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+Project Gutenberg's The Family and it's Members, by Anna Garlin Spencer
+
+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: The Family and it's Members
+
+Author: Anna Garlin Spencer
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2007 [EBook #20645]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FAMILY AND IT'S MEMBERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and unusual spelling in the      |
+    | original document have been preserved.                    |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Bold text is marked with ='s, italicized text with _'s    |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this  |
+    | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this     |
+    | document.                                                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                         LIPPINCOTT'S
+
+                      FAMILY LIFE SERIES
+
+                          EDITED BY
+                  BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
+
+            TEACHERS COLLEGE. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
+
+
+                  THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS
+                    By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S HOME MANUALS
+
+Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
+Teachers College, Columbia University
+
+
+CLOTHING FOR WOMEN
+
+   By LAURA I. BALDT, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia University.
+   454 Pages, 7 Colored Plates, 202 Illustrations in Text.
+
+SUCCESSFUL CANNING AND PRESERVING
+
+   By OLA POWELL, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 425
+   Pages, 5 Colored Plates, 174 Illustrations in Text. Third
+   Edition.
+
+HOME AND COMMUNITY HYGIENE
+
+   By JEAN BROADHURST, Ph.D. 428 Pages, 1 Colored Plate, 118
+   Illustrations in Text.
+
+THE BUSINESS OF THE HOUSEHOLD
+
+   By C.W. TABER, Author of _Taker's Dietetic Charts_, _Nurses'
+   Medical Dictionary_, etc. 438 Pages. Illustrated. Second Edition,
+   Revised.
+
+HOUSEWIFERY
+
+   By L. RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia
+   University. 351 Pages. Colored Frontispiece and 175 Illustrations
+   in Text.
+
+LAUNDERING
+
+   By LYDIA RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Instructor in Housewifery and
+   Laundering, Teachers College, Columbia University. 152
+   Illustrations.
+
+HOUSE AND HOME
+
+   By GRETA GREY, B.S., Director of Home Economics Department,
+   University of Wyoming. Illustrated.
+
+MILLINERY (_In Preparation_)
+
+   By EVELYN SMITH TOBEY, B.S., Teachers College, Columbia
+   University
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES
+
+Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
+Teachers College, Columbia University
+
+CLOTHING--CHOICE, CARE, COST
+
+   By MARY SCHENCK WOOLMAN, B.S. 290 Pages. Illustrated. Second
+   Edition.
+
+SUCCESSFUL FAMILY LIFE, ON THE MODERATE INCOME
+
+   By MARY HINMAN ABEL. 263 Pages.
+
+THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS
+
+   By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER, Special Lecturer in Social Science,
+   Teachers College, Columbia University.
+
+
+
+
+               LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES
+        EDITED BY BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D., TEACHERS
+                 COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
+
+                          THE FAMILY
+                           AND ITS
+                           MEMBERS
+
+                              BY
+
+                     ANNA GARLIN SPENCER
+
+
+   SPECIAL LECTURER IN SOCIAL SCIENCE, TEACHERS COLLEGE OF
+   COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, FORMERLY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF THE
+   NEW YORK SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK, SPECIAL LECTURER AT THE
+  UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND HACKLEY PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY
+    AND ETHICS AT MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL; AUTHOR OF
+               WOMAN'S SHARE IN SOCIAL CULTURE
+
+
+
+                   PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
+                   J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+         COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+
+
+            PRINTED AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
+                  BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+                     PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+              TO THE MOTHERS AND FATHERS, IN
+              NUMBER BEYOND COUNT, WHOSE
+              COURAGE, LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS
+              CARRY ONWARD THE GENERATIONS
+              AND KEEP THE MAIN CURRENTS
+              OF LIFE STRONG AND WHOLESOME.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+=A Threefold Aim.=--This book is based upon three theses--namely,
+first, that the monogamic, private, family is a priceless inheritance
+from the past and should be preserved; second, that in order to
+preserve it many of its inherited customs and mechanisms must be
+modified to suit new social demands; and third, that present day
+experimentation and idealistic effort already indicate certain
+tendencies of change in the family order which promise needed
+adjustment to ends of highest social value.
+
+Many learned books have been written concerning the evolution of sex,
+the history of matrimonial institutions and the development of the
+family. This volume is not an attempted rival of any of these. The
+work of Havelock Ellis, of Le Tourneau, of Otis T. Mason, of Geddes
+and Thompson, and others building upon the foundations laid by the
+great pioneers in the study of the family, constitute a sufficient
+mine of historical information and scientific analysis and evaluation.
+The studies and suggestions of Olive Schreiner, Mrs. Clews Parsons,
+Mrs. Helen Bosanquet, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Key and others
+indicate the tendency of modern inquiry into the just basis of the
+family order. The work of Professors Howard, Giddings, Thomas, Boss,
+Goodsell, Calhoun, Patten, Dealey, Cooley, Ellwood, Todd and others in
+college fields, shows the importance of the family and the necessity
+of giving all that concerns it the most serious attention.
+
+This book aims to begin where many of these students leave off and to
+turn specific attention to the problems of personal and ethical
+decision which now face men and women who would make their own married
+life and parenthood successful. The past experience of the race is
+drawn upon only in so far as it seems to explain present conditions
+and point the way to future social and personal achievements.
+
+=Basic Principles Underlying All Socially Useful Changes.=--A
+fundamental principle in democracy is the right and duty of every
+human being to develop a strong, noble and distinctive individuality.
+For such development it is necessary that a person be self-supporting,
+free of despotic control by others, and able and willing to bear equal
+part with every other human being in the social order to which he or
+she belongs.
+
+This implies that no human being should be wholly sacrificed in
+personal development to the service or welfare of any other human
+being, or group of human beings, either inside or outside the family
+circle. On the other hand, after temporary excursions into an extreme
+individualism that ordained a free-for-all competition in every walk
+of life, society is now keenly alive to the need for control of
+personal desire and individual activity within channels of social
+usefulness. It is beginning to be clearly seen that society has a
+right to demand from any person or class of persons that form of
+community service which definitely inheres in the social function
+which is assumed by, or which devolves upon, such person or class of
+persons. In the old days of "status," when each and every person found
+himself in a place set for him and from which he could not depart,
+there was only the duty of being content and useful in the "sphere of
+life to which he was called." In the new condition of "contract," in
+which each and every person in a democratic community finds himself at
+liberty to use all common opportunities in the interest of his own
+achievement, there is the duty of choice along every avenue of purpose
+and of activity. This gives the new double call to the intelligence
+and conscience; the call to become the best personality one can make
+of oneself and the call to serve the common life to ends of social
+well-being.
+
+=The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference.=--Doctor Giddings
+declares in fine summary "we may conceive of society as any plural
+number of sentient creatures more or less continuously subjected to
+common stimuli, to differing stimuli and to inter-stimulation, and
+responding thereto in like behaviour, concerted activity or
+cooeperation, as well as in unlike or competitive activity; and
+becoming, therefore, with developing intelligence, coherent through a
+dominating consciousness of kind while always sufficiently conscious
+of difference to insure a measure of individual liberty." Democracy
+tends to enlarge the area of those who, while conscious of kind that
+unites, are also keen in desire to develop in liberty any natural
+difference which can make their personality felt as distinctive or
+powerful. The individual differences among women were wholly ignored
+in the past. They were never in reality all alike, as they were
+commonly thought to be. The usual designation of a subject class lumps
+all together as if all were the same. It is the mark of emergence from
+the mass to the class, and from the class to the individual, that more
+and more defines differences between persons. Women have now, for the
+first time in the civilization called Christian, arrived at a point in
+which differences between members of their sex can claim social
+recognition. They are, therefore, now called upon as never before to
+balance by conscious effort the personal desire and the social claim.
+The family, more than any other inherited institution, feels the
+oscillations between the individual demand for personal achievement
+and the response to the social need for large service within group
+relationships which now, for the first time, stir in the consciousness
+of average women.
+
+=The Family as We Know It Is the Central Nursery of Character.=--The
+inevitable outcome of the new freedom, education and economic
+opportunity of women gives us the problem of the modern family. The
+ideal of the democracy we are trying to achieve is higher personality
+in all the mass of the people. The method of democracy so far as we
+can see is education, perfected and universalized, by which all the
+children of each generation may be developed physically, mentally,
+morally, and vocationally to their utmost excellence and power. The
+family, as we have inherited it, is so far the central nursery and
+school in this development. So far in the history of the race or in
+its present social manifestation no rival institution, even the formal
+school, offers an adequate substitute for the family in this beginning
+of the educative process. The intimate and vital care and nurture of
+the individual life still depends for the mass of the people upon the
+private, monogamic, family. This intimate and vital care of the
+children of each generation has so far in human experience cost women
+large expenditure of time and strength; so large expenditure that
+personal achievement has been wholly and is even now largely
+subordinated to the social service implied in home-making. The deepest
+problems of the modern family inhere in the effort to adjust the new
+freedom of women, and its new demands for individual development in
+customary lines of vocational work, to the ancient family claim. New
+adjustments are called for not only in the family itself but in all
+the educational, political, economic, and social arrangements of life
+to accommodate this new demand of women to be achieving persons
+whether married or single. Women have entered, as newly emerging from
+status to contract, into a man-made social organization, a man-made
+school, a man-made industrial order, and a man-made state.
+Achievement, individual and successful, means to most of them, as to
+any newly enfranchised class, the type of distinctive activity and
+accomplishment which their elder brothers have outlined. The
+antithesis, therefore, which now works toward acute problems in the
+minds of both men and women is between the sort of achievement which
+men have sought after and attained, and the sort of social service
+which the past conditions required of women. Slowly it is being
+perceived that in the actual family service, as it is now aided by
+social mechanisms surrounding the household, is place and economic
+opportunity for high personal achievement by competent women. Still
+more slowly is it being apprehended that in the new adjustments of
+economic and professional life there is or may be opportunity for
+married women and mothers to serve the family in high measure and also
+attain outside some distinctive vocational pride and satisfaction of
+craftsmanship. Most slowly of all is it being understood that the
+future calls for such modification of specialization in outside work
+that men and women alike may serve the generations in family devotion
+to the sort of work fathers and mothers have to do and yet cherish
+some personal and ideal vocational effort which may sweeten and enrich
+their lives.
+
+=Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.=--There are
+five basic institutions in modern social organization. They may be
+named the family, the school, the church, the industrial order, and
+the state. They have all come to us as parts of our social inheritance
+from time too remote to reckon. They have mingled and intermingled
+their tendencies of control and influence in varieties of social
+functioning too numerous to mention. They are now emerging to
+distinctness only to be engaged in new forms of interaction that make
+the highest ideals of each and all seem fundamentally akin.
+
+The main tendency of development in all these institutions is,
+however, identical and one clearly perceived. It is the tendency from
+status to contract, from fixed order to flexible adjustment, from
+static to dynamic condition, already noted in regard to the family.
+
+In the school we have moved and are now moving from an aristocracy of
+command, by which ancient life was reproduced, to a democracy of
+comradeship in which it is aimed to make each generation improve upon
+its predecessor. In the church, as it has moved from the family ritual
+at the domestic fireside to the self-chosen altar of each worshipper
+in the world's cathedrals, the reactionaries have held on to "the
+faith once delivered to the saints" and the progressive minds have
+moved to some new prophecy of the truth and right; until to-day, as
+Professor Coe well says, "the aim of the modern church is to give
+education in the art of brotherhood," and to evoke "faith in a
+fatherly God and in a human destiny that outreaches all the accidents
+of our frailty." In the industrial order, still in the trial stage of
+conflict between the fixed status of the "hand" and the "master" and
+the contract of equal partners in a cooeperative enterprise, the
+movement is steadily toward the social requirement of equality,
+justice, and good-will. In the state we have achieved mechanical
+expression of complete democracy. We still lack, and in our own
+country woefully lack, the "spirit within the wheels" that can move
+with power toward an actual government by the people, for the people,
+and truly of the people. Yet by fire and sword and through blood and
+suffering the handwriting of equality, justice, and fraternity has
+been set in our Constitutions and Bills of Right. What remains to be
+done is the socializing of the political mechanisms. That means simply
+that we shall learn to live our democracy and be no longer content to
+merely write it in law. The difficulty now is not so much to get a
+good statement of democratic right as to make it work effectively in
+common action. This fact makes it of doubtful wisdom that men and
+women so often concentrate effort on the eighteenth-century
+doctrinaire position of appeal for Constitutional Amendments and
+blanket state legislation as if of themselves these could secure
+actual personal liberty and social welfare. The objection that some
+forward-looking persons have to the demand of the "National Woman's
+Party," so called, for a Federal Amendment that shall "abolish all sex
+discriminations in law" is not that its principle is too radical, but
+that its method is too antiquated.
+
+The business of the present and the immediate future is to so adjust
+the family life to "two heads" as to keep love and to balance duties.
+The next job is to adjust the family order itself to a contract system
+of industry that gives each member of the family a free and often a
+separating access to daily work and to its return in wages or salary,
+in such manner as to retain family unity and mutual aid while giving
+freedom and opportunity for each of its members. The pressing
+political duty is to use the new voters, the women recently
+enfranchised, for needed emancipation from partisan and selfish
+political despotism in the interest of effective choices for the
+public good. The ever-growing demand of the school is for some
+translation of freedom of self-development in terms of respect for
+social order and in the spirit of social service. The family life, in
+the United States, at least, stands not so much in need of manifestoes
+of equality of rights between men and women as of delicate and
+discriminating adjustments of that equality to the social demands upon
+husbands and wives and upon fathers and mothers. This book aims to
+suggest some of the changes in external customs and inherited ways of
+living which may lead toward a firmer hold upon social idealism within
+the family, as well as within all other inherited institutions, while
+new bases of democratic freedom are being firmly installed.
+
+=Coveted Uses of the Book.=--This volume is intended to meet the needs
+of college and teacher-training school students; of university
+extension classes; of study groups in Women's Clubs, Consumers'
+Leagues, Leagues of Women Voters and Church Classes. It is also hoped
+that it may form the basis for private study by groups within the
+home.
+
+The book is written with a poignant sense of the breaking up of old
+social foundations in the agony and terror of the Great War. It is
+sent forth with a keen understanding of the spirit of youth that
+to-day challenges every inherited institution and ideal, even to the
+bone and marrow of the church, the state, the industrial order, the
+educative process, and even the family itself. It issues from an
+abiding faith that "above all things Truth beareth away the victory"
+and hence that no fearless inquiry can harm the essential values of
+life. It confesses a clear trust in "the Spirit that led us hither and
+is leading us onward." It would sound a call to hold all that has
+dowered the race at the sources of life sacred and of worth. It would
+echo all that bids us move onward to higher and better things.
+
+The greatest ambition herein recorded is to serve as one who opens
+doors of insight into the House of the Interpreter.
+
+                                                      --THE AUTHOR.
+
+JANUARY, 1923.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                         5
+
+   A Threefold Aim. Basic Principles Underlying All Socially
+   Useful Changes. The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference.
+   Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.
+   Coveted Uses of This Book.
+
+I. THE FAMILY                                                       19
+
+   The Experience of the Past. New Ideals Affecting the Family.
+   The Headship of the Father. Is It Possible to Democratize the
+   Family? What Is the Modern Ideal in Child-care? Modern Ideals
+   of Sex-relationship. Ellen Key and Her Gospel. What is Meant
+   by the Demand that Illegitimacy be Abolished? The Legitimation
+   of Children Born Out of Wedlock. Philanthropic Tendencies
+   Respect Legal Marriage. Illicit Unions of Men and Women in
+   Divergent Social Position. Shall We Return to Polygamy? All
+   Children Entitled to Best Development Possible. The Work of
+   the Children's Bureau. The Suggested Uniform Laws. Have
+   Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood? Ellen Key's
+   Estimate of Motherhood. Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work
+   Inerrantly. New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support.
