upon the trivial and the +important. They are perhaps the most obvious manifestations of that +desire to know, that "What is this?" and "Why do you do that?" of the +child. The first dawn of the social consciousness takes this form, as +the dawning intelligence of the child takes the form of constant +question and insatiate curiosity.</p> + +<p>Literature, too, portrays an equally absorbing though better adjusted +desire to know all kinds of life. The popular books are the novels, +dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely +read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a +measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all +sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social +adjustment—for the remedying of social ills.</p> + +<p><a name="page_009"></a>Doubtless one under the conviction of sin in +regard to social ills finds a vague consolation in reading about the +lives of the poor, and derives a sense of complicity in doing good. He +likes to feel that he knows about social wrongs even if he does not +remedy them, and in a very genuine sense there is a foundation for this +belief.</p> + +<p>Partly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a +new affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world +before. Evil itself does not shock us as it once did, and we count only +that man merciful in whom we recognize an understanding of the criminal. +We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and +hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a +realization of the experiences of other people. Already there is a +conviction that we are under a moral obligation in choosing our +experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately <a +name="page_010"></a> determine our understanding of life. We know +instinctively that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and +consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we +have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously +circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics.</p> + +<p>We can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one +common characteristic,—the conviction that they are different from +other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because they +are more sensitive or more refined. Such people "refuse to be bound by +any relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and admiration, +or the identity of political opinion, or religious creed." We have +learned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not for the +will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which +deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say +that they illustrate the danger of <a name="page_011"></a> +concentrating the mind on narrow and unprogressive issues.</p> + +<p>We know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and +democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social +expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the +identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of +Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as +though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience, +because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry +us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and +jostle of the crowd.</p> + +<p>The six following chapters are studies of various types and groups who +are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance +of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct. +No attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer advice beyond the +assumption that the cure for the ills of <a name="page_012"></a> +Democracy is more Democracy, but the quite unlooked-for result of the +studies would seem to indicate that while the strain and perplexity of +the situation is felt most keenly by the educated and self-conscious +members of the community, the tentative and actual attempts at +adjustment are largely coming through those who are simpler and less +analytical.</p> + + + + +<center><h2><a name="page_013">CHAPTER II</a></h2> + +<h4>CHARITABLE EFFORT</h4></center> + + +<p>All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, +which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away +from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to +act upon them.</p> + +<p>Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a +course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct, +which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing +moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the +strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon +another.</p> + +<p>Probably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing +more <a name="page_014"></a> rapidly than the charitable relation—that +relation which obtains between benefactor and beneficiary; at the same +time there is no point of contact in our modern experience which reveals +so clearly the lack of that equality which democracy implies. We have +reached the moment when democracy has made such inroads upon this +relationship, that the complacency of the old-fashioned charitable man +is gone forever; while, at the same time, the very need and existence of +charity, denies us the consolation and freedom which democracy will at +last give.</p> + +<p>It is quite obvious that the ethics of none of us are clearly defined, +and we are continually obliged to act in circles of habit, based upon +convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of +environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our +methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was +believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that <a +name="page_015"></a> the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity +was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable +agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of +his own superior prosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior +morality. We have learned since that time to measure by other standards, +and have ceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive +respect; while it is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other, +its possession is by no means assumed to imply the possession of the +highest moral qualities. We have learned to judge men by their social +virtues as well as by their business capacity, by their devotion to +intellectual and disinterested aims, and by their public spirit, and we +naturally resent being obliged to judge poor people so solely upon the +industrial side. Our democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. It is +largely in this modern tendency to judge all men by one democratic +standard, while the old charitable <a name="page_016"></a> attitude +commonly allowed the use of two standards, that much of the difficulty +adheres. We know that unceasing bodily toil becomes wearing and +brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable if we judge large +numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in maintaining it.</p> + +<p>The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house +made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is +no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her +hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over +against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained +only through status.</p> + +<p>The only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those +who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through +sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable +reasons; but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing, and +must be bolstered and helped into industrial health. The charity +visitor, <a name="page_017"></a> let us assume, is a young college +woman, well-bred and open-minded; when she visits the family assigned to +her, she is often embarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the +stress of her teaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to +treat the members of the family almost exclusively as factors in the +industrial system. She insists that they must work and be +self-supporting, that the most dangerous of all situations is idleness, +that seeking one's own pleasure, while ignoring claims and +responsibilities, is the most ignoble of actions. The members of her +assigned family may have other charms and virtues—they may possibly be +kind and considerate of each other, generous to their friends, but it is +her business to stick to the industrial side. As she daily holds up +these standards, it often occurs to the mind of the sensitive visitor, +whose conscience has been made tender by much talk of brotherhood and +equality, that she has no right to say these things; that her untrained +<a name="page_018"></a> hands are no more fitted to cope with actual +conditions than those of her broken-down family.</p> + +<p>The grandmother of the charity visitor could have done the industrial +preaching very well, because she did have the industrial virtues and +housewifely training. In a generation our experiences have changed, and +our views with them; but we still keep on in the old methods, which +could be applied when our consciences were in line with them, but which +are daily becoming more difficult as we divide up into people who work +with their hands and those who do not. The charity visitor belonging to +the latter class is perplexed by recognitions and suggestions which the +situation forces upon her. Our democracy has taught us to apply our +moral teaching all around, and the moralist is rapidly becoming so +sensitive that when his life does not exemplify his ethical convictions, +he finds it difficult to preach.</p> + +<p>Added to this is a consciousness, in the <a name="page_019"></a> mind +of the visitor, of a genuine misunderstanding of her motives by the +recipients of her charity, and by their neighbors. Let us take a +neighborhood of poor people, and test their ethical standards by those +of the charity visitor, who comes with the best desire in the world to +help them out of their distress. A most striking incongruity, at once +apparent, is the difference between the emotional kindness with which +relief is given by one poor neighbor to another poor neighbor, and the +guarded care with which relief is given by a charity visitor to a +charity recipient. The neighborhood mind is at once confronted not only +by the difference of method, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical +standards.</p> + +<p>A very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is +sufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly +relations. There is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything, +and all the residents of the given tenement know the most intimate +family affairs of all the others. <a name="page_020"></a> The fact that +the economic condition of all alike is on a most precarious level makes +the ready outflow of sympathy and material assistance the most natural +thing in the world. There are numberless instances of self-sacrifice +quite unknown in the circles where greater economic advantages make that +kind of intimate knowledge of one's neighbors impossible. An Irish +family in which the man has lost his place, and the woman is struggling +to eke out the scanty savings by day's work, will take in the widow and +her five children who have been turned into the street, without a +moment's reflection upon the physical discomforts involved. The most +maligned landlady who lives in the house with her tenants is usually +ready to lend a scuttle full of coal to one of them who may be out of +work, or to share her supper. A woman for whom the writer had long tried +in vain to find work failed to appear at the appointed time when +employment was secured at last. Upon investigation it transpired that a +neighbor further <a name="page_021"></a> down the street was taken ill, +that the children ran for the family friend, who went of course, saying +simply when reasons for her non-appearance were demanded, "It broke me +heart to leave the place, but what could I do?" A woman whose husband +was sent up to the city prison for the maximum term, just three months, +before the birth of her child found herself penniless at the end of that +time, having gradually sold her supply of household furniture. She took +refuge with a friend whom she supposed to be living in three rooms in +another part of town. When she arrived, however, she discovered that her +friend's husband had been out of work so long that they had been reduced +to living in one room. The friend, however, took her in, and the +friend's husband was obliged to sleep upon a bench in the park every +night for a week, which he did uncomplainingly if not cheerfully. +Fortunately it was summer, "and it only rained one night." The writer +could not discover from the young mother that she had <a +name="page_022"></a> any special claim upon the "friend" beyond the +fact that they had formerly worked together in the same factory. The +husband she had never seen until the night of her arrival, when he at +once went forth in search of a midwife who would consent to come upon +his promise of future payment.</p> + +<p>The evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid +his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right +and wrong. There is no doubt that this rude rule still holds among many +people with whom charitable agencies are brought into contact, and that +their ideas of right and wrong are quite honestly outraged by the +methods of these agencies. When they see the delay and caution with +which relief is given, it does not appear to them a conscientious +scruple, but as the cold and calculating action of a selfish man. It is +not the aid that they are accustomed to receive from their neighbors, +and they do not understand why the impulse which drives people to "be +good to the poor" <a name="page_023"></a> should be so severely +supervised. They feel, remotely, that the charity visitor is moved by +motives that are alien and unreal. They may be superior motives, but +they are different, and they are "agin nature." They cannot comprehend +why a person whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his +natural impulses, should go into charity work at all. The only man they +are accustomed to see whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than +his tenderness of heart, is the selfish and avaricious man who is +frankly "on the make." If the charity visitor is such a person, why does +she pretend to like the poor? Why does she not go into business at once?</p> + +<p>We may say, of course, that it is a primitive view of life, which thus +confuses intellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite +honestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity +from time to time. In moments of indignation the poor have been known to +say: "What do you want, anyway? If you have nothing to <a +name="page_024"></a> give us, why not let us alone and stop your +questionings and investigations?" "They investigated me for three weeks, +and in the end gave me nothing but a black character," a little woman +has been heard to assert. This indignation, which is for the most part +taciturn, and a certain kindly contempt for her abilities, often puzzles +the charity visitor. The latter may be explained by the standard of +worldly success which the visited families hold. Success does not +ordinarily go, in the minds of the poor, with charity and +kind-heartedness, but rather with the opposite qualities. The rich +landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and +will have his own. There are moments of irritation and of real +bitterness against him, but there is still admiration, because he is +rich and successful. The good-natured landlord, he who pities and spares +his poverty-pressed tenants, is seldom rich. He often lives in the back +of his house, which he has owned for a long time, perhaps has inherited; +but he has been able to accumulate <a name="page_025"></a> little. He +commands the genuine love and devotion of many a poor soul, but he is +treated with a certain lack of respect. In one sense he is a failure. +The charity visitor, just because she is a person who concerns herself +with the poor, receives a certain amount of this good-natured and kindly +contempt, sometimes real affection, but little genuine respect. The poor +are accustomed to help each other and to respond according to their +kindliness; but when it comes to worldly judgment, they use industrial +success as the sole standard. In the case of the charity visitor who has +neither natural kindness nor dazzling riches, they are deprived of both +standards, and they find it of course utterly impossible to judge of the +motive of organized charity.</p> + +<p>Even those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in +altruistic effort and see the end to be desired, find something +distasteful in the juxtaposition of the words "organized" and "charity." +We say in defence that we are striving to turn this <a +name="page_026"></a> emotion into a motive, that pity is capricious, +and not to be depended on; that we mean to give it the dignity of +conscious duty. But at bottom we distrust a little a scheme which +substitutes a theory of social conduct for the natural promptings of the +heart, even although we appreciate the complexity of the situation. The +poor man who has fallen into distress, when he first asks aid, +instinctively expects tenderness, consideration, and forgiveness. If it +is the first time, it has taken him long to make up his mind to take the +step. He comes somewhat bruised and battered, and instead of being met +with warmth of heart and sympathy, he is at once chilled by an +investigation and an intimation that he ought to work. He does not +recognize the disciplinary aspect of the situation.</p> + +<p>The only really popular charity is that of the visiting nurses, who by +virtue of their professional training render services which may easily +be interpreted into sympathy and kindness, ministering as they do to +obvious needs which do not require investigation.</p> + +<p><a name="page_027"></a>The state of mind which an investigation arouses +on both sides is most unfortunate; but the perplexity and clashing of +different standards, with the consequent misunderstandings, are not so +bad as the moral deterioration which is almost sure to follow.</p> + +<p>When the agent or visitor appears among the poor, and they discover that +under certain conditions food and rent and medical aid are dispensed +from some unknown source, every man, woman, and child is quick to learn +what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a +glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any +self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is +an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize +that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by +at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite +elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor +they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift <a +name="page_028"></a> and religious observance. The deception in the +first instances arises from a wondering inability to understand the +ethical ideals which can require such impossible virtues, and from an +innocent desire to please. It is easy to trace the development of the +mental suggestions thus received. When A discovers that B, who is very +little worse off than he, receives good things from an inexhaustible +supply intended for the poor at large, he feels that he too has a claim +for his share, and step by step there is developed the competitive +spirit which so horrifies charity visitors when it shows itself in a +tendency to "work" the relief-giving agencies.</p> + +<p>The most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the +charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love +and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. The +spontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child +is turned into righteous indignation against <a name="page_029"></a> +the district nurse, because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do +it herself. Or the kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase +of much needed medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the +dispensary, because it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and "who can +get well on a piece of paper?"</p> + +<p>If a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is +quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to +mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty +wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in, +all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They +know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she +has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They +imagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous +gift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. She ought +to get new shoes for the <a name="page_030"></a> family all round, "she +sees well enough that they need them." It is no more than the neighbor +herself would do, has practically done, when she lent her own shoes. The +charity visitor has broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in +a primitive society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and +the resources of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble +when she is judged by the ethics of that primitive society.</p> + +<p>The neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their +own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other +things. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are +like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady +visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as +though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not +intend to give them things which are so plainly needed?</p> + +<p>The visitor says, sometimes, that in holding <a name="page_031"></a> +her poor family so hard to a standard of thrift she is really breaking +down a rule of higher living which they formerly possessed; that saving, +which seems quite commendable in a comfortable part of town, appears +almost criminal in a poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs +food, even if the children of the family do not.</p> + +<p>She feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the +industrial view of life. The benevolent individual of fifty years ago +honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in +comfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had +practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained +whatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for +indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly +untouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity +visitor. She says sometimes, "Why must I talk always of getting work and +saving money, the things <a name="page_032"></a> I know nothing about? +If it were anything else I had to urge, I could do it; anything like +Latin prose, which I had worried through myself, it would not be so +hard." But she finds it difficult to connect the experiences of her +youth with the experiences of the visited family.</p> + +<p>Because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually +surprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged. She +refers quite naturally to the "horrors of the saloon," and discovers +that the head of her visited family does not connect them with "horrors" +at all. He remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free +lunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not +able to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity +visitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction. He may +listen politely to her reference to "horrors," but considers it only +"temperance talk."</p> + +<p>The charity visitor may blame the women <a name="page_033"></a> for +lack of gentleness toward their children, for being hasty and rude to +them, until she learns that the standard of breeding is not that of +gentleness toward the children so much as the observance of certain +conventions, such as the punctilious wearing of mourning garments after +the death of a child. The standard of gentleness each mother has to work +out largely by herself, assisted only by the occasional shame-faced +remark of a neighbor, "That they do better when you are not too hard on +them"; but the wearing of mourning garments is sustained by the +definitely expressed sentiment of every woman in the street. The mother +would have to bear social blame, a certain social ostracism, if she +failed to comply with that requirement. It is not comfortable to outrage +the conventions of those among whom we live, and, if our social life be +a narrow one, it is still more difficult. The visitor may choke a little +when she sees the lessened supply of food and the scanty clothing +provided for the remaining children in order that one <a +name="page_034"></a> may be conventionally mourned, but she doesn't +talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her first +month of experience with the family since bereaved.</p> + +<p>The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the +result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The +girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable +school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by +all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even +shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose +family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to +another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place, +knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her +position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to +the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social +advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is +judged <a name="page_035"></a> largely by her clothes. Her house +furnishing, with its pitiful little decorations, her scanty supply of +books, are never seen by the people whose social opinions she most +values. Her clothes are her background, and from them she is largely +judged. It is due to this fact that girls' clubs succeed best in the +business part of town, where "working girls" and "young ladies" meet +upon an equal footing, and where the clothes superficially look very +much alike. Bright and ambitious girls will come to these down-town +clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of subjects and +listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time before joining +a club identified with their own neighborhood, where they would be +judged not solely on their own merits and the unconscious social +standing afforded by good clothes, but by other surroundings which are +not nearly up to these. For the same reason, girls' clubs are infinitely +more difficult to organize in little towns and villages, where every <a +name="page_036"></a> one knows every one else, just how the front +parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the house. +These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment; they +impede the democratic relationship and add to the self-consciousness of +all concerned. Every one who has had to do with down-town girls' clubs +has had the experience of going into the home of some bright, +well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps wretched, +and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her, although the +working girl may not have been at home when the call was made, and the +visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy throughout. In +some very successful down-town clubs the home address is not given at +all, and only the "business address" is required. Have we worked out our +democracy further in regard to clothes than anything else?</p> + +<p>The charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to +spend <a name="page_037"></a> much money upon clothes, to care so much +for "appearances." She realizes dimly that the care for personal +decoration over that for one's home or habitat is in some way primitive +and undeveloped; but she is silenced by its obvious need. She also +catches a glimpse of the fact that the disproportionate expenditure of +the poor in the matter of clothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of +the rich who hide from them the interior of their houses, and their more +subtle pleasures, while of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and +their street manners. Every one who goes shopping at the same time may +see the clothes of the richest women in town, but only those invited to +her receptions see the Corot on her walls or the bindings in her +library. The poor naturally try to bridge the difference by reproducing +the street clothes which they have seen. They are striving to conform to +a common standard which their democratic training presupposes belongs to +all of us. The charity visitor <a name="page_038"></a> may regret that +the Italian peasant woman has laid aside her picturesque kerchief and +substituted a cheap street hat. But it is easy to recognize the first +attempt toward democratic expression.</p> + +<p>The charity visitor finds herself still more perplexed when she comes to +consider such problems as those of early marriage and child labor; for +she cannot deal with them according to economic theories, or according +to the conventions which have regulated her own life. She finds both of +these fairly upset by her intimate knowledge of the situation, and her +sympathy for those into whose lives she has gained a curious insight. +She discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards have been, and it +takes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist +so strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit +the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. The +charity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the imprudence of early +marriages, quite naturally <a name="page_039"></a> because she comes +from a family and circle of professional and business people. A +professional man is scarcely equipped and started in his profession +before he is thirty. A business man, if he is on the road to success, is +much nearer prosperity at thirty-five than twenty-five, and it is +therefore wise for these men not to marry in the twenties; but this does +not apply to the workingman. In many trades he is laid upon the shelf at +thirty-five, and in nearly all trades he receives the largest wages in +his life between twenty and thirty. If the young workingman has all his +wages to himself, he will probably establish habits of personal comfort, +which he cannot keep up when he has to divide with a family—habits +which he can, perhaps, never overcome.</p> + +<p>The sense of prudence, the necessity for saving, can never come to a +primitive, emotional man with the force of a conviction; but the +necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. He +naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he <a +name="page_040"></a> expects them to care for him when he gets old, and +in some trades old age comes very early. A Jewish tailor was quite +lately sent to the Cook County poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at +the age of thirty-five. Had his little boy of nine been but a few years +older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public charity. He was, +in fact, better able to well support a family when he was twenty than +when he was thirty-five, for his wages had steadily grown less as the +years went on. Another tailor whom I know, who is also a Socialist, +always speaks of saving as a bourgeois virtue, one quite impossible to +the genuine workingman. He supports a family consisting of himself, a +wife and three children, and his two parents on eight dollars a week. He +insists it would be criminal not to expend every penny of this amount +upon food and shelter, and he expects his children later to care for +him.</p> + +<p>This economic pressure also accounts for the tendency to put children to +work overyoung <a name="page_041"></a> and thus cripple their chances +for individual development and usefulness, and with the avaricious +parent also leads to exploitation. "I have fed her for fourteen years, +now she can help me pay my mortgage" is not an unusual reply when a +hardworking father is expostulated with because he would take his bright +daughter out of school and put her into a factory.</p> + +<p>It has long been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly +urging her "family" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least +connive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not +the excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been +taking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and +more social claim; to urge that the boy go to work and support his +parents, who are receiving charitable aid. She does not realize what a +cruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives +advice.</p> + +<p>The manager in a huge mercantile establishment employing many children +was able <a name="page_042"></a> to show during a child-labor +investigation, that the only children under fourteen years of age in his +employ were protégés who had been urged upon him by philanthropic +ladies, not only acquaintances of his, but valued patrons of the +establishment. It is not that the charity visitor is less wise than +other people, but she has fixed her mind so long upon the industrial +lameness of her family that she is eager to seize any crutch, however +weak, which may enable them to get on.</p> + +<p>She has failed to see that the boy who attempts to prematurely support +his widowed mother may lower wages, add an illiterate member to the +community, and arrest the development of a capable workingman. As she +has failed to see that the rules which obtain in regard to the age of +marriage in her own family may not apply to the workingman, so also she +fails to understand that the present conditions of employment +surrounding a factory child are totally unlike those which obtained +during the energetic youth of her father.</p> + +<p><a name="page_043"></a>The child who is prematurely put to work is +constantly oppressed by this never ending question of the means of +subsistence, and even little children are sometimes almost crushed with +the cares of life through their affectionate sympathy. The writer knows +a little Italian lad of six to whom the problems of food, clothing, and +shelter have become so immediate and pressing that, although an +imaginative child, he is unable to see life from any other standpoint. +The goblin or bugaboo, feared by the more fortunate child, in his mind, +has come to be the need of coal which caused his father hysterical and +demonstrative grief when it carried off his mother's inherited linen, +the mosaic of St. Joseph, and, worst of all, his own rubber boots. He +once came to a party at Hull-House, and was interested in nothing save a +gas stove which he saw in the kitchen. He became excited over the +discovery that fire could be produced without fuel. "I will tell my +father of this stove. You buy no coal, you need only a match. Anybody +will <a name="page_044"></a> give you a match." He was taken to visit +at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was paid for it. +On being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no rent for that +house, he came back quite wild with interest that the problem was +solved. "Me and my father will go to the country. You get a big house, +all warm, without rent." Nothing else in the country interested him but +the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an exclusiveness worthy +of a single taxer.</p> + +<p>The struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near +the edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the +charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents +who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn, +take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with +them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the +immature nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing +habits <a name="page_045"></a> of obedience, so that the nerves and +will may not depart from this control when the child is older. The +charity visitor, whose family relation is lifted quite out of this, does +not in the least understand the industrial foundation for this family +tyranny.</p> + +<p>The head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of +working women, and spoke of the despotism which is often established +over little children. She said that the so-called determination to break +a child's will many times arose from a lust of dominion, and she urged +the ideal relationship founded upon love and confidence. But many of the +women were puzzled. One of them remarked to the writer as she came out +of the club room, "If you did not keep control over them from the time +they were little, you would never get their wages when they are grown +up." Another one said, "Ah, of course she (meaning the speaker) doesn't +have to depend upon her children's wages. She can afford to be lax with +them, <a name="page_046"></a> because even if they don't give money to +her, she can get along without it."</p> + +<p>There are an impressive number of children who uncomplainingly and +constantly hand over their weekly wages to their parents, sometimes +receiving back ten cents or a quarter for spending-money, but quite as +often nothing at all; and the writer knows one girl of twenty-five who +for six years has received two cents a week from the constantly falling +wages which she earns in a large factory. Is it habit or virtue which +holds her steady in this course? If love and tenderness had been +substituted for parental despotism, would the mother have had enough +affection, enough power of expression to hold her daughter's sense of +money obligation through all these years? This girl who spends her +paltry two cents on chewing-gum and goes plainly clad in clothes of her +mother's choosing, while many of her friends spend their entire wages on +those clothes which factory girls love so well, must be held by some +powerful force.</p> + +<p><a name="page_047"></a>The charity visitor finds these subtle and +elusive problems most harrowing. The head of a family she is visiting is +a man who has become black-listed in a strike. He is not a very good +workman, and this, added to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of +work for a long time. The fatal result of being long out of work +follows: he becomes less and less eager for it, and gets a "job" less +and less frequently. In order to keep up his self-respect, and still +more to keep his wife's respect for him, he yields to the little +self-deception that this prolonged idleness follows because he was once +blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a martyr. Deep down in his heart +perhaps—but who knows what may be deep down in his heart? Whatever may +be in his wife's, she does not show for an instant that she thinks he +has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her earn, by sewing and cleaning, +most of the scanty income for the family. The charity visitor, however, +does see this, and she also sees that the other men who <a +name="page_048"></a> were in the strike have gone back to work. She +further knows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not +skilful. She cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and +denounce him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of +certain intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees +other workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends +many more hours in the public library reading good books than the +average workman has time to do. He has formed no bad habits and has +yielded only to those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which +come to the intellectual man. He lacks the qualifications which would +induce his union to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a +constant speaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral +attitude on the questions discussed there. He contributes a certain +intellectuality to his friends, and he has undoubted social value. The +neighboring women confide to the charity visitor their <a +name="page_049"></a> sympathy with his wife, because she has to work so +hard, and because her husband does not "provide." Their remarks are +sharpened by a certain resentment toward the superiority of the +husband's education and gentle manners. The charity visitor is ashamed +to take this point of view, for she knows that it is not altogether +fair. She is reminded of a college friend of hers, who told her that she +was not going to allow her literary husband to write unworthy potboilers +for the sake of earning a living. "I insist that we shall live within my +own income; that he shall not publish until he is ready, and can give +his genuine message." The charity visitor recalls what she has heard of +another acquaintance, who urged her husband to decline a lucrative +position as a railroad attorney, because she wished him to be free to +take municipal positions, and handle public questions without the +inevitable suspicion which unaccountably attaches itself in a corrupt +city to a corporation attorney. The action of these two <a +name="page_050"></a> women seemed noble to her, but in their cases they +merely lived on a lesser income. In the case of the workingman's wife, +she faced living on no income at all, or on the precarious one which she +might be able to get together.</p> + +<p>She sees that this third woman has made the greatest sacrifice, and she +is utterly unwilling to condemn her while praising the friends of her +own social position. She realizes, of course, that the situation is +changed by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other +two do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight +was only discovered through an accident to one of the children. The +charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the +finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from +the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she +suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into +complaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting <a +name="page_051"></a> the family altogether, but she has become much +interested in the progress of the crippled child who eagerly anticipates +her visits, and she also suspects that she will never know many finer +women than the mother. She is unwilling, therefore, to give up the +friendship, and goes on bearing her perplexities as best she may.</p> + +<p>The first impulse of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with +her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their +children out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which +receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the +instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the growth of +juvenile crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving +no legitimate and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we +remember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house +or regular meals.</p> + +<p><a name="page_052"></a>There are certain boys in many city neighborhoods +who form themselves into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more +intrepid than the rest. Their favorite performance is to break into an +untenanted house, to knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which +they sell to the nearest junk dealer. With the money thus procured they +buy beer and drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the +alley. From beginning to end they have the excitement of knowing that +they may be seen and caught by the "coppers," and are at times quite +breathless with suspense. It is not the least unlike, in motive and +execution, the practice of country boys who go forth in squads to set +traps for rabbits or to round up a coon.</p> + +<p>It is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious +training really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy +undertakes to guide them into further excitements. From the very +beginning the most enticing and exciting <a name="page_053"></a> +experiences which they have seen have been connected with crime. The +policeman embodies all the majesty of successful law and established +government in his brass buttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon.</p> + +<p>The boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale +to tell of the interior recesses of the mysterious police station. The +earliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the +rattling fire engines, "the time there was a fire in the next block," +and all the tense interest of the patrol wagon "the time the drunkest +lady in our street was arrested."</p> + +<p>In the first year of their settlement the Hull-House residents took +fifty kindergarten children to Lincoln Park, only to be grieved by their +apathetic interest in trees and flowers. As they came back with an +omnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find +them galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled <a +name="page_054"></a> by. Their eager little heads popped out of the +windows full of questioning: "Was it a man or a woman?" "How many +policemen inside?" and eager little tongues began to tell experiences of +arrests which baby eyes had witnessed.</p> + +<p>The excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a +fight are all centred in the outward display of crime. The parent who +receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is +willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest +things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation +schools than the conscientious charity visitor.</p> + +<p>This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of +their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often +leads the boys into difficulty. Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten +were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of +pilfering and destroying property. They <a name="page_055"></a> had dug +a cave under a railroad viaduct in which they had spent many days and +nights of the summer vacation. They had "swiped" potatoes and other +vegetables from hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in +true brigand fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation +with stolen junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic +imaginations. The father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a +building five miles away in a prosperous portion of the city. The +landlord did not want an active boy in the building, and his mother was +dead; the janitor paid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman +living near the viaduct. She conscientiously gave him his breakfast and +supper, and left something in the house for his dinner every morning +when she went to work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by +night to challenge his statement that he "would rather sleep outdoors in +the summer," or to investigate what he did during the day. In <a +name="page_056"></a> the meantime the three boys lived in a world of +their own, made up from the reading of adventurous stories and their +vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more as the days went +by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic passing over the +street on the top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous exertions on +their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform School, comforting +himself with the conclusive remark, "Well, we had fun anyway, and maybe +they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in the country, where +we can't hurt anything."</p> + +<p>In addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the +scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of +the young people. "Going to the theatre" is indeed the most common and +satisfactory form of recreation. Many boys who conscientiously give all +their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay +for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday <a +name="page_057"></a> afternoon. It is their one satisfactory glimpse of +life—the moment when they "issue forth from themselves" and are stirred +and thoroughly interested. They quite simply adopt as their own, and +imitate as best they can, all that they see there. In moments of genuine +grief and excitement the words and the gestures they employ are those +copied from the stage, and the tawdry expression often conflicts +hideously with the fine and genuine emotion of which it is the +inadequate and vulgar vehicle.</p> + +<p>As in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of +expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they +know.</p> + +<p>If we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the +spectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the +popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function +of art for the multitude of working people than all the "free galleries" +and picture exhibits combined.</p> + +<p><a name="page_058"></a>The greatest difficulty is experienced when the +two standards come sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt +at understanding and explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's +own ethical standpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had +bought and sold school books stolen from the school fund,—books which +are all plainly marked with a red stamp,—came to Hull House one morning +in great distress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident +"to speak to the judge." She gave as a reason the fact that the House +had known her for six years, and had once been very good to her when her +little girl was buried. The resident more than suspected that her +visitor knew the school books were stolen when buying them, and any +attempt to talk upon that subject was evidently considered very rude. +The visitor wished to get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason +why the House should not help her. The alderman was out of town, so she +could not go <a name="page_059"></a> to him. After a long conversation +the visitor entirely failed to get another point of view and went away +grieved and disappointed at a refusal, thinking the resident simply +disobliging; wondering, no doubt, why such a mean woman had once been +good to her; leaving the resident, on the other hand, utterly baffled +and in the state of mind she would have been in, had she brutally +insisted that a little child should lift weights too heavy for its +undeveloped muscles.</p> + +<p>Such a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher +ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but +it is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in +which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient +is broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:—</p> + +<p>A certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and +pathos of forlorn old age. She is responsible for the <a +name="page_060"></a> well-being of perhaps a dozen old women to whom +she sustains a sincerely affectionate and almost filial relation. Some +of them learn to take her benefactions quite as if they came from their +own relatives, grumbling at all she does, and scolding her with a family +freedom. One of these poor old women was injured in a fire years ago. +She has but the fragment of a hand left, and is grievously crippled in +her feet. Through years of pain she had become addicted to opium, and +when she first came under the visitor's care, was only held from the +poorhouse by the awful thought that she would there perish without her +drug. Five years of tender care have done wonders for her. She lives in +two neat little rooms, where with her thumb and two fingers she makes +innumerable quilts, which she sells and gives away with the greatest +delight. Her opium is regulated to a set amount taken each day, and she +has been drawn away from much drinking. She is a voracious reader, and +has her head full of strange tales made up from <a name="page_061"></a> +books and her own imagination. At one time it seemed impossible to do +anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two years in a suburb, +where the family of the charity visitor lived, and where she was nursed +through several hazardous illnesses. She now lives a better life than +she did, but she is still far from being a model old woman. The +neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is supported and +comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she occasionally +"rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar her in her +tottering walk. The care of her has broken through even that second +standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the +standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be +helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the +plums of benevolence. The old lady herself is conscious of this +criticism. Indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't +in the least deserve what she gets. In order to <a name="page_062"></a> +disarm them, and at the same time to explain what would otherwise seem +loving-kindness so colossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that +during her sojourn in the suburb she discovered an awful family +secret,—a horrible scandal connected with the long-suffering charity +visitor; that it is in order to prevent the divulgence of this that she +constantly receives her ministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors +accept this explanation as simple and offering a solution of this vexed +problem. Doubtless many of them have a glimpse of the real state of +affairs, of the love and patience which ministers to need +irrespective of worth. But the standard is too high for most of them, +and it sometimes seems unfortunate to break down the second standard, +which holds that people who "rush the growler" are not worthy of +charity, and that there is a certain justice attained when they go to +the poorhouse. It is certainly dangerous to break down the lower, unless +the higher is made clear.</p> + +<p><a name="page_063"></a>Just when our affection becomes large enough to +care for the unworthy among the poor as we would care for the unworthy +among our own kin, is certainly a perplexing question. To say that it +should never be so, is a comment upon our democratic relations to them +which few of us would be willing to make.</p> + +<p>Of what use is all this striving and perplexity? Has the experience any +value? It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity +visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do. +It drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they +claim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of +a sisterhood, which requires, as some of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods +do, that the member first take the vows of obedience and poverty, so +that she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and +thus she is not harassed by a constant attempt at adjustment.</p> + +<p><a name="page_064"></a>Both the tenement-house resident and the sister +assume to have put themselves upon the industrial level of their +neighbors, although they have left out the most awful element of +poverty, that of imminent fear of starvation and a neglected old age.</p> + +<p>The young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most +precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the +city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which +our growing democracy forces upon her.</p> + +<p>We sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would +doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not +scientific enough. We dislike the entire arrangement of cards +alphabetically classified according to streets and names of families, +with the unrelated and meaningless details attached to them. Our feeling +of revolt is probably not unlike that which afflicted the students of +botany and geology in the middle of the last century, when flowers were +tabulated in alphabetical order, <a name="page_065"></a> when geology +was taught by colored charts and thin books. No doubt the students, +wearied to death, many times said that it was all too scientific, and +were much perplexed and worried when they found traces of structure and +physiology which their so-called scientific principles were totally +unable to account for. But all this happened before science had become +evolutionary and scientific at all, before it had a principle of life +from within. The very indications and discoveries which formerly +perplexed, later illumined and made the study absorbing and vital.</p> + +<p>We are singularly slow to apply this evolutionary principle to human +affairs in general, although it is fast being applied to the education +of children. We are at last learning to follow the development of the +child; to expect certain traits under certain conditions; to adapt +methods and matter to his growing mind. No "advanced educator" can allow +himself to be so absorbed in the question of what a child <a +name="page_066"></a> ought to be as to exclude the discovery of what he +is. But in our charitable efforts we think much more of what a man ought +to be than of what he is or of what he may become; and we ruthlessly +force our conventions and standards upon him, with a sternness which we +would consider stupid indeed did an educator use it in forcing his +mature intellectual convictions upon an undeveloped mind.</p> + +<p>Let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to +bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays +with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him. +The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes +that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has +the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a +belief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after +all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudo-scientific +parent, who acts from dogmatic <a name="page_067"></a> conviction and +is sure he is right. He talks of developing his child's self-respect and +good sense, and leaves him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of +self-control and development which the child does not possess. There is +no doubt that our development of charity methods has reached this +pseudo-scientific and stilted stage. We have learned to condemn +unthinking, ill-regulated kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in +mere repression much as the stern parent tells the visitor below how +admirably he is rearing the child, who is hysterically crying upstairs +and laying the foundation for future nervous disorders. The +pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the undeveloped stage of our +philanthropy, is perhaps most clearly revealed in our tendency to lay +constant stress on negative action. "Don't give;" "don't break down +self-respect," we are constantly told. We distrust the human impulse as +well as the teachings of our own experience, and in their stead +substitute dogmatic rules for <a name="page_068"></a> conduct. We +forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions +must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those +convictions to life itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull +upon the sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the +possession of the visitor is constantly applied, and she has a +reasonable chance for an ultimate intellectual comprehension. Indeed, +part of the perplexity in the administration of charity comes from the +fact that the type of person drawn to it is the one who insists that her +convictions shall not be unrelated to action. Her moral concepts +constantly tend to float away from her, unless they have a basis in the +concrete relation of life. She is confronted with the task of reducing +her scruples to action, and of converging many wills, so as to unite the +strength of all of them into one accomplishment, the value of which no +one can foresee.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her +social compunction <a name="page_069"></a> through charitable effort +finds that the wider social activity, and the contact with the larger +experience, not only increases her sense of social obligation but at the +same time recasts her social ideals. She is chagrined to discover that +in the actual task of reducing her social scruples to action, her humble +beneficiaries are far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of +purpose, but in self-sacrificing action. She reaches the old-time virtue +of humility by a social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits +by the side of the road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a +contrite sinner, but she gets the dust upon her head because she has +stumbled and fallen in the road through her efforts to push forward the +mass, to march with her fellows. She has socialized her virtues not only +through a social aim but by a social process.</p> + +<p>The Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the +great forward-moving procession led by Jehovah. "To love mercy" and at +the same time "to <a name="page_070"></a> do justly" is the difficult +task; to fulfil the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of +indiscriminate giving with all its disastrous results; to fulfil the +second solely is to obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it +results in such a dreary lack of sympathy and understanding that the +establishment of justice is impossible. It may be that the combination +of the two can never be attained save as we fulfil still the third +requirement—"to walk humbly with God," which may mean to walk for many +dreary miles beside the lowliest of His creatures, not even in that +peace of mind which the company of the humble is popularly supposed to +afford, but rather with the pangs and throes to which the poor human +understanding is subjected whenever it attempts to comprehend the +meaning of life.</p> + + + + +<center><h2><a name="page_071">CHAPTER III</a></h2> + +<h4>FILIAL RELATIONS</h4></center> + + +<p>There are many people in every community who have not felt the "social +compunction," who do not share the effort toward a higher social +morality, who are even unable to sympathetically interpret it. Some of +these have been shielded from the inevitable and salutary failures which +the trial of new powers involve, because they are content to attain +standards of virtue demanded by an easy public opinion, and others of +them have exhausted their moral energy in attaining to the current +standard of individual and family righteousness.</p> + +<p>Such people, who form the bulk of contented society, demand that the +radical, the reformer, shall be without stain or question in his +personal and family relations, and <a name="page_072"></a> judge most +harshly any deviation from the established standards. There is a certain +justice in this: it expresses the inherent conservatism of the mass of +men, that none of the established virtues which have been so slowly and +hardly acquired shall be sacrificed for the sake of making problematic +advance; that the individual, in his attempt to develop and use the new +and exalted virtue, shall not fall into the easy temptation of letting +the ordinary ones slip through his fingers.</p> + +<p>This instinct to conserve the old standards, combined with a distrust of +the new standard, is a constant difficulty in the way of those +experiments and advances depending upon the initiative of women, both +because women are the more sensitive to the individual and family +claims, and because their training has tended to make them content with +the response to these claims alone.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that, in the effort to sustain the moral energy +necessary to work out a more satisfactory social relation, the <a +name="page_073"></a> individual often sacrifices the energy which +should legitimately go into the fulfilment of personal and family +claims, to what he considers the higher claim.</p> + +<p>In considering the changes which our increasing democracy is constantly +making upon various relationships, it is impossible to ignore the filial +relation. This chapter deals with the relation between parents and their +grown-up daughters, as affording an explicit illustration of the +perplexity and mal-adjustment brought about by the various attempts of +young women to secure a more active share in the community life. We +constantly see parents very much disconcerted and perplexed in regard to +their daughters when these daughters undertake work lying quite outside +of traditional and family interests. These parents insist that the girl +is carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, that she is in search of a +career, that she is restless and does not know what she wants. They will +give any reason, almost, rather than the recognition of a genuine <a +name="page_074"></a> and dignified claim. Possibly all this is due to +the fact that for so many hundreds of years women have had no larger +interests, no participation in the affairs lying quite outside personal +and family claims. Any attempt that the individual woman formerly made +to subordinate or renounce the family claim was inevitably construed to +mean that she was setting up her own will against that of her family's +for selfish ends. It was concluded that she could have no motive larger +than a desire to serve her family, and her attempt to break away must +therefore be wilful and self-indulgent.</p> + +<p>The family logically consented to give her up at her marriage, when she +was enlarging the family tie by founding another family. It was easy to +understand that they permitted and even promoted her going to college, +travelling in Europe, or any other means of self-improvement, because +these merely meant the development and cultivation of one of its own +members. When, however, she responded to her impulse to <a +name="page_075"></a> fulfil the social or democratic claim, she +violated every tradition.</p> + +<p>The mind of each one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we +emerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family +obligations. We have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet +most of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to +disregard them and the elemental claim they make upon us. We have +yielded at times to the temptation of ignoring them for selfish aims, of +considering the individual and not the family convenience, and we +remember with shame the self-pity which inevitably followed. But just as +we have learned to adjust the personal and family claims, and to find an +orderly development impossible without recognition of both, so perhaps +we are called upon now to make a second adjustment between the family +and the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be ennobled.</p> + +<p>The attempt to bring about a healing <a name="page_076"></a> compromise +in which the two shall be adjusted in proper relation is not an easy +one. It is difficult to distinguish between the outward act of him who +in following one legitimate claim has been led into the temporary +violation of another, and the outward act of him who deliberately +renounces a just claim and throws aside all obligation for the sake of +his own selfish and individual development. The man, for instance, who +deserts his family that he may cultivate an artistic sensibility, or +acquire what he considers more fulness of life for himself, must always +arouse our contempt. Breaking the marriage tie as Ibsen's "Nora" did, to +obtain a larger self-development, or holding to it as George Eliot's +"Romola" did, because of the larger claim of the state and society, must +always remain two distinct paths. The collision of interests, each of +which has a real moral basis and a right to its own place in life, is +bound to be more or less tragic. It is the struggle between two claims, +the destruction of either of which would bring <a name="page_077"></a> +ruin to the ethical life. Curiously enough, it is almost exactly this +contradiction which is the tragedy set forth by the Greek dramatist, who +asserted that the gods who watch over the sanctity of the family bond +must yield to the higher claims of the gods of the state. The failure to +recognize the social claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the +suspicion constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely +selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general good. This +suspicion will never be dissipated until parents, as well as daughters, +feel the democratic impulse and recognize the social claim.</p> + +<p>Our democracy is making inroads upon the family, the oldest of human +institutions, and a claim is being advanced which in a certain sense is +larger than the family claim. The claim of the state in time of war has +long been recognized, so that in its name the family has given up sons +and husbands and even the fathers of little children. If we can once see +the claims of society in any such <a name="page_078"></a> light, if its +misery and need can be made clear and urged as an explicit claim, as the +state urges its claims in the time of danger, then for the first time +the daughter who desires to minister to that need will be recognized as +acting conscientiously. This recognition may easily come first through +the emotions, and may be admitted as a response to pity and mercy long +before it is formulated and perceived by the intellect.</p> + +The family as well as the state we are all called upon to maintain as +<p>the highest institutions which the race has evolved for its safeguard +and protection. But merely to preserve these institutions is not enough. +There come periods of reconstruction, during which the task is laid upon +a passing generation, to enlarge the function and carry forward the +ideal of a long-established institution. There is no doubt that many +women, consciously and unconsciously, are struggling with this task. The +family, like every other element of human life, is susceptible of +progress, and from epoch to <a name="page_079"></a> epoch its +tendencies and aspirations are enlarged, although its duties can never +be abrogated and its obligations can never be cancelled. It is +impossible to bring about the higher development by any self-assertion +or breaking away of the individual will. The new growth in the plant +swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and +protects it, must still be the truest type of progress. The family in +its entirety must be carried out into the larger life. Its various +members together must recognize and acknowledge the validity of the +social obligation. When this does not occur we have a most flagrant +example of the ill-adjustment and misery arising when an ethical code is +applied too rigorously and too conscientiously to conditions which are +no longer the same as when the code was instituted, and for which it was +never designed. We have all seen parental control and the family claim +assert their authority in fields of effort which belong to the adult +judgment of the child and <a name="page_080"></a> pertain to activity +quite outside the family life. Probably the distinctively family tragedy +of which we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this +authority through all the entanglements of wounded affection and +misunderstanding. We see parents and children acting from conscientious +motives and with the tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery +which can scarcely be hidden.