+   The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life. Women
+   Cannot be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage. A Few Believe in
+   a Third Sex. Most Social Students Believe in Marriage. Dangers
+   of Extreme Specialization. Industrial Exploitation of Children
+   and Youth. Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils. The
+   Attack upon the Family by Reactionaries. The Prevalence of
+   Divorce. Old Institutions Need New Sanctions. The Monogamic
+   Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness. The Inherited
+   Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments. The Family as an
+   Aid to Spiritual Democracy. The Family the Nursery of
+   Personality. Life, Not Theory About Life, Teaches Us. The
+   Moral Elite in the Modern Family. Questions.
+
+II. THE MOTHER                                                      46
+
+   Antiquity of the Mother-instinct. Recognized Essentials in
+   Child-care. The Protective Function. Social Elements in Modern
+   Protection of Children. Women's Leadership in Social
+   Protection. The Provision of Food, Clothing and Shelter. The
+   Woman in Rural Life. Modern Demand for Standardization. The
+   Apartment House and the Family. New Uses of Electric Power.
+   Certain Duties the Mother Cannot Delegate. The Mother's
+   Compensation for Personal Service. Early Drill in Personal
+   Habits. Early Practice in Talking, Walking, Obedience, and
+   Imitation. Special Responsibility of the Average Mother.
+   Women's Relation to More Formal Education. Women's Relation to
+   Educational Agencies. The Social Value of Parental Affection.
+   What Women Need Most. Questions.
+
+III. THE FATHER                                                     69
+
+   Historic Background of Fatherhood. Purchase and Capture of
+   Wives. The Patriarchal Family. The Three Chief Sources of
+   Influence. Ancient Military Training of Youth.
+   Ancestor-worship. The Double Standard of Morals. Basic Needs
+   for Equality of Human Rights. Special Protection of Women
+   Needed in Ancient Times. The Social Value of the Patriarchal
+   Family. The Responsibilities of the Ancient Father
+   Commensurate with His Power. Moral Qualities in Women
+   Developed by Masculine Selection. The Highest Ideal of
+   Fatherhood. Incomplete Adjustment to Equality of Rights in the
+   Family. The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem."
+   Women Cannot Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old
+   Privileges. New Social Advantages for Fathers. Questions.
+
+IV. THE GRANDPARENTS                                                90
+
+   Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life. Savage Treatment
+   of the Aged. The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for
+   Aged Men. The Position of Chief-mother in the Ancient Family.
+   Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life. Old Women and the
+   Witchcraft Delusion. Older Women in Religious Vocations
+   Honored in Middle Ages. To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at
+   Seventy. Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families? Reasons
+   Why Husbands Desert Their Families. The Financial Provision
+   for Old Age. Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age. Pension
+   Laws. Old age Home Insurance. To Prevent Premature Old Age.
+   Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor. Need of
+   Experience in Many Fields of Work. Prepare Vocationally for
+   Old-age Needs. The Attitude of Mind Toward Old Age. The
+   Special Gifts of the Old to the Home and the World. Questions.
+
+V. BROTHERS, SISTERS AND NEXT OF KIN                               116
+
+   The Ancient Kinship Bond. Present Demands of Kinship. Special
+   Burden of Women in Family Obligation. Disadvantages of the
+   Only Child. Permanent Value of the Family Bond. Questions.
+
+VI. FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE                                     124
+
+   The Power of Friendship. The Newly-wed and Old Friends. Some
+   Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders. New Demands
+   for Social Control of Marriage Choices. The Young Should be
+   Helped to Make Wise Choices. The Revolt of Youth. The Wisdom
+   of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth. Personal Choice in
+   Marriage Has Now Widest Range. The Value of the Church in
+   Social Life. Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage
+   Responsibility. New and Finer Marriage Unions. Questions.
+
+VII. HUSBANDS AND WIVES                                            141
+
+   Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.
+   Social Restraints on Marriage Choices. Shall the Wife Take the
+   Husband's Name? Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?
+   Who Shall Choose the Domicile? Shall the Married Woman Earn
+   Outside the Home? Economic Considerations Involved. Is It Bad
+   Form to Earn After Marriage? Shall Parenthood be Chosen? Some
+   People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless. What is the
+   Just Financial Basis of the Household? What Shall be the
+   Accepted Standard of Living? The Need for Full and Mutual
+   Understanding Before Marriage. The Supreme Satisfactions of
+   Successful Marriage. Questions.
+
+VIII. THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY                                   164
+
+   Conditions to be Secured for Every Child. The Need for Two
+   Parents. Equal Guardianship of Both Parents. Every Child
+   Should Have a Competent Mother. Every Child Should Have a
+   Competent Father. Economic Aspects of the Father's Competency.
+   The French Plan of Extra-wage. The Endowment of Mothers. Does
+   this Plan Make Too Little of Fathers? Just Limits to Number of
+   Children in Subsidized Families. The Right of a Child to be
+   Officially Counted. Every Child Should Have Social Protection.
+   Child-labor. Children Must be Protected in Recreation.
+   Standards of and Aids to Health. Health Boards Should Help All
+   Alike. Items of Work in Child Hygiene. The Educational Rights
+   of Children. The Use of Married Women as Teachers. Individual
+   Sharing in the Social Inheritance. Questions.
+
+IX. THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY                                       189
+
+   The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre. Eugenics. Euthenics
+   and Eudemics. Only Men in Lists of Geniuses. Social Need to
+   Learn What Children Are. "Charting Parents." New "Observation
+   Records" for Children. What to Do with the Specially Gifted
+   Child. Genius Universal in Nature. Genius Its Own
+   School-master. Varieties of the Gifted. Questions.
+
+X. THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP                                 205
+
+   The Defective Children. Custodial Care of the Defective.
+   Heredity. Difficulties in Care of Morons. The Colony Plan.
+   Mental Hygiene. Special Rooms in Public Schools. Training the
+   Nervous System. Responsibility of Women in Marriage. The Call
+   for Preventive Work. Questions.
+
+XI. PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS                                    219
+
+   Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son? Distinction
+   Between the Mentally Competent and the Defective in Criminal
+   Classes. Moral Invalids. Rehabilitation of the Competent. The
+   Right Use of Leisure Time. The Moving Picture. The Automobile
+   and Its Influence. Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training
+   of Children. Parental Love for the Black Sheep. Children's
+   Courts. Domestic Relations Courts. Dangerous Rebound from
+   Ancient Family Discipline. Do Modern Youth Need New Community
+   Disciplines? Questions.
+
+XII. THE BROKEN FAMILY                                             233
+
+   The Problems of Divorce. Frequency of Divorce in the United
+   States. Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy. New Standards of
+   Marriage Success. Dangers of Extreme Individualism in
+   Marriage. Free Love Not Admissible. Must Work Toward Desired
+   Permanency in Marriage. Needed Changes in Legal and Social
+   Approach to Divorce. Prohibition of Paid Attorneys in Divorce.
+   Divorce Proceedings Should be Heard in Secret. Earlier and
+   Better Use of the Domestic Relations Court. The Children to be
+   Affected Society's Chief Care. A Uniform or Federal Divorce
+   Law. Education Our Chief Reliance. Helps Toward Family
+   Stability. Shall Society Favor the Remarriage of Divorced
+   Persons? Turning from Compulsory to Attractive Methods of
+   Reform. Questions.
+
+XIII. THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS                                   246
+
+   Changes from Ancient to Modern Forms of Labor. The Old
+   Household a Work-place. Welfare Managers in Modern Times.
+   Child-labor. Increase in Women Wage-earners. Social Pressure
+   on the Individual Worker. Demands of Family Life Should be
+   Considered in Industry and in Labor Legislation. The Code for
+   Women in Industry. Should Adult Women and Children be Listed
+   Together in Labor Laws? Women in War Work. Minimum Wage for
+   Fathers of Families the Vital Need. The Attitude of Women
+   Toward Labor Problems. Necessary Protection of Children and
+   Youth in Labor. Women and the Cost of Living. The Family
+   Demand upon Unmarried Women. Farming and the Farmer's Wife.
+   Domestic Help and Family Life. The Application of Democratic
+   Principles to Life. Women Must be More Democratic. The Social
+   Effect of Trade Unions. Women in Trade Unions. The New
+   Solidarity of Women. Questions.
+
+XIV. THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL                                     269
+
+   New Forms of Education Demanded by Modern Industry. Education
+   a Social Process. The Three Learned Professions. New Calls for
+   Trained Leadership. The Special Education of Girls. Formal
+   School Training of Women New. Modern Training for Social
+   Service. Departments of Household Economics in Colleges.
+   Society Now Based upon Man's Economic Leadership. Women
+   Socially Drafted for Motherhood. Father-office and
+   Mother-office Still Differ. Should the Education of Girls
+   Include Special Attention to Family Claims? Adjustment of
+   Family Service and Vocational Work. Dangers of Specialization
+   in Professional Work. The New Training in Sex-education.
+   Heroes Held Up for Admiration. Moral Training at the Heart of
+   Education. Drill to Avert Economic Tragedies. A Graduated
+   Scale of Virtues. Dr. Lester Ward's Types of Education.
+   Questions.
+
+XV. THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE                                290
+
+   The Socialization of the Modern State. The Interest and Work
+   of Women in This Process of Political Change. Health a Social
+   Enterprise. General and Vocational Training for All. Women's
+   Work in Philanthropy. Culture Aids to the Common Life. Many
+   Languages in One Country. The Children's Bureau. A Women's
+   Lobby at the National Capitol. Women's Interest in Public Life
+   a Social Asset. Social Service in Peace. Problems Voters Must
+   Solve. Confusion Between National and Local Effort.
+   Preferential Voting. Proportional Representation. What Shall
+   Public and What Shall Private Social Service Attempt?
+   Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen. Our Country a
+   Member of the Family of Nations. Vows of Civic Consecration.
+   Questions.
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                       314
+
+
+
+
+THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FAMILY
+
+  "The family is the heart's fatherland; the fatherland is the
+  cradle of humanity."--MAZZINI.
+
+  "The family has two functions; as a smaller group it affords
+  opportunity for eliciting qualities of affection and character
+  which cannot be displayed in a larger group; and in the second
+  place it is a training for future members of the larger group in
+  the qualities of disposition and character which are essential to
+  citizenship. Marriage converts an attachment between man and woman
+  into a deliberate, permanent, responsible, intimate union for a
+  common end of mutual good. Modern society requires that the
+  husband and wife contemplate lifelong companionship, and the
+  affection between husband and wife is enriched by the relation of
+  parents to the children which are their care. The end of the
+  family is not economic profit but mutual aid and the continuance
+  and progress of the race."--PROFESSOR TUFTS, in _Ethics_, by Dewey
+  and Tufts.
+
+  =Social Work and Family Conservation.=--"By whatever name they may
+  be called, the most essential elements of social work are those
+  which seek to conserve the family life; to strengthen or
+  supplement the home; to give children in foster homes or elsewhere
+  the care of which tragic misfortune has deprived them in their
+  natural homes; to provide income necessary in the proper care of
+  their children; to restore broken homes; to discover and, if
+  possible, remove destructive influences which interfere with
+  normal home life and the reasonable discharge of conjugal and
+  parental obligations. The institutions which exist for the benefit
+  of those individuals who have no home or who need care of a kind
+  that cannot well be supplied in the home, only emphasize the
+  importance of conserving family life when its essential elements
+  are present."--EDWARD T. DEVINE.
+
+  "Human nature has achieved the consciousness that existence has an
+  aim. Human life, therefore, is a mission; the mission of reaching
+  that aim, by incessant activity upon the path toward it and
+  perpetual warfare against the obstacles opposed to it."--MAZZINI.
+
+    The Home:
+
+        "For something that abode endued
+        With temple-like repose; an air
+        Of life's kind purposes pursued
+        With ordered freedom, sweet and fair;
+        A tent, pitched in a world not right,
+        It seemed, whose inmates, every one,
+        On tranquil faces bore the light
+        Of duties beautifully done."
+                      --COVENTRY PATMORE.
+
+
+=The Experience of the Past.=--By many experiments, over many
+differing "folk-ways," the modern family has arrived. We name it now
+"monogamic," and mean by the name the union of one man and one woman,
+in aim at least for life, and their children. Whereas once it was the
+rule of a tribe or clan which determined every detail of
+sex-relationship, a rule represented either by the mother or the
+father, it is now an individualistic choice of two adult persons only,
+socially legalized by a required certificate and ceremony. Whereas
+once it was the basis of all social order and mutual aid, it is now
+one of several institutions inherited from the past, and is itself
+subject to the state, which is the chief heir to our social
+inheritance. The family, however, is now, as it has always been, the
+interior, vital, and so far indispensable social relationship,
+beginning, as it does, at first hand the training of each individual
+toward membership in society-at-large. In the past, under the
+mother-rule, the social elements of the family were emphasized, since
+her power was one delegated by the group of which she and her children
+were a part and closely related to peaceful ways and to primitive
+industrial arts. Under the father-rule, the political and legal
+elements of the family were emphasized, since his was an autocratic
+and personal control of wife and children, even of adult sons, and in
+many cases of his own mother, and marked the beginning and worked
+toward the power of the modern state. In all cases, however, it was as
+a representative of the group-ideal and the group-control that the
+parents held sway over the family; and if the family is to persist in
+the future as an institution it will hold its authority over
+individual lives as trustee of society-at-large. Name, line of
+inheritance, rights and duties of one member toward other members and
+to the family group as a whole, must all be determined in the last
+analysis by the "mores" of the people and the time concerned.
+
+=New Ideals Affecting the Family.=--To-day the ideal of equality of
+rights for men and women, and the ideal of ministration to childhood's
+needs, are stronger than the ideal of family control. The social
+demand is, therefore, for standardization of family life and of
+child-care on a high plane of physical, mental, and moral development
+of each individual life rather than for an autocratic representation
+of the power of what Professor James called "the collectivity that
+owns us." Hence certain problems which have never before been clear in
+social consciousness are now arising to enter all debates on family
+stability and family success.
+
+=The Headship of the Father.=--During the middle ages of our
+civilization and for centuries of our later past the headship of the
+family rested securely in the father. Now the ideal of "Two heads in
+council; Two beside the hearth; Two in the tangled business of the
+world" is working toward democratization of the family. This leads
+toward a legal status and an economic adjustment in which the relation
+of husband and wife may be equalized toward each other and toward
+their children. In this new process, which is a part of the general
+movement we call democracy, there are special difficulties of
+modification peculiar to the family relation. The monogamic ideal and
+practice demands permanency, solidarity of interest and unity of
+control both within and without the family circle, at least until all
+the children of a marriage have reached maturity. The ideal of the
+rightful individuation of women, and even of minor children, works
+against that legal solidarity and obvious unity. The old way of
+obtaining these elements of family stability, a method still in vogue
+in many places and still defended by some persons, was to place all
+power of control in the hands of the husband and father, and thus make
+the wife a perpetual minor and leave the children wholly under
+patriarchal bondage. The modern ideal of women as entitled to
+self-ownership and self-control even when married, and the social
+need, just beginning to be understood, for women as for men to fully
+develop their powers and capacities militates against the legal
+headship of the father. To-day there is a demand, growing in
+insistency, that we accept the right of each member of the family
+circle to individual development and work toward its realization.
+There is also the demand that we retain inviolate the social means for
+successful family life. Some do not hesitate to say that to fulfil
+both these demands is not within human power.
+
+=Is It Possible to Democratize the Family?=--The witty writer who
+declares that "the democratization of the family is impossible, since
+the family is by nature an autocracy and ruled by the worst
+disposition in it," is not without endorsers. There are also those,
+more serious in intent, who claim that the family as an inherited
+institution is by virtue of its inmost quality inimical to the
+personal freedom of its members, and hence that the state, which is
+now standardizing child-care, must undertake the practical duties
+involved and leave both parents free to change marital relationship at
+will before or after the birth of children and maintain their separate
+bachelor or spinster freedom.