</p> + +<p>Such glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted centuries ago in Assisi, +when the eager young noble cast his very clothing at his father's feet, +dramatically renouncing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting +the narrow family claim to the wider and more universal duty. All the +conflict of tragedy ensued which might have been averted, had the father +recognized the higher claim, and had he been willing to subordinate and +adjust his own claim to it. The father considered his son disrespectful +and hard-hearted, yet we know St. Francis to have been the most tender +and <a name="page_081"></a> loving of men, responsive to all possible +ties, even to those of inanimate nature. We know that by his affections +he freed the frozen life of his time. The elements of tragedy lay in the +narrowness of the father's mind; in his lack of comprehension and his +lack of sympathy with the power which was moving his son, and which was +but part of the religious revival which swept Europe from end to end in +the early part of the thirteenth century; the same power which built the +cathedrals of the North, and produced the saints and sages of the South. +But the father's situation was nevertheless genuine; he felt his heart +sore and angry, and his dignity covered with disrespect. He could not, +indeed, have felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the fire of +the same revival, and lifted out of and away from the contemplation of +himself and his narrower claim. It is another proof that the notion of a +larger obligation can only come through the response to an enlarged +interest <a name="page_082"></a> in life and in the social movements +around us.</p> + +<p>The grown-up son has so long been considered a citizen with well-defined +duties and a need of "making his way in the world," that the family +claim is urged much less strenuously in his case, and as a matter of +authority, it ceases gradually to be made at all. In the case of the +grown-up daughter, however, who is under no necessity of earning a +living, and who has no strong artistic bent, taking her to Paris to +study painting or to Germany to study music, the years immediately +following her graduation from college are too often filled with a +restlessness and unhappiness which might be avoided by a little clear +thinking, and by an adaptation of our code of family ethics to modern +conditions.</p> + +<p>It is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter otherwise +than as a family possession. From her babyhood she has been the charm +and grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her <a +name="page_083"></a> as an integral part of the social order, hard to +believe that she has duties outside of the family, to the state and to +society in the larger sense. This assumption that the daughter is solely +an inspiration and refinement to the family itself and its own immediate +circle, that her delicacy and polish are but outward symbols of her +father's protection and prosperity, worked very smoothly for the most +part so long as her education was in line with it. When there was +absolutely no recognition of the entity of woman's life beyond the +family, when the outside claims upon her were still wholly unrecognized, +the situation was simple, and the finishing school harmoniously and +elegantly answered all requirements. She was fitted to grace the +fireside and to add lustre to that social circle which her parents +selected for her. But this family assumption has been notably broken +into, and educational ideas no longer fit it. Modern education +recognizes woman quite apart from family or society claims, and gives <a +name="page_084"></a> her the training which for many years has been +deemed successful for highly developing a man's individuality and +freeing his powers for independent action. Perplexities often occur when +the daughter returns from college and finds that this recognition has +been but partially accomplished. When she attempts to act upon the +assumption of its accomplishment, she finds herself jarring upon ideals +which are so entwined with filial piety, so rooted in the tenderest +affections of which the human heart is capable, that both daughter and +parents are shocked and startled when they discover what is happening, +and they scarcely venture to analyze the situation. The ideal for the +education of woman has changed under the pressure of a new claim. The +family has responded to the extent of granting the education, but they +are jealous of the new claim and assert the family claim as over against +it.</p> + +<p>The modern woman finds herself educated to recognize a stress of social +obligation <a name="page_085"></a> which her family did not in the +least anticipate when they sent her to college. She finds herself, in +addition, under an impulse to act her part as a citizen of the world. +She accepts her family inheritance with loyalty and affection, but she +has entered into a wider inheritance as well, which, for lack of a +better phrase, we call the social claim. This claim has been recognized +for four years in her training, but after her return from college the +family claim is again exclusively and strenuously asserted. The +situation has all the discomfort of transition and compromise. The +daughter finds a constant and totally unnecessary conflict between the +social and the family claims. In most cases the former is repressed and +gives way to the family claim, because the latter is concrete and +definitely asserted, while the social demand is vague and unformulated. +In such instances the girl quietly submits, but she feels wronged +whenever she allows her mind to dwell upon the situation. She <a +name="page_086"></a> either hides her hurt, and splendid reserves of +enthusiasm and capacity go to waste, or her zeal and emotions are turned +inward, and the result is an unhappy woman, whose heart is consumed by +vain regrets and desires.</p> + +<p>If the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she is even +reproached for her discontent. She is told to be devoted to her family, +inspiring and responsive to her social circle, and to give the rest of +her time to further self-improvement and enjoyment. She expects to do +this, and responds to these claims to the best of her ability, even +heroically sometimes. But where is the larger life of which she has +dreamed so long? That life which surrounds and completes the individual +and family life? She has been taught that it is her duty to share this +life, and her highest privilege to extend it. This divergence between +her self-centred existence and her best convictions becomes constantly +more apparent. But the situation is not even so simple <a +name="page_087"></a> as a conflict between her affections and her +intellectual convictions, although even that is tumultuous enough, also +the emotional nature is divided against itself. The social claim is a +demand upon the emotions as well as upon the intellect, and in ignoring +it she represses not only her convictions but lowers her springs of +vitality. Her life is full of contradictions. She looks out into the +world, longing that some demand be made upon her powers, for they are +too untrained to furnish an initiative. When her health gives way under +this strain, as it often does, her physician invariably advises a rest. +But to be put to bed and fed on milk is not what she requires. What she +needs is simple, health-giving activity, which, involving the use of all +her faculties, shall be a response to all the claims which she so keenly +feels.</p> + +<p>It is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be +part of a life quite outside their own, because the <a +name="page_088"></a> college woman frequently makes these first +attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have not been trained in the line +of action. She lacks the ability to apply her knowledge and theories to +life itself and to its complicated situations. This is largely the fault +of her training and of the one-sidedness of educational methods. The +colleges have long been full of the best ethical teaching, insisting +that the good of the whole must ultimately be the measure of effort, and +that the individual can only secure his own rights as he labors to +secure those of others. But while the teaching has included an +ever-broadening range of obligation and has insisted upon the +recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the training has been +singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions for personal +distinction, and has trained the faculties almost exclusively in the +direction of intellectual accumulation. Doubtless, woman's education is +at fault, in that it has failed to recognize certain needs, and has +failed to cultivate and <a name="page_089"></a> guide the larger +desires of which all generous young hearts are full.</p> + +<p>During the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no +contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or +the needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only +with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the +purpose of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are bidden +to bide their time. This could only be justifiable if a definite outlet +were provided when they leave college. Doubtless the need does not +differ widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional +or business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly +brought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. Apparently +every obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to +begin the active life, for which, during so many years, she has been +preparing. But during this so-called preparation, her faculties have +been trained solely for accumulation, <a name="page_090"></a> and she +has learned to utterly distrust the finer impulses of her nature, which +would naturally have connected her with human interests outside of her +family and her own immediate social circle. All through school and +college the young soul dreamed of self-sacrifice, of succor to the +helpless and of tenderness to the unfortunate. We persistently distrust +these desires, and, unless they follow well-defined lines, we repress +them with every device of convention and caution.</p> + +<p>One summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence in East London, +where she had become sick and bewildered by the sights and sounds +encountered there, directly to Switzerland. She found the beaten routes +of travel filled with young English men and women who could walk many +miles a day, and who could climb peaks so inaccessible that the feats +received honorable mention in Alpine journals,—a result which filled +their families with joy and pride. These young people knew to <a +name="page_091"></a> a nicety the proper diet and clothing which would +best contribute toward endurance. Everything was very fine about them +save their motive power. The writer does not refer to the hard-worked +men and women who were taking a vacation, but to the leisured young +people, to whom this period was the most serious of the year, and filled +with the most strenuous exertion. They did not, of course, thoroughly +enjoy it, for we are too complicated to be content with mere exercise. +Civilization has bound us too closely with our brethren for any one of +us to be long happy in the cultivation of mere individual force or in +the accumulation of mere muscular energy.</p> + +<p>With Whitechapel constantly in mind, it was difficult not to advise +these young people to use some of this muscular energy of which they +were so proud, in cleaning neglected alleys and paving soggy streets. +Their stores of enthusiasm might stir to energy the listless men and +women of East London and utilize latent social <a name="page_092"></a> +forces. The exercise would be quite as good, the need of endurance as +great, the care for proper dress and food as important; but the motives +for action would be turned from selfish ones into social ones. Such an +appeal would doubtless be met with a certain response from the young +people, but would never be countenanced by their families for an +instant.</p> + +<p>Fortunately a beginning has been made in another direction, and a few +parents have already begun to consider even their little children in +relation to society as well as to the family. The young mothers who +attend "Child Study" classes have a larger notion of parenthood and +expect given characteristics from their children, at certain ages and +under certain conditions. They quite calmly watch the various attempts +of a child to assert his individuality, which so often takes the form of +opposition to the wishes of the family and to the rule of the household. +They recognize as acting under the same law of development the little +child of <a name="page_093"></a> three who persistently runs away and +pretends not to hear his mother's voice, the boy of ten who violently, +although temporarily, resents control of any sort, and the grown-up son +who, by an individualized and trained personality, is drawn into +pursuits and interests quite alien to those of his family.</p> + +<p>This attempt to take the parental relation somewhat away from mere +personal experience, as well as the increasing tendency of parents to +share their children's pursuits and interests, will doubtless finally +result in a better understanding of the social obligation. The +understanding, which results from identity of interests, would seem to +confirm the conviction that in the complicated life of to-day there is +no education so admirable as that education which comes from +participation in the constant trend of events. There is no doubt that +most of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence, +because our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend +each other. The old <a name="page_094"></a> difficulties incident to +the clash of two codes of morals must drop away, as the experiences of +various members of the family become larger and more identical.</p> + +<p>At the present moment, however, many of those difficulties still exist +and may be seen all about us. In order to illustrate the situation +baldly, and at the same time to put it dramatically, it may be well to +take an instance concerning which we have no personal feeling. The +tragedy of King Lear has been selected, although we have been accustomed +so long to give him our sympathy as the victim of the ingratitude of his +two older daughters, and of the apparent coldness of Cordelia, that we +have not sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood, +revealed by the fact that he should get himself into so entangled and +unhappy a relation to all of his children. In our pity for Lear, we fail +to analyze his character. The King on his throne exhibits utter lack of +self-control. The King in the storm gives way <a name="page_095"></a> +to the same emotion, in repining over the wickedness of his children, +which he formerly exhibited in his indulgent treatment of them.</p> + +<p>It might be illuminating to discover wherein he had failed, and why his +old age found him roofless in spite of the fact that he strenuously +urged the family claim with his whole conscience. At the opening of the +drama he sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an indulgent +parent expects when he has given gifts to his children. From the two +elder, the responses for the division of his lands were graceful and +fitting, but he longed to hear what Cordelia, his youngest and best +beloved child, would say. He looked toward her expectantly, but instead +of delight and gratitude there was the first dawn of character. Cordelia +made the awkward attempt of an untrained soul to be honest and +scrupulously to express her inmost feeling. The king was baffled and +distressed by this attempt at self-expression. <a name="page_096"></a> +It was new to him that his daughter should be moved by a principle +obtained outside himself, which even his imagination could not follow; +that she had caught the notion of an existence in which her relation as +a daughter played but a part. She was transformed by a dignity which +recast her speech and made it self-contained. She found herself in the +sweep of a feeling so large that the immediate loss of a kingdom seemed +of little consequence to her. Even an act which might be construed as +disrespect to her father was justified in her eyes, because she was +vainly striving to fill out this larger conception of duty. The test +which comes sooner or later to many parents had come to Lear, to +maintain the tenderness of the relation between father and child, after +that relation had become one between adults, to be content with the +responses made by the adult child to the family claim, while at the same +time she responded to the claims of the rest of life. The mind of Lear +was <a name="page_097"></a> not big enough for this test; he failed to +see anything but the personal slight involved, and the ingratitude alone +reached him. It was impossible for him to calmly watch his child +developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and sympathy.</p> + +<p>That a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to +apprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his +anger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him +than his sense of paternal obligation. Lear apparently also ignored the +common ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal +inheritance of magnanimity. He had thought of himself so long as a noble +and indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might +perceive himself in the wrong. Even in the midst of the storm he +declared himself more sinned against than sinning. He could believe any +amount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no +fidelity on <a name="page_098"></a> the part of Cordelia unless she +gave him the sign he demanded.</p> + +<p>At length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and +broken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first +time his experience was identical with the experience of the men around +him, and he came to a larger conception of life. He put himself in the +place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly found healing and +comfort. He took poor Tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human +contact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which +he suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his +throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward Cordelia.</p> + +<p>In reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a full share of +our censure. Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of +tenderness. Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and +be unwilling to give him <a name="page_099"></a> what he so obviously +craved? We see in the old king "the over-mastering desire of being +beloved, selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving +and kindly nature alone." His eagerness produces in us a strange pity +for him, and we are impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child +cannot feel this, even in the midst of her search for truth and her +newly acquired sense of a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow +conception that would break thus abruptly with the past and would assume +that her father had no part in the new life. We want to remind her "that +pity, memory, and faithfulness are natural ties," and surely as much to +be prized as is the development of her own soul. We do not admire the +Cordelia who through her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later +admire the same woman who comes back from France that she may include +her father in her happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly +taken her salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her +conscience had developed <a name="page_100"></a> in her new life that +she was driven back to her father, where she perished, drawn into the +cruelty and wrath which had now become objective and tragic.</p> + +<p>Historically considered, the relation of Lear to his children was +archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life +since developed. His paternal expression was one of domination and +indulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without +any anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that +they could have a worthy life apart from him. If that rudimentary +conception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that +we have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate +that by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like +misery.</p> + +<p>Wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a +modicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual +to the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a +code <a name="page_101"></a> of ethics dealing with these larger +relationships, instead of a code designed to apply so exclusively to +relationships obtaining only between individuals.</p> + +<p>Doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those +which occur when two standards of morals, both honestly held and +believed in, are brought sharply together. The awkwardness and +constraint we experience when two standards of conventions and manners +clash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference.</p> + + + + +<center><h2><a name="page_102">CHAPTER IV</a></h2> + +<h4>HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT</h4></center> + + +<p>If we could only be judged or judge other people by purity of motive, +life would be much simplified, but that would be to abandon the +contention made in the first chapter, that the processes of life are as +important as its aims. We can all recall acquaintances of whose +integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion +as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are +often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of +other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.</p> + +<p>This tendency to be so sure of integrity of purpose as to be +unsympathetic and hardened to the means by which it is accomplished, is +perhaps nowhere so obvious as <a name="page_103"></a> in the household +itself. It nowhere operates as so constant a force as in the minds of +the women who in all the perplexity of industrial transition are +striving to administer domestic affairs. The ethics held by them are for +the most part the individual and family codes, untouched by the larger +social conceptions.</p> + +<p>These women, rightly confident of their household and family integrity +and holding to their own code of morals, fail to see the household in +its social aspect. Possibly no relation has been so slow to respond to +the social ethics which we are now considering, as that between the +household employer and the household employee, or, as it is still +sometimes called, that between mistress and servant.</p> + +<p>This persistence of the individual code in relation to the household may +be partly accounted for by the fact that orderly life and, in a sense, +civilization itself, grew from the concentration of interest in one +place, and that moral feeling first became centred in a limited number +of persons. From the <a name="page_104"></a> familiar proposition that +the home began because the mother was obliged to stay in one spot in +order to cherish the child, we can see a foundation for the belief that +if women are much away from home, the home itself will be destroyed and +all ethical progress endangered.</p> + +<p>We have further been told that the earliest dances and social gatherings +were most questionable in their purposes, and that it was, therefore, +the good and virtuous women who first stayed at home, until gradually +the two—the woman who stayed at home and the woman who guarded her +virtue—became synonymous. A code of ethics was thus developed in regard +to woman's conduct, and her duties were logically and carefully limited +to her own family circle. When it became impossible to adequately +minister to the needs of this circle without the help of many people who +did not strictly belong to the family, although they were part of the +household, they were added as aids merely for supplying these needs. +When women were the brewers and bakers, the fullers, <a +name="page_105"></a> dyers, spinners, and weavers, the soap and candle +makers, they administered large industries, but solely from the family +point of view. Only a few hundred years ago, woman had complete control +of the manufacturing of many commodities which now figure so largely in +commerce, and it is evident that she let the manufacturing of these +commodities go into the hands of men, as soon as organization and a +larger conception of their production were required. She felt no +responsibility for their management when they were taken from the home +to the factory, for deeper than her instinct to manufacture food and +clothing for her family was her instinct to stay with them, and by +isolation and care to guard them from evil.</p> + +<p>She had become convinced that a woman's duty extended only to her own +family, and that the world outside had no claim upon her. The British +matron ordered her maidens aright, when they were spinning under her own +roof, but she felt no compunction of conscience when the morals <a +name="page_106"></a> and health of young girls were endangered in the +overcrowded and insanitary factories. The code of family ethics was +established in her mind so firmly that it excluded any notion of social +effort.</p> + +<p>It is quite possible to accept this explanation of the origin of morals, +and to believe that the preservation of the home is at the foundation of +all that is best in civilization, without at the same time insisting +that the separate preparation and serving of food is an inherent part of +the structure and sanctity of the home, or that those who minister to +one household shall minister to that exclusively. But to make this +distinction seems difficult, and almost invariably the sense of +obligation to the family becomes confused with a certain sort of +domestic management. The moral issue involved in one has become +inextricably combined with the industrial difficulty involved in the +other, and it is at this point that so many perplexed housekeepers, +through the confusion of the two <a name="page_107"></a> problems, take +a difficult and untenable position.</p> + +<p>There are economic as well as ethical reasons for this survival of a +simpler code. The wife of a workingman still has a distinct economic +value to her husband. She cooks, cleans, washes, and mends—services for +which, before his marriage, he paid ready money. The wife of the +successful business or professional man does not do this. He continues +to pay for his cooking, house service, and washing. The mending, +however, is still largely performed by his wife; indeed, the stockings +are pathetically retained and their darning given an exaggerated +importance, as if women instinctively felt that these mended stockings +were the last remnant of the entire household industry, of which they +were formerly mistresses. But one industry, the cooking and serving of +foods to her own family, woman has never relinquished. It has, +therefore, never been organized, either by men or women, and is in an +undeveloped <a name="page_108"></a> state. Each employer of household +labor views it solely from the family standpoint. The ethics prevailing +in regard to it are distinctly personal and unsocial, and result in the +unique isolation of the household employee.</p> + +<p>As industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified, +from the mediæval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who +spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and +live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. Were this process +complete, we should have no problem of household employment. But, even +in households comparatively humble, there is still one alien, one who is +neither loved nor loving.</p> + +<p>The modern family has dropped the man who made its shoes, the woman who +spun its clothes, and, to a large extent, the woman who washes them, but +it stoutly refuses to drop the woman who cooks its food and ministers +directly to its individual comfort; it strangely insists that to do <a +name="page_109"></a> that would be to destroy the family life itself. +The cook is uncomfortable, the family is uncomfortable; but it will not +drop her as all her fellow-workers have been dropped, although the cook +herself insists upon it. So far has this insistence gone that every +possible concession is made to retain her. The writer knows an employer +in one of the suburbs who built a bay at the back of her house so that +her cook might have a pleasant room in which to sleep, and another in +which to receive her friends. This employer naturally felt aggrieved +when the cook refused to stay in her bay. Viewed in an historic light, +this employer might quite as well have added a bay to her house for her +shoemaker, and then deemed him ungrateful because he declined to live in +it.</p> + +<p>A listener, attentive to a conversation between two employers of +household labor,—and we certainly all have opportunity to hear such +conversations,—would often discover a tone implying that the employer +was abused <a name="page_110"></a> and put upon; that she was +struggling with the problem solely because she was thus serving her +family and performing her social duties; that otherwise it would be a +great relief to her to abandon the entire situation, and "never have a +servant in her house again." Did she follow this impulse, she would +simply yield to the trend of her times and accept the present system of +production. She would be in line with the industrial organization of her +age. Were she in line ethically, she would have to believe that the +sacredness and beauty of family life do not consist in the processes of +the separate preparation of food, but in sharing the corporate life of +the community, and in making the family the unit of that life.</p> + +<p>The selfishness of a modern mistress, who, in her narrow social ethics, +insists that those who minister to the comforts of her family shall +minister to it alone, that they shall not only be celibate, but shall be +cut off, more or less, from their natural social ties, excludes the best +working-people from her service.</p> + +<p><a name="page_111"></a>A man of dignity and ability is quite willing to +come into a house to tune a piano. Another man of mechanical skill will +come to put up window shades. Another of less skill, but of perfect +independence, will come to clean and relay a carpet. These men would all +resent the situation and consider it quite impossible if it implied the +giving up of their family and social ties, and living under the roof of +the household requiring their services.</p> + +<p>The isolation of the household employee is perhaps inevitable so long as +the employer holds her belated ethics; but the situation is made even +more difficult by the character and capacity of the girls who enter this +industry. In any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently +displaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions. +The workmen who have knowledge and insight, who are in touch with their +time, quickly reorganize.</p> + +<p>The general statement may be made that the enterprising girls of the +community go <a name="page_112"></a> into factories, and the less +enterprising go into households, although there are many exceptions. It +is not a question of skill, of energy, of conscientious work, which will +make a girl rise industrially while she is in the household; she is not +in the rising movement. She is belated in a class composed of the +unprogressive elements of the community, which is recruited constantly +by those from the ranks of the incompetent, by girls who are learning +the language, girls who are timid and slow, or girls who look at life +solely from the savings-bank point of view. The distracted housekeeper +struggles with these unprogressive girls, holding to them not even the +well-defined and independent relation of employer and employed, but the +hazy and constantly changing one of mistress to servant.</p> + +<p>The latter relation is changing under pressure from various directions. +In our increasing democracy the notion of personal service is constantly +becoming more distasteful, conflicting, as it does, with the more <a +name="page_113"></a> modern notion of personal dignity. Personal +ministration to the needs of childhood, illness, and old age seem to us +reasonable, and the democratic adjustment in regard to them is being +made. The first two are constantly raised nearer to the level of a +profession, and there is little doubt that the third will soon follow. +But personal ministrations to a normal, healthy adult, consuming the +time and energy of another adult, we find more difficult to reconcile to +our theories of democracy.</p> + +<p>A factory employer parts with his men at the factory gates at the end of +a day's work; they go to their homes as he goes to his, in the +assumption that they both do what they want and spend their money as +they please; but this solace of equality outside of working hours is +denied the bewildered employer of household labor.</p> + +<p>She is obliged to live constantly in the same house with her employee, +and because of certain equalities in food and shelter she is brought +more sharply face to face with the mental and social inequalities.</p> + +<p><a name="page_114"></a>The difficulty becomes more apparent as the +character of the work performed by the so-called servant is less +absolutely useful and may be merely time consuming. A kind-hearted woman +who will complacently take an afternoon drive, leaving her cook to +prepare the five courses of a "little dinner for only ten guests," will +not be nearly so comfortable the next evening when she speeds her +daughter to a dance, conscious that her waitress must spend the evening +in dull solitude on the chance that a caller or two may ring the +door-bell.</p> + +<p>A conscientious employer once remarked to the writer: "In England it +must be much easier; the maid does not look and dress so like your +daughter, and you can at least pretend that she doesn't like the same +things. But really, my new waitress is quite as pretty and stylish as my +daughter is, and her wistful look sometimes when Mary goes off to a +frolic quite breaks my heart."