+
+=Mating and Parenthood.=--This latter view is stated definitely by one
+writer who believes that a new morality will "separate entirely,
+mating from parenthood" in the interest of a more effective social
+arrangement--"mating," or the free union of a man and a woman in
+sex-relationship, to be in that case "solely a private matter with
+which no one but the parties involved have any concern." "Parenthood,"
+on the other hand, having relation, as it must, to society, requires,
+so this writer declares, from either the father or the mother, as
+inclination and capacity indicate, or from both parents if such should
+be the wish of both, a "contract with the state" binding to an
+upbringing of the child in accordance with accepted standards of
+physical, mental, moral, and vocational demands. Such a contract with
+the state in respect to child-care and the training of youth might
+give far better results, be it confessed, than follow the utterly
+ignorant and careless breeding of the young of the human race by those
+on lowest levels of thought and action. Few, however, think such a
+contract would meet all essentials of child-development.
+
+=What Is the Modern Ideal in Child-care?=--What is the ideal of those
+most advanced in knowledge of childhood's needs and most sincere in
+devotion to the welfare and happiness of the young? It is certainly
+not one which ignores or minimizes the influence of the private home
+or one which includes the belief that one parent, however wise or
+good, can do as much for a child as two parents working in harmony
+over a long period of years can accomplish.
+
+Nor can the influence of such a proposed separation of mating and
+parenthood upon the sex-relationship itself be ignored in any proposed
+new ways of living together. Some of the critics of the family, as we
+know it, may put "duty" in quotation marks when dealing with
+sex-relationship in the effort to put "love" on the throne, but
+experience shows that in all the intimate relationships of life some
+stay from without the individual desire is needed to restrain from
+impulsive change and lessen frictional expression of temperamental
+weakness. On reason and a sense of obligation are based all successful
+human arrangements, and these need social support.
+
+=Modern Ideals in Sex-relationship.=--To so separate mating and
+parenthood as to make it the business of no one but the two chiefly
+concerned when or how often such mating became a personal experience,
+and to make it a matter of social indifference whether one or two
+parents contracted with society for the right upbringing of the child
+or children involved (with no troublesome questions asked about either
+parent not in evidence in the contract), would certainly blur the
+social outline of the family, as we know it, to the point of legal
+nullification. There might, indeed, grow up in such an imagined
+condition a form of contract between two persons mating, as well as
+one between parents and state, in respect to parenthood's social
+responsibilities, and where such personal contract was broken redress
+from the courts might be sought and obtained. The effect, however, of
+such a plan as that proposed would inevitably be to leave the nobler,
+the more loving and less selfish of the men and women involved, more
+surely even than is now the case, the victims of the weaker, the more
+grasping, and the more selfish of the twain.
+
+=Ellen Key and Her Gospel.=--Indeed, the high priestess of the gospel
+of freedom from legal bondage in sex-relation, Ellen Key, declares
+that "a higher culture in love can be attained only by correlating
+self-control with love and parental responsibility," a correlation she
+believes would "follow as a consequence when love and parental
+responsibility were made the sole conditions of sex-relations." She
+also says that "in all cases where there is an affinity of souls and
+the sympathy of friendship, love is what it always was and always will
+be, the cooeperation of the father with the mother in the education of
+the children as well as the cooeperation of the mother with the father
+in all great social works." She thus links her ideal of true freedom
+for the choices of love with social obligations and hence again with
+what is best in inherited family life.
+
+In addition, however, to the claim that love should be freed from
+legal restraints in the interest of self-expression and
+self-development (whether or not from Ellen Key's high standpoint of
+parental responsibility) we have another attack upon the legal
+autonomy of the family, as we know it, in the demand of some radical
+feminists that "illegitimacy should be abolished."
+
+=What is Meant by This Demand?=--A crusade against all sex-association
+that may result in children born out of wedlock is understandable but
+is surely not the counsel of perfection in sex-control intended by
+those making this demand. What is meant seems rather that we should
+take ground against any legal distinction between the status of
+children born within and those born outside of legal marriage. What
+would that be likely to mean in respect to the monogamic family? The
+hard conditions attaching to both unmarried motherhood and unfathered
+childhood, often in the past wholly cruel and unsocial, have been much
+ameliorated during the last fifty years and largely through the
+efforts of those who held firmly to the value of legal marriage and
+the accepted family system in general. Laws have been passed and
+firmly executed to find the shirking father and bring him to marriage
+with the woman involved; or if such marriage is not possible or
+feasible to compel him to make financial contribution toward the
+support and education of the child.
+
+=The Legitimation of Children Born Out of Wedlock.=--If marriage
+occurs, then the child otherwise illegitimate may come within the
+legal family through appropriate laws which the most conservative now
+advocate. In such cases the belated acceptance within the family bond
+does not count seriously against the child. If marriage does not
+occur, and there are many cases of irregular sex-relationship where
+that is not the right solution of the problems involved in
+illegitimacy, then the unmarried mother is helped to establish herself
+with her child where cruel stigma and useless curiosity may be best
+avoided. To aid in her protection she is encouraged by many agencies
+and persons to take the title of "Mrs.," since that is a conventional
+term at best and may be given according to age (as in the older
+custom) or come to attach itself to motherhood as justly as to
+wifehood. More and more society is reaching out through law and wise
+philanthropy to fasten mutual responsibility for child-care and
+nurture upon both parents even where they are not legally married.
+This movement must go on until the handicap of the child born out of
+wedlock is reduced to its lowest possible terms.[1]
+
+=Philanthropic Tendencies Respect Legal Marriage.=--These tendencies,
+however, are not in the direction, intentionally at least, of making
+legal condition and status in respect to name, inheritance of family
+property from a father whose parental relationship is not legally
+established, and public recognition of parenthood, identical in the
+case of children born within and without the legal family circle. Is
+such an identical status and condition desirable? If so, in what way
+could this goal be accomplished?
+
+If men and women become fathers and mothers without benefit of clergy
+or state license and later marry, then the children born before and
+those born after the wedding ceremony may, usually do, and always
+should, become one flock. In many countries where legal marriage is
+difficult because of expense involved or distance from officials, such
+cases often occur and with no apparent social harm where there is real
+affection and true loyalty between the men and women involved. Many
+illegitimate conceptions are similarly taken care of by the enforced
+or assisted marriage of the parties concerned just before the birth of
+the child. In many cases, however, in our own country doubtless the
+great majority, the father concerned has an illicit connection with
+some girl quite outside his own social circle and later, as in the
+famous "Kallikak" case, marries a woman of his own class and has a
+family of recognized children. What would be advised in such a case by
+those advocating the legal abolition of illegitimacy? Should a
+searching investigation of the whole previous life of every
+prospective bridegroom be made, and wherever a previous relationship
+can be found which involves parenthood a legal prohibition work
+automatically to prevent a second relationship? This seems to be the
+plan proposed by Mrs. Edith Houghton Hooker in her recent book, _The
+Laws of Sex_, as in her program of "measures designed to minimize
+extra-marital sex relationships and to check the commercialization of
+vice," she lays down the principle "the common parentage of an
+illegitimate child to constitute marriage or if either of the parents
+was previously married, bigamy." This would, of course, carry out her
+next item of the social program, namely, "place the illegitimate child
+on the same plane as the legitimate," but that plane would be a very
+low one in the cases that would legally become those of bigamy. In the
+case of very unequal partners in an illicit sex-relationship, a legal
+union that was based on the fact of equal responsibility for a child
+born out of wedlock, and made a legal necessity only because of that
+mutual relationship, could surely be good neither for the men and
+women involved nor for any child or children thus legitimatized by
+force of arms, as it were.
+
+=Illicit Unions of Men and Women in Divergent Social Position.=--On
+the other hand, in cases where the illegitimate parenthood is the
+fruit of a union between a man of a high and a woman or girl of a very
+low grade of intelligence and of social position a legal prohibition
+which would work automatically to prevent any later and legal marriage
+with a woman of higher grade (because of the existence of a child by
+the extra-marital relation) would not be wholly satisfactory.
+Although such a regulation would prevent any legitimate children being
+born of that father, it would not necessarily legitimatize the child
+or children of the first relation. The social value of either of these
+plans is extremely doubtful.
+
+=Shall We Return to Polygamy?=--Again, in such cases as have been
+indicated, should the first mother be ignored and the child or
+children of the irregular union be adopted into the legal home of the
+father and added to the registered children of the second mother? Some
+such plan has been adopted in some countries and at certain periods of
+family development. Such a course undertaken now, however, in modern
+conditions would, in addition to the possible suffering of the adopted
+children, be most unjust to the unmarried mother. Or, again, would it
+be advised that the first mother with her child or children be
+accepted as a legal part of the home in which the second mother is
+legally installed? That would be a frank return to polygamy in cases
+where there have been irregular pre-marital relations outside of the
+monogamic bond. Or do all those who advocate the abolition of
+illegitimacy take the ground, which some of them definitely do, that
+the monogamic family is obsolete and that the state in its corporate
+capacity should take full charge of all children? Or, when the demand
+is sifted to its ultimate elements, is it merely that the unjust
+conditions attending the lives of children born out of wedlock must be
+ameliorated by a larger charity of feeling, a better understanding of
+human weakness and the effect of bad social conditions, and the
+constant effort to give all children as nearly equal chance at the
+best things of life as can be made possible by social feeling and wise
+social care?
+
+=All Children Entitled to Best Development Possible.=--If the latter
+is all that is meant, the phrase the "abolition of illegitimacy" is
+unfortunate and the real agreement among philanthropists, educators
+and all right-thinking people on the just claim of all children
+(however they may chance to arrive on this troubled planet) to the
+best development possible, should be emphasized in the slogan. It is
+well to remember that only a minority of children in any country, and
+in many countries a very small minority, are involved directly in this
+problem of the right treatment of children born outside the legal
+family. It would seem the part of social wisdom, therefore, in this,
+as in all other matters of social control, to ask ourselves the
+question, What rule on the whole gives the best condition for the
+largest number of persons?--and on the answer to that question base
+our law and custom, then add considerate treatment for the minority
+who must in the nature of things have some handicap if the rule is
+obeyed by the majority.
+
+=The Work of the Children's Bureau.=--To lessen this handicap, the
+Federal Children's Bureau in Washington, D.C., began in 1915 an
+inquiry into illegitimacy as a child welfare problem, causing studies
+to be made of laws in different States of the Union. The results of
+this study were published in 1919 in Bureau Publication No. 42. In
+1920 conferences were held under the auspices of the Bureau to
+consider standards of protection which might be embodied in laws. A
+Committee appointed to draft suggestions arrived at and to recommend
+the same made a Report, which is published in Bureau Publication No.
+77.
+
+The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws on
+request formed a Committee on Status and Protection of Illegitimate
+Children which reported at length to the Thirty-first Annual Meeting
+of that body in August, 1921. This report formed the basis of
+discussion by legal experts, and in the meeting at San Francisco of
+recent date a revised program for "Uniform State Legislation for
+Children Born Out of Wedlock" was accepted and recommended. The title
+used is itself an advance upon old ideas.
+
+=The Suggested Uniform Law.=--It is less harsh to speak of "those born
+out of wedlock" than of the "illegitimate." Moreover, the
+recommendations include a suggestion that in future in all reference
+in legal papers or official notices to a child born out of wedlock it
+"shall be sufficient for all purposes to refer to the mother as the
+parent having the sole custody of the child or to the child as being
+in the sole custody of the mother, no explicit reference being made to
+illegitimacy except in birth certificates or records of judicial
+proceedings in which the question of birth out of wedlock is at
+issue." The general law in the States of our Union legitimatizes a
+child born out of wedlock by the subsequent inter-marriage of the
+parents. This makes it easy for men and women to repair an injury if
+they can marry after the birth of their child. In any case the
+recommendations for uniform State laws make it clear that the tendency
+is strong to bring legal pressure to bear upon the father of a child
+by an unwedded mother to pay the expenses of her confinement, to
+support the child under the laws requiring "support of poor relatives"
+or under statutes specifically obligating recognition of parental
+responsibility outside the marriage bond; and this obligation, it is
+held, should continue in recognition and enforcement until the child
+is sixteen years of age.
+
+Although there is strong demand on the part of many to give the child
+born out of wedlock the "right to inherit from the father's estate
+even though not legitimated," the Committee of the Commissioners on
+Uniform State Laws do not so recommend. Their statement concerning
+Liability of the Father's Estate is as follows: "The obligation of the
+father where his paternity has been judicially established in his
+lifetime or has been acknowledged by him in writing or by the part
+performance of his obligations is enforceable against his estate in
+such an amount as the court may determine, having regard to the age of
+the child, the ability of the mother to support it, the amount of
+property left by the father, the number, age, and financial condition
+of the lawful issue, if any, and the rights of the widow, if any."
+
+To this writer this covers the just obligation if rightly administered
+and by leaving still a distinction in law between the rights of
+children born within and those born outside the marriage bond helps to
+preserve the interests of the majority of children.
+
+In any case the preservation of such distinctions as are left in the
+milder and more humane laws advocated should help in making men and
+women anxious to give all the children for which they may be
+responsible a legal right to both parents by due process of marriage.
+
+=Have Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood?=--It is not alone
+philanthropic interest in the welfare of a class of children now
+handicapped by birth outside of legal family bonds, that has issued
+the call to "abolish illegitimacy." The slogan is also an expression
+of a new demand that women fit to bear and rear children and deeply
+desiring that personal experience and the social obligation which it
+implies, should be given a social right to become mothers whether or
+not the fitting permanent mate be found for a life-union under the
+law. This demand is reaching a critical poignancy in those countries
+in which the Great War has added to a long-increasing "surplus of
+women" an astounding total of millions of women fit to marry whose
+rightful mates are buried on the fields of conflict. Shall these
+women, it is asked, be denied motherhood as well as wifehood? Shall
+the state lose the children these women, child-loving and noble and
+wise, might bear to help make good the horrible losses that war has
+entailed?
+
+Moreover, women everywhere are discerning the shallow inconsistency
+between the ideal so long preached of motherhood as woman's chief if
+not her only contribution to normal life and genuine social usefulness
+and the abnormal economic conditions and double ethical standards
+which doom so many women to single life. Still deeper in the hearts of
+women, now for the first time free to give voice to inner questionings
+of the inherited organization of society which has bound them to
+conventions written solely by men in statute and custom, rises the
+query, Is the present fashion of courtship and wedding favorable for
+installing fit women as mothers or keeping to single life those least
+capable of that social function?
+
+=Ellen Key's Estimate of Motherhood.=--Ellen Key expresses this
+feeling that fitness for a task so tremendous as parenthood is more
+important than any mechanism by which parenthood is secured when she
+says, "It is solely from one moral point of view that motherhood
+without marriage, as well as the right of free divorce, must be
+judged. Irresponsible motherhood is always sin with or without
+marriage; responsible motherhood is always sacred with or without
+marriage." And again she says, "The one necessary thing is to make
+ever greater demands upon the men and women who take to themselves the
+right to give humanity new beings." Ellen Key has also much to say
+about the superior value of what women can do in and through their
+race-service as mothers to anything they can do outside of that
+office, except perhaps as teachers helping mothers. Her feeling on
+this matter is echoed by not a few women who ask for the social right
+to motherhood even when denied or not desiring ordinary family life.
+She declares that "It is an indisputable fact that if the majority of
+women no longer had the calm and repose to abide at the source of life
+but wanted to navigate all the seas with men, the sex contrasts would
+resolve themselves not into harmony but into monotony. Until women
+come to realize this it must still be insisted that the gain to
+society is nothing if millions of women do the work that men could do
+better and evade or fulfil poorly the greater tasks of life and
+happiness, the creation of men and the creation of souls." To fulfil
+these tasks properly she insists that women require the same human
+rights as men but they should use their new power of choice "in the
+field of life, in those provinces in which imponderable values are
+created, values that cannot be reduced to figures and yet are the sole
+values capable of transforming humanity; for it is not utilities but
+complete human beings that elevate life." The same feeling that she
+expresses animates many women who desire fit women to be mothers, even
+if unmarried, at whatever cost to old forms of family autonomy.
+
+=Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work Inerrantly.=--Certainly no one can
+contend that monogamic marriage has worked inerrantly to give women
+who are "born mothers" a chance for their natural career, or to keep
+from physical motherhood within legal marriage all the women unfit for
+the spiritual tasks of parenthood. It is certain that in present
+conditions many women most needed for the transmission of both
+physical and social inheritance in finest form are side-tracked from
+the central roadway of life, and the race suffers thereby.