</p> + +<p>Too many employers of domestic service have always been exempt from +manual labor, <a name="page_115"></a> and therefore constantly impose +exacting duties upon employees, the nature of which they do not +understand by experience; there is thus no curb of rationality imposed +upon the employer's requirements and demands. She is totally unlike the +foreman in a shop, who has only risen to his position by way of having +actually performed with his own hands all the work of the men he +directs. There is also another class of employers of domestic labor, who +grow capricious and over-exacting through sheer lack of larger interests +to occupy their minds; it is equally bad for them and the employee that +the duties of the latter are not clearly defined. Tolstoy contends that +an exaggerated notion of cleanliness has developed among such employers, +which could never have been evolved among usefully employed people. He +points to the fact that a serving man, in order that his hands may be +immaculately clean, is kept from performing the heavier work of the +household, and then is supplied with a tray, upon which to place a card, +in <a name="page_116"></a> order that even his clean hands may not +touch it; later, even his clean hands are covered with a pair of clean +white gloves, which hold the tray upon which the card is placed.</p> + +<p>If it were not for the undemocratic ethics used by the employers of +domestics, much work now performed in the household would be done +outside, as is true of many products formerly manufactured in the feudal +household. The worker in all other trades has complete control of his +own time after the performance of definitely limited services, his wages +are paid altogether in money which he may spend in the maintenance of a +separate home life, and he has full opportunity to organize with the +other workers in his trade.</p> + +<p>The domestic employee is retained in the household largely because her +"mistress" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity +of family life.</p> + +<p>The household employee has no regular opportunity for meeting other +workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a +corporate body. The industrial isolation <a name="page_117"></a> of the +household employee results, as isolation in a trade must always result, +in a lack of progress in the methods and products of that trade, and a +lack of aspiration and education in the workman. Whether we recognize +this isolation as a cause or not, we are all ready to acknowledge that +household labor has been in some way belated; that the improvements +there have not kept up with the improvement in other occupations. It is +said that the last revolution in the processes of cooking was brought +about by Count Rumford, who died a hundred years ago. This is largely +due to the lack of <i>esprit de corps</i> among the employees, which keeps +them collectively from fresh achievements, as the absence of education +in the individual keeps her from improving her implements.</p> + +<p>Under this isolation, not only must one set of utensils serve divers +purposes, and, as a consequence, tend to a lessened volume and lower +quality of work, but, inasmuch as the appliances are not made <a +name="page_118"></a> to perform the fullest work, there is an amount of +capital invested disproportionate to the product when measured by the +achievement in other branches of industry. More important than this is +the result of the isolation upon the worker herself. There is nothing +more devastating to the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind +and spirit, than the constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of +that fellowship which makes our public opinion. If an angry foreman +reprimands a girl for breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him, +and the culprit knows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or +injustice of her situation. In either case she bears it better for +knowing that, and not thinking it over in solitude. If a household +employee breaks a utensil or a piece of porcelain and is reprimanded by +her employer, too often the invisible jury is the family of the latter, +who naturally uphold her censorious position and intensify the feeling +of loneliness in the employee.</p> + +<p><a name="page_119"></a>The household employee, in addition to her +industrial isolation, is also isolated socially. It is well to remember +that the household employees for the better quarters of the city and +suburbs are largely drawn from the poorer quarters, which are nothing if +not gregarious. The girl is born and reared in a tenement house full of +children. She goes to school with them, and there she learns to march, +to read, and write in companionship with forty others. When she is old +enough to go to parties, those she attends are usually held in a public +hall and are crowded with dancers. If she works in a factory, she walks +home with many other girls, in much the same spirit as she formerly +walked to school with them. She mingles with the young men she knows, in +frank, economic, and social equality. Until she marries she remains at +home with no special break or change in her family and social life. If +she is employed in a household, this is not true. Suddenly all the +conditions of her <a name="page_120"></a> life are altered. This change +may be wholesome for her, but it is not easy, and thought of the +savings-bank does not cheer one much, when one is twenty. She is +isolated from the people with whom she has been reared, with whom she +has gone to school, and among whom she expects to live when she marries. +She is naturally lonely and constrained away from them, and the "new +maid" often seems "queer" to her employer's family. She does not care to +mingle socially with the people in whose house she is employed, as the +girl from the country often does, but she surfers horribly from +loneliness.</p> + +<p>This wholesome, instinctive dread of social isolation is so strong that, +as every city intelligence-office can testify, the filling of situations +is easier, or more difficult, in proportion as the place offers more or +less companionship. Thus, the easy situation to fill is always the city +house, with five or six employees, shading off into the more difficult +suburban home, with two, <a name="page_121"></a> and the utterly +impossible lonely country house.</p> + +<p>There are suburban employers of household labor who make heroic efforts +to supply domestic and social life to their employees; who take the +domestic employee to drive, arrange to have her invited out +occasionally; who supply her with books and papers and companionship. +Nothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom +successful in actual operation, resulting as it does in a simulacrum of +companionship. The employee may have a genuine friendship for her +employer, and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not have, and +the unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she +has, merely because of the propinquity.</p> + +<p>The unnaturalness of the situation is intensified by the fact that the +employee is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from +her natural associates, and that her employer sympathetically insists +upon filling the vacancy in interests <a name="page_122"></a> and +affections by her own tastes and friendship. She may or may not succeed, +but the employee should not be thus dependent upon the good will of her +employer. That in itself is undemocratic.</p> + +<p>The difficulty is increasing by a sense of social discrimination which +the household employee keenly feels is against her and in favor of the +factory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. Women +seeking employment, understand perfectly well this feeling among +mechanics, doubtless quite unjustifiable, but it acts as a strong +inducement toward factory labor. The writer has long ceased to apologize +for the views and opinions of working people, being quite sure that on +the whole they are quite as wise and quite as foolish as the views and +opinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of +young mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily +demonstrated. The contrast is further accentuated by the better social +position of the factory girl, and the advantages provided for <a +name="page_123"></a> her in the way of lunch clubs, social clubs, and +vacation homes, from which girls performing household labor are +practically excluded by their hours of work, their geographical +situation, and a curious feeling that they are not as interesting as +factory girls.</p> + +<p>This separation from her natural social ties affects, of course, her +opportunity for family life. It is well to remember that women, as a +rule, are devoted to their families; that they want to live with their +parents, their brothers and sisters, and kinsfolk, and will sacrifice +much to accomplish this. This devotion is so universal that it is +impossible to ignore it when we consider women as employees. Young +unmarried women are not detached from family claims and requirements as +young men are, and are more ready and steady in their response to the +needs of aged parents and the helpless members of the family. But women +performing labor in households have peculiar difficulties in responding +to their family <a name="page_124"></a> claims, and are practically +dependent upon their employers for opportunities of even seeing their +relatives and friends.</p> + +<p>Curiously enough the same devotion to family life and quick response to +its claims, on the part of the employer, operates against the girl +employed in household labor, and still further contributes to her +isolation.</p> + +<p>The employer of household labor, in her zeal to preserve her own family +life intact and free from intrusion, acts inconsistently and grants to +her cook, for instance, but once or twice a week, such opportunity for +untrammelled association with her relatives as the employer's family +claims constantly. This in itself is undemocratic, in that it makes a +distinction between the value of family life for one set of people as +over against another; or, rather, claims that one set of people are of +so much less importance than another, that a valuable side of life +pertaining to them should be sacrificed for the other.</p> + +<p>This cannot be defended theoretically, and no doubt much of the talk +among the employers <a name="page_125"></a> of household labor, that +their employees are carefully shielded and cared for, and that it is so +much better for a girl's health and morals to work in a household than +to work in a factory, comes from a certain uneasiness of conscience, and +from a desire to make up by individual scruple what would be done much +more freely and naturally by public opinion if it had an untrammelled +chance to assert itself. One person, or a number of isolated persons, +however conscientious, cannot perform this office of public opinion. +Certain hospitals in London have contributed statistics showing that +seventy-eight per cent of illegitimate children born there are the +children of girls working in households. These girls are certainly not +less virtuous than factory girls, for they come from the same families +and have had the same training, but the girls who remain at home and +work in factories meet their lovers naturally and easily, their fathers +and brothers know the men, and unconsciously exercise a certain +supervision and a certain <a name="page_126"></a> direction in their +choice of companionship. The household employees living in another part +of the city, away from their natural family and social ties, depend upon +chance for the lovers whom they meet. The lover may be the young man who +delivers for the butcher or grocer, or the solitary friend, who follows +the girl from her own part of town and pursues unfairly the advantage +which her social loneliness and isolation afford him. There is no +available public opinion nor any standard of convention which the girl +can apply to her own situation.</p> + +<p>It would be easy to point out many inconveniences arising from the fact +that the old economic forms are retained when moral conditions which +befitted them have entirely disappeared, but until employers of domestic +labor become conscious of their narrow code of ethics, and make a +distinct effort to break through the status of mistress and servant, +because it shocks their moral sense, there is no chance of even +beginning a reform.</p> + +<p><a name="page_127"></a>A fuller social and domestic life among household +employees would be steps toward securing their entrance into the larger +industrial organizations by which the needs of a community are most +successfully administered. Many a girl who complains of loneliness, and +who relinquishes her situation with that as her sole excuse, feebly +tries to formulate her sense of restraint and social mal-adjustment. She +sometimes says that she "feels so unnatural all the time." The writer +has known the voice of a girl to change so much during three weeks of +"service" that she could not recognize it when the girl returned to her +home. It alternated between the high falsetto in which a shy child +"speaks a piece" and the husky gulp with which the <i>globus hystericus</i> +is swallowed. The alertness and <i>bonhomie</i> of the voice of the +tenement-house child had totally disappeared. When such a girl leaves +her employer, her reasons are often incoherent and totally +incomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally <a +name="page_128"></a> concludes that she wishes to get away from the +work and back to her dances and giddy life, content, if she has these, +to stand many hours in an insanitary factory. The charge of the employer +is only half a truth. These dances may be the only organized form of +social life which the disheartened employee is able to mention, but the +girl herself, in her discontent and her moving from place to place, is +blindly striving to respond to a larger social life. Her employer thinks +that she should be able to consider only the interests and conveniences +of her employer's family, because the employer herself is holding to a +family outlook, and refuses to allow her mind to take in the larger +aspects of the situation.</p> + +<p>Although this household industry survives in the midst of the factory +system, it must, of course, constantly compete with it. Women with +little children, or those with invalids depending upon them, cannot +enter either occupation, and they are practically confined to the sewing +trades; but <a name="page_129"></a> to all other untrained women +seeking employment a choice is open between these two forms of labor.</p> + +<p>There are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or +do some form of factory work; few so dull that some perplexed +housekeeper will not receive them, at least for a trial, in her +household. Household labor, then, has to compete with factory labor, and +women seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two +forms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment, +in point of wages, and in point of the advantage they afford for family +and social life. Three points are easily disposed of. First, in regard +to hours, there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. The +average factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the +evening, with the chance of working overtime in busy seasons. This +leaves most of the evenings and Sundays entirely free. The average hours +of household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night, +with <a name="page_130"></a> little difference in seasons. There is one +afternoon a week, with an occasional evening, but Sunday is seldom +wholly free. Even these evenings and afternoons take the form of a +concession from the employer. They are called "evenings out," as if the +time really belonged to her, but that she was graciously permitting her +employee to use it. This attitude, of course, is in marked contrast to +that maintained by the factory operative, who, when she works evenings +is paid for "over-time."</p> + +<p>Second, in regard to permanency of position, the advantage is found +clearly on the side of the household employee, if she proves in any +measure satisfactory to her employer, for she encounters much less +competition.</p> + +<p>Third, in point of wages, the household is again fairly ahead, if we +consider not the money received, but the opportunity offered for saving +money. This is greater among household employees, because they do not +pay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend +money in <a name="page_131"></a> recreation is less frequent. The +minimum wages paid an adult in household labor may be fairly put at two +dollars and a half a week; the maximum at six dollars, this excluding +the comparatively rare opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars +a month, and the housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month.</p> + +<p>The factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be +smaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the +minds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers +for increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for +less than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last +being a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five +dollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance +of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it +easier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board, +in a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be <a +name="page_132"></a> content with four dollars a week and pay no board, +in a scale of wages rising toward six dollars; and the girl well knows +that there are scores of forewomen at sixty dollars a month for one +forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar housekeeper. In many cases this +position is well taken economically, for, although the opportunity for +saving may be better for the employees in the household than in the +factory, her family saves more when she works in a factory and lives +with them. The rent is no more when she is at home. The two dollars and +a half a week which she pays into the family fund more than covers the +cost of her actual food, and at night she can often contribute toward +the family labor by helping her mother wash and sew.</p> + +<p>The fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in +regard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if +the position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining +factor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to +remedy this, at least in its domestic <a name="page_133"></a> and +social aspects. To allow household employees to live with their own +families and among their own friends, as factory employees now do, would +be to relegate more production to industrial centres administered on the +factory system, and to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be +done in the household.</p> + +<p>In those cases in which the household employees have no family ties, +doubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of +residence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most +keenly felt. Indeed, the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in +the servants' quarters at the summer hotels. In these residence clubs, +the household employee could have the independent life which only one's +own abiding place can afford. This, of course, presupposes a higher +grade of ability than household employees at present possess; on the +other hand, it is only by offering such possibilities that the higher +grades of intelligence can be secured for household employment. <a +name="page_134"></a> As the plan of separate clubs for household +employees will probably come first in the suburbs, where the difficulty +of securing and holding "servants" under the present system is most +keenly felt, so the plan of buying cooked food from an outside kitchen, +and of having more and more of the household product relegated to the +factory, will probably come from the comparatively poor people in the +city, who feel most keenly the pressure of the present system. They +already consume a much larger proportion of canned goods and bakers' +wares and "prepared meats" than the more prosperous people do, because +they cannot command the skill nor the time for the more tedious +preparation of the raw material. The writer has seen a tenement-house +mother pass by a basket of green peas at the door of a local grocery +store, to purchase a tin of canned peas, because they could be easily +prepared for supper and "the children liked the tinny taste."</p> + +<p>It is comparatively easy for an employer to manage her household +industry with a <a name="page_135"></a> cook, a laundress, a waitress. +The difficulties really begin when the family income is so small that +but one person can be employed in the household for all these varied +functions, and the difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable +as they fall altogether upon the mother of the family, who is living in +a flat, or, worse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one +set of utensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making +the living room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly +insupportable on rainy washing-days in winter. Such a woman, rather than +the prosperous housekeeper, uses factory products, and thus no high +standard of quality is established.</p> + +<p>The problem of domestic service, which has long been discussed in the +United States and England, is now coming to prominence in France. As a +well-known economist has recently pointed out, the large defection in +the ranks of domestics is there regarded as a sign of revolt against an +"unconscious slavery," while English and <a name="page_136"></a> +American writers appeal to the statistics which point to the absorption +of an enormous number of the class from which servants were formerly +recruited into factory employments, and urge, as the natural solution, +that more of the products used in households be manufactured in +factories, and that personal service, at least for healthy adults, be +eliminated altogether. Both of these lines of discussion certainly +indicate that domestic service is yielding to the influence of a +democratic movement, and is emerging from the narrower code of family +ethics into the larger code governing social relations. It still remains +to express the ethical advance through changed economic conditions by +which the actual needs of the family may be supplied not only more +effectively but more in line with associated effort. To fail to +apprehend the tendency of one's age, and to fail to adapt the conditions +of an industry to it, is to leave that industry ill-adjusted and belated +on the economic side, and out of line ethically.</p> + + + + +<center><h2><a name="page_137">CHAPTER V</a></h2> + +<h4>INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION</h4></center> + + +<p>There is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to +action our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we +have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to +fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. We have all +been at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly +individualized people gathered together as a committee. Their aimless +attempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering +motion of a baby's arm before he has learned to coördinate his muscles.</p> + +<p>If, as is many times stated, we are passing from an age of individualism +to one of association, there is no doubt that for decisive <a +name="page_138"></a> and effective action the individual still has the +best of it. He will secure efficient results while committees are still +deliberating upon the best method of making a beginning. And yet, if the +need of the times demand associated effort, it may easily be true that +the action which appears ineffective, and yet is carried out upon the +more highly developed line of associated effort, may represent a finer +social quality and have a greater social value than the more effective +individual action. It is possible that an individual may be successful, +largely because he conserves all his powers for individual achievement +and does not put any of his energy into the training which will give him +the ability to act with others. The individual acts promptly, and we are +dazzled by his success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of +his code. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial +relations, as existing between the owner of a large factory and his +employees.</p> + +<p><a name="page_139"></a>A growing conflict may be detected between the +democratic ideal, which urges the workmen to demand representation in +the administration of industry, and the accepted position, that the man +who owns the capital and takes the risks has the exclusive right of +management. It is in reality a clash between individual or aristocratic +management, and corporate or democratic management. A large and highly +developed factory presents a sharp contrast between its socialized form +and individualistic ends.</p> + +<p>It is possible to illustrate this difference by a series of events which +occurred in Chicago during the summer of 1894. These events epitomized +and exaggerated, but at the same time challenged, the code of ethics +which regulates much of our daily conduct, and clearly showed that +so-called social relations are often resting upon the will of an +individual, and are in reality regulated by a code of individual +ethics.</p> + +<p><a name="page_140"></a>As this situation illustrates a point of great +difficulty to which we have arrived in our development of social ethics, +it may be justifiable to discuss it at some length. Let us recall the +facts, not as they have been investigated and printed, but as they +remain in our memories.</p> + +<p>A large manufacturing company had provided commodious workshops, and, at +the instigation of its president, had built a model town for the use of +its employees. After a series of years it was deemed necessary, during a +financial depression, to reduce the wages of these employees by giving +each workman less than full-time work "in order to keep the shops open." +This reduction was not accepted by the men, who had become discontented +with the factory management and the town regulations, and a strike +ensued, followed by a complete shut-down of the works. Although these +shops were non-union shops, the strikers were hastily organized and +appealed for help to the American <a name="page_141"></a> Railway +Union, which at that moment was holding its biennial meeting in Chicago. +After some days' discussion and some futile attempts at arbitration, a +sympathetic strike was declared, which gradually involved railway men in +all parts of the country, and orderly transportation was brought to a +complete standstill. In the excitement which followed, cars were burned +and tracks torn up. The police of Chicago did not cope with the +disorder, and the railway companies, apparently distrusting the Governor +of the State, and in order to protect the United States mails, called +upon the President of the United States for the federal troops, the +federal courts further enjoined all persons against any form of +interference with the property or operation of the railroads, and the +situation gradually assumed the proportions of internecine warfare. +During all of these events the president of the manufacturing company +first involved, steadfastly refused to have the situation submitted to +arbitration, <a name="page_142"></a> and this attitude naturally +provoked much discussion. The discussion was broadly divided between +those who held that the long kindness of the president of the company +had been most ungratefully received, and those who maintained that the +situation was the inevitable outcome of the social consciousness +developing among working people. The first defended the president of the +company in his persistent refusal to arbitrate, maintaining that +arbitration was impossible after the matter had been taken up by other +than his own employees, and they declared that a man must be allowed to +run his own business. They considered the firm stand of the president a +service to the manufacturing interests of the entire country. The others +claimed that a large manufacturing concern has ceased to be a private +matter; that not only a number of workmen and stockholders are concerned +in its management, but that the interests of the public are so involved +that the <a name="page_143"></a> officers of the company are in a real +sense administering a public trust.</p> + +<p>This prolonged strike clearly puts in a concrete form the ethics of an +individual, in this case a benevolent employer, and the ethics of a mass +of men, his employees, claiming what they believed to be their moral +rights.</p> + +<p>These events illustrate the difficulty of managing an industry which has +become organized into a vast social operation, not with the coöperation +of the workman thus socialized, but solely by the dictation of the +individual owning the capital. There is a sharp divergence between the +social form and the individual aim, which becomes greater as the +employees are more highly socialized and dependent. The president of the +company under discussion went further than the usual employer does. He +socialized not only the factory, but the form in which his workmen were +living. He built, and in a great measure regulated, an entire town, +without calling upon the workmen <a name="page_144"></a> either for +self-expression or self-government. He honestly believed that he knew +better than they what was for their good, as he certainly knew better +than they how to conduct his business. As his factory developed and +increased, making money each year under his direction, he naturally +expected the town to prosper in the same way.</p> + +<p>He did not realize that the men submitted to the undemocratic conditions +of the factory organization because the economic pressure in our +industrial affairs is so great that they could not do otherwise. Under +this pressure they could be successfully discouraged from organization, +and systematically treated on the individual basis.</p> + +<p>Social life, however, in spite of class distinctions, is much freer than +industrial life, and the men resented the extension of industrial +control to domestic and social arrangements. They felt the lack of +democracy in the assumption that they should be taken care of in these +matters, in which even the humblest <a name="page_145"></a> workman has +won his independence. The basic difficulty lay in the fact that an +individual was directing the social affairs of many men without any +consistent effort to find out their desires, and without any +organization through which to give them social expression. The president +of the company was, moreover, so confident of the righteousness of his +aim that he had come to test the righteousness of the process by his own +feelings and not by those of the men. He doubtless built the town from a +sincere desire to give his employees the best surroundings. As it +developed, he gradually took toward it the artist attitude toward his +own creation, which has no thought for the creation itself but is +absorbed in the idea it stands for, and he ceased to measure the +usefulness of the town by the standard of the men's needs. This process +slowly darkened his glints of memory, which might have connected his +experience with that of his men. It is possible to cultivate the +impulses of the benefactor <a name="page_146"></a> until the power of +attaining a simple human relationship with the beneficiaries, that of +frank equality with them, is gone, and there is left no mutual interest +in a common cause. To perform too many good deeds may be to lose the +power of recognizing good in others; to be too absorbed in carrying out +a personal plan of improvement may be to fail to catch the great moral +lesson which our times offer.</p> + +<p>The president of this company fostered his employees for many years; he +gave them sanitary houses and beautiful parks; but in their extreme +need, when they were struggling with the most difficult situation which +the times could present to them, he lost his touch and had nothing +wherewith to help them. The employer's conception of goodness for his +men had been cleanliness, decency of living, and, above all, thrift and +temperance. Means had been provided for all this, and opportunities had +also been given for recreation and improvement. But this employer +suddenly found <a name="page_147"></a> his town in the sweep of a +world-wide moral impulse. A movement had been going on about him and +among his working men, of which he had been unconscious, or concerning +which he had heard only by rumor.</p> + +<p>Outside the ken of philanthropists the proletariat had learned to say in +many languages, that "the injury of one is the concern of all." Their +watchwords were brotherhood, sacrifice, the subordination of individual +and trade interests, to the good of the working classes, and they were +moved by a determination to free that class from the untoward conditions +under which they were laboring.</p> + +<p>Compared to these watchwords, the old ones which this philanthropic +employer had given his town were negative and inadequate. He had +believed strongly in temperance and steadiness of individual effort, but +had failed to apprehend the greater movement of combined abstinence and +concerted action. With all his fostering, the president had not attained +to a conception <a name="page_148"></a> of social morality for his men +and had imagined that virtue for them largely meant absence of vice.</p> + +<p>When the labor movement finally stirred his town, or, to speak more +fairly, when, in their distress and perplexity, his own employees +appealed to an organized manifestation of this movement, they were quite +sure that simply because they were workmen in distress they would not be +deserted by it. This loyalty on the part of a widely ramified and +well-organized union toward the workmen in a "non-union shop," who had +contributed nothing to its cause, was certainly a manifestation of moral +power.</p> + +<p>In none of his utterances or correspondence did the president for an +instant recognize this touch of nobility, although one would imagine +that he would gladly point out this bit of virtue, in what he must have +considered the moral ruin about him. He stood throughout for the +individual virtues, those which had distinguished the model workmen of +his youth; those <a name="page_149"></a> which had enabled him and so +many of his contemporaries to rise in life, when "rising in life" was +urged upon every promising boy as the goal of his efforts.</p> + +<p>Of the code of social ethics he had caught absolutely nothing. The +morals he had advocated in selecting and training his men did not fail +them in the hour of confusion. They were self-controlled, and they +themselves destroyed no property. They were sober and exhibited no +drunkenness, even although obliged to hold their meetings in the saloon +hall of a neighboring town. They repaid their employer in kind, but he +had given them no rule for the life of association into which they were +plunged.</p> + +<p>The president of the company desired that his employees should possess +the individual and family virtues, but did nothing to cherish in them +the social virtues which express themselves in associated effort.</p> + +<p>Day after day, during that horrible time of suspense, when the wires +constantly reported the same message, "the President <a +name="page_150"></a> of the Company holds that there is nothing to +arbitrate," one was forced to feel that the ideal of one-man rule was +being sustained in its baldest form. A demand from many parts of the +country and from many people was being made for social adjustment, +against which the commercial training and the individualistic point of +view held its own successfully.</p> + +<p>The majority of the stockholders, not only of this company but of +similar companies, and many other citizens, who had had the same +commercial experience, shared and sustained this position. It was quite +impossible for them to catch the other point of view. They not only felt +themselves right from the commercial standpoint, but had gradually +accustomed themselves also to the philanthropic standpoint, until they +had come to consider their motives beyond reproach. Habit held them +persistent in this view of the case through all changing conditions.</p> + +<p>A wise man has said that "the consent <a name="page_151"></a> of men +and your own conscience are two wings given you whereby you may rise to +God." It is so easy for the good and powerful to think that they can +rise by following the dictates of conscience, by pursuing their own +ideals, that they are prone to leave those ideals unconnected with the +consent of their fellow-men. The president of the company thought out +within his own mind a beautiful town. He had power with which to build +this town, but he did not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men +who were living in it. The most unambitious reform, recognizing the +necessity for this consent, makes for slow but sane and strenuous +progress, while the most ambitious of social plans and experiments, +ignoring this, is prone to failure.</p> + +<p>The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to +consult the "feasible right" as well as the absolute right. He is often +obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln's "best possible," and then has the +sickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. He has to move +along <a name="page_152"></a> with those whom he leads toward a goal +that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has +to discover what people really want, and then "provide the channels in +which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow." What he does +attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a +solitary mountain-climber beyond that of the valley multitude but it is +sustained and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. +Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater +because lateral. He has not taught his contemporaries to climb +mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet +higher; added to this, he has made secure his progress. A few months +after the death of the promoter of this model town, a court decision +made it obligatory upon the company to divest itself of the management +of the town as involving a function beyond its corporate powers. The +parks, flowers, and fountains of this far-famed industrial centre <a +name="page_153"></a> were dismantled, with scarcely a protest from the +inhabitants themselves.</p> + +<p>The man who disassociates his ambition, however disinterested, from the +coöperation of his fellows, always takes this risk of ultimate failure. +He does not take advantage of the great conserver and guarantee of his +own permanent success which associated efforts afford. Genuine +experiments toward higher social conditions must have a more democratic +faith and practice than those which underlie private venture. Public +parks and improvements, intended for the common use, are after all only +safe in the hands of the public itself; and associated effort toward +social progress, although much more awkward and stumbling than that same +effort managed by a capable individual, does yet enlist deeper forces +and evoke higher social capacities.</p> + +<p>The successful business man who is also the philanthropist is in more +than the usual danger of getting widely separated from his employees. +The men already have the <a name="page_154"></a> American veneration +for wealth and successful business capacity, and, added to this, they +are dazzled by his good works. The workmen have the same kindly impulses +as he, but while they organize their charity into mutual benefit +associations and distribute their money in small amounts in relief for +the widows and insurance for the injured, the employer may build model +towns, erect college buildings, which are tangible and enduring, and +thereby display his goodness in concentrated form.</p> + +<p>By the very exigencies of business demands, the employer is too often +cut off from the social ethics developing in regard to our larger social +relationships, and from the great moral life springing from our common +experiences. This is sure to happen when he is good "to" people rather +than "with" them, when he allows himself to decide what is best for them +instead of consulting them. He thus misses the rectifying influence of +that fellowship which is so big that it leaves no room for <a +name="page_155"></a> sensitiveness or gratitude. Without this +fellowship we may never know how great the divergence between ourselves +and others may become, nor how cruel the misunderstandings.</p> + +<p>During a recent strike of the employees of a large factory in Ohio, the +president of the company expressed himself as bitterly disappointed by +the results of his many kindnesses, and evidently considered the +employees utterly unappreciative. His state of mind was the result of +the fallacy of ministering to social needs from an individual impulse +and expecting a socialized return of gratitude and loyalty. If the +lunch-room was necessary, it was a necessity in order that the employees +might have better food, and, when they had received the better food, the +legitimate aim of the lunch-room was met. If baths were desirable, and +the fifteen minutes of calisthenic exercise given the women in the +middle of each half day brought a needed rest and change to their +muscles, then the increased cleanliness and the increased bodily <a +name="page_156"></a> comfort of so many people should of themselves +have justified the experiment.</p> + +<p>To demand, as a further result, that there should be no strikes in the +factory, no revolt against the will of the employer because the +employees were filled with loyalty as the result of the kindness, was of +course to take the experiment from an individual basis to a social one.</p> + +<p>Large mining companies and manufacturing concerns are constantly +appealing to their stockholders for funds, or for permission to take a +percentage of the profits, in order that the money may be used for +educational and social schemes designed for the benefit of the +employees. The promoters of these schemes use as an argument and as an +appeal, that better relations will be thus established, that strikes +will be prevented, and that in the end the money returned to the +stockholders will be increased. However praiseworthy this appeal may be +in motive, it involves a distinct confusion of issues, and in theory +deserves the failure it so often <a name="page_157"></a> meets with in +practice. In the clash which follows a strike, the employees are accused +of an ingratitude, when there was no legitimate reason to expect +gratitude; and useless bitterness, which has really a factitious basis, +may be developed on both sides.</p> + +<p>Indeed, unless the relation becomes a democratic one, the chances of +misunderstanding are increased, when to the relation of employer and +employees is added the relation of benefactor to beneficiaries, in so +far as there is still another opportunity for acting upon the individual +code of ethics.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that these efforts are to be commended, not only from +the standpoint of their social value but because they have a marked +industrial significance. Failing, as they do, however, to touch the +question of wages and hours, which are almost invariably the points of +trades-union effort, the employers confuse the mind of the public when +they urge the amelioration of conditions and the kindly relation +existing between them and their men as a reason for the discontinuance +<a name="page_158"></a> of strikes and other trades-union tactics. The +men have individually accepted the kindness of the employers as it was +individually offered, but quite as the latter urges his inability to +increase wages unless he has the coöperation of his competitors, so the +men state that they are bound to the trades-union struggle for an +increase in wages because it can only be undertaken by combinations of +labor.</p> + +<p>Even the much more democratic effort to divide a proportion of the +profits at the end of the year among the employees, upon the basis of +their wages and efficiency, is also exposed to a weakness, from the fact +that the employing side has the power of determining to whom the benefit +shall accrue.</p> + +<p>Both individual acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and +individual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most +useful as they establish standards to which the average worker and +employer may in time be legally compelled to conform. Progress must +always come through the individual <a name="page_159"></a> who varies +from the type and has sufficient energy to express this variation. He +first holds a higher conception than that held by the mass of his +fellows of what is righteous under given conditions, and expresses this +conviction in conduct, in many instances formulating a certain scruple +which the others share, but have not yet defined even to themselves. +Progress, however, is not secure until the mass has conformed to this +new righteousness. This is equally true in regard to any advance made in +the standard of living on the part of the trades-unionists or in the +improved conditions of industry on the part of reforming employers. The +mistake lies, not in overpraising the advance thus inaugurated by +individual initiative, but in regarding the achievement as complete in a +social sense when it is still in the realm of individual action. No sane +manufacturer regards his factory as the centre of the industrial system. +He knows very well that the cost of material, wages, and selling prices +are determined by <a name="page_160"></a> industrial conditions +completely beyond his control. Yet the same man may quite calmly regard +himself and his own private principles as merely self-regarding, and +expect results from casual philanthropy which can only be accomplished +through those common rules of life and labor established by the +community for the common good.</p> + +<p>Outside of and surrounding these smaller and most significant efforts +are the larger and irresistible movements operating toward combination. +This movement must tend to decide upon social matters from the social +standpoint. Until then it is difficult to keep our minds free from a +confusion of issues. Such a confusion occurs when the gift of a large +sum to the community for a public and philanthropic purpose, throws a +certain glamour over all the earlier acts of a man, and makes it +difficult for the community to see possible wrongs committed against it, +in the accumulation of wealth so beneficently used. It is possible also +that the resolve to <a name="page_161"></a> be thus generous +unconsciously influences the man himself in his methods of accumulation. +He keeps to a certain individual rectitude, meaning to make an +individual restitution by the old paths of generosity and kindness, +whereas if he had in view social restitution on the newer lines of +justice and opportunity, he would throughout his course doubtless be +watchful of his industrial relationships and his social virtues.</p> + +<p>The danger of professionally attaining to the power of the righteous +man, of yielding to the ambition "for doing good" on a large scale, +compared to which the ambition for politics, learning, or wealth, are +vulgar and commonplace, ramifies through our modern life; and those most +easily beset by this temptation are precisely the men best situated to +experiment on the larger social lines, because they so easily dramatize +their acts and lead public opinion. Very often, too, they have in their +hands the preservation and advancement of large vested interests, <a +name="page_162"></a> and often see clearly and truly that they are +better able to administer the affairs of the community than the +community itself: sometimes they see that if they do not administer them +sharply and quickly, as only an individual can, certain interests of +theirs dependent upon the community will go to ruin.</p> + +<p>The model employer first considered, provided a large sum in his will +with which to build and equip a polytechnic school, which will doubtless +be of great public value. This again shows the advantage of individual +management, in the spending as well as in the accumulating of wealth, +but this school will attain its highest good, in so far as it incites +the ambition to provide other schools from public funds. The town of +Zurich possesses a magnificent polytechnic institute, secured by the +vote of the entire people and supported from public taxes. Every man who +voted for it is interested that his child should enjoy its benefits, +and, of course, the voluntary attendance must be <a +name="page_163"></a> larger than in a school accepted as a gift to the +community.</p> + +<p>In the educational efforts of model employers, as in other attempts +toward social amelioration, one man with the best of intentions is +trying to do what the entire body of employees should have undertaken to +do for themselves. The result of his efforts will only attain its +highest value as it serves as an incentive to procure other results by +the community as well as for the community.</p> + +<p>There are doubtless many things which the public would never demand +unless they were first supplied by individual initiative, both because +the public lacks the imagination, and also the power of formulating +their wants. Thus philanthropic effort supplies kindergartens, until +they become so established in the popular affections that they are +incorporated in the public school system. Churches and missions +establish reading rooms, until at last the public library system dots +the city with branch <a name="page_164"></a> reading rooms and +libraries. For this willingness to take risks for the sake of an ideal, +for those experiments which must be undertaken with vigor and boldness +in order to secure didactic value in failure as well as in success, +society must depend upon the individual possessed with money, and also +distinguished by earnest and unselfish purpose. Such experiments enable +the nation to use the Referendum method in its public affairs. Each +social experiment is thus tested by a few people, given wide publicity, +that it may be observed and discussed by the bulk of the citizens before +the public prudently makes up its mind whether or not it is wise to +incorporate it into the functions of government. If the decision is in +its favor and it is so incorporated, it can then be carried on with +confidence and enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>But experience has shown that we can only depend upon successful men for +a certain type of experiment in the line of industrial amelioration and +social advancement. <a name="page_165"></a> The list of those who found +churches, educational institutions, libraries, and art galleries, is +very long, as is again the list of those contributing to model +dwellings, recreation halls, and athletic fields. At the present moment +factory employers are doing much to promote "industrial betterment" in +the way of sanitary surroundings, opportunities for bathing, lunch rooms +provided with cheap and wholesome food, club rooms, and guild halls. But +there is a line of social experiment involving social righteousness in +its most advanced form, in which the number of employers and the +"favored class" are so few that it is plain society cannot count upon +them for continuous and valuable help. This lack is in the line of +factory legislation and that sort of social advance implied in shorter +hours and the regulation of wages; in short, all that organization and +activity that is involved in such a maintenance and increase of wages as +would prevent the lowering of the standard of life.</p> + +<p>A large body of people feel keenly that <a name="page_166"></a> the +present industrial system is in a state of profound disorder, and that +there is no guarantee that the pursuit of individual ethics will ever +right it. They claim that relief can only come through deliberate +corporate effort inspired by social ideas and guided by the study of +economic laws, and that the present industrial system thwarts our +ethical demands, not only for social righteousness but for social order. +Because they believe that each advance in ethics must be made fast by a +corresponding advance in politics and legal enactment, they insist upon +the right of state regulation and control. While many people +representing all classes in a community would assent to this as to a +general proposition, and would even admit it as a certain moral +obligation, legislative enactments designed to control industrial +conditions have largely been secured through the efforts of a few +citizens, mostly those who constantly see the harsh conditions of labor +and who are incited to activity by their sympathies as well as their +convictions.</p> + +<p><a name="page_167"></a> This may be illustrated by the series of legal +enactments regulating the occupations in which children may be allowed +to work, also the laws in regard to the hours of labor permitted in +those occupations, and the minimum age below which children may not be +employed. The first child labor laws were enacted in England through the +efforts of those members of parliament whose hearts were wrung by the +condition of the little parish apprentices bound out to the early +textile manufacturers of the north; and through the long years required +to build up the code of child labor legislation which England now +possesses, knowledge of the conditions has always preceded effective +legislation. The efforts of that small number in every community who +believe in legislative control have always been reënforced by the +efforts of trades-unionists rather than by the efforts of employers. +Partly because the employment of workingmen in the factories brings them +in contact with the children who tend to lower wages and demoralize <a +name="page_168"></a> their trades, and partly because workingmen have +no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy, and must +perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only channel of +redress which is open to them.</p> + +<p>We may illustrate by imagining a row of people seated in a moving +street-car, into which darts a boy of eight, calling out the details of +the last murder, in the hope of selling an evening newspaper. A +comfortable looking man buys a paper from him with no sense of moral +shock; he may even be a trifle complacent that he has helped along the +little fellow, who is making his way in the world. The philanthropic +lady sitting next to him may perhaps reflect that it is a pity that such +a bright boy is not in school. She may make up her mind in a moment of +compunction to redouble her efforts for various newsboys' schools and +homes, that this poor child may have better teaching, and perhaps a +chance at manual training. She probably is convinced <a +name="page_169"></a> that he alone, by his unaided efforts, is +supporting a widowed mother, and her heart is moved to do all she can +for him. Next to her sits a workingman trained in trades-union methods. +He knows that the boy's natural development is arrested, and that the +abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up the force which should go +into growth; moreover, that this premature use of his powers has but a +momentary and specious value. He is forced to these conclusions because +he has seen many a man, entering the factory at eighteen and twenty, so +worn out by premature work that he was "laid on the shelf" within ten or +fifteen years. He knows very well that he can do nothing in the way of +ameliorating the lot of this particular boy; that his only possible +chance is to agitate for proper child-labor laws; to regulate, and if +possible prohibit, street-vending by children, in order that the child +of the poorest may have his school time secured to him, and may have at +least his short chance for growth.</p> + +<p><a name="page_170"></a> These three people, sitting in the street car, +are all honest and upright, and recognize a certain duty toward the +forlorn children of the community. The self-made man is encouraging one +boy's own efforts; the philanthropic lady is helping on a few boys; the +workingman alone is obliged to include all the boys of his class. +Workingmen, because of their feebleness in all but numbers, have been +forced to appeal to the state, in order to secure protection for +themselves and for their children. They cannot all rise out of their +class, as the occasionally successful man has done; some of them must be +left to do the work in the factories and mines, and they have no money +to spend in philanthropy.</p> + +<p>Both public agitation and a social appeal to the conscience of the +community is necessary in order to secure help from the state, and, +curiously enough, child-labor laws once enacted and enforced are a +matter of great pride, and even come to be regarded as a register of the +community's humanity and <a name="page_171"></a> enlightenment. If the +method of public agitation could find quiet and orderly expression in +legislative enactment, and if labor measures could be submitted to the +examination and judgment of the whole without a sense of division or of +warfare, we should have the ideal development of the democratic state.</p> + +<p>But we judge labor organizations as we do other living institutions, not +by their declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but by their +blundering efforts to apply their principles to actual conditions, and +by the oft-time failure of their representatives, when the individual +finds himself too weak to become the organ of corporate action.</p> + +<p>The very blunders and lack of organization too often characterizing a +union, in marked contrast to the orderly management of a factory, often +confuse us as to the real issues involved, and we find it hard to trust +uncouth and unruly manifestations of social effort. The situation is +made even more complicated by the fact that <a name="page_172"></a> +those who are formulating a code of associated action so often break +through the established code of law and order. As society has a right to +demand of the reforming individual that he be sternly held to his +personal and domestic claims, so it has a right to insist that labor +organizations shall keep to the hardly won standards of public law and +order; and the community performs but its plain duty when it registers +its protest every time law and order are subverted, even in the interest +of the so-called social effort. Yet in moments of industrial stress and +strain the community is confronted by a moral perplexity which may arise +from the mere fact that the good of yesterday is opposed to the good of +today, and that which may appear as a choice between virtue and vice is +really but a choice between virtue and virtue. In the disorder and +confusion sometimes incident to growth and progress, the community may +be unable to see anything but the unlovely struggle itself.</p> + +<p><a name="page_173"></a>The writer recalls a conversation between two +workingmen who were leaving a lecture on "Organic Evolution." The first +was much puzzled, and anxiously inquired of the second "if evolution +could mean that one animal turned into another." The challenged workman +stopped in the rear of the hall, put his foot upon a chair, and +expounded what he thought evolution did mean; and this, so nearly as the +conversation can be recalled, is what he said: "You see a lot of fishes +are living in a stream, which overflows in the spring and strands some +of them upon the bank. The weak ones die up there, but others make a big +effort to get back into the water. They dig their fins into the sand, +breathe as much air as they can with their gills, and have a terrible +time. But after a while their fins turn into legs and their gills into +lungs, and they have become frogs. Of course they are further along than +the sleek, comfortable fishes who sail up and down the stream waving +their tails and <a name="page_174"></a> despising the poor damaged +things thrashing around on the bank. He—the lecturer—did not say +anything about men, but it is easy enough to think of us poor devils on +the dry bank, struggling without enough to live on, while the +comfortable fellows sail along in the water with all they want and +despise us because we thrash about." His listener did not reply, and was +evidently dissatisfied both with the explanation and the application. +Doubtless the illustration was bungling in more than its setting forth, +but the story is suggestive.</p> + +<p>At times of social disturbance the law-abiding citizen is naturally so +anxious for peace and order, his sympathies are so justly and inevitably +on the side making for the restoration of law, that it is difficult for +him to see the situation fairly. He becomes insensible to the unselfish +impulse which may prompt a sympathetic strike in behalf of the workers +in a non-union shop, because he allows his mind to dwell exclusively on +the disorder which has <a name="page_175"></a> become associated with +the strike. He is completely side-tracked by the ugly phases of a great +moral movement. It is always a temptation to assume that the side which +has respectability, authority, and superior intelligence, has therefore +righteousness as well, especially when the same side presents concrete +results of individual effort as over against the less tangible results +of associated effort.</p> + +<p>It is as yet most difficult for us to free ourselves from the +individualistic point of view sufficiently to group events in their +social relations and to judge fairly those who are endeavoring to +produce a social result through all the difficulties of associated +action. The philanthropist still finds his path much easier than do +those who are attempting a social morality. In the first place, the +public, anxious to praise what it recognizes as an undoubted moral +effort often attended with real personal sacrifice, joyfully seizes upon +this manifestation and overpraises it, recognizing the philanthropist <a +name="page_176"></a> as an old friend in the paths of righteousness, +whereas the others are strangers and possibly to be distrusted as +aliens. It is easy to confuse the response to an abnormal number of +individual claims with the response to the social claim. An exaggerated +personal morality is often mistaken for a social morality, and until it +attempts to minister to a social situation its total inadequacy is not +discovered. To attempt to attain a social morality without a basis of +democratic experience results in the loss of the only possible +corrective and guide, and ends in an exaggerated individual morality but +not in social morality at all. We see this from time to time in the +care-worn and overworked philanthropist, who has taxed his individual +will beyond the normal limits and has lost his clew to the situation +among a bewildering number of cases. A man who takes the betterment of +humanity for his aim and end must also take the daily experiences of +humanity for the constant correction of his process. He must not only <a +name="page_177"></a> test and guide his achievement by human +experience, but he must succeed or fail in proportion as he has +incorporated that experience with his own. Otherwise his own +achievements become his stumbling-block, and he comes to believe in his +own goodness as something outside of himself. He makes an exception of +himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank and file of his +fellows. He forgets that it is necessary to know of the lives of our +contemporaries, not only in order to believe in their integrity, which +is after all but the first beginnings of social morality, but in order +to attain to any mental or moral integrity for ourselves or any such +hope for society.</p> + + + + +<center><h2><a name="page_178">CHAPTER VI</a></h2> + +<h4>EDUCATIONAL METHODS</h4></center> + + +<p>As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the +value and function of each member of the community, however humble he +may be. We have come to believe that the most "brutish man" has a value +in our common life, a function to perform which can be fulfilled by no +one else. We are gradually requiring of the educator that he shall free +the powers of each man and connect him with the rest of life. We ask +this not merely because it is the man's right to be thus connected, but +because we have become convinced that the social order cannot afford to +get along without his special contribution. Just as we have come to +resent all hindrances which keep us from untrammelled comradeship with +<a name="page_179"></a> our fellows, and as we throw down unnatural +divisions, not in the spirit of the eighteenth-century reformers, but in +the spirit of those to whom social equality has become a necessity for +further social development, so we are impatient to use the dynamic power +residing in the mass of men, and demand that the educator free that +power. We believe that man's moral idealism is the constructive force of +progress, as it has always been; but because every human being is a +creative agent and a possible generator of fine enthusiasm, we are +sceptical of the moral idealism of the few and demand the education of +the many, that there may be greater freedom, strength, and subtilty of +intercourse and hence an increase of dynamic power. We are not content +to include all men in our hopes, but have become conscious that all men +are hoping and are part of the same movement of which we are a part.</p> + +<p>Many people impelled by these ideas have become impatient with the slow +recognition <a name="page_180"></a> on the part of the educators of +their manifest obligation to prepare and nourish the child and the +citizen for social relations. The educators should certainly conserve +the learning and training necessary for the successful individual and +family life, but should add to that a preparation for the enlarged +social efforts which our increasing democracy requires. The democratic +ideal demands of the school that it shall give the child's own +experience a social value; that it shall teach him to direct his own +activities and adjust them to those of other people. We are not willing +that thousands of industrial workers shall put all of their activity and +toil into services from which the community as a whole reaps the +benefit, while their mental conceptions and code of morals are narrow +and untouched by any uplift which the consciousness of social value +might give them.</p> + +<p>We are impatient with the schools which lay all stress on reading and +writing, suspecting them to rest upon the assumption <a +name="page_181"></a> that the ordinary experience of life is worth +little, and that all knowledge and interest must be brought to the +children through the medium of books. Such an assumption fails to give +the child any clew to the life about him, or any power to usefully or +intelligently connect himself with it. This may be illustrated by +observations made in a large Italian colony situated in Chicago, the +children from which are, for the most part, sent to the public schools.</p> + +<p>The members of the Italian colony are largely from South +Italy,—Calabrian and Sicilian peasants, or Neapolitans from the +workingmen's quarters of that city. They have come to America with the +distinct aim of earning money, and finding more room for the energies of +themselves and their children. In almost all cases they mean to go back +again, simply because their imaginations cannot picture a continuous +life away from the old surroundings. Their experiences in Italy have +been those of simple outdoor activity, and their ideas have come <a +name="page_182"></a> directly to them from their struggle with +Nature,—such a hand-to-hand struggle as takes place when each man gets +his living largely through his own cultivation of the soil, or with +tools simply fashioned by his own hands. The women, as in all primitive +life, have had more diversified activities than the men. They have +cooked, spun, and knitted, in addition to their almost equal work in the +fields. Very few of the peasant men or women can either read or write. +They are devoted to their children, strong in their family feeling, even +to remote relationships, and clannish in their community life.</p> + +<p>The entire family has been upheaved, and is striving to adjust itself to +its new surroundings. The men, for the most part, work on railroad +extensions through the summer, under the direction of a <i>padrone</i>, who +finds the work for them, regulates the amount of their wages, and +supplies them with food. The first effect of immigration upon the women +is that of idleness. They no <a name="page_183"></a> longer work in the +fields, nor milk the goats, nor pick up faggots. The mother of the +family buys all the clothing, not only already spun and woven but made +up into garments, of a cut and fashion beyond her powers. It is, indeed, +the most economical thing for her to do. Her house-cleaning and cooking +are of the simplest; the bread is usually baked outside of the house, +and the macaroni bought prepared for boiling. All of those outdoor and +domestic activities, which she would naturally have handed on to her +daughters, have slipped away from her. The domestic arts are gone, with +their absorbing interests for the children, their educational value, and +incentive to activity. A household in a tenement receives almost no raw +material. For the hundreds of children who have never seen wheat grow, +there are dozens who have never seen bread baked. The occasional +washings and scrubbings are associated only with discomfort. The child +of such a family receives constant stimulus of most exciting sort from +his city <a name="page_184"></a> street life, but he has little or no +opportunity to use his energies in domestic manufacture, or, indeed, +constructively in any direction. No activity is supplied to take the +place of that which, in Italy, he would naturally have found in his own +surroundings, and no new union with wholesome life is made for him.</p> + +<p>Italian parents count upon the fact that their children learn the +English language and American customs before they do themselves, and the +children act not only as interpreters of the language, but as buffers +between them and Chicago, resulting in a certain almost pathetic +dependence of the family upon the child. When a child of the family, +therefore, first goes to school, the event is fraught with much +significance to all the others. The family has no social life in any +structural form and can supply none to the child. He ought to get it in +the school and give it to his family, the school thus becoming the +connector with the organized society <a name="page_185"></a> about +them. It is the children aged six, eight, and ten, who go to school, +entering, of course, the primary grades. If a boy is twelve or thirteen +on his arrival in America, his parents see in him a wage-earning factor, +and the girl of the same age is already looking toward her marriage.