+
+Any custom, however, which should make it a negligible matter whether
+or not a permanent "houseband" were enlisted with a "housewife" in
+building a home in which to place a child desired must tend toward a
+reversion, not an advance, in social organization. Or so it seems to
+many students of the evolution of the family.
+
+The mother and child made the first social grouping in which love and
+trust could work. The father, as we know him, is a later asset of
+social progress. He has taken into the home many things we want now to
+get rid of, as, for example, a social tendency toward masculine
+monopolies. His genius for organization in political and economic
+fields has in many ways worked against the right alignment of men and
+women in family relations. But can we do without the father
+altogether, save for a brief hour of service as a "biologic
+necessity"? Still more, can we have for mothers that "calm and repose"
+which Ellen Key bespeaks for them unless they have fathers of
+efficiency and character to help them in their peculiar task of
+life-creation? Is not the alternative to the father's partnership in
+family life the creation of a class of "state mothers" or the social
+endowment of all mothers by public grant?
+
+=New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support.=--In point of fact,
+all the demands for new freedom in respect to motherhood rest
+primarily upon the recognition by society-at-large of a claim upon it,
+financial as well as spiritual, for the benefit of all who are allowed
+to be mothers, in right of their own fitness for the function. And
+this recognition of the social value of mothers is emphasized by many
+who hold firmly to the monogamic family. It is not clear that any
+sweeping changes away from the private family should be made to meet a
+condition that may be changed by less drastic means.
+
+=Local Discrepancies in Numbers of Men and of Women.=--Fit men and
+women are not always together in the same place. To have more men in a
+given locality than can possibly have wives or more women than can
+possibly marry under the monogamic system is to derange its workings.
+Is it conceivable that we shall always be so stupid and clumsy in
+economic adjustment that such conditions shall continue, now that we
+are able to be more easily mobile and flexible every decade? The mere
+mechanical maladjustment caused by serious discrepancies in numbers of
+the two sexes; in cities and in older countries more women, in
+manufacture and pioneer agriculture more men; certainly creates
+serious conditions. Social engineering is needed for remedy. We may
+not, as so long ago was done in Virginia, transport hundreds of
+"attractive damsels" from crowded towns, where women most do
+congregate, to a new country, to be eagerly accepted wives on landing
+from the ships. We are told, however, that many girls are being
+assisted to emigrate from England to places where their service is
+needed and where there are so many surplus men that they do marry in
+short order. We shall find that nature and economic adjustments will
+unite to more and more even up the two sides of life. It is a
+sinister condition of modern life that forbids early marriage to so
+many men and all chance of suitable marriage to so many women who
+really desire that relationship with all their hearts. We must go
+about its remedy with open eyes, and from frankly accepted reasons,
+for the sake of better family conditions.
+
+=The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life.=--There is,
+however, another condition, many-sided and complex, often operating
+upon the persons most involved unconsciously and seldom treated with
+clarity or frankness, which works against the family as an
+institution. This condition is the increasing tendency of many of the
+ablest women to marry very late or to refuse to marry at all. These
+are not the women who feel defrauded that they are not mothers in
+their own person, still less that life has cheated them in not
+furnishing a husband. They are usually those who in youth began some
+specialized form of vocational service which holds their interest and
+leads toward pecuniary profit and social recognition.
+
+They are the modern spinsters, happy and busy, who often feed their
+motherly instincts by caring for other people's children and feel a
+sense of relief that it is a voluntary service, which they may rightly
+indulge in vacations, and not a bond that never releases from duty.
+They are the maiden aunts who spend affection and money upon the
+families of their relatives; who help their younger brothers and
+sisters through college; who take care of the aged and invalid in the
+family connection, and act often as stay and prop to all the weaker
+and more burdened of their kin. What many families would do without
+this type of unmarried woman is hard to tell. They are often grateful
+for their release from wearing domestic cares and enjoy their sense of
+power in general serviceableness to those they love while at the same
+time appreciating with keen satisfaction their own joy of
+craftsmanship in some chosen profession. Except for a brief hour now
+and then, when sister has a new baby or brother takes a new wife, they
+feel anything but troubled over their condition of single blessedness
+until, perhaps, a premonition of lonely old age stirs regret.
+
+=The Demand of Eugenists.=--From the point of view of the eugenists,
+who demand more fecundity on the higher and less on the lower levels
+of life, one of the most sinister of all influences inimical to family
+life is this large and increasing band of superior and happy single
+women who are not even discontented and make no demand for any closer
+touch with life than is now given them. If it is bad for the family
+for a large number of women unable to find suitable permanent mates to
+be so eager for motherhood that they claim social permission for that
+public service whatever their marital position, it may be still worse
+for the family for a large number of highly superior women to cease to
+care greatly for intimate comradeship with men or for the actual
+experience of motherhood. Many women working and living in solitary
+fashion until too old to risk the chances of marriage, and able to
+find highest comradeship and largest comfort in other women's
+companionship, have been so held by family burdens in youth that this
+result has been inevitable. Society has, therefore, a task to prevent
+the weight of past generations, falling now so heavily upon some young
+men and upon far more young women, from operating against the
+well-being of the generations to come. We should make it our social
+business to share more justly the burdens due to old age and chronic
+invalidism.
+
+=Women Can Not be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage.=--It is too late
+in the day to pass laws forbidding women from gaining economic freedom
+and social power in professional careers so that all the best of them
+shall again be obliged to marry as a "means of support." Few persons
+would do this if they could. But we can and should make haste to bring
+together, as the State Universities of our country do so helpfully,
+those who should be the fathers and mothers of the future, in that
+period of life when love will take chances for the future.
+"Propinquity," the old adage declares, is the "best incentive to
+courtship," and it should be made to work more effectively.
+
+In our own country, eugenists may be comforted to learn, it is still
+fashionable to marry, even in the best families. We are told by our
+census that more people marry in the thousand and marry young in the
+United States than in other countries.[2] And although it may be
+claimed that the older Americans and the finest types do not reproduce
+so freely as social well-being requires, there is much hope that
+movements of population, so much freer here than elsewhere among the
+educated and competent, will lead to better sex-adjustments and to the
+absorbing of more first-class women in family life.
+
+=A Few Believe in a "Third Sex."=--There are those, however, although
+but a few, who do not view with alarm the modern increase of unmarried
+women of types most needed for motherhood. These believe that in the
+present time, and perhaps in a long future, our complex social needs
+cannot be met by holding the best blood and breeding within the family
+bond, but that there must be a reserve of celibates, a few men and
+many women, to carry on the school and to work for social amelioration
+and social progress. This point of view, which has been sometimes
+characterized as "defense of a third sex," is based on two premises:
+namely, first, that all of a married woman's time and strength
+throughout her whole adult life must go into strictly family service
+in order for the family to be maintained; and, second, that those men
+and women who specialize in some vocation in such extreme degree that
+they cannot marry and have children are thereby, by reason of that
+celibate concentration, better able to function socially in their
+chosen work. It is the object of this book to disprove both these
+assumptions.
+
+=Most Social Students Advocate Marriage.=--Celibate concentration upon
+a specific task, however valuable that task may be, is open, we
+contend, to serious social dangers, as history amply proves. And
+family life has now such varied and efficient aids from commerce,
+manufacture, educational provisions in school and recreation centres,
+in summer camps and special organizations of youthful energy toward
+social serviceableness, that men and women can marry and rear
+families, if they really desire so to do, more easily than ever
+before, provided they are willing to pay the price of simplicity in
+the home and in individual mastery of the technic of new ways of
+living. What is needed for the best development of the family under
+modern conditions is not more celibates, men and women of high ability
+and noble consecration to undertake wholesale service in its behalf,
+but rather that more of the best and the best-balanced men and women
+be absorbed, to necessary degree, and at the right period of life, in
+the task of actual transmission of their quality and tendency through
+the living tissues of the social organism in the vital process of
+parenthood. What is needed to secure that result is not only a new
+ideal of social obligation but also, and definitely, such skill in
+economic and domestic adjustments as will more and more leave a margin
+of strength and energy for a chosen vocation not wholly mortgaged to
+family uses, in the case of women as of men. It is quite time that
+some of the rightly honored "maiden aunts of society," as our leading
+spinsters have been called, used some of their wisest thought and
+their most self-sacrificing service toward securing such economic and
+domestic adjustments as will work toward the diminution of their own
+kind!
+
+Again it must be insisted that what society-at-large now needs most is
+not celibates, however wise and good, working along one line, without
+close touch with the main experiences of birth and death and common
+social relationship, but rather the deepening and broadening of common
+human relations through the reaction of the wise and good upon all the
+fundamental ties that bind the race and the generations together. The
+loss to society of those who might have been fathers and mothers and
+chose to be so devoted to religious orders as to stand apart from
+their race-life is an admitted calamity in the view of most people who
+study mediaeval history.
+
+=Dangers of Extreme Specialization.=--Moreover, the tendency now in
+all departments of industry and professional service is toward a
+specialization which often defeats its own end and lessens rather than
+increases the usefulness of its own department. "We want not workers,"
+says Emerson, "but men working." We want not specialists in the
+extreme sense but all-round students devoting themselves to one sphere
+of research or activity with a constant sense of its relation to all
+other spheres of thought and action. Particularly in social service we
+want not so much those who in early life specialize in one or another
+form of social pathology or social therapeutics but rather those
+mature and rounded in personal experience who elect some particular
+service with full realization of its place in the network of common
+human relationship. Especially is this true of all social work which
+deals directly with individuals.
+
+The higher development of the family and the wider range of social
+service, therefore, alike, demand that a much greater proportion of
+the moral and intellectual elite of the race pay their debt to the
+generations through the family.
+
+=Industrial Exploitation of Childhood and Youth.=--There is another
+condition of modern life which must be noted as inimical to the
+stability and the efficiency of the family, a condition which works
+from the bottom upward through the lower levels of society as others
+which have been noted work from the top down through the higher
+levels. It is the condition which leads toward the misuse of young
+girls in wage-earning tasks. There is a difference of opinion among
+the wisest in regard to the social usefulness of forms of protective
+labor legislation for adult women which are not shared by men. There
+can be none in respect to the social harm of using the vitality, the
+charm, the strength, the happiness of minors, especially of potential
+mothers, to carry on the processes of machine-dominated systems of
+manufacture and business. It takes so little physical strength or
+mental power to become a cog in these rapidly revolving wheels. It
+means such a waste to thus use the years of youth, meant for education
+and development and meant to attract toward successful family life
+rather than away from it.
+
+The wrong and injustice of child-labor is equal for both sexes and no
+law can be too stringent or too severely enforced against it. The
+social waste of using youth exclusively in wage-earning pursuits can
+easily be proved, in the case of girls, to extend to years older than
+in the case of boys. The family cannot be maintained in stable
+condition, and certainly can not progress in social value, unless the
+majority of young girls are given the right attitude toward it and
+time to prepare for its opportunities and responsibilities. If, as is
+generally now believed, the legal majority and voting age for boys and
+girls should be the same, namely, twenty-one years, then the girls, as
+potential mothers, must have a distinct and specialized protection up
+to that legal majority from all that harms health, prevents
+safeguarded recreation, or turns life-currents away from the home to
+the factory. The death-rate of babies when mothers work in factories
+or shops with no provision for special rest is one testimony to the
+social improvidence of our present industrial use of older women. The
+life-long invalidism of many women, the childlessness of multitudes,
+the statistics of home conditions revealed by Children's Courts
+furnish testimony of like character. The unknown toll of loss of
+personal aptitude for family life leading to broken homes, or to
+hopeless struggles against invasions by poverty of the right of common
+men and women to a home, are proof positive that a change in economic
+conditions is demanded in the interest of family life.
+
+=Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils.=--These social evils
+connected with child-labor and the neglect in the industrial world of
+youth and its needs are not to be mended by helps to individuals
+alone. More radical measures are required for the protection of
+society's most precious asset, the health, happiness and leisure of
+all its children.
+
+"Education," says the ancient sage, "is the ladder that every child
+must climb in order to become all that he is meant to become; and
+therefore children are made unfit for other employments in order that
+they may have leisure to learn." To this may be added, the type of
+education that fits the average girl for high usefulness as a
+housemother is an absolute need if the average home life is to be made
+a centre of freedom and of happiness. Those, therefore, who are
+working against child-labor and against the unrestricted use of
+mothers of young children and of potential mothers, in wage-earning
+industry, are working directly, and with great power, for the
+preservation and stability of the family. Those also who are working
+through the formal education of the schools for the insertion of study
+and practice along lines of home-making are making a complementary and
+valuable contribution toward the inner unity and the outer success of
+the family.
+
+=The Attack upon the Family by Reactionaries.=--One more and most
+important attack upon the family as it exists to-day must be noted in
+this list of elements in modern society which work against this
+inherited institution. It is an attack which, however mistaken, is
+ostensibly, and often honestly in intent, a movement for the
+protection and improvement of the family order. It is the effort to
+turn the history of that institution back upon itself and make the
+family again, as in the past, a legal unity with one representative,
+the husband and father, through whom alone the wife and children have
+distinct relationship to society-at-large. It is an effort to return
+to mediaeval thought and practice and to reaffirm in legal outline the
+headship of the husband and father, the permanent minority of the wife
+and mother, and the complete subordination of the children. It is even
+an effort to rescind such laws as have given married women independent
+contract-power and property rights, the equal guardianship of their
+children, the full use of educational provisions, and individual
+relationship to the state through the franchise. Voices are not
+wanting to insist that only through a return to this old domestic
+order of kingship of the man can the family be preserved.
+
+A recent book claiming intellectual authority and endorsed by many men
+in high positions states this opinion clearly, and seeks to strengthen
+it by the use of scientific half-truths used not scientifically but as
+a support for a metaphysical theory of masculine and feminine quality.
+Every step that has been taken from the male despotism within marriage
+and parenthood has met such appeals to stay the progress of democracy
+toward the hearth-stone lest the family order be wholly destroyed.
+Most people, however, believe that the steps which have been taken
+away from that family despotism are too many to be retraced. Women
+will not be put back into perpetual legal minority when once they have
+become adults under the law. They will not consent to lose property
+rights and the power of guardianship over their own children. They
+will not consent to their own disfranchisement or to the loss of
+opportunities of education and of economic independence. It is as
+futile as it is stupid to expect that in this matter history will go
+backward. To oppose measures already accomplished which are in the
+direction of democratic adjustment of social relations, even by those
+who think certain measures "a reform against nature," is not only idle
+in effect but shows that the opposer is out of touch with "whatsoever
+forces draw the ages on."
+
+There are many elements in the restlessness of a period too rapidly
+changing to be always sure of its ground that needlessly confuse the
+issues of family obligation and personal loyalty to accepted tasks.
+There are many tendencies toward extreme individualism which need
+balancing by clearer ideals of social serviceableness. Especially is
+this true in the case of women somewhat intoxicated by the belated
+freedom and power which came to them after too prolonged a struggle
+against inherited bonds. There are many economic and educational
+requirements yet to be met in order to protect and maintain the
+accepted ideal of monogamic marriage. But of all the ideas inimical to
+the family in our modern life, the demand for its return to
+aristocratic and outgrown forms is the most absurd and the most
+harmful. All history shows that those who try to put a law, a
+political system, an economic method, a rule of morality, or a
+religious ideal back into a form discarded by the majority of those
+who constitute the ethical and intellectual elite directly work toward
+the chaos of revolution. To try to force the family ideal or its legal
+bond or social outline back into the patriarchal form is to do the
+utmost possible to bring on a catastrophic struggle between the new
+and the old. The evil wrought by such reactionary teaching is in the
+exact ratio of its power of influence. Whatever we may try to do, as
+balance, through evolutionary methods at points where changes in form
+have not been as yet made safe and sane by required adjustments of the
+individual life to the new order, we should make haste to attempt. No
+person, however, who is in actual touch with the movement of social
+progress can hope to turn any great democratic tendency back upon
+itself and "make that which hath been as if it were not." No truly
+just person will wish to do so.