</p> + +<p>Let us take one of these boys, who has learned in his six or eight years +to speak his native language, and to feel himself strongly identified +with the fortunes of his family. Whatever interest has come to the minds +of his ancestors has come through the use of their hands in the open +air; and open air and activity of body have been the inevitable +accompaniments of all their experiences. Yet the first thing that the +boy must do when he reaches school is to sit still, at least part of the +time, and he must learn to listen to what is said to him, with all the +perplexity of listening to a foreign tongue. He does not find this very +stimulating, and is slow to respond to the more subtle incentives of the +schoolroom. The <a name="page_186"></a> peasant child is perfectly +indifferent to showing off and making a good recitation. He leaves all +that to his schoolfellows, who are more sophisticated and equipped with +better English. His parents are not deeply interested in keeping him in +school, and will not hold him there against his inclination. Their +experience does not point to the good American tradition that it is the +educated man who finally succeeds. The richest man in the Italian colony +can neither read nor write—even Italian. His cunning and +acquisitiveness, combined with the credulity and ignorance of his +countrymen, have slowly brought about his large fortune. The child +himself may feel the stirring of a vague ambition to go on until he is +as the other children are; but he is not popular with his schoolfellows, +and he sadly feels the lack of dramatic interest. Even the pictures and +objects presented to him, as well as the language, are strange.</p> + +<p>If we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the +experiences which <a name="page_187"></a> the child already has and to +use his spontaneous and social activity, then the city streets begin +this education for him in a more natural way than does the school. The +South Italian peasant comes from a life of picking olives and oranges, +and he easily sends his children out to pick up coal from railroad +tracks, or wood from buildings which have been burned down. +Unfortunately, this process leads by easy transition to petty thieving. +It is easy to go from the coal on the railroad track to the coal and +wood which stand before a dealer's shop; from the potatoes which have +rolled from a rumbling wagon to the vegetables displayed by the grocer. +This is apt to be the record of the boy who responds constantly to the +stimulus and temptations of the street, although in the beginning his +search for bits of food and fuel was prompted by the best of motives.</p> + +<p>The school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition +to the distractions of the neighborhood. Nothing <a +name="page_188"></a> is more fascinating than that mysterious "down +town," whither the boy longs to go to sell papers and black boots, to +attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay all night on the pretence of +waiting for the early edition of the great dailies. If a boy is once +thoroughly caught in these excitements, nothing can save him from +over-stimulation and consequent debility and worthlessness; he arrives +at maturity with no habits of regular work and with a distaste for its +dulness.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, there are hundreds of boys of various nationalities +who conscientiously remain in school and fulfil all the requirements of +the early grades, and at the age of fourteen are found in factories, +painstakingly performing their work year after year. These later are the +men who form the mass of the population in every industrial neighborhood +of every large city; but they carry on the industrial processes year +after year without in the least knowing what it is all about. The one +fixed habit which the boy carries away with <a name="page_189"></a> him +from the school to the factory is the feeling that his work is merely +provisional. In school the next grade was continually held before him as +an object of attainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole +object of present effort is to get ready for something else. This +tentative attitude takes the last bit of social stimulus out of his +factory work; he pursues it merely as a necessity, and his very mental +attitude destroys his chance for a realization of its social value. As +the boy in school contracted the habit of doing his work in certain +hours and taking his pleasure in certain other hours, so in the factory +he earns his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three +hours of lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. Both in the +school and in the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and +monotonous, his recreation must become more exciting and stimulating. +The hopelessness of adding evening classes and social entertainments as +a mere frill to a day filled with monotonous and deadening <a +name="page_190"></a> drudgery constantly becomes more apparent to those +who are endeavoring to bring a fuller life to the industrial members of +the community, and who are looking forward to a time when work shall +cease to be senseless drudgery with no self-expression on the part of +the worker. It sometimes seems that the public schools should contribute +much more than they do to the consummation of this time. If the army of +school children who enter the factories every year possessed thoroughly +vitalized faculties, they might do much to lighten this incubus of dull +factory work which presses so heavily upon so large a number of our +fellow-citizens. Has our commercialism been so strong that our schools +have become insensibly commercialized, whereas we supposed that our +industrial life was receiving the broadening and illuminating effects of +the schools? The training of these children, so far as it has been +vocational at all, has been in the direction of clerical work. It is +possible that the business <a name="page_191"></a> men, whom we in +America so tremendously admire, have really been dictating the +curriculum of our public schools, in spite of the conventions of +educators and the suggestions of university professors. The business +man, of course, has not said, "I will have the public schools train +office boys and clerks so that I may have them easily and cheaply," but +he has sometimes said, "Teach the children to write legibly and to +figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of punctuality and +order; to be prompt to obey; and you will fit them to make their way in +the world as I have made mine." Has the workingman been silent as to +what he desires for his children, and allowed the business man to decide +for him there, as he has allowed the politician to manage his municipal +affairs, or has the workingman so far shared our universal optimism that +he has really believed that his children would never need to go into +industrial life at all, but that all of his sons would become bankers +and merchants?</p> + +<p><a name="page_192"></a>Certain it is that no sufficient study has been +made of the child who enters into industrial life early and stays there +permanently, to give him some offset to its monotony and dulness, some +historic significance of the part he is taking in the life of the +community.</p> + +<p>It is at last on behalf of the average workingmen that our increasing +democracy impels us to make a new demand upon the educator. As the +political expression of democracy has claimed for the workingman the +free right of citizenship, so a code of social ethics is now insisting +that he shall be a conscious member of society, having some notion of +his social and industrial value.</p> + +<p>The early ideal of a city that it was a market-place in which to +exchange produce, and a mere trading-post for merchants, apparently +still survives in our minds and is constantly reflected in our schools. +We have either failed to realize that cities have become great centres +of production and manufacture in which a huge population is <a +name="page_193"></a> engaged, or we have lacked sufficient presence of +mind to adjust ourselves to the change. We admire much more the men who +accumulate riches, and who gather to themselves the results of industry, +than the men who actually carry forward industrial processes; and, as +has been pointed out, our schools still prepare children almost +exclusively for commercial and professional life.</p> + +<p>Quite as the country boy dreams of leaving the farm for life in town and +begins early to imitate the travelling salesman in dress and manner, so +the school boy within the town hopes to be an office boy, and later a +clerk or salesman, and looks upon work in the factory as the occupation +of ignorant and unsuccessful men. The schools do so little really to +interest the child in the life of production, or to excite his ambition +in the line of industrial occupation, that the ideal of life, almost +from the very beginning, becomes not an absorbing interest in one's work +and a consciousness of its value and social relation, but a desire for +money with which unmeaning <a name="page_194"></a> purchases may be +made and an unmeaning social standing obtained.</p> + +<p>The son of a workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses +his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he +comes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people +learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial +arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption +that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,—that every +promising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined +for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under +other conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a +folding-bed for her huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister, +who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the +cramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him +educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress +meanly, the life of the average laborer <a name="page_195"></a> tends +to become flat and monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind +or hold his interest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at +the bottom, who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the +work is necessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to +our theories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is +covered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or +trouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. Certainly no serious +effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial +life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration +regarding it.</p> + +<p>Apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust +which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. To +get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is +still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line. +A workingman's family will make every effort and <a +name="page_196"></a> sacrifice that the brightest daughter be sent to +the high school and through the normal school, quite as much because a +teacher in the family raises the general social standing and sense of +family consequence, as that the returns are superior to factory or even +office work. "Teacher" in the vocabulary of many children is a synonym +for women-folk gentry, and the name is indiscriminately applied to women +of certain dress and manner. The same desire for social advancement is +expressed by the purchasing of a piano, or the fact that the son is an +office boy, and not a factory hand. The overcrowding of the professions +by poorly equipped men arises from much the same source, and from the +conviction that "an education" is wasted if a boy goes into a factory or +shop.</p> + +<p>A Chicago manufacturer tells a story of twin boys, whom he befriended +and meant to give a start in life. He sent them both to the Athenæum for +several winters as a preparatory business training, and then took them +into his office, where they speedily <a name="page_197"></a> became +known as the bright one and the stupid one. The stupid one was finally +dismissed after repeated trials, when to the surprise of the entire +establishment, he quickly betook himself into the shops, where he became +a wide-awake and valuable workman. His chagrined benefactor, in telling +the story, admits that he himself had fallen a victim to his own +business training and his early notion of rising in life. In reality he +had merely followed the lead of most benevolent people who help poor +boys. They test the success of their efforts by the number whom they +have taken out of factory work into some other and "higher occupation."</p> + +<p>Quite in line with this commercial ideal are the night schools and +institutions of learning most accessible to working people. First among +them is the business college which teaches largely the mechanism of +type-writing and book-keeping, and lays all stress upon commerce and +methods of distribution. Commodities are treated as <a +name="page_198"></a> exports and imports, or solely in regard to their +commercial value, and not, of course, in relation to their historic +development or the manufacturing processes to which they have been +subjected. These schools do not in the least minister to the needs of +the actual factory employee, who is in the shop and not in the office. +We assume that all men are searching for "puddings and power," to use +Carlyle's phrase, and furnish only the schools which help them to those +ends.</p> + +<p>The business college man, or even the man who goes through an academic +course in order to prepare for a profession, comes to look on learning +too much as an investment from which he will later reap the benefits in +earning money. He does not connect learning with industrial pursuits, +nor does he in the least lighten or illuminate those pursuits for those +of his friends who have not risen in life. "It is as though nets were +laid at the entrance to education, in which those who by some <a +name="page_199"></a> means or other escape from the masses bowed down +by labor, are inevitably caught and held from substantial service to +their fellows." The academic teaching which is accessible to workingmen +through University Extension lectures and classes at settlements, is +usually bookish and remote, and concerning subjects completely divorced +from their actual experiences. The men come to think of learning as +something to be added to the end of a hard day's work, and to be gained +at the cost of toilsome mental exertion. There are, of course, +exceptions, but many men who persist in attending classes and lectures +year after year find themselves possessed of a mass of inert knowledge +which nothing in their experience fuses into availability or +realization.</p> + +<p>Among the many disappointments which the settlement experiment has +brought to its promoters, perhaps none is keener than the fact that they +have as yet failed to work out methods of education, specialized <a +name="page_200"></a> and adapted to the needs of adult working people +in contra-distinction to those employed in schools and colleges, or +those used in teaching children. There are many excellent reasons and +explanations for this failure. In the first place, the residents +themselves are for the most part imbued with academic methods and +ideals, which it is most difficult to modify. To quote from a late +settlement report, "The most vaunted educational work in settlements +amounts often to the stimulation mentally of a select few who are, in a +sense, of the academic type of mind, and who easily and quickly respond +to the academic methods employed." These classes may be valuable, but +they leave quite untouched the great mass of the factory population, the +ordinary workingman of the ordinary workingman's street, whose attitude +is best described as that of "acquiescence," who lives through the +aimless passage of the years without incentive "to imagine, to design, +or to aspire." <a name="page_201"></a> These men are totally untouched +by all the educational and philanthropic machinery which is designed for +the young and the helpless who live on the same streets with them. They +do not often drink to excess, they regularly give all their wages to +their wives, they have a vague pride in their superior children; but +they grow prematurely old and stiff in all their muscles, and become +more and more taciturn, their entire energies consumed in "holding a +job."</p> + +<p>Various attempts have been made to break through the inadequate +educational facilities supplied by commercialism and scholarship, both +of which have followed their own ideals and have failed to look at the +situation as it actually presents itself. The most noteworthy attempt +has been the movement toward industrial education, the agitation for +which has been ably seconded by manufacturers of a practical type, who +have from time to time founded and endowed technical schools, designed +for workingmen's sons. The early schools of this <a +name="page_202"></a> type inevitably reflected the ideal of the +self-made man. They succeeded in transferring a few skilled workers into +the upper class of trained engineers, and a few less skilled workers +into the class of trained mechanics, but did not aim to educate the many +who are doomed to the unskilled work which the permanent specialization +of the division of labor demands.</p> + +<p>The Peter Coopers and other good men honestly believed that if +intelligence could be added to industry, each workingman who faithfully +attended these schools could walk into increased skill and wages, and in +time even become an employer himself. Such schools are useful beyond +doubt; but so far as educating workingmen is concerned or in any measure +satisfying the democratic ideal, they plainly beg the question.</p> + +<p>Almost every large city has two or three polytechnic institutions +founded by rich men, anxious to help "poor boys." These have been +captured by conventional educators <a name="page_203"></a> for the +purpose of fitting young men for the colleges and universities. They +have compromised by merely adding to the usual academic course manual +work, applied mathematics, mechanical drawing and engineering. Two +schools in Chicago, plainly founded for the sons of workingmen, afford +an illustration of this tendency and result. On the other hand, so far +as schools of this type have been captured by commercialism, they turn +out trained engineers, professional chemists, and electricians. They are +polytechnics of a high order, but do not even pretend to admit the +workingman with his meagre intellectual equipment. They graduate machine +builders, but not educated machine tenders. Even the textile schools are +largely seized by young men who expect to be superintendents of +factories, designers, or manufacturers themselves, and the textile +worker who actually "holds the thread" is seldom seen in them; indeed, +in one of the largest schools women are not allowed, in spite of the +fact that spinning and weaving have <a name="page_204"></a> +traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are at +present employed in the textile mills.</p> + +<p>It is much easier to go over the old paths of education with "manual +training" thrown in, as it were; it is much simpler to appeal to the old +ambitions of "getting on in life," or of "preparing for a profession," +or "for a commercial career," than to work out new methods on democratic +lines. These schools gradually drop back into the conventional courses, +modified in some slight degree, while the adaptation to workingmen's +needs is never made, nor, indeed, vigorously attempted. In the meantime, +the manufacturers continually protest that engineers, especially trained +for devising machines, are not satisfactory. Three generations of +workers have invented, but we are told that invention no longer goes on +in the workshop, even when it is artificially stimulated by the offer of +prizes, and that the inventions of the last quarter of the nineteenth +century have by no means fulfilled <a name="page_205"></a> the promise +of the earlier three-quarters.</p> + +<p>Every foreman in a large factory has had experience with two classes of +men: first with those who become rigid and tolerate no change in their +work, partly because they make more money "working by the piece," when +they stick to that work which they have learned to do rapidly, and +partly because the entire muscular and nervous system has become by +daily use adapted to particular motions and resents change. Secondly, +there are the men who float in and out of the factory, in a constantly +changing stream. They "quit work" for the slightest reason or none at +all, and never become skilled at anything. Some of them are men of low +intelligence, but many of them are merely too nervous and restless, too +impatient, too easily "driven to drink," to be of any use in a modern +factory. They are the men for whom the demanded adaptation is +impossible.</p> + +<p>The individual from whom the industrial <a name="page_206"></a> order +demands ever larger drafts of time and energy, should be nourished and +enriched from social sources, in proportion as he is drained. He, more +than other men, needs the conception of historic continuity in order to +reveal to him the purpose and utility of his work, and he can only be +stimulated and dignified as he obtains a conception of his proper +relation to society. Scholarship is evidently unable to do this for him; +for, unfortunately, the same tendency to division of labor has also +produced over-specialization in scholarship, with the sad result that +when the scholar attempts to minister to a worker, he gives him the +result of more specialization rather than an offset from it. He cannot +bring healing and solace because he himself is suffering from the same +disease. There is indeed a deplorable lack of perception and adaptation +on the part of educators all along the line.</p> + +<p>It will certainly be embarrassing to have our age written down +triumphant in the matter of inventions, in that our factories <a +name="page_207"></a> were filled with intricate machines, the result of +advancing mathematical and mechanical knowledge in relation to +manufacturing processes, but defeated in that it lost its head over the +achievement and forgot the men. The accusation would stand, that the age +failed to perform a like service in the extension of history and art to +the factory employees who ran the machines; that the machine tenders, +heavy and almost dehumanized by monotonous toil, walked about in the +same streets with us, and sat in the same cars; but that we were +absolutely indifferent and made no genuine effort to supply to them the +artist's perception or student's insight, which alone could fuse them +into social consciousness. It would further stand that the scholars +among us continued with yet more research, that the educators were +concerned only with the young and the promising, and the philanthropists +with the criminals and helpless.</p> + +<p>There is a pitiful failure to recognize the situation in which the +majority of working <a name="page_208"></a> people are placed, a +tendency to ignore their real experiences and needs, and, most stupid of +all, we leave quite untouched affections and memories which would afford +a tremendous dynamic if they were utilized.</p> + +<p>We constantly hear it said in educational circles, that a child learns +only by "doing," and that education must proceed "through the eyes and +hands to the brain"; and yet for the vast number of people all around us +who do not need to have activities artificially provided, and who use +their hands and eyes all the time, we do not seem able to reverse the +process. We quote the dictum, "What is learned in the schoolroom must be +applied in the workshop," and yet the skill and handicraft constantly +used in the workshop have no relevance or meaning given to them by the +school; and when we do try to help the workingman in an educational way, +we completely ignore his everyday occupation. Yet the task is merely one +of adaptation. It is to take actual conditions and to make them the <a +name="page_209"></a> basis for a large and generous method of +education, to perform a difficult idealization doubtless, but not an +impossible one.</p> + +<p>We apparently believe that the workingman has no chance to realize life +through his vocation. We easily recognize the historic association in +regard to ancient buildings. We say that "generation after generation +have stamped their mark upon them, have recorded their thoughts in them, +until they have become the property of all." And yet this is even more +true of the instruments of labor, which have constantly been held in +human hands. A machine really represents the "seasoned life of man" +preserved and treasured up within itself, quite as much as an ancient +building does. At present, workmen are brought in contact with the +machinery with which they work as abruptly as if the present set of +industrial implements had been newly created. They handle the machinery +day by day, without any notion of its gradual evolution and growth. Few +of the men who perform the mechanical work <a name="page_210"></a> in +the great factories have any comprehension of the fact that the +inventions upon which the factory depends, the instruments which they +use, have been slowly worked out, each generation using the gifts of the +last and transmitting the inheritance until it has become a social +possession. This can only be understood by a man who has obtained some +idea of social progress. We are still childishly pleased when we see the +further subdivision of labor going on, because the quantity of the +output is increased thereby, and we apparently are unable to take our +attention away from the product long enough to really focus it upon the +producer. Theoretically, "the division of labor" makes men more +interdependent and human by drawing them together into a unity of +purpose. "If a number of people decide to build a road, and one digs, +and one brings stones, and another breaks them, they are quite +inevitably united by their interest in the road. But this naturally +presupposes that they know where the road is going to, that <a +name="page_211"></a> they have some curiosity and interest about it, +and perhaps a chance to travel upon it." If the division of labor robs +them of interest in any part of it, the mere mechanical fact of +interdependence amounts to nothing.</p> + +<p>The man in the factory, as well as the man with the hoe, has a grievance +beyond being overworked and disinherited, in that he does not know what +it is all about. We may well regret the passing of the time when the +variety of work performed in the unspecialized workshop naturally +stimulated the intelligence of the workingmen and brought them into +contact both with the raw material and the finished product. But the +problem of education, as any advanced educator will tell us, is to +supply the essentials of experience by a short cut, as it were. If the +shop constantly tends to make the workman a specialist, then the problem +of the educator in regard to him is quite clear: it is to give him what +may be an offset from the over-specialization of his daily work, to +supply him with general information and <a name="page_212"></a> to +insist that he shall be a cultivated member of society with a +consciousness of his industrial and social value.</p> + +<p>As sad a sight as an old hand-loom worker in a factory attempting to +make his clumsy machine compete with the flying shuttles about him, is a +workingman equipped with knowledge so meagre that he can get no meaning +into his life nor sequence between his acts and the far-off results.</p> + +<p>Manufacturers, as a whole, however, when they attempt educational +institutions in connection with their factories, are prone to follow +conventional lines, and to exhibit the weakness of imitation. We find, +indeed, that the middle-class educator constantly makes the mistakes of +the middle-class moralist when he attempts to aid working people. The +latter has constantly and traditionally urged upon the workingman the +specialized virtues of thrift, industry, and sobriety—all virtues +pertaining to the individual. When each man had his own shop, it was +perhaps wise to lay almost <a name="page_213"></a> exclusive stress +upon the industrial virtues of diligence and thrift; but as industry has +become more highly organized, life becomes incredibly complex and +interdependent. If a workingman is to have a conception of his value at +all, he must see industry in its unity and entirety; he must have a +conception that will include not only himself and his immediate family +and community, but the industrial organization as a whole. It is +doubtless true that dexterity of hand becomes less and less imperative +as the invention of machinery and subdivision of labor proceeds; but it +becomes all the more necessary, if the workman is to save his life at +all, that he should get a sense of his individual relation to the +system. Feeding a machine with a material of which he has no knowledge, +producing a product, totally unrelated to the rest of his life, without +in the least knowing what becomes of it, or its connection with the +community, is, of course, unquestionably deadening to his intellectual +<a name="page_214"></a> and moral life. To make the moral connection it +would be necessary to give him a social consciousness of the value of +his work, and at least a sense of participation and a certain joy in its +ultimate use; to make the intellectual connection it would be essential +to create in him some historic conception of the development of industry +and the relation of his individual work to it.</p> + +<p>Workingmen themselves have made attempts in both directions, which it +would be well for moralists and educators to study. It is a striking +fact that when workingmen formulate their own moral code, and try to +inspire and encourage each other, it is always a large and general +doctrine which they preach. They were the first class of men to organize +an international association, and the constant talk at a modern labor +meeting is of solidarity and of the identity of the interests of +workingmen the world over. It is difficult to secure a successful +organization of men into the simplest trades organization <a +name="page_215"></a> without an appeal to the most abstract principles +of justice and brotherhood. As they have formulated their own morals by +laying the greatest stress upon the largest morality, so if they could +found their own schools, it is doubtful whether they would be of the +mechanic institute type. Courses of study arranged by a group of +workingmen are most naïve in their breadth and generality. They will +select the history of the world in preference to that of any period or +nation. The "wonders of science" or "the story of evolution" will +attract workingmen to a lecture when zoölogy or chemistry will drive +them away. The "outlines of literature" or "the best in literature" will +draw an audience when a lecturer in English poetry will be solitary. +This results partly from a wholesome desire to have general knowledge +before special knowledge, and is partly a rebound from the +specialization of labor to which the workingman is subjected. When he is +free from work and can direct his own <a name="page_216"></a> mind, he +tends to roam, to dwell upon large themes. Much the same tendency is +found in programmes of study arranged by Woman's Clubs in country +places. The untrained mind, wearied with meaningless detail, when it +gets an opportunity to make its demand heard, asks for general +philosophy and background.</p> + +<p>In a certain sense commercialism itself, at least in its larger aspect, +tends to educate the workingman better than organized education does. +Its interests are certainly world-wide and democratic, while it is +absolutely undiscriminating as to country and creed, coming into contact +with all climes and races. If this aspect of commercialism were +utilized, it would in a measure counterbalance the tendency which +results from the subdivision of labor.</p> + +<p>The most noteworthy attempt to utilize this democracy of commerce in +relation to manufacturing is found at Dayton, Ohio, in the yearly +gatherings held in a large factory there. Once a year the entire force +<a name="page_217"></a> is gathered together to hear the returns of the +business, not so much in respect to the profits, as in regard to its +extension. At these meetings, the travelling salesmen from various parts +of the world—from Constantinople, from Berlin, from Rome, from Hong +Kong—report upon the sales they have made, and the methods of +advertisement and promotion adapted to the various countries.</p> + +<p>Stereopticon lectures are given upon each new country as soon as it has +been successfully invaded by the product of the factory. The foremen in +the various departments of the factory give accounts of the increased +efficiency and the larger output over former years. Any man who has made +an invention in connection with the machinery of the factory, at this +time publicly receives a prize, and suggestions are approved that tend +to increase the comfort and social facilities of the employees. At least +for the moment there is a complete esprit de corps, and the youngest and +least skilled employee sees himself in connection with the interests <a +name="page_218"></a> of the firm, and the spread of an invention. It is +a crude example of what might be done in the way of giving a large +framework of meaning to factory labor, and of putting it into a sentient +background, at least on the commercial side.</p> + +<p>It is easy to indict the educator, to say that he has gotten entangled +in his own material, and has fallen a victim to his own methods; but +granting this, what has the artist done about it—he who is supposed to +have a more intimate insight into the needs of his contemporaries, and +to minister to them as none other can?</p> + +<p>It is quite true that a few writers are insisting that the growing +desire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its +counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part +of many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of +conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual +because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult +to bring together, <a name="page_219"></a> is found on a large scale in +society itself, when we have the separation of the people who think from +those who work. And yet, since Ruskin ceased, no one has really +formulated this in a convincing form. And even Ruskin's famous dictum, +that labor without art brutalizes, has always been interpreted as if art +could only be a sense of beauty or joy in one's own work, and not a +sense of companionship with all other workers. The situation demands the +consciousness of participation and well-being which comes to the +individual when he is able to see himself "in connection and cooperation +with the whole"; it needs the solace of collective art inherent in +collective labor.</p> + +<p>As the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling, +so the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human +significance—some one who shall teach him to find that which will give +a potency to his life. His education, however simple, should tend to +make him <a name="page_220"></a> widely at home in the world, and to +give him a sense of simplicity and peace in the midst of the triviality +and noise to which he is constantly subjected. He, like other men, can +learn to be content to see but a part, although it must be a part of +something.</p> + +<p>It is because of a lack of democracy that we do not really incorporate +him in the hopes and advantages of society, and give him the place which +is his by simple right. We have learned to say that the good must be +extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one +person or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that +statement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we +cannot even be sure that it is worth having. In spite of many attempts +we do not really act upon either statement.</p> + + + + +<center><h2><a name="page_221">CHAPTER VII</a></h2> + +<h4>POLITICAL REFORM</h4></center> + + +<p>Throughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical +maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting +upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to +the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. In +addition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is +often an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands.</p> + +<p>Nowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests +itself in certain quarters of every great city. It is most difficult to +hold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social +expression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains +to keep on common <a name="page_222"></a> ground in our human +experiences. Otherwise there is in various parts of the community an +inevitable difference of ethical standards which becomes responsible for +much misunderstanding.</p> + +<p>It is difficult both to interpret sympathetically the motives and ideals +of those who have acquired rules of conduct in experience widely +different from our own, and also to take enough care in guarding the +gains already made, and in valuing highly enough the imperfect good so +painfully acquired and, at the best, so mixed with evil. This wide +difference in daily experience exhibits itself in two distinct attitudes +toward politics. The well-to-do men of the community think of politics +as something off by itself; they may conscientiously recognize political +duty as part of good citizenship, but political effort is not the +expression of their moral or social life. As a result of this +detachment, "reform movements," started by business men and the better +element, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political +machinery <a name="page_223"></a> and with a concern for the better +method of administration, rather than with the ultimate purpose of +securing the welfare of the people. They fix their attention so +exclusively on methods that they fail to consider the final aims of city +government. This accounts for the growing tendency to put more and more +responsibility upon executive officers and appointed commissions at the +expense of curtailing the power of the direct representatives of the +voters. Reform movements tend to become negative and to lose their +educational value for the mass of the people. The reformers take the +rôle of the opposition. They give themselves largely to criticisms of +the present state of affairs, to writing and talking of what the future +must be and of certain results which should be obtained. In trying to +better matters, however, they have in mind only political achievements +which they detach in a curious way from the rest of life, and they speak +and write of the purification of politics as of a thing set apart from +daily life.</p> + +<p><a name="page_224"></a>On the other hand, the real leaders of the people +are part of the entire life of the community which they control, and so +far as they are representative at all, are giving a social expression to +democracy. They are often politically corrupt, but in spite of this they +are proceeding upon a sounder theory. Although they would be totally +unable to give it abstract expression, they are really acting upon a +formulation made by a shrewd English observer; namely, that, "after the +enfranchisement of the masses, social ideals enter into political +programmes, and they enter not as something which at best can be +indirectly promoted by government, but as something which it is the +chief business of government to advance directly."</p> + +<p>Men living near to the masses of voters, and knowing them intimately, +recognize this and act upon it; they minister directly to life and to +social needs. They realize that the people as a whole are clamoring for +social results, and they hold their power because they respond to that +demand. They are <a name="page_225"></a> corrupt and often do their +work badly; but they at least avoid the mistake of a certain type of +business men who are frightened by democracy, and have lost their faith +in the people. The two standards are similar to those seen at a popular +exhibition of pictures where the cultivated people care most for the +technique of a given painting, the moving mass for a subject that shall +be domestic and human.</p> + +<p>This difference may be illustrated by the writer's experience in a +certain ward of Chicago, during three campaigns, when efforts were made +to dislodge an alderman who had represented the ward for many years. In +this ward there are gathered together fifty thousand people, +representing a score of nationalities; the newly emigrated Latin, +Teuton, Celt, Greek, and Slav who live there have little in common save +the basic experiences which come to men in all countries and under all +conditions. In order to make fifty thousand people, so heterogeneous in +nationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any <a +name="page_226"></a> demand, it must be founded upon universal +experiences which are perforce individual and not social.</p> + +<p>An instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it +possible to understand the individualistic basis of his political +success, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for +the extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of +which he is constantly guilty.</p> + +<p>This leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his +constituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the +same time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be +committing. They thus free the alderman from blame because his +corruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and +hero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous.</p> + +<p>In certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action +unless the results will benefit himself or some one of his +acquaintances, <a name="page_227"></a> and it is a long step in moral +progress to set the good of the many before the interest of the few, and +to be concerned for the welfare of a community without hope of an +individual return. How far the selfish politician befools his +constituents into believing that their interests are identical with his +own; how far he presumes upon their inability to distinguish between the +individual and social virtues, an inability which he himself shares with +them; and how far he dazzles them by the sense of his greatness, and a +conviction that they participate therein, it is difficult to determine.</p> + +<p>Morality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than +in the form of moral ideas, and it is obvious that ideas only operate +upon the popular mind through will and character, and must be dramatized +before they reach the mass of men, even as the biography of the saints +have been after all "the main guide to the stumbling feet of thousands +of Christians to whom the Credo has been but mysterious words."</p> + +<p><a name="page_228"></a>Ethics as well as political opinions may be +discussed and disseminated among the sophisticated by lectures and +printed pages, but to the common people they can only come through +example—through a personality which seizes the popular imagination. The +advantage of an unsophisticated neighborhood is, that the inhabitants do +not keep their ideas as treasures—they are untouched by the notion of +accumulating them, as they might knowledge or money, and they frankly +act upon those they have. The personal example promptly rouses to +emulation. In a neighborhood where political standards are plastic and +undeveloped, and where there has been little previous experience in +self-government, the office-holder himself sets the standard, and the +ideas that cluster around him exercise a specific and permanent +influence upon the political morality of his constituents.</p> + +<p>Nothing is more certain than that the quality which a heterogeneous +population, living in one of the less sophisticated wards, <a +name="page_229"></a> most admires is the quality of simple goodness; +that the man who attracts them is the one whom they believe to be a good +man. We all know that children long "to be good" with an intensity which +they give to no other ambition. We can all remember that the earliest +strivings of our childhood were in this direction, and that we venerated +grown people because they had attained perfection.</p> + +<p>Primitive people, such as the South Italian peasants, are still in this +stage. They want to be good, and deep down in their hearts they admire +nothing so much as the good man. Abstract virtues are too difficult for +their untrained minds to apprehend, and many of them are still simple +enough to believe that power and wealth come only to good people.</p> + +<p>The successful candidate, then, must be a good man according to the +morality of his constituents. He must not attempt to hold up too high a +standard, nor must he attempt to reform or change their standards. His +<a name="page_230"></a> safety lies in doing on a large scale the good +deeds which his constituents are able to do only on a small scale. If he +believes what they believe and does what they are all cherishing a +secret ambition to do, he will dazzle them by his success and win their +confidence. There is a certain wisdom in this course. There is a common +sense in the mass of men which cannot be neglected with impunity, just +as there is sure to be an eccentricity in the differing and reforming +individual which it is perhaps well to challenge.</p> + +<p>The constant kindness of the poor to each other was pointed out in a +previous chapter, and that they unfailingly respond to the need and +distresses of their poorer neighbors even when in danger of bankruptcy +themselves. The kindness which a poor man shows his distressed neighbor +is doubtless heightened by the consciousness that he himself may be in +distress next week; he therefore stands by his friend when he gets too +drunk to take care of himself, when he loses his wife or <a +name="page_231"></a> child, when he is evicted for non-payment of rent, +when he is arrested for a petty crime. It seems to such a man entirely +fitting that his alderman should do the same thing on a larger +scale—that he should help a constituent out of trouble, merely because +he is in trouble, irrespective of the justice involved.</p> + +<p>The alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are +arrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear +before him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are +likely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to +"fix up matters" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a +serious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised +by his constituents. All this conveys the impression to the +simple-minded that law is not enforced, if the lawbreaker have a +powerful friend. One may instance the alderman's action in standing by +an Italian padrone of the ward when he was indicted for violating the +civil service regulations. The commissioners had <a +name="page_232"></a> sent out notices to certain Italian day-laborers +who were upon the eligible list that they were to report for work at a +given day and hour. One of the padrones intercepted these notifications +and sold them to the men for five dollars apiece, making also the usual +bargain for a share of their wages. The padrone's entire arrangement +followed the custom which had prevailed for years before the +establishment of civil service laws. Ten of the laborers swore out +warrants against the padrone, who was convicted and fined seventy-five +dollars. This sum was promptly paid by the alderman, and the padrone, +assured that he would be protected from any further trouble, returned +uninjured to the colony. The simple Italians were much bewildered by +this show of a power stronger than that of the civil service, which they +had trusted as they did the one in Italy. The first violation of its +authority was made, and various sinister acts have followed, until no +Italian who is digging a sewer or sweeping a street for the city feels +quite secure in holding his <a name="page_233"></a> job unless he is +backed by the friendship of the alderman. According to the civil service +law, a laborer has no right to a trial; many are discharged by the +foreman, and find that they can be reinstated only upon the aldermanic +recommendation. He thus practically holds his old power over the +laborers working for the city. The popular mind is convinced that an +honest administration of civil service is impossible, and that it is but +one more instrument in the hands of the powerful.</p> + +<p>It will be difficult to establish genuine civil service among these men, +who learn only by experience, since their experiences have been of such +a nature that their unanimous vote would certainly be that "civil +service" is "no good."</p> + +<p>As many of his constituents in this case are impressed with the fact +that the aldermanic power is superior to that of government, so +instances of actual lawbreaking might easily be cited. A young man may +enter a saloon long after midnight, the legal <a name="page_234"></a> +closing hour, and seat himself at a gambling table, perfectly secure +from interruption or arrest, because the place belongs to an alderman; +but in order to secure this immunity the policeman on the beat must +pretend not to see into the windows each time that he passes, and he +knows, and the young man knows that he knows, that nothing would +embarrass "Headquarters" more than to have an arrest made on those +premises. A certain contempt for the whole machinery of law and order is +thus easily fostered.</p> + +<p>Because of simple friendliness the alderman is expected to pay rent for +the hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find "jobs" when +work is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all +the places which he can seize from the city hall. The alderman of the +ward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he +had twenty-six hundred people in his ward upon the public pay-roll. +This, of course, included day <a name="page_235"></a> laborers, but +each one felt under distinct obligations to him for getting a position. +When we reflect that this is one-third of the entire vote of the ward, +we realize that it is very important to vote for the right man, since +there is, at the least, one chance out of three for securing work.</p> + +<p>If we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay +respectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question +of voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a +political one. An Italian laborer wants a "job" more than anything else, +and quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. It is not so +different from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two +strengthen each other.</p> + +<p>The alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for +an office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate +suffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his +constituents under obligations to him; but the <a name="page_236"></a> +action of such an individual becomes a demoralizing element in the +community when kindly impulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of +personal ambition, and when the plastic morals of his constituents +gradually conform to his own undeveloped standards.</p> + +<p>The alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. He seizes +these days of family festivities for making friends. It is easiest to +reach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side +it seems natural and kindly that he should do it. The alderman procures +passes from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or +attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for +benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar +distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest +lady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the +alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When +others <a name="page_237"></a> are spending pennies, he is spending +dollars. When anxious relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the +two most beautiful children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys +votes from both sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes +best, buying off the young lady who is persistently determined to find +out, with five dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to +be sent to the sick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar +suits him exactly. He murmurs many times, "Never mind, the money all +goes to the poor; it is all straight enough if the church gets it, the +poor won't ask too many questions." The oftener he can put such +sentiments into the minds of his constituents, the better he is pleased. +Nothing so rapidly prepares them to take his view of money getting and +money spending. We see again the process disregarded, because the end +itself is considered so praiseworthy.</p> + +<p>There is something archaic in a community <a name="page_238"></a> of +simple people in their attitude toward death and burial. There is +nothing so easy to collect money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily +remembers that the early religious tithes were paid to ward off death +and ghosts. At times one encounters almost the Greek feeling in regard +to burial. If the alderman seizes upon times of festivities for +expressions of his good-will, much more does he seize upon periods of +sorrow. At a funeral he has the double advantage of ministering to a +genuine craving for comfort and solace, and at the same time of +assisting a bereaved constituent to express that curious feeling of +remorse, which is ever an accompaniment of quick sorrow, that desire to +"make up" for past delinquencies, to show the world how much he loved +the person who has just died, which is as natural as it is universal.</p> + +<p>In addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social +occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the <a +name="page_239"></a> grade of which almost determines their social +standing in the neighborhood. The alderman saves the very poorest of his +constituents from that awful horror of burial by the county; he provides +carriages for the poor, who otherwise could not have them. It may be too +much to say that all the relatives and friends who ride in the carriages +provided by the alderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly +influenced by his kindness, and talk of his virtues during the long +hours of the ride back and forth from the suburban cemetery. A man who +would ask at such a time where all the money thus spent comes from would +be considered sinister. The tendency to speak lightly of the faults of +the dead and to judge them gently is transferred to the living, and many +a man at such a time has formulated a lenient judgment of political +corruption, and has heard kindly speeches which he has remembered on +election day. "Ah, well, he has a big Irish heart. He is good to the <a +name="page_240"></a> widow and the fatherless." "He knows the poor +better than the big guns who are always talking about civil service and +reform."</p> + +<p>Indeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of +administration make against this big manifestation of human +friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of +the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman +will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every +week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes +provided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into +"hundreds a year." He understands what the people want, and ministers +just as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. An +attempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at +one time when a delicate little child was deserted in the Hull-House +nursery. An investigation showed that it had been born ten days +previously in the <a name="page_241"></a> Cook County hospital, but no +trace could be found of the unfortunate mother. The little child lived +for several weeks, and then, in spite of every care, died. It was +decided to have it buried by the county authorities, and the wagon was +to arrive at eleven o'clock; about nine o'clock in the morning the rumor +of this awful deed reached the neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in +a very excited state of mind, to protest. They took up a collection out +of their poverty with which to defray a funeral. The residents of +Hull-House were then comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not +realize that they were really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the +community. In their crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness +which had been expended upon the little creature while it was alive; +that it had had every attention from a skilled physician and a trained +nurse, and even intimated that the excited members of the group had not +taken part in this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that +it should be buried as <a name="page_242"></a> it had been born, at the +county's expense. It is doubtful if Hull-House has ever done anything +which injured it so deeply in the minds of some of its neighbors. It was +only forgiven by the most indulgent on the ground that the residents +were spinsters, and could not know a mother's heart. No one born and +reared in the community could possibly have made a mistake like that. No +one who had studied the ethical standards with any care could have +bungled so completely.</p> + +<p>We are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple +people. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a +reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and +regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is +forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and +faithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and +forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is +the magnanimous <a name="page_243"></a> man, the kindly reckless +villain who is always applauded. So shrewd an observer as Samuel Johnson +once remarked that it was surprising to find how much more kindness than +justice society contained.</p> + +<p>On the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town +within easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more +important of his friends. Here again he has seized upon an old tradition +and primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best +expressed when men drink together. The saloons offer a common meeting +ground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who +meet there.</p> + +<p>He distributes each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters, +but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious +management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of +that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable +societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys <a +name="page_244"></a> for Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be +allowed to eat turkey again. As he does not distribute his Christmas +favors from any hardly acquired philanthropic motive, there is no +disposition to apply the carefully evolved rules of the charitable +societies to his beneficiaries. Of course, there are those who suspect +that the benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel +themselves quite freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further +and glory in the fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." An example +of this is the young man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars, +giving a sly wink at the others. But this freedom from any sense of +obligation is often the first step downward to the position where he is +willing to sell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket as +he pleases. The writer recalls a conversation with a man in which he +complained quite openly, and with no sense of shame, that his vote had +"sold for only two dollars this year," and that he was "awfully <a +name="page_245"></a> disappointed." The writer happened to know that +his income during the nine months previous had been but twenty-eight +dollars, and that he was in debt thirty-two dollars, and she could well +imagine the eagerness with which he had counted upon this source of +revenue. After some years the selling of votes becomes a commonplace, +and but little attempt is made upon the part of the buyer or seller to +conceal the fact, if the transaction runs smoothly.</p> + +<p>A certain lodging-house keeper at one time sold the votes of his entire +house to a political party and was "well paid for it too"; but being of +a grasping turn, he also sold the house for the same election to the +rival party. Such an outrage could not be borne. The man was treated to +a modern version of tar and feathers, and as a result of being held +under a street hydrant in November, contracted pneumonia which resulted +in his death. No official investigation took place, since the doctor's +certificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and <a +name="page_246"></a> public sentiment sustained the action. In various +conversations which the writer had concerning the entire transaction, +she discovered great indignation concerning his duplicity and treachery, +but none whatever for his original offence of selling out the votes of +his house.</p> + +<p>A club will be started for the express purpose of gaining a reputation +for political power which may later be sold out. The president and +executive committee of such a club, who will naturally receive the +funds, promise to divide with "the boys" who swell the size of the +membership. A reform movement is at first filled with recruits who are +active and loud in their assertions of the number of votes they can +"deliver." The reformers are delighted with this display of zeal, and +only gradually find out that many of the recruits are there for the +express purpose of being bought by the other side; that they are most +active in order to seem valuable, and thus raise the price of their +allegiance when they are ready to sell. Reformers <a +name="page_247"></a> seeing them drop away one by one, talk of +desertion from the ranks of reform, and of the power of money over +well-meaning men, who are too weak to withstand temptation; but in +reality the men are not deserters because they have never actually been +enrolled in the ranks. The money they take is neither a bribe nor the +price of their loyalty, it is simply the consummation of a +long-cherished plan and a well-earned reward. They came into the new +movement for the purpose of being bought out of it, and have +successfully accomplished that purpose.</p> + +<p>Hull-House assisted in carrying on two unsuccessful campaigns against +the same alderman. In the two years following the end of the first one, +nearly every man who had been prominent in it had received an office +from the reëlected alderman. A printer had been appointed to a clerkship +in the city hall; a driver received a large salary for services in the +police barns; the candidate himself, a bricklayer, held a position in +the city construction department. At the beginning of <a +name="page_248"></a> the next campaign, the greatest difficulty was +experienced in finding a candidate, and each one proposed, demanded time +to consider the proposition. During this period he invariably became the +recipient of the alderman's bounty. The first one, who was foreman of a +large factory, was reported to have been bought off by the promise that +the city institutions would use the product of his firm. The second one, +a keeper of a grocery and family saloon, with large popularity, was +promised the aldermanic nomination on the regular ticket at the +expiration of the term of office held by the alderman's colleague, and +it may be well to state in passing that he was thus nominated and +successfully elected. The third proposed candidate received a place for +his son in the office of the city attorney.</p> + +<p>Not only are offices in his gift, but all smaller favors as well. Any +requests to the council, or special licenses, must be presented by the +alderman of the ward in which the person desiring the favor resides. <a +name="page_249"></a> There is thus constant opportunity for the +alderman to put his constituents under obligations to him, to make it +difficult for a constituent to withstand him, or for one with large +interests to enter into political action at all. From the Italian pedler +who wants a license to peddle fruit in the street, to the large +manufacturing company who desires to tunnel an alley for the sake of +conveying pipes from one building to another, everybody is under +obligations to his alderman, and is constantly made to feel it. In +short, these very regulations for presenting requests to the council +have been made, by the aldermen themselves, for the express purpose of +increasing the dependence of their constituents, and thereby augmenting +aldermanic power and prestige.</p> + +<p>The alderman has also a very singular hold upon the property owners of +his ward. The paving, both of the streets and sidewalks throughout his +district, is disgraceful; and in the election speeches the reform side +holds him responsible for this condition, and <a name="page_250"></a> +promises better paving under another régime. But the paving could not be +made better without a special assessment upon the property owners of the +vicinity, and paying more taxes is exactly what his constituents do not +want to do. In reality, "getting them off," or at the worst postponing +the time of the improvement, is one of the genuine favors which he +performs. A movement to have the paving done from a general fund would +doubtless be opposed by the property owners in other parts of the city +who have already paid for the asphalt bordering their own possessions, +but they have no conception of the struggle and possible bankruptcy +which repaving may mean to the small property owner, nor how his chief +concern may be to elect an alderman who cares more for the feelings and +pocket-books of his constituents than he does for the repute and +cleanliness of his city.</p> + +<p>The alderman exhibited great wisdom in procuring from certain of his +down-town friends the sum of three thousand dollars <a +name="page_251"></a> with which to uniform and equip a boys' temperance +brigade which had been formed in one of the ward churches a few months +before his campaign. Is it strange that the good leader, whose heart was +filled with innocent pride as he looked upon these promising young +scions of virtue, should decline to enter into a reform campaign? Of +what use to suggest that uniforms and bayonets for the purpose of +promoting temperance, bought with money contributed by a man who was +proprietor of a saloon and a gambling house, might perhaps confuse the +ethics of the young soldiers? Why take the pains to urge that it was +vain to lecture and march abstract virtues into them, so long as the +"champion boodler" of the town was the man whom the boys recognized as a +loyal and kindhearted friend, the public-spirited citizen, whom their +fathers enthusiastically voted for, and their mothers called "the friend +of the poor." As long as the actual and tangible success is thus +embodied, marching whether in kindergartens or brigades, <a +name="page_252"></a> talking whether in clubs or classes, does little to +change the code of ethics.</p> + +<p>The question of where does the money come from which is spent so +successfully, does of course occur to many minds. The more primitive +people accept the truthful statement of its sources without any shock to +their moral sense. To their simple minds he gets it "from the rich" and, +so long as he again gives it out to the poor as a true Robin Hood, with +open hand, they have no objections to offer. Their ethics are quite +honestly those of the merry-making foresters. The next less primitive +people of the vicinage are quite willing to admit that he leads the +"gang" in the city council, and sells out the city franchises; that he +makes deals with the franchise-seeking companies; that he guarantees to +steer dubious measures through the council, for which he demands liberal +pay; that he is, in short, a successful "boodler." When, however, there +is intellect enough to get this point of view, there is also enough to +make the contention <a name="page_253"></a> that this is universally +done, that all the aldermen do it more or less successfully, but that +the alderman of this particular ward is unique in being so generous; +that such a state of affairs is to be deplored, of course; but that that +is the way business is run, and we are fortunate when a kind-hearted man +who is close to the people gets a large share of the spoils; that he +serves franchised companies who employ men in the building and +construction of their enterprises, and that they are bound in return to +give work to his constituents. It is again the justification of stealing +from the rich to give to the poor. Even when they are intelligent enough +to complete the circle, and to see that the money comes, not from the +pockets of the companies' agents, but from the street-car fares of +people like themselves, it almost seems as if they would rather pay two +cents more each time they ride than to give up the consciousness that +they have a big, warm-hearted friend at court who will stand by them in +an emergency. <a name="page_254"></a> The sense of just dealing comes +apparently much later than the desire for protection and indulgence. On +the whole, the gifts and favors are taken quite simply as an evidence of +genuine loving-kindness. The alderman is really elected because he is a +good friend and neighbor. He is corrupt, of course, but he is not +elected because he is corrupt, but rather in spite of it. His standard +suits his constituents. He exemplifies and exaggerates the popular type +of a good man. He has attained what his constituents secretly long for.