+
+=The Prevalence of Divorce.=--Many urge reactionary attitudes toward
+present family ideals and practice because of the divorce problem. The
+omission of this from the list of causes for the modern instability of
+the family and for its too frequent lack of success may have been
+already noted and condemned by the reader of these pages. The fact of
+divorces, however, whether they be many or few, is to the writer a
+symptom, not a cause, the legal expression of a social disease, not
+the disease itself. Bad diagnosis, or inadequate treatment on the
+basis of a symptom, may increase the disease; and the facts concerning
+divorce are of so serious a nature that a separate chapter has been
+assigned to them under the heading: The Broken Family. The prevalence
+of divorce, however, it must here be said, demonstrably proves two
+things--one that men and women now feel themselves at moral and social
+liberty to seek divorce when longer living together seems to them
+intolerable, and that women are using their new freedom and economic
+independence to make marriage conditions more to their liking. They
+are setting a standard respecting desirable husbands, not always
+wisely, often selfishly, but in the long run and large way to ends of
+greater equality of demand in the marriage relation. The tendency on
+the whole is toward a higher conception of what marriage should be and
+what it should do for both parties in the bond. The statistics of
+illegitimacy, of commercialized prostitution, of venereal disease, of
+infant mortality, of early death or life-long invalidism of wives and
+mothers, of marital unhappiness and parental neglect which are found
+by honest investigation in states and nations in which no divorce is
+allowed do not lead to the belief that legal permanence of the
+marriage bond secures socially helpful family life. On the contrary,
+such facts already show that divorce in the civilization we have
+inherited comes as a result of bad conditions which worked infinite
+harm before divorces could be obtained.
+
+=Old Institutions Need New Sanctions.=--We must now ask of any laws
+concerning any institution not what did ancient "folk-ways" ordain but
+what do modern conditions require? No form of human association,
+however old and whatever its contribution to the social inheritance,
+but is on trial to-day before all free minds. That trial must be
+openly conducted. No "secret diplomacy" to reinstate old ideals or
+laws against the common belief; no "boring from within" to propagate
+new schemes the object of which is to gratify personal wish without
+regard to public good; but "open covenants" with the future "openly
+arrived at" in an ethically consecrated present. What shall be our
+guide in such a free and frank consideration of the present and the
+future of the family?
+
+=The Monogamic Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness.=--In the
+first place, one must accept the fact that it is presumptive evidence
+of the continued worth and value of any inherited institution if it
+can be proved that it has served vital social needs which still
+operate and that no other existing institution is able or ready to
+take its place for the special social service which it was designed to
+render. To the present writer it seems clear that the monogamic family
+holds its title clear to social preservation on both these points. The
+family preceded individualistic marriage as we know it and was
+developed for the purpose of giving to oncoming generations a share in
+the race-life, whatever the ideals concerning that race-life may have
+been at any period of social order. Even in its present undeveloped
+form, with its cramping limitations of past autocracy and with its
+crude attempts at an as yet half-understood democracy, we may well
+count the private monogamic family as a priceless inheritance and work
+toward its better organization and larger service to social life. No
+other institution yet developed has shown in history or now shows in
+present life a worthy substitute for its functioning in child-care and
+child-development. Many also believe that no form of sex-association
+secures such possibilities of moral discipline and personal
+satisfaction as does the guarded relationship of monogamic marriage.
+
+=The Inherited Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments.=--There
+are, therefore, no reasons for welcoming the decline of the private
+family. There are many that demand imperatively some adjustments in
+inner comradeship and in mechanical arrangements surrounding the
+household, in order to hold firm its spiritual values during changes
+in social conditions. How far these changes of detail may go or what
+will be the end of some present clearly outlined tendencies no one can
+prophesy. The duty of the hour is, however, to set this treasure of
+social inheritance in a clear light; to show its actual and potential
+social value as at present perceived; and to try by all simple
+measures open to our intelligence to aid in its evolution toward a
+more perfect expression of the love of man and woman each for the
+other and of the protection and care of both for the children of that
+love. The basic test of all proposed changes in any inherited
+institution is from henceforward, we must believe, that which inheres
+in the spiritual essence of democracy. What is that essence of
+democracy which must be applied as test within the family, as within
+the state and within the industrial order? It is the fundamental
+belief in the worth and dignity of every human being and the equal
+right of each and all to personality. No man, as in the older days,
+must be obliged to be husband and father, but may choose, if he deems
+it essential to his own being, to remain in a solitary path outside
+the current of the generations. No woman must be obliged to live
+solely to serve a family. She, too, has right to self-development in
+some chosen way. No married couple must be forced to add to the
+children already here; they may justly be protected in living and
+working together in some comradeship that has no family limitations
+save those of mutual loyalty and mutual service. No child is to be
+justly held so much under family control as to have his nature stifled
+or warped, and no child shall be made a pecuniary asset to the family
+regardless of his own needs. No family autonomy is henceforth to be
+secured by fiat of law enthroning one "head" as the legal despot or
+economic ruler. The family must be democratized in that sense in which
+each individual within its bond shall be sustained in seeking and in
+maintaining the conditions of personality. No one human being to live
+solely for others' service or to have his or her value estimated in
+terms of contribution to other lives, but all to seek the utmost
+perfection of individual life as a contribution to the common life;
+this is the democratic ideal.
+
+=The Family as an Aid to Spiritual Democracy.=--There seems to be no
+other inherited institution in which this spiritual essence of
+democracy can be so clearly and so well realized as it may be and
+to-day often is in the private monogamic family. The permanent and
+successful family offers a unique centre of personal development at
+the heart of all other social groups. Founded as it is in selective
+affection, and in aim at least permanently secure, it offers a refuge
+in every distress and a help in every trouble of each of its members.
+There was never a time when such a mutual resistance of a small and
+intimate group to the complex pressure of the world upon each
+individual life was more sorely needed. The confusing social currents
+of this changing era set free from ancient moorings many who can find
+no clear chart for newer voyaging in thought and action. These need
+what the family more than any other inherited institution can still
+give--something of the simplicity of the blood bond and something of
+the strength of clan membership, and more of the partial affection
+which sets each personality in its best light and gives each a chance
+to better its own world achievement in the appreciation of its
+dearest.
+
+=The Family the Nursery of Personality.=--The family in this sense of
+comforting and developing the individual nature has as yet no rival.
+Says Browning, "Every man has two soul sides--one to face the world
+with and one to show a woman when he loves her." There are those who
+blame the family relationship for its exclusiveness and partiality,
+and there are countless instances where the ego is so extended into
+the blood group that selfish disregard of all others becomes a mark of
+family affection. Yet is it profoundly true that just as the baby
+needs some one to whom its little life is all-important in order to
+gain strength of will to achieve its difficult beginnings of
+consciousness, so all of us need a small group in which our well-being
+and our happiness are of greater concern than those of any one person
+can be to all the world of persons. No truly enlightened person
+believes that he or she is as wise or as good as the best friend
+thinks; and no truly enlightened person believes that the affection of
+one's family is a just gauge of the value of one's life to the world.
+We all need, however, and children particularly need, some inner
+circle of love which comes to us by virtue simply of our being, to
+help us when we make excursions of moral and affectional adventure in
+the world outside, in a world in which we are valued only for what we
+can achieve.
+
+=Life, Not Theory About Life, Teaches Us.=--Let no one believe,
+however, that any theory about or claim for the family really
+indicates its value. We live before we can interpret our life, and
+what is already achieved by those in the forward ranks shows what all
+may yet become. We are not left to chance or imagination or to
+argument or affirmation of principles to visualize the family as it is
+or as it may be. We may look about us and see what it is and can do
+for men and women. Few, perhaps, are standing on the heights of their
+own being when they build the family altar. Yet in the love and
+sacrifice of plain and unknown fathers who cheerfully toil for their
+loved ones, in the patient endurance of simple-hearted mothers who
+give so much of their lives in ready service to husband and family, in
+the frolic-joy and eager activity of ordinary children whose only
+dower is the free and happy service of their parents, is the fruit and
+the promise of the human family.
+
+=The Moral Elite in the Modern Family.=--Above all, we have to-day a
+growing number who live in the spirit of a true marriage and a noble
+cradle of infancy and show by actual example what the family is meant
+to be. These prophesy a marriage that demands each of the other that
+a perfect life shall perfect their love. These give a new pattern and
+type of parenthood, woven of the tears and joy, the aspiration and the
+service of those who call children from the storehouse of universal
+life, not in response to careless passion but in the solemn joy of
+creative purpose. These are the men and women who shall yet build from
+the home as the heart's centre, a wiser school, a more righteous
+state, a juster industry, and a purer worship of the ideal.
+
+It is in the new comradeship of men and women on all the levels of
+life that such auspicious promise of better social life is found. It
+is on the new basis of reverence of each personality for every other,
+not only for the person that other is but for the person he or she may
+become if given fair chance for best achievement, that the new social
+ethics rests. It is on that basis that we may build a faith assured
+and strong that the family will not be lost in the time that needs it
+most but will shape itself to finer issues and more useful service.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE FAMILY
+
+  1. What has been the general trend of development in Matrimonial
+     Institutions?
+
+  2. Has the monogamic family, as now outlined and legalized, any
+     elements inherently inimical to a democratic order of society?
+     If so, what are those elements? If not, what stand should be
+     taken in regard to proposals for fundamental changes in the
+     inherited family system?
+
+  3. If the inherited family system should be preserved and
+     maintained, what, if any, changes in form, or practical
+     adjustments to the new freedom of woman and new ideals of
+     education of youth, are demanded for its present stability and
+     future success?
+
+  4. In _Taboo and Genetics: A Study of the Biological,
+     Sociological, and Psychological Foundation of the Family_, by
+     M.M. Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Blanchard, it is
+     claimed that "The chief interest of society should be in the
+     eugenic value of the children born into it." Is that true, and
+     if so, how can this social interest be best excited and
+     maintained?
+
+  5. Dr. Edward T. Devine advocates social insurance for sickness
+     and widowhood, but not out-door relief or widow's pensions;
+     also advocates physical investigation and home visiting for
+     school children, but not school lunches, eye-glasses or
+     clothing as a free gift. His conclusion is that "the state
+     should enforce a minimum standard of child-care, but the
+     expense of providing it should fall on parents or on some
+     insurance fund to which parents have contributed." Is this
+     sound American doctrine? If so, should proposed legislation be
+     gauged by it?
+
+  6. Read chapter, "The Family," in _A Social Theory of Religious
+     Education_, by G.A. Coe. Is the emphasis laid upon equality in
+     this statement justified?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See _Children Born Out of Wedlock_, by George B. Mangold, Ph.D.,
+University of Missouri, 1921.
+
+[2] See Chapter V, "The Home," in _The Normal Life_, by Edward T.
+Devine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MOTHER
+
+    "Strength and dignity are her clothing;
+    She openeth her mouth with wisdom;
+    And the law of kindness is on her tongue.
+    She looketh well to the ways of her household,
+    And eateth not the bread of idleness.
+    The heart of her husband trusteth in her;
+    Her children rise up and call her blessed;
+    Give her of the fruit of her hands;
+    And let her works praise her in the gates."
+                    --PROVERBS.
+
+    "A being breathing thoughtful breath,
+    A traveller betwixt life and death;
+    The reason firm, the temperate will,
+    Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
+    A perfect woman, nobly plann'd,
+    To warn, to comfort, and command;
+    And yet a spirit still and bright,
+    With something of an angel light."
+                    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+    "Yet in herself she dwelleth not,
+      Although no home were half so fair;
+    No simplest duty is forgot;
+    Life hath no dim and lowly spot
+    That doth not in her sunshine share."
+                    --LOWELL.
+
+    "I loved the woman; there was one through whom I loved her, one
+    Not learned, save in gracious household ways,
+    Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
+    No angel, but a dearer being, interpreter between the gods and men.
+
+    "Happy he with such a mother! Faith in womankind
+    Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
+    Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
+    He shall not blind his soul with clay."
+                    --TENNYSON.
+
+
+=Antiquity of the Mother-instinct.=--The mother-instinct of protection
+of offspring, of care of weakness and of sacrifice for the young, came
+to high power before the human was reached in the scale of beings. It
+must never be forgotten that humbler sisters set the fashion of
+motherhood's devotion too long ago to reckon the time and in types of
+organism too remote to be always recognized as kin to the human beings
+we know to-day. This is the greatest and most racially useful of all
+the biological assets stored up for us in the prehuman struggle toward
+what we now call civilization. Nor should we fail to give full value
+to the testimony of primitive human life that the mother and child
+formed the first social group within the loose association of the
+herd. It was the first group to develop, by virtue of its conscious
+relationship, the sense of trust and the habit of service of the
+stronger to the weaker, thus leading toward mutual aid within an area
+of affection and good-will. These facts give basic assurance that
+mother-love will last, no matter what changes in form of its
+expression may be called for by changes in social order.
+
+The reason why the relationship of mother and child was able thus to
+lead the way toward social organization for the common good is
+obvious. The intimate physical tie, the easily understood claim of the
+child upon its mother, the prolongation of human infancy instituting a
+habit of continuous service of the young and hence a tendency toward a
+settled home and peaceful industries, all made it easy for woman to
+become care-taker of children. These also made it easy for the early
+social order to hold mothers to the task and, in growing measure,
+protect them in it. What have been the recognized essentials in that
+care-taking of motherhood? What are the permanent elements in the
+mother's devotion to offspring which persist under all changes in
+social conditions?
+
+=The Recognized Essentials in Child-care.=--The more important items
+in a program of child-care may be summed up as follows:
+
+    First--Protection of infancy and childhood from threatening
+          dangers.
+
+    Second--Providing food, clothing, and shelter for the young.
+
+    Third--Drilling children in physical habits and manner of
+          personal behavior demanded by the family rule of time and
+          place of birth.
+
+    Fourth--Teaching the child to talk, to walk, to obey, to
+          imitate.
+
+    Fifth--Interpreting to each newcomer the group morals which
+          govern the family and the educational process in the
+          period and locality into which he is born.
+
+    Sixth--For ages untold, the more formal education of all girls
+          and of all little boys in the folk-lore, the vocational
+          skill, the ways of living together and the methods of
+          social arrangement both within and without the tribe or
+          state or nation into which they were born.
+
+Are any of these essential elements of motherhood's ancient devotion
+to child-life lifted wholly from her obligation? Careful study of the
+family needs and conditions, and the effect upon them of modern social
+control and social organization, indicates that not one of these
+ancient obligations is taken bodily from the modern mother's service.
+
+=The Protective Function.=--The protective function has indeed been
+considered for many centuries peculiarly the father's duty. Ever since
+man was bound to family obligations he has been charged with repelling
+enemy attacks upon the group of which his own family was a part and
+with the task of standing guard over wife and child as against all
+physical dangers. Man has developed under this social pressure a sense
+of chivalry and a tendency to "save women and children first" which
+give noble examples of courage and self-sacrifice to fire the
+imagination of each new generation. Has the father-office developed
+such many-sided and adequate protective service to childhood that
+mothers have been able to "lay down their arms" and rest content in
+the knowledge that their children are shielded from every danger? It
+seems not. In the days when women were ignorant of all outside their
+homes they may have felt so secure because not understanding the cause
+of many family tragedies. In the days when they had no power to change
+conditions affecting the home from without they may have felt excused
+from the protective function of early motherhood, since men had taken
+over physical defense and economic support and the relationship of the
+family group to the social whole. No open-eyed woman in a country
+giving women social, economic, and political power can so think
+to-day.
+
+It is a far cry from the savage mother, beating back some beast of the
+jungle or the plain, to the modern mother whose physical protection
+and that of her children is amply provided not alone by the husband
+and father concerned but by organized society with its police power,
+its courts and laws. The dangers that threaten child-life to-day in
+the more civilized communities are not the same that threatened the
+young of the herd-pack or the early lives of primitive men and women.
+Then the mother had sometimes to defend her child against its own
+father, especially her girl-babies against the social fiat of death
+executed by the father's will. Ancient folk-lore and myth show us many
+a struggle, intense and cruel, between mother-love and this
+group-sentence of death upon some of its young. In case of war also
+the ancient mother had to protect her virgin daughters against outrage
+and capture, albeit so feebly and to so disastrous an end. And war,
+since it is always and by its nature must be a return to savage
+conditions, now leads to the sacrifice of women and children in much
+the ancient manner; and faced by its horrors at close touch, the
+mother-instinct essays the old task to the same bitter defeat.