</p> + +<p>At one end of the ward there is a street of good houses, familiarly +called "Con Row." The term is perhaps quite unjustly used, but it is +nevertheless universally applied, because many of these houses are +occupied by professional office holders. This row is supposed to form a +happy hunting-ground of the successful politician, where he can live in +prosperity, and still maintain his vote and influence in the ward. It +would be difficult to justly estimate the influence <a +name="page_255"></a> which this group of successful, prominent men, +including the alderman who lives there, have had upon the ideals of the +youth in the vicinity. The path which leads to riches and success, to +civic prominence and honor, is the path of political corruption. We +might compare this to the path laid out by Benjamin Franklin, who also +secured all of these things, but told young men that they could be +obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal living, by the cultivation +of the mind, and the holding fast to righteousness; or, again, we might +compare it to the ideals which were held up to the American youth fifty +years ago, lower, to be sure, than the revolutionary ideal, but still +fine and aspiring toward honorable dealing and careful living. They were +told that the career of the self-made man was open to every American +boy, if he worked hard and saved his money, improved his mind, and +followed a steady ambition. The writer remembers that when she was ten +years old, the village schoolmaster <a name="page_256"></a> told his +little flock, without any mitigating clauses, that Jay Gould had laid +the foundation of his colossal fortune by always saving bits of string, +and that, as a result, every child in the village assiduously collected +party-colored balls of twine. A bright Chicago boy might well draw the +inference that the path of the corrupt politician not only leads to +civic honors, but to the glories of benevolence and philanthropy. This +lowering of standards, this setting of an ideal, is perhaps the worst of +the situation, for, as we said in the first chapter, we determine ideals +by our daily actions and decisions not only for ourselves, but largely +for each other.</p> + +<p>We are all involved in this political corruption, and as members of the +community stand indicted. This is the penalty of a democracy,—that we +are bound to move forward or retrograde together. None of us can stand +aside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the +same air.</p> + +<p><a name="page_257"></a>That the alderman has much to do with setting the +standard of life and desirable prosperity may be illustrated by the +following incident: During one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew +a poster representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking +champagne at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by +other revellers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer, +who sat upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a +workingman's dinner-pail, and the passer-by was asked which type of +representative he preferred, the presumption being that at least in a +workingman's district the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the +chagrin of the reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in +the popular mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly +so desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a +diamond in his shirt front. The district wished its representative "to +stand up with the best of them," <a name="page_258"></a> and certainly +some of the constituents would have been ashamed to have been +represented by a bricklayer. It is part of that general desire to appear +well, the optimistic and thoroughly American belief, that even if a man +is working with his hands to-day, he and his children will quite likely +be in a better position in the swift coming to-morrow, and there is no +need of being too closely associated with common working people. There +is an honest absence of class consciousness, and a naïve belief that the +kind of occupation quite largely determines social position. This is +doubtless exaggerated in a neighborhood of foreign people by the fact +that as each nationality becomes more adapted to American conditions, +the scale of its occupation rises. Fifty years ago in America "a +Dutchman" was used as a term of reproach, meaning a man whose language +was not understood, and who performed menial tasks, digging sewers and +building railroad embankments. Later the Irish did <a +name="page_259"></a> the same work in the community, but as quickly as +possible handed it on to the Italians, to whom the name "dago" is said +to cling as a result of the digging which the Irishman resigned to him. +The Italian himself is at last waking up to this fact. In a political +speech recently made by an Italian padrone, he bitterly reproached the +alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day "jobs" of sitting in an +office to Irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day "jobs" of sweeping +the streets to the Italians. This general struggle to rise in life, to +be at least politically represented by one of the best, as to occupation +and social status, has also its negative side. We must remember that the +imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and that the loss of +social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps most dreaded by +the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct, the power to +give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but feebly +developed. A form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, <a +name="page_260"></a> is afforded by the simple desire to do what others +do, in order to share with them the approval of the community. Of +course, the larger the number of people among whom an habitual mode of +conduct obtains, the greater the constraint it puts upon the individual +will. Thus it is that the political corruption of the city presses most +heavily where it can be least resisted, and is most likely to be +imitated.</p> + +<p>According to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are +bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the +water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant +springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes +from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not +enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the +discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The +prosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat +with <a name="page_261"></a> the "boss" politician or preserve his +independence on a smaller income; but to an Italian day laborer it is a +choice between obeying the commands of a political "boss" or practical +starvation. Again, a more intelligent man may philosophize a little upon +the present state of corruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of +our commercialism, from which we are bound to emerge; at any rate, he +may give himself the solace of literature and ideals in other +directions, but the more ignorant man who lives only in the narrow +present has no such resource; slowly the conviction enters his mind that +politics is a matter of favors and positions, that self-government means +pleasing the "boss" and standing in with the "gang." This slowly +acquired knowledge he hands on to his family. During the month of +February his boy may come home from school with rather incoherent tales +about Washington and Lincoln, and the father may for the moment be fired +to tell of Garibaldi, but such talk is only periodic, <a +name="page_262"></a> and the long year round the fortunes of the entire +family, down to the opportunity to earn food and shelter, depend upon +the "boss."</p> + +<p>In a certain measure also, the opportunities for pleasure and recreation +depend upon him. To use a former illustration, if a man happens to have +a taste for gambling, if the slot machine affords him diversion, he goes +to those houses which are protected by political influence. If he and +his friends like to drop into a saloon after midnight, or even want to +hear a little music while they drink together early in the evening, he +is breaking the law when he indulges in either of them, and can only be +exempt from arrest or fine because the great political machine is +friendly to him and expects his allegiance in return.</p> + +<p>During the campaign, when it was found hard to secure enough local +speakers of the moral tone which was desired, orators were imported from +other parts of the town, from the so-called "better element." <a +name="page_263"></a> Suddenly it was rumored on all sides that, while +the money and speakers for the reform candidate were coming from the +swells, the money which was backing the corrupt alderman also came from +a swell source; that the president of a street-car combination, for whom +he performed constant offices in the city council, was ready to back him +to the extent of fifty thousand dollars; that this president, too, was a +good man, and sat in high places; that he had recently given a large sum +of money to an educational institution and was therefore as +philanthropic, not to say good and upright, as any man in town; that the +corrupt alderman had the sanction of the highest authorities, and that +the lecturers who were talking against corruption, and the selling and +buying of franchises, were only the cranks, and not the solid business +men who had developed and built up Chicago.</p> + +<p>All parts of the community are bound together in ethical development. If +the so-called more enlightened members accept <a name="page_264"></a> +corporate gifts from the man who buys up the council, and the so-called +less enlightened members accept individual gifts from the man who sells +out the council, we surely must take our punishment together. There is +the difference, of course, that in the first case we act collectively, +and in the second case individually; but is the punishment which follows +the first any lighter or less far-reaching in its consequences than the +more obvious one which follows the second?</p> + +<p>Have our morals been so captured by commercialism, to use Mr. Chapman's +generalization, that we do not see a moral dereliction when business or +educational interests are served thereby, although we are still shocked +when the saloon interest is thus served?</p> + +<p>The street-car company which declares that it is impossible to do +business without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral +level with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a +saloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal <a +name="page_265"></a> class, and questionable money with which to +debauch his constituents. Both sets of men assume that the only appeal +possible is along the line of self-interest. They frankly acknowledge +money getting as their own motive power, and they believe in the +cupidity of all the men whom they encounter. No attempt in either case +is made to put forward the claims of the public, or to find a moral +basis for action. As the corrupt politician assumes that public morality +is impossible, so many business men become convinced that to pay tribute +to the corrupt aldermen is on the whole cheaper than to have taxes too +high; that it is better to pay exorbitant rates for franchises, than to +be made unwilling partners in transportation experiments. Such men come +to regard political reformers as a sort of monomaniac, who are not +reasonable enough to see the necessity of the present arrangement which +has slowly been evolved and developed, and upon which business is safely +conducted. A reformer who really knew the people <a +name="page_266"></a> and their great human needs, who believed that it +was the business of government to serve them, and who further recognized +the educative power of a sense of responsibility, would possess a clew +by which he might analyze the situation. He would find out what needs, +which the alderman supplies, are legitimate ones which the city itself +could undertake, in counter-distinction to those which pander to the +lower instincts of the constituency. A mother who eats her Christmas +turkey in a reverent spirit of thankfulness to the alderman who gave it +to her, might be gradually brought to a genuine sense of appreciation +and gratitude to the city which supplies her little children with a +Kindergarten, or, to the Board of Health which properly placarded a case +of scarlet-fever next door and spared her sleepless nights and wearing +anxiety, as well as the money paid with such difficulty to the doctor +and the druggist. The man who in his emotional gratitude almost kneels +before his political friend who gets his boy out of jail, <a +name="page_267"></a> might be made to see the kindness and good sense +of the city authorities who provided the boy with a playground and +reading room, where he might spend his hours of idleness and +restlessness, and through which his temptations to petty crime might be +averted. A man who is grateful to the alderman who sees that his +gambling and racing are not interfered with, might learn to feel loyal +and responsible to the city which supplied him with a gymnasium and +swimming tank where manly and well-conducted sports are possible. The +voter who is eager to serve the alderman at all times, because the +tenure of his job is dependent upon aldermanic favor, might find great +relief and pleasure in working for the city in which his place was +secured by a well-administered civil service law.</p> + +<p>After all, what the corrupt alderman demands from his followers and +largely depends upon is a sense of loyalty, a standing-by the man who is +good to you, who understands you, and who gets you <a +name="page_268"></a> out of trouble. All the social life of the voter +from the time he was a little boy and played "craps" with his "own +push," and not with some other "push," has been founded on this sense of +loyalty and of standing in with his friends. Now that he is a man, he +likes the sense of being inside a political organization, of being +trusted with political gossip, of belonging to a set of fellows who +understand things, and whose interests are being cared for by a strong +friend in the city council itself. All this is perfectly legitimate, and +all in the line of the development of a strong civic loyalty, if it were +merely socialized and enlarged. Such a voter has already proceeded in +the forward direction in so far as he has lost the sense of isolation, +and has abandoned the conviction that city government does not touch his +individual affairs. Even Mill claims that the social feelings of man, +his desire to be at unity with his fellow-creatures, are the natural +basis for morality, and he defines <a name="page_269"></a> a man of +high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an isolated +individual, but as a part in a social organism.</p> + +<p>Upon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure +of civic virtue. It is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that +his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that +they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied +for all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen +into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual +for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of +life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the +community, and rises into a sense of the common weal.</p> + +<p>In order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual +needs must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important +as they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of +self-interest. The demand <a name="page_270"></a> should be +universalized; in this process it would also become clarified, and the +basis of our political organization become perforce social and ethical.</p> + +<p>Would it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself, +because he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social +development than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made +over by "good citizens" and governed by "experts"? The former at least +are engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express +itself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a +whole.</p> + +<p>The wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good +citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to +make it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that +curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous +do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient, +and that they can leave the arts and <a name="page_271"></a> wiles of +securing popular favor to the self-seeking. This results in a certain +repellent manner, commonly regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and +is further responsible for the fatal mistake of making the surroundings +of "good influences" singularly unattractive; a mistake which really +deserves a reprimand quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed +of making the surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are +akin to that state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider +morality to the eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new +moral movements have ever and again been inaugurated by those who have +found themselves in revolt against the conventionalized good.</p> + +<p>The success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of +administration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly +elements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and +selfish process. For the painful condition of endeavoring to minister <a +name="page_272"></a> to genuine social needs, through the political +machinery, and at the same time to remodel that machinery so that it +shall be adequate to its new task, is to encounter the inevitable +discomfort of a transition into a new type of democratic relation. The +perplexing experiences of the actual administration, however, have a +genuine value of their own. The economist who treats the individual +cases as mere data, and the social reformer who labors to make such +cases impossible, solely because of the appeal to his reason, may have +to share these perplexities before they feel themselves within the grasp +of a principle of growth, working outward from within; before they can +gain the exhilaration and uplift which comes when the individual +sympathy and intelligence is caught into the forward intuitive movement +of the mass. This general movement is not without its intellectual +aspects, but it has to be transferred from the region of perception to +that of emotion before it is really apprehended. <a +name="page_273"></a> The mass of men seldom move together without an +emotional incentive. The man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of +the perplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great +source of vitality.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are +attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises +from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their +efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are +reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social +conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression +for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the +sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but +observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that +a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with +the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged +to act upon <a name="page_274"></a> our theory. A stirring appeal has +lately been made by a recognized ethical lecturer who has declared that +"It is insanity to expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. +We arrive at moral knowledge only by tentative and observant practice. +We learn how to apply the new insight by having attempted to apply the +old and having found it to fail."</p> + +<p>This necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the +undertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those +who shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with +the cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that +not untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social +morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often +at the expense of the well-settled standards of morality.</p> + +<p>The power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious +mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible +intelligence. In the <a name="page_275"></a> range of individual +morals, we have learned to distrust him who would reach spirituality by +simply renouncing the world, or by merely speculating upon its evils. +The result, as well as the process of virtues attained by repression, +has become distasteful to us. When the entire moral energy of an +individual goes into the cultivation of personal integrity, we all know +how unlovely the result may become; the character is upright, of course, +but too coated over with the result of its own endeavor to be +attractive. In this effort toward a higher morality in our social +relations, we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose +the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his +activity only in connection with the activity of the many.</p> + +<p>The cry of "Back to the people" is always heard at the same time, when +we have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of +"Back to Christ," as though we would seek refuge with our fellows <a +name="page_276"></a> and believe in our common experiences as a +preparation for a new moral struggle.</p> + +<p>As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it +has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the +curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the +whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us +whatever the turn of fortune. Tolstoy has portrayed the experience in +"Master and Man." The former saves his servant from freezing, by +protecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled +with an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. Such experiences, of +which we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living +that peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great +multitude of the dead. It is akin to the assurance that the dead +understand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and +therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the +misunderstandings <a name="page_277"></a> we have in life are due to +partial experience, and all life's fretting comes of our limited +intelligence; when the last and Great Experience comes, it is, perforce, +attended by mercy and forgiveness. Consciously to accept Democracy and +its manifold experiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom.</p> + +<a name="page_278"></a> + + + + +<center><h2><a name="page_279"></a>INDEX<sup><small><a href="#page_279_note">1</a></small></sup></h2></center> + + +<p>Alderman, basis of his political success, <a href="#page_226">226</a>, <a href="#page_228">228</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_267">267</a>;<br> + his influence on morals of the American boy, <a href="#page_251">251</a>, <a href="#page_255">255</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>;<br> + on standard of life, <a href="#page_257">257</a>;<br> + his power, <a href="#page_232">232</a>, <a href="#page_233">233</a>, <a href="#page_235">235</a>, <a href="#page_246">246</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a>;<br> + his social duties, <a href="#page_234">234</a>, <a href="#page_236">236</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>.</p> + +<p>Art and the workingman, <a href="#page_219">219</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>"Boss," the, ignorant man's dependence on, <a href="#page_260">260</a>, <a href="#page_266">266</a>.</p> + +<p>Business college, the, <a href="#page_197">197</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Charity, administration of, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_022">22</a>;<br> + neighborly relations in, <a href="#page_029">29</a>, <a href="#page_230">230</a>;<br> + organized, <a href="#page_025">25</a>;<br> + standards in, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_032">32</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a>, <a href="#page_049">49</a>, <a href="#page_058">58</a>;<br> + scientific <i>vs.</i> human relations in, <a href="#page_064">64</a>.</p> + +<p>Child labor, premature work, <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_188">188</a>;<br> + first laws concerning, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_170">170</a>.</p> + +<p>City, responsibilities of, <a href="#page_266">266</a>.</p> + +<p>Civil service law, its enforcement, <a href="#page_231">231</a>, <a href="#page_233">233</a>.</p> + +<p>Commercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, <a href="#page_193">193</a>.</p> + +<p>Commercialism and education, <a href="#page_190">190</a>-<a href="#page_199">199</a>, <a href="#page_216">216</a>;<br> + morals captured by, <a href="#page_264">264</a>;<br> + polytechnic schools taken by, <a href="#page_202">202</a>.</p> + +<p>Coöperation, <a href="#page_153">153</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>.</p> + +<p>Cooper, Peter, <a href="#page_202">202</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Dayton, Ohio, factory at, <a href="#page_216">216</a>.</p> + +<p>Death and burials among simple people, <a href="#page_238">238</a>.</p> + +<p>Domestic service, problem of, in France, England, and America, <a href="#page_135">135</a>;<br> + industrial difficulty of, <a href="#page_106">106</a>;<br> + moral issues of, <a href="#page_106">106</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Education, attempts at industrial, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br> + commercialism in, <a href="#page_196">196</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br> + in commercialism, <a href="#page_216">216</a>;<br> + in technical schools, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br> + lack of adaptation in, <a href="#page_199">199</a>, <a href="#page_208">208</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>;<br> + of industrial workers, <a href="#page_180">180</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a>, <a href="#page_199">199</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>;<br> + offset to overspecialization, <a href="#page_211">211</a>;<br> + public school and, <a href="#page_190">190</a>, <a href="#page_192">192</a>;<br> + relation of, to the child, <a href="#page_180">180</a>, <a href="#page_185">185</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a>;<br> + relation of, to the immigrant, <a href="#page_181">181</a>-<a href="#page_186">186</a>;<br> + university extension lectures and settlements, <a href="#page_199">199</a>;<br> + workingmen's lecture courses, <a href="#page_214">214</a>.</p> + +<p>Educators, mistakes of, <a href="#page_212">212</a>;<br> + new demands on, <a href="#page_178">178</a>, <a href="#page_192">192</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_211">211</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Family claim, the, <a href="#page_004">4</a>, <a href="#page_074">74</a>, <a href="#page_078">78</a>;<br> + daughter's college education, <a href="#page_082">82</a>;<br> + employer's <i>vs.</i> domestic's, <a href="#page_123">123</a>, <a href="#page_124">124</a>;<br> + on the daughter, <a href="#page_082">82</a>;<br> + on the son, <i>ibid.</i></p> + +<p>Family life, misconception of, <a href="#page_116">116</a>.</p> + +<p>Filial relations, clash of moral codes, <a href="#page_094">94</a>.</p> + +<p>Funerals, attitude of simple people toward, <a href="#page_238">238</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Household employee, the, <a href="#page_108">108</a>, <a href="#page_109">109</a>;<br> + character of, <a href="#page_112">112</a>;<br> + domestic <i>vs.</i> <a name="page_280"></a> factory, <a href="#page_116">116</a>, <a href="#page_118">118</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>;<br> + isolation of, <a href="#page_109">109</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_117">117</a>, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_132">132</a>;<br> + morals of, <a href="#page_125">125</a>;<br> + unnatural relation of, <a href="#page_113">113</a>, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_127">127</a>;<br> + unreasonable demands on, <a href="#page_113">113</a>, <a href="#page_115">115</a>;<br> + residence clubs for, <a href="#page_133">133</a>;<br> + social position of, <a href="#page_114">114</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>.</p> + +<p>Household employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, <a href="#page_116">116</a>;<br> + reform of, in relation to employee, <a href="#page_126">126</a>.</p> + +<p>Household, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, <a href="#page_129">129</a>;<br> + competition of factory work with, <a href="#page_128">128</a>;<br> + difficulties of the small, <a href="#page_135">135</a>;<br> + industrial isolation of, <a href="#page_117">117</a>;<br> + industry of, transferred to factory, <a href="#page_104">104</a>, <a href="#page_105">105</a>;<br> + lack of progress in, <a href="#page_117">117</a>;<br> + origin of, <a href="#page_104">104</a>;<br> + social <i>vs.</i> individual aspects of, <a href="#page_103">103</a>;<br> + suburban difficulties of, <a href="#page_134">134</a>;<br> + wages in, <a href="#page_131">131</a>.</p> + +<p>Hull-house experiences, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_058">58</a>, <a href="#page_059">59</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a>, <a href="#page_247">247</a>.</p> + +<p>Human life, value of, <a href="#page_007">7</a>, <a href="#page_178">178</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Individual action <i>vs.</i> associated, <a href="#page_137">137</a>, <a href="#page_153">153</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>;<br> + advantages of, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_162">162</a>;<br> + limitations of, <a href="#page_165">165</a>;<br> + moral evolution involved in, <a href="#page_226">226</a>.</p> + +<p>Individual <i>vs.</i> social needs, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a>.</p> + +<p>Individual <i>vs.</i> social virtues, <a href="#page_224">224</a>, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_265">265</a>.</p> + +<p>Italian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, <a href="#page_229">229</a>;<br> + dependence of, on their children, <a href="#page_184">184</a>;<br> + education of, <a href="#page_185">185</a>;<br> + new conditions of life of, <a href="#page_181">181</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Juvenile criminal, the, evolution of, <a href="#page_053">53</a>-<a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Labor, division of, <a href="#page_210">210</a>, <a href="#page_213">213</a>;<br> + reaction from, <a href="#page_215">215</a>.</p> + +<p>Law and order, <a href="#page_172">172</a>, <a href="#page_174">174</a>, <a href="#page_234">234</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Moral fact and moral idea, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_229">229</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a>.</p> + +<p>Morality, natural basis of, <a href="#page_268">268</a>;<br> + personal and social, <a href="#page_006">6</a>, <a href="#page_176">176</a>, <a href="#page_103">103</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Philanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, <a href="#page_150">150</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>-<a href="#page_157">157</a>.</p> + +<p>Philanthropist, the, <a href="#page_154">154</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>-<a href="#page_176">176</a>.</p> + +<p>Political corruption, ethical development in, <a href="#page_270">270</a>;<br> + formation of reform clubs, <a href="#page_246">246</a>;<br> + greatest pressure of, <a href="#page_260">260</a>;<br> + individual and social aspect of, <a href="#page_264">264</a>;<br> + leniency in regard to, <a href="#page_239">239</a>;<br> + responsibility for, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a>;<br> + selling of votes, <a href="#page_244">244</a>-<a href="#page_246">246</a>;<br> + street railway and saloon interest, <a href="#page_262">262</a>.</p> + +<p>Political leaders, causes of success of, <a href="#page_224">224</a>.</p> + +<p>Political standards, <a href="#page_228">228</a>, <a href="#page_229">229</a>, <a href="#page_251">251</a>-<a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a>;<br> + compared with Benjamin Franklin's, <a href="#page_255">255</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Referendum method, the, <a href="#page_164">164</a>.</p> + +<p>Reformer, the, ethics of, <a href="#page_270">270</a>.</p> + +<p>Reform movements in politics, causes of failure in, <a href="#page_222">222</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_274">274</a>;<br> + business men's attitude toward, <a href="#page_265">265</a>.</p> + +<p>Rumford, Count, <a href="#page_117">117</a>.</p> + +<p>Ruskin, <a href="#page_219">219</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<p>Saloon, the, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_264">264</a>.</p> + +<p>Social claim, the, <a href="#page_004">4</a>, <a href="#page_077">77</a>;<br> + child study and, <a href="#page_092">92</a>, <a href="#page_180">180</a>;<br> + misplaced energy and, <a href="#page_090">90</a>.</p> + +<p>Social virtues, code of employer, <a href="#page_143">143</a>, <a href="#page_148">148</a>;<br> + code of laboring man, <i>ibid.</i></p> + +<br> + +<p>Technical schools, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br> + adaptation of, to workingmen, <a href="#page_204">204</a>;<br> + compromises in, <a href="#page_203">203</a>;<br> + polytechnic institutions, <a href="#page_202">202</a>;<br> + textile schools, <a href="#page_203">203</a>;<br> + women in, <i>ibid.</i></p> + +<p>Thrift, individualism of, <a href="#page_031">31</a>, <a href="#page_040">40</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>.</p> + +<p>Trades unions, <a href="#page_148">148</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_171">171</a>;<br> + sympathetic strikes, <a href="#page_174">174</a>.</p> + +<br> + +<a name="page_281"></a> + +<p>Workingman, the, ambition of, for his children, <a href="#page_191">191</a>, <a href="#page_258">258</a>;<br> + art in relation to, <a href="#page_218">218</a>;<br> + charity of, <a href="#page_154">154</a>;<br> + evening classes and social entertainment for, <a href="#page_189">189</a>;<br> + grievance of, <a href="#page_211">211</a>;<br> + historical perspective in the work of, <i>ibid.</i>;<br> + organizations of, <a href="#page_214">214</a>;<br> + standards for political candidate, <a href="#page_257">257</a>.</p> + +<a name="page_279_note"></a><p><small><a href="#page_279"><sup>1</sup></a> This index is not intended to be exhaustive.</small></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS *** + +***** This file should be named 15487-h.htm or 15487-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/4/8/15487/ + +Produced by Alicia Williams, Joel Schlosberg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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