+
+In peaceful periods, however, in the long ages when the father-rule
+was a despotism tempered only by natural affection and the skill of
+women in securing advantages while simulating submission, mothers had
+large use of their protective function in easing family discipline and
+in gaining relief from harsh conditions affecting childhood. Theirs
+was then no open fight for the well-being of their offspring, and
+often not a wise effort to that end, but ancient song and story all
+show that childhood and youth depended upon the mother-love in crises
+of family experience and that without such refuge many young lives
+would have been utterly sacrificed.
+
+=Social Elements in Modern Protection of Children.=--To-day the
+dangers to which babies and children are exposed are more subtle in
+form and more complex in action. They are less within than without the
+average home. They are those that give the high death-rate of infants,
+the crippled limbs of children, the weakness of body and defectiveness
+of mind and feebleness or perversion of moral nature that make so many
+human beings unequal to life's demands. They are the dangers, personal
+and social, summed up in the antitheses of "health" and "disease," of
+"normal" and "abnormal." Not that the dangers so indicated are new but
+rather that we are newly aware of them. Not that savage or early
+civilized life had conditions more favorable to health and normality
+but that the easier modern conditions save alive many who in harsher
+times would have died in babyhood. Moreover, we are beginning at last
+to set a standard, in ever-clearer outline, of what is health and of
+what is normality in physical, mental, and moral human life. Moreover,
+we are seeing as never before that the dangers that beset the child
+to-day are not those from which the mother alone, or the individual
+father and mother working together, can adequately protect. They are
+dangers that only society can prevent and that society alone can
+abolish.
+
+=Women's Leadership in Social Protection.=--Why, then, do we say that
+the protective function of individual motherhood is still demanded and
+still a large part of the modern mother's obligation? Because she is
+to-day the one most clearly required, in our own country at least, to
+summon the social forces to lessen or abolish those dangers to which
+children are exposed. The action of the solitary, primitive mother
+fighting off the despoiler of her child does not much resemble the
+banding together of modern women by the hundreds and by the thousands
+to abolish typhoid fever in some city in which it has become endemic
+through the greed of manufacturers who pollute the water supply. It
+is, however, the same spirit in both; and in the modern instance it
+wakes, first, the fathers to their protective duty, and then the
+guardians of the public health, and then educates the public mind, and
+at last accomplishes the desired result through appropriate laws,
+well enforced. It is a long step from the indirect "influence," the
+often deceitful cunning, the appeal to sex-attraction and the pleading
+of weakness by which for ages women sought to protect their children
+against harsh punishments, their daughters against marriage to those
+whom they loathed, and their sons to apprenticeship to work they could
+not choose, to the openly exercised power of the modern mother. In the
+days when wives and mothers had no legal rights which society was
+bound to respect, appeal was woman's only weapon; now the modern
+mother has command of her protective function and exercises it
+fearlessly. The same spirit is in all the long process of change,
+however, and women to-day banding openly together and joining also
+with men on equal terms, to secure laws protecting children from
+cruelty even against their own parents; to raise the "age of consent"
+in order to prevent the unwitting moral suicide of little girls; to
+sweep the streets free from vicious allurements that young boys may be
+preserved from debauchery and disease; to place trustees of society's
+power of public protection as chaperones in every place of moral
+danger; these modern women are near of kin to all motherhood of any
+past. So also are those of the same spirit as the ancient mother who
+band themselves together, again with men on equal terms, but oftenest,
+perhaps, with men whom their own social interest has summoned to the
+task, for the establishment of "Health Centres", of adequate and
+efficient clinics and dispensaries; for securing necessary education
+and care of mothers before the birth of their children, and for
+mothers and babies alike needing good, fresh air, rest and comfort
+after birth; for the raising of standards of physical well-being all
+along the line of life from youth to age. The ancient mother was too
+ignorant and had too little power to save her children and family from
+physical ills, but she did her best. The modern mother is able to
+learn about requirements and to act with power for the better health
+and better training of every child. Is she always ready for and equal
+to the task?
+
+At least we can claim this for the mother devotion in modern times,
+that it shows, and in exact proportion of its increasing social power,
+an alertness and a moral earnestness in all that concerns the welfare
+of children that have perpetuated and extended the protective
+functions of society as no other agency has done. Much of the modern
+legislation and social work directed toward the physical and moral
+safeguarding of the young has been instituted and is carried out in
+detail largely by women. The passage of the so-called Maternity Bill
+by our National Congress, at the recognized instigation of women of
+the United States, and the call it makes for a large staff of women
+workers to carry out its provisions, is a case in point. This
+protective work for mothers and babies is not always done by women who
+are themselves mothers. Perhaps too often its details are in charge of
+those lacking deep experience of life, and hence not able to interpret
+new laws of social control to parents of ancient ideals and backward
+social culture. But women in any case are called for in large numbers
+to translate the ancient personal duty of protective care of the young
+in terms of social obligations.
+
+=The Provision of Food, Clothing, and Shelter.=--The second recognized
+ancient duty of mothers is in respect to the provision of food,
+clothing, and shelter for the young. This duty has undergone great
+changes of method during the last century, and in the large centres of
+population has altered almost past recognition. These changes seem to
+many to minimize the individual mother's responsibility in these
+matters to the vanishing point.
+
+It is indeed an almost immeasurable distance from the primitive mother
+scratching the soil with her sharpened stick, her baby bound to her
+bended back, in order to plant a few seeds for a tiny harvest to save
+the life of her child when the hunt should be poor, to the modern
+mother whose food supply for her family comes to the table from all
+parts of the earth at the call of her telephone. Is the modern mother,
+then, released from all obligations as to that food supply? It is a
+long step also from the primitive mother making slowly with her thorn
+needle the only garment her child may wear, and even a long step from
+the home spinning, weaving and dyeing of later handicraft, to the
+modern use of the "ready-made" shop and the division of all
+garment-making into innumerable specialties of labor. Is the modern
+mother thereby released from care concerning the family clothing?
+
+For the modern housing of families do we not all have to depend upon
+the architect, the builder, the real estate broker, the speculator in
+land, the laws concerning boundaries, taxes and title deeds, rent and
+landlords' powers, and press all one upon another for a chance for a
+home when we elect to live where many other people want also to live?
+Is, then, the shelter of the family no longer the mother's care?
+
+=The Woman in Rural Life.=--The country-woman, dealing at first hand
+with rural conditions, has many of the same problems of personal
+devotion in the provision of food, clothing, and shelter with which
+her ancient ancestor struggled. She has, it is true, "scientific
+farming" of men to raise the harvests that ancestor's heroic but
+feeble efforts could not secure. She has mechanical and commercial
+aids as housemother such as the primitive woman never imagined. She
+has been released from much of the drudgery which burdened her
+grandmother in the domestic stage of industry. She is under social
+protection such as no previous woman enjoyed in the solitary household
+of the past. And in the United States the Federal Government is
+offering her aids.[3] It is, however, true that the housemother in
+rural communities still feels many of the obligations of the ancient
+woman. The three-meal-a-day routine, the actual preparation of raw
+material of food for the table, the personal offices of housework,
+washing, ironing, mending, making, sweeping, dusting, cleaning, in all
+their varied details, keep her in active sympathy with the past. This
+fact furnishes the main reason why "Women's Columns" and "Magazines
+for Women" reach such large circulation in rural districts, where they
+help toward lessening the domestic burden by showing how to carry it
+more easily.
+
+The farm woman, however, is moving, many thousand strong, with men as
+many, to mitigate the isolation of the solitary household, to bring
+the home nearer to the neighbors, the school, the church and the
+store, by massing rural homes in villages and forming the habits of
+the men-folk to go further afield for their own work. This movement,
+which is of all social reforms most needed because affecting larger
+classes than any other and also because affecting the basic industry
+of all countries, that of agriculture, is working toward making
+farm-life once more attractive to young men and capable of winning
+young women to the life of the farmer's wife.
+
+Meanwhile, the higher forms of social organization possible in cities
+and in closely settled towns and villages are working to lessen
+house-keeping burdens to an unprecedented degree. It is noticeable
+that all schemes for so specializing woman's work and so easing the
+domestic burden as to make, as one writer puts it, "the home a rest
+place for women as for men," have their imaginary seat in great cities
+or closely built suburbs. The farm-women we know can combine and
+cooeperate to a greater extent than they now do and the town and city
+women may take far better advantage of the agencies of household
+assistance now at their doors. How far this movement to relieve the
+home of household work may go we do not know.
+
+=Modern Demand for Standardization.=--Is there any plan yet proposed,
+however, which can relieve the mother of her primary and ancient
+obligation to see that her family is well nourished, suitably clothed
+and healthfully sheltered? Some one must attend to the needs of each
+family in these vital particulars which underlie all problems of
+public and private health. Shall the state do it? So far the
+experience of state institutions and even of private "homes" do not
+encourage hope along that line. So far the physical and affectional
+needs of children and youth, and of husbands and wives, and of fathers
+and mothers have not been met by any substitute for the private home.
+And in the private home, under any plan, there must go on certain
+processes which have to cost some one member of the family a great
+deal of thought, much personal effort and constant attention. For most
+families in average condition that person is naturally the
+housemother. If the husband and father is the chief or only
+wage-earner in "gainful occupations," then his health and strength are
+of primary concern to all the family and must be secured by adequate
+and healthful provision of food and clothing, and the home must give
+him what he vitally needs for maintaining power of economic service to
+his family. If the mother, also, is a wage-or salary-earner we have
+the dictum of economists that her inherited and usual place in the
+family machinery must be filled, if at all successfully, by trained
+and congenial helpers at a cost in present conditions prohibitive for
+the average family income. The estimate of Mr. Taber, in his excellent
+book, _The Business of the Household_, is that unless for causes of
+illness or special emergency "no family having an income of less than
+three thousand dollars has any right to maintain a maid." This
+estimate seems not only economically correct but shows why so few
+families have incomes that can release the housemother from housework.
+It also shows why only the exceptionally trained and competent
+vocational worker, if a married woman and mother of young children,
+can earn enough to release herself from the miscellaneous tasks of the
+private household without loss to the family treasury. The easing of
+the burden of housework, almost unbearable as it has been and
+responsible, as we have good reason to believe, for much ill-health of
+women and much unhappiness in marriage, is coming fast and from quite
+other directions than is often perceived. The commercial aids of
+wholesale preparation of food and clothing, and the new fashions in
+house-building and household management are alike working toward such
+a reduction of private household service as may enable the average
+woman to meet the family needs, even where there are several young
+children, if she is strong in body and trained in efficient ways of
+working, and yet have considerable time left for other activities.
+
+The apartment house has set the fashion of simplification and
+reduction of necessary personal service in the home. The apartment
+house, with its continuous hot water, its ready heat and its relief
+from care of sidewalks, halls and stairs, and with its hour-service at
+command is obviously becoming a favorite place to live in. Especially
+do women like it. The multiple house, however, does not seem the best
+place for children after the earliest months of infancy, and in many
+such houses they are openly "not wanted." The multiple house has also
+many disadvantages from the social side in the lack of home
+associations which support family affection. They are also for the
+most part in localities where people are brought together without plan
+or friendship and hence can not cultivate that neighborliness which,
+so far in the history of the race, has been a nursery of the community
+spirit.
+
+=The Apartment House and the Family.=--The apartment house seems to be
+the best place for those families in which all the adult members are
+busy at some vocation, and in which the children are of age to profit
+by educational opportunities usually found only in cities. In such
+families the burdens of the person who is in command of the family
+comfort as to food and raiment and house-keeping are reduced to the
+lowest terms. If to the usual apartment house provisions for aids to
+the housemother are added, what is now offered in some places, namely,
+the "Auto-Service for Meals," whereby the principal meal, at least,
+the dinner, is brought to the door ready to place on the table and all
+cooking dishes hard to wash are returned to the centre of supply to be
+prepared for another service, then, indeed, can all the members take
+turns in rendering the small offices for family comfort still required
+and each go about his or her special vocation at will. This seems to
+be the goal of many progressive minds, although personal taste is
+seldom satisfied by "cooeperative" cooking.
+
+It must be remembered by all, that the sort of family pictured above
+has in it no children of ages requiring freedom of motion and constant
+attention (unless, indeed, "the boarding-school in the country" for
+all over four or five years is contemplated). It has in it no aged
+whose needs in diet and in physical comfort vary from the usual. It
+has in it no chronic invalids and no convalescents, no blind or lame
+or specially weak requiring special help. It is for the particular
+benefit, at least, of families of a particular type, of which the
+cities, with their more varied facilities, contain an unusual
+proportion. For the family of the ordinary type, with its many
+differing needs and its variety of claim upon some one person for its
+central direction and service, the various aids from without which
+have been indicated serve rather to relieve from excessive burdens
+than to remove altogether the special obligations of the woman-head of
+the family.
+
+Moreover, the time left to the average housemother from the old
+housework by the new helps in that work is, in part at least,
+mortgaged in advance to social effort to make the new commercial aids
+to family service actual helps and not hindrances to family health and
+comfort. The food supply drawn upon must be sharply investigated lest
+it contain deleterious substances or be denuded of nourishing quality.
+The ready-made clothing must be bought with knowledge and constant
+vigilance against cheating in material or in construction or in sins
+of fashion against health and beauty. The labor-saving devices of
+every sort must be put to intelligent test and require specific
+training for most efficient use. The family budget must be more
+carefully planned and more heroically maintained at prudent levels.
+The public service of markets, transportation facilities and functions
+of "middlemen" must be understood and controlled as never before.
+Above all, the pressure of uniformity must be resisted if the offered
+supply of the essentials of life prove inadequate to the deepest
+needs, or the scale of living be too ambitiously set by the housing
+facilities adjusted to the ideas and claims of landlords rather than
+to the needs of family life.
+
+Hence we may say that the old forms of effort by which mothers fed and
+clothed and sheltered their children led directly to absorption of
+interest, energy and conscientious labor within the house. The new
+forms of effort by which these essentials of healthful and comfortable
+living are secured lead directly to all manner of cooeperative social
+adjustments of supply to demand. The standard of demand, however, let
+it never be forgotten, is made and maintained within the intimate
+family circle itself, and the personal intelligence and ethical
+maturity of the housemothers, who form the major purchasing class of
+every civilized community, determine that standard. For that great
+enterprise of high standardization the same personal devotion to the
+central demands of life is required in the average modern woman which
+made the ancient mother so great a leader in primitive culture. The
+new aids to the housemother's task may give her a better chance than
+any women ever had before to see the real social significance of the
+personal offices of home life. The poets have seen it all through the
+centuries and have pictured the myth goddesses bringing the cup and
+the bread and the fruit and weaving the web of ceremonial or of simple
+garment in household poetry. All human need for sustenance and the
+nurture of our physical being has made the wife the loaf-giver and the
+mother a nourisher of the young, and as such artists have portrayed
+her.
+
+We may say "our father-land," but we always say "our mother-earth." To
+those who see clearly the value of the ancient family rite of the
+meal alone together, to which it may well be every member of the
+family has made a distinct contribution; to those to whom the private
+table still appeals and who still appreciate the taste and quality of
+every purchase made for each individual member of the intimate group
+(things taking time and thought most often of the mother), the
+individual home has meanings that are not lost but rather are growing
+in spiritual importance as the drudgery of the household is lessened.
+
+=New Uses of Electric Power.=--To-day another great contribution to
+the spiritual value of the private household ministrations is offered
+in the new uses of electric power. Already the "servantless house" is
+widely advertised. Already the grave difficulties in household
+adjustment made by the growing unwillingness of competent girls and
+women to do anything in the households of strangers, and thereby
+giving rise to the serious "servant-girl problem" for people of
+limited means, are being mitigated by the new devices of this modern
+wizard of electricity. It seems to many of us that had this magician
+been discovered before the invention of steam-power-driven machinery
+the whole tendency of modern industry would have been turned not so
+absolutely, if at all, toward the factory. Such modifications of
+domestic manufacture and handicraft as right use of electricity could
+have initiated, might have prevented some of the social and economic
+evils of our present labor world. However that may be, it is clear
+that now the modern housewife has at her hand the means of easy
+control of her special family duties such as no ancient woman could
+have conceived. The movement henceforward, therefore, we must believe,
+is toward such lessening of household burdens by mechanical means, and
+such simplification of household requirements by new family ideals as
+will make every woman of ordinary strength and of even moderate
+capacity and training so sure a master of essentials in that field
+that she can dispense with the "help" that so often now hinders the
+real family life and make the home more truly the private shrine of
+affection and of mutual aid than it has ever been before.
+
+=Certain Duties the Mother Cannot Delegate= if she would hand on the
+torch of life the brighter for her handling. Doctor Devine has well
+said that "the only satisfactory method of getting babies safely
+through the first years of life is the strictly individualistic plan
+of attention to each one by its own mother." The proof of this is in
+the death-rate of infants in foundling asylums and in other forms of
+communal care even where scientific knowledge has been invoked and
+humane feeling exercised. To keep babies alive and well is a
+prerequisite to all later development, and happiness seems to be a
+necessary foundation for such preservation of their life and health.
+So far in human experience babies have declined with one accord to be
+happy unless some one person was constantly devoted to their welfare.
+That person may be a "hired expert," it is true, but the successful
+nurse must have the mother-feeling. Moreover, it is now agreed that
+the best physical stamina is secured by mothers breast-feeding their
+own babies, and all manner of incentives, even to state subsidies, are
+being used to lead women to this personal office.
+
+If mothers thus nurse their babies they must come close to them in
+affectional contact, and it is through affectional contact more than
+in any other way that babies seem to thrive. No one can claim that
+ability to care for and bring up children "comes by nature." The
+affectional tie does, however, give an added earnestness to the desire
+to learn how to minister wisely and well to the needs of the child.
+That same affectional tie on the part of the mother is shown in a
+return of affection from the child. Such personal ministrations of the
+mother to the child have also a great effect in forming the whole
+character in later life. One may worship from a distance, and the
+capacity to justly estimate excellence grows with maturity. But the
+child knows best those who serve his needs most intimately and gives
+his love to that person.
+
+=The Mother's Compensation for Personal Service.=--There is much
+compensation, therefore, for the woman who gives herself to her child
+in old-fashioned ways of personal service. She gets the charm and the
+allurement of the growing bud on life's tree. If she misses that she
+loses something of her birthright and some "substitute-mother" gets
+something of satisfaction from the child that she does not.
+
+=Early Drill in Personal Habits.=--The third essential of the
+inherited obligation of mothers to their children is the early drill
+in personal habits that are required for health and decency and
+propriety in any given time and place. For this it is an absolute
+necessity that either the mother so serve herself or that she secure
+some substitute-mother of refinement, knowledge, affection and
+devotion which make her an equal in the family circle. How many nurses
+fulfil that demand? Many, even of those least recognized by their
+employers as entitled to special gratitude and appreciation. The point
+to be noted is, however, that even if experts for "hour-service" as
+nursery governess could be had in sufficient numbers and even if the
+majority of families could financially meet the expense of those fully
+competent, such service would not, as a rule, meet the needs of
+children under three or four years. It is a constant task, not,
+indeed, requiring every minute of time, but requiring constant
+readiness to serve at need both day and night to start an infant along
+the required rules of daily habit. And that task does not lend itself
+to the conditions of group-teaching or to the schedule of shared
+service of visiting experts. Some one must be on the job all the time
+or it is not accomplished with success, although skilled personal
+care-takers can get fine results in gradually lessened attention by
+the time the baby becomes the child.
+
+If there are several children in a family, however, the most competent
+mother, or substitute-mother, has the process to repeat with each
+newcomer, so that for every child we may reckon at least two years of
+very constant attention if the bodily habits of health and propriety
+and the first steps in social training for agreeable membership in the
+family are to be well taken. The public school is full of children for
+whom the teachers heroically try to make up for lacks in this intimate
+home-training. It may be that some people view with pleasure a "movie
+picture" in which large numbers of children go through a "toothbrush
+drill," but to some of us it is a sorry exhibit. When Booker
+Washington opened Tuskegee he required only a toothbrush as entrance
+fee and equipment, and the use of that implement had to be explained
+and almost all other agencies for personal neatness and physical care
+of the body to be offered and their use enforced. This was the step of
+a whole race toward civilization, a step which the slave condition had
+not made possible before for the field-hands of the South. The people
+coming to us from all the peasant classes of Europe and the East have
+many of them lacked also the chance to be drilled in the things that
+belong to private and personal habit demanded by our civilization. It
+may be that for such the public school is the only medium for the
+belated acquirement of such habits; but if publicity in drill and lack
+of reserve and modesty be the price paid for wholesale instruction it
+may injure those with good breeding at command in their own homes by
+lowering their standards, even while it helps upward those who need
+the school baths and the school treatment of heads and throats and
+teeth and all manner of personal care. It is not easy to get what
+children require in these particulars in the crowded tenement. It may
+be impossible in the congested quarters of a great city. But the need
+thus pathetically shown in the children of many social strata in the
+United States indicates that not only should there be own mothers or
+substitute-mothers for every little child to start each aright along
+the way of life but every own mother or substitute-mother should have
+a decent place to live in so that all needed drill may be conducted in
+dignified privacy and in an atmosphere required for right results. The
+housing problem reaches back to the primal need to have a suitable
+living-place into which to put every home.
+
+=Early Practice in Walking, Talking, Obedience, and Imitation.=--The
+fourth obligation which the past has laid upon the modern mother is to
+teach the little child to walk, to talk, to obey, and to imitate. All
+these are a part of the habit-drill of the very earliest years. They
+are bound up with the acquirement of those personal habits of health
+and propriety before indicated. It is not for nothing that women from
+the oldest time have been noted for their power of speech and habit of
+talking. They have had to give every little child the start toward
+that most indispensable key to all knowledge, the use and
+understanding of language. And the mother, or the woman who acts for
+the mother, knows what the child says before any one else can
+understand his fumbling at speech. Later the mother and the father and
+other devoted members of the family have to interpret the child's
+language to all others until he gets accustomed to this difficult art.
+
+In learning to walk it is the desire to get closer to those most
+beloved that helps the child to balance on his feet and try the
+fearful voyage across the room to where father or mother waits to
+welcome his approach. And here in most families the mother has the
+practice in hand far more hours in the day than any one else in the
+family. Yet for talking and walking in families where there are
+several children the most efficient instruction of the youngest is
+often given by the older brothers and sisters. The first child has all
+to do or to try to do alone; the only child has to pioneer all through
+childhood and youth so far as his own family life is concerned, but
+the child in a family of several children learns almost by unconscious
+absorption from those just a step in advance of his own attempts.
+Where there are children too near in age the inevitable jealousy or
+unhappiness of the baby too soon pushed from his throne defeats this
+end of easy accomplishment through imitation. Where there are too many
+children in the family for the father to properly support, or the
+mother to healthfully or happily care for, the nearness of age often
+means friction and not comradeship. Where in such families the older
+children act as "little fathers" or "little mothers" they may be
+defrauded of a child's right to care-free leisure or develop a
+tyrannous control of the younger ones far from helpful to the
+development of either. The coming of new members to the family,
+however, in right spacing and right conditions, means that each child
+gets the benefit of all the teaching each other child receives and
+makes it far easier for all to learn the ways of life. The art of
+obedience which is learned in such conditions is a share in a family
+public opinion, outlined, indeed, by the parents, but maintained by
+all the younger members of the group. Not that the same elements enter
+into the early character-drill of each child. There are as many
+temperaments and as many capacities and as many differing reactions to
+like conditions in any family, as a general thing, as there are
+children to be considered. This difference, however, while it makes
+family discipline more difficult, makes it also usually more
+effective, for it insures that parents shall study reasons for rules
+and try at least to reach an obvious basis for them in personal and
+social well-being rather than in the parents' will. This leads the way
+to later democracy by stimulating the sense of justice and the sense
+of individualistic right, together with the sense of mutual tolerance
+and mutual aid in the very beginnings of family living together.
+
+=Special Responsibility of the Average Mother.=--The burden of this
+preliminary training toward social order and social welfare rests
+to-day more heavily upon the mother than upon any one else, even the
+father. He often has pressing business down-town whenever hard
+questions of family discipline must be faced. He is often so
+overburdened with the financial support of the family that he cannot
+give time or attention necessary to the constant helping of children
+to escape from the savage to the civilized, from the selfish to the
+helpful, from the ignorant to the ever-learning. At any rate, just as
+many men "keep their religion in their wife's name," so, many fathers,
+although successfully appealed to as final authority in larger
+concerns of family order, leave the details of character-drill of all
+their younger children in the hands of the mother.
+
+What teachers can do in school comes later in life than the period of
+which we now speak. Even the kindergarten, with its short hours and
+its more artificial life, only shows each day a picture of what the
+child may do later on in his own self-culture. The home nursery is the
+real place of actual experience for the average child, with the family
+table and the intimate association with father and mother and brother
+and sister. These make a school of preeminent importance to the later
+training.
+
+=Women's Relation to More Formal Education.=--The fifth obligation
+which the modern mother inherits from the ages is that relating to the
+more formal education of all girls and of all little boys in the
+folk-lore, the vocational skill, and the methods of social arrangement
+which set moral fashions and demand personal obedience to the social
+order into which one is born. This obligation is so largely shared
+to-day that many see in it no special burden for the modern mother.
+The school training once so largely within the home, or for the older
+boys so definitely obtained in fraternities or war-groups of men, is
+now a separate institution. The customs, tribal or national, that once
+ruled the family-training are now solidified and definitely outlined
+in laws written on statute books. The illiterate parent cannot, if he
+would, disobey the compulsory school law. The poverty-stricken parent
+must either starve himself to feed his children according to the
+demands of the health board or he must accept public or private
+charity for their sustenance according to modern demands. The ignorant
+parent must submit to treatment of his children by public nurse or
+doctor of whom he may be afraid. The parent not ignorant, but
+differing from the majority as to what will prevent disease or cure
+it, must accept the public rule.
+
+The decay of domestic industry and the growth of the factory system
+have given rise to so many and serious social dangers that laws are
+now passed forbidding home manufacture on grounds of need to abolish
+sweatshop conditions, although to many such prohibition seems, and to
+some may be, the denial of parental moral protection to children and
+youth in families of the very poor. The training for self-supporting
+work, which came about so naturally from within the household in the
+handicraft stage of industry, now requires many public agencies of
+education. The new social "mores" accepted by the majority and
+supported by law and court may be directly opposed to the inherited
+ideal of right living of large numbers of people in any given
+locality, especially in the United States with our large immigrant
+population.
+
+To have education so much a public concern seems to many to so
+minimize the mother's share in it that she is placed in the same
+general relation as the father to what was once her special duty.
+Ideally, both parents are equally bound to decide all questions
+concerning the formal education of their children within the limits of
+personal choice made possible by the public provisions of which all
+parents may now take advantage. In some favored families this really
+occurs. Actually, however, in most families the mother has more
+leisure to learn of possible opportunities, to influence possible
+improvement, and, above all, to help to wise individual choice in the
+use by the family of these socially provided educational facilities
+than has the father. She is also now more likely to belong to
+associations or clubs or classes for adult study in which educational
+problems are discussed than is he, and often more intimately
+acquainted with children's desires or needs in education.
+
+=Women's Relation to Educational Agencies.=--A glance at the list of
+national and local associations for the study and application of
+educational science and art will show the vast majority of women over
+men (in the United States at least) who are trying to find out what
+real education in modern life should be and how to secure that best
+training for their own children and for the children of all. The
+educational obligation is, therefore, not taken from the average
+mother's duty; it has changed its form only and often is the more
+difficult to meet successfully because of the high specialization of
+the teachers and the confusion of the school direction. No one would
+claim that fathers, if loyal and worthy, are less anxious than mothers
+for the trailing of their children toward successful living. The fact,
+however, that most mothers stand nearest to the lives of the children
+make them most often the necessary purveyors of educational
+opportunities from the public provision to private use.
+
+=The Social Value of Parental Affection.=--Below and within all other
+gifts to humanity which have come by the way of motherhood's devotion
+to child-life is that selective and partial affection which secures to
+each child one adult person at least to whom he or she is supreme in
+interest. Most normal women feel when they hear the cry of their own
+new-born that all of life is justly tributary to that one priceless
+creature who has come at their call out of the mystery of being to
+travel the difficult road of the generations of mankind. Nor is this
+inherited tendency toward partial affection a sign of undeveloped or
+selfish quality in the woman of to-day. It is a provision of nature
+still supremely useful in helping each tiny atom of the social whole
+to find and keep its own place in a world of struggle and hardship.
+The fear of defeat handicaps many a purpose before it is put to the
+test. The sense of loneliness drives many to lower companionship when
+higher is hard to attain. The lack of courage and the paralysis of
+faith in one's self or in others makes invalid many a nature which
+might otherwise achieve. To prevent such waste from inner weakness and
+to "encourage excellence in each individual," to use Doctor Small's
+fine phrase, we need a childhood saturated with the sense of personal
+values on the plane of affection. Selfishness may indeed pollute this
+mainspring of personal power, and selfishness sometimes reaches its
+acme in motherhood's partiality for its own. The ideal of social
+solidarity and the claim of all upon each one must never be absent
+from the family influence if that influence is to be wholesome. The
+family, however, exists to make a small spot in which there may be a
+unity found nowhere else, and at the centre of the family life is
+still the mother.
+
+Says Schiller, "Knowledge and culture demand a blissful sky, much
+careful nursing and a long number of springs." Who shall be able to
+secure this for every son of man if no one stands at the door of young
+life to make these the first demand upon time and strength and
+devotion for every child in the interest of every child? "The
+community" has been called "an endowment for human progress." Parental
+love, so often supremely expressed by the mother, works still and in
+any future in sight must work ever more devotedly and wisely to secure
+for each child his rightful share in that endowment. The main business
+of life is the carrying on of life, and in that business women were
+drafted long ago for the heaviest end of service and with little
+social permission to do their work by proxy. Many social helps in her
+task now make possible leisure and opportunity for individual vocation
+as never before. Her primal duty to the race remains, however, a debt
+to be paid as a first obligation wherever and whenever a woman accepts
+the august function of motherhood. And to-day the majority of most
+successful families absorb in large measure the time and strength of
+the housemother.
+
+=What Women Need Most= is moral sanity and mental poise; the ability
+to adjust themselves to radical and rapid changes in their
+relationship to society without losing the finest and most useful
+results of their past social discipline. Woman is acquiring a new
+relationship to the home--that of mutual headship with man in the
+social institution in which for ages she has been a legal subordinate.
+Social welfare demands that she take into the new copartnership of
+domestic life the old devotion to family interests. Woman is acquiring
+a new relationship to the school--that of learner in the highest
+educational opportunity and of teacher in an ever-widening area.
+Social welfare demands that she take into the modern school her
+ancient devotion to child-life.
+
+The mass of women are acquiring a new relationship to the industrial
+order--that of spenders instead of producers. Social welfare demands
+that the modern woman put into her function of purchasing consumer of
+staple products the same conscientious standardizing of those products
+and the same sense of responsibility for the conditions surrounding
+laborers which she displayed in the old handicraft days of domestic
+industry. A minority of women are acquiring also a new relationship to
+the industrial order in becoming the recipient of wages or salary,
+instead of being paid for work as of old in "truck" or in "kind." The
+feel of the pay envelope on her palm is an unaccustomed but a
+delicious pleasure to the modern woman. Social welfare demands that
+she be not beguiled thereby into complicity with industrial
+exploitation of the weak and the poor, such as she would not have
+tolerated in the old days of personal relationship in labor in
+domestic handicraft.
+
+Woman is acquiring a new relationship to recreation and the social
+control of the customs ruling leisure hours. Social welfare demands
+that gambling be not made fashionable in the drawing room as it is
+being driven out of the business world; that dancing be not vulgarized
+and the mother-tongue not corrupted, but that self-control, purity,
+dignity, mark the "new woman" as it did her best ancestors. Woman is
+acquiring a new relationship to the state--that of citizen with full
+responsibility instead of her old perpetual minority under man's
+control. Social welfare demands that she take into the body politic
+the same devotion to the weak and undeveloped, the same patient, wise
+dependence upon the spiritual elements of justice and wisdom which
+have made her private motherhood so successful. She must not now, on
+peril of a social setback, take up man's weapons of selfishness, of
+violence, of impatient revolution--weapons the best of men have
+already discarded.
+
+Women should now be clear-sighted enough to see that the world needs
+from them not the same but different contributions to the upreach and
+onward march of the race from those elements in which man has
+excelled. If society-at-large is to become truly a family of those who
+love and serve each other, then human beings of the mother-sex must
+take into public life and public service the best they have learned
+and taught in the individual home. What women most need now is to
+"retain all the good the past hath had" as they step forward to their
+full liberty and responsibility in new relationships to life.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE MOTHER
+
+  1. What, in general, have been the social demands upon wives and
+     mothers, and how have these been met in the past?
+
+  2. What, if any, of these inherited social demands are now met by
+     social agencies outside of the private family?
+
+  3. What, in general, may be defined as the line of demarkation
+     between the private obligations resting still upon mothers for
+     personal service to family life and agencies of public
+     child-care and social standardization?
+
+  4. How far is a trend toward minimizing the demand for personal
+     service of the housemother in the private family to be
+     encouraged?
+
+  5. If a mother, in average financial condition, has the "three and
+     one-half children" eugenists demand of each family, and does
+     her duty by them in private family life, how much of her time
+     and strength must go into the housemother's service and for
+     what period of years?
+
+  6. What amount of time and strength might be left, in the case of
+     strong and competent women, for other vocational work?
+
+  7. Is the modern "nursery school" an adequate substitute for the
+     early home-training? (See report, "A Nursery School
+     Experiment," published by "Bureau of Educational Experiments,"
+     144 West Thirteenth Street, New York City.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] (_a_) See, for example, "Conveniences for the Farm Home," Farmers'
+Bulletin No. 270, and (_b_) "The Farm Kitchen as a Workshop," Farmers'
+Bulletin No. 607.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FATHER
+
+    "Who plants his soul in stalwart sons and daughters keeps on giving
+      His life and vision to his fellow men;
+        His power grows like leaven.
+
+    "His children strive to take his spirit up and keep it living;
+      They share with all the love he gave his own, as he had shared,
+        And lives, his love has served, all call him father."
+
+                        From the Tribute, _To My Father_,
+                             by HORNELL HART.
+
+  "To dwell in the wide house of the world; to stand in true
+  attitude therein; in success to share one's principles with the
+  people; in failure to live them out alone; to be incorruptible by
+  riches or honor; unchangeable by poverty; unmoved by perils or
+  power--these I call the qualities of a great man."--MENCIUS.
+
+  "For the man who is such as no longer to delay being among the
+  number of the best is like a priest and minister of the gods,
+  using the deity that is planted within him, that which makes a man
+  uncontaminated by any pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by
+  any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, who
+  cannot be overpowered by passion, one dyed deep with justice,
+  understanding that only what belongs to himself is matter for his
+  activity, yet remembering also that every human being is his
+  kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to mans
+  nature."--MARCUS AURELIUS.
+
+    "'Tis not in battles that from youth we train
+    The governor who must be wise and good.
+    Wisdom doth live with children round her knees;
+    Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk
+    Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk
+    Of the mind's business; this is the stalk
+    True power doth grow on."--WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+=Historic Background of Fatherhood.=--The father seems to have had a
+precarious attachment to the family in earlier forms of life. As Le
+Tourneau well says, "The animal family is especially maternal;
+although father birds often share parental duties, many mammals are
+less developed in duration and strength of affection." Fathers,
+mothers, and their offspring are not closely grouped in lower life.
+The relation of the sexes, even when the human was reached, seems not
+to have carried with it a sense of the double obligation of
+parenthood. "Marriage was brittle in the early times," says Sir John
+Lubbock. The obvious relationship of mother and child, the lack of
+such irrefutable testimony to parenthood in the case of man, and other
+elements of primitive experience lending confusion to the situation,
+made it a process of time and a test of growing intelligence for men
+to learn that babies take two parents to give them birth.
+
+When the human male did learn that he was a father, as his mate was a
+mother, it seems to have mentally intoxicated him, and led the way to
+many social vagaries. The grotesque comedy of the couvade, which
+proved a tragedy so often for the poor mother compelled by the custom
+to rise in her weakness and even neglect her new-born baby, in order
+to do double work and to tempt the appetite of her lord after his
+make-believe pangs of childbirth, was one sign that primitive
+consciousness found the new knowledge of double parentage very
+exciting.
+
+The varieties of phallic worship found in so many ages and among so
+many peoples show how man plumed himself upon the generative function
+and how he linked it with the god-idea. The "religious dedication of
+women," which gratified at once the lust of priests and the demands of
+ancient theology that the gods should have the best of everything
+earthly, is another testimony to the preoccupation of early man with
+sex in its relation to religion. This idea of the sacrifice of
+sex-relationship to the gods passed down through the ages until actual
+celibacy became the ideal of the holy life and the Divine was supposed
+to be better served by monks and nuns than by fathers and mothers.
+
+In the family relation the experience of fathers, after they knew
+themselves to be such, has been widely varied and not along any single
+line of development. To quote Le Tourneau again, "There has been no
+strict relation between intellectual development and the form of
+sexual union. Even among monkeys, as in men, we find both polygamy and
+monogamy; and bees and other forms of lower life show a high degree of
+social organization and division of labor without the institution of
+the family at all." The relation of the sexes has always been a deep
+concern of human society even in most primitive forms of social order,
+but after men knew the connection between the gratification of
+sex-instinct and the procreative function, they began to reason about
+and to make more definite the customs that outlined permitted
+marriage. The varieties of social expression in these ancient customs
+is witness alike to economic pressure, the effect of climate and
+immigration, political struggle and the institutions of war and of
+private property.
+
+=Purchase and Capture of Wives.=--Purchase and capture began early to
+run a race in the supply of wives. Purchase, which kept the twain
+together in nearness to one or the other side of the family line, was
+usually best for women; especially when, as often happened, it gave
+her the protection of her own blood relations. Capture, on the other
+hand, made woman not only the possession of her husband in a peculiar
+sense as separating her from all who might, through the working of
+natural affection, act as her helpers in time of need, but made it
+possible for the slavery of the wife to the husband to take on more
+cruel forms. Although, it must be said, even capture gave a few women
+of superlative charm a chance to take precedence of common wives
+gained in the usual manner.
+
+Two influences, one from the custom to allow marriages only within a
+certain blood bond, and one to allow marriages only outside that
+family relationship, have worked in the first instance to preserve
+certain racial traits from extinction, and in the second place to mix
+the common elements of human nature to the enrichment of the common
+stock. This balancing regard for the known and allurement of the novel
+has also worked to give manifold forms of family association, since
+those customs were superseded.
+
+It would seem that not only were "trial marriages" for individuals an
+ancient, not at all a modern device, to see how the twain could get
+along together, but varying trial forms of marriage for racial,
+tribal, and national groups have made all manner of experiments to see
+what on the whole would serve best the social need in the family
+relationship.
+
+That process of wide experimentation at last settled into the ideal
+and practice of one father-head, at least, even if still allowing more
+than one wife and mother within its bond. That father-head seems to
+have found his place only on condition of grant from society of
+complete authority over wife and children.
+
+=The Patriarchal Family.=--The patriarchal family, which Sir Henry
+Maine described so well, but which he mistakenly supposed to be the
+first great type of familial association, placed firmly at the centres
+of social order the power and responsibility of the man. Doubtless
+that power and responsibility drew their chief sanction from the idea
+of man as the real source of being. After man learned that he was as
+much a parent in being father as woman was a parent in being mother,
+nothing seemed to have contented him but spiritual supremacy in
+parenthood. The classic picture and interpretation of this phase of
+family development is contained in the great drama of the Greeks, the
+trilogy of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Electra, Orestes, and the
+Erinnyes. Here we see how the mother-side of life, once so powerful as
+representative of tribal unity, was set aside and overborne by the
+father-side, as Apollo proudly claims all generative power for man and
+relegates the mother to the position of an underling nurse. It will be
+remembered, however, that Athena, although, as Apollo said, "having a
+father only," makes the mothers still invaluable as guardians of the
+family altar and as those who can bless or blight both the fruitage of
+the earth and of the marriage bed.
+
+The Greeks, by virtue of their superior self-consciousness when
+passing through radical social changes, and by virtue also of their
+power of literary portrayal of experience, have set down for us, for
+all time, the way by which man attained his unlimited power over woman
+and over the family order.
+
+We need not accept in full measure Dr. Lester Ward's picturesque story
+of the manner in which women were made subject to men, _i.e._, that
+female sex-selection so overdid the business of rewarding with favor
+the strength, the fighting quality, and the cunning which grew to
+mental power in the male, that when human men and women were reached,
+woman found a master ready-made by her subhuman sisters. We may,
+however, find a most suggestive indication of the real reasons for
+that masculine supremacy in Doctor Ward's testimony to the way in
+which the female sex, when it had the power of special selection of
+the kind of mates it wanted, set a fashion in masculine attainment
+which did work later against her own command of the sex-relation.
+Women did not become subject to men because of physical weakness. The
+savage woman does continuous work heavier and more strength-demanding
+than that assigned to the savage man. It was not even that the
+primitive woman had always to carry the child as she worked, and had
+therefore a double burden, although that greatly helped men in gaining
+supremacy. It was rather that the larger leisure of primitive man and
+his consequent development of thought and imagination enabled him to
+secure religion and statecraft as allies to his physical claims. The
+intellectual side of the male development was doubtless greatly aided
+by female selection, and when man was reached he already knew how to
+outwit other men and most women in the race for power.
+
+=The Three Chief Sources of Influence.=--It has been well said that
+the "three great sources of influence in barbarous as in civilized
+countries are religion, military power, and money." All these
+influences became masculine monopolies ages ago.
+
+The ancient woman was sometimes a priestess and often a healer in her
+simple fashion and in all ages has acted as nurse in illness and
+care-taker of the aged and the feeble when these have received care.
+She has been mistress of the ceremonials of birth and death and
+marriage when these have been parts of the family ritual, and
+courtship has been largely in her charge. All the customs that relate
+to intimate household experiences have been shared by women as ritual
+and rule of life.
+
+Men, however, took over the simple elements of religious feeling and
+social requirement in which women bore so great a part and made of
+them religious cults and theologies, and they then became a masculine
+monopoly. Men also took over the simple healing of gifted women and
+made it first the prerogative of the "medicine man" and at last of the
+medical profession, from which women were barred until very lately.
+The social customs which women once had power to enforce in so many
+ways became the "law," made and executed solely by men. Art, science,
+literature, grew to great proportions as man acquired the opportunity
+and the skill to concentrate his intelligence upon specialties of
+effort; and from all the walks of educational preparation and of
+professional achievement women were debarred. Hence, in the family
+order, in which the first and obvious place of women had been
+relatively high, man took the position of mastery by right of
+religious priesthood, by right of legal supremacy, and by right of
+monopoly of the money power.
+
+Back of all this lay the assumption of the superior relation of the
+father to the spiritual life of the child.
+
+Man gained his larger leisure first by the use of women as slaves when
+individual women became the property of individual men, and later by
+conquest over other men through which process he secured more slaves,
+and finally by the military systems that in various forms gave some
+men a chance to work at what they liked and from which they could gain
+advantage in the growing complexity of increasing social organization.
+
+Man's larger leisure, which gave him money power or its equivalent in
+earlier forms of exchange, could not have been secured by him had not
+woman been socially and by religious sanction set to the constant task
+of the family service and the more peaceful occupations of primitive
+agriculture.
+
+=Ancient Military Training of Youth.=--Doubtless man's military
+prestige and power gave him the greatest advantage over woman and was
+the source, more than anything else, of her subjection in the family
+order. This came about not only because military success gave the
+women of conquered tribes into the absolute power of the conquerors,
+and broke for such the social bond of remaining mother-right, but
+because of the special training of boys and young men which the
+military systems of all ages have initiated. "The ancient
+fraternities," and the manner of education which separated those who
+would be "braves" from the family life in early youth, the strong bond
+of a common purpose made appealing to youthful imagination by mystic
+ceremonials and burnt into the consciousness by painful "initiations,"
+all combined to teach men how to work together for common ends and in
+a way unknown to the training and opportunity of women.[4] This it was
+which gave a consistency and a power to man's collective life which
+woman could not gain in the past, and exclusion from which enabled man
+to become her legal and economic master even within the home.
+
+The economic power which man acquired through specialization of labor,
+made possible for him by social excuse from exhausting personal
+service within the family; the political power, made possible for him
+by military achievement, from which women for the most part were
+strictly barred by the "Trade Unionism" of war preparation; the
+intellectual power, made a sex-monopoly in education and professional
+use and opportunity; and the religious sanction of priesthood and
+theology, which fastened all these to law and government, secured the
+complete subjection of mothers to fathers and gave woman in the family
+the status of her infant children.
+
+=Ancestor-worship.=--This triple influence of money, military power,
+and religion, gave the definite basis for ancestor-worship, which has
+been so widespread and so influential in the setting of social
+customs. Ancestor-worship, with its separate family ceremonials, for
+which the wife must learn her husband's family ritual, led to
+child-marriage, and that in turn to the slavery of the wife not only
+to the husband but to the older women of his family. Child-marriage
+led also to many tragedies of racial decay before it was seen to be
+inimical to strength and power of achievement. When child-marriage was
+not a part of marriage customs, however, and a suitable age was
+demanded, for sex-unions, ancestor-worship made the position of the
+father secure. He alone could pass on the name and inheritance, the
+family worship and the dutiful service of his forefathers, to the
+children yet to be. The Greek poem before referred to shows in the
+pathetic attempt of Electra, the loyal daughter of the slain
+Agamemnon, to offer the required sacrifices at her father's grave, and
+her joy that the return of the son could make such sacrifices valid
+for peace of the dead and the service of the living yet to be born,
+shows vividly how religion made firm and binding the father's place in
+the family.
+
+So deeply did this religious sanction of ancestor-worship affect the
+social "mores" that, as is shown so clearly in Spartan history, no man
+could shirk his duty of marriage and of parenthood without social
+opprobrium. The well-known anecdote related by Plutarch of the youth
+who, educated rigorously to show respect to the aged fathers, is
+praised for flouting a grey-haired bachelor and refusing to rise and
+give him a seat in the open square because, as the youth scornfully
+says, "No children of yours will ever make sacrifice for his
+ancestors," pictures vividly the sense of responsibility to the family
+life once almost universal.
+
+This feeling, bred by ancestor-worship, has persisted long after the
+church in its various forms has superseded the ancient family worship.
+We find it as late as in Colonial times in Protestant New England,
+where the bachelor was fined and subjected to humiliating community
+supervision and the spinster, almost unknown above twenty years of
+age, if persisting in her single life was treated as an exception to
+be held in social tutelage.
+
+=The Double Standard of Morals.=--The triple bond of money, military
+power, and economic supremacy, which made men masters in the family
+life, made them also able to free themselves from exclusive devotion
+to one wife, whether under the law of polygamy or professed monogamy;
+as it has been possible for men to divorce their wives for slight
+causes, while wives often received the death penalty for even supposed
+infidelity. It has also instituted and maintained for ages a double
+standard of morals by which the same act mutually shared by men and
+women has been for men a slight peccadillo and for women a deadly sin.
+Chastity has been made almost the sole virtue of women, invasion of
+which even by resisted force has destroyed her "honor," and voluntary
+rejection of which has made her a creature of social ostracism. Man,
+on the other hand, has been forgiven all manner of slips from the
+straight and narrow way of marital fidelity, provided he could achieve
+something of importance in the world of thought or action.
+
+This double standard of morals has reacted upon the family not only in
+preventing women from establishing social conditions suitable for
+their own best development and that of their children but has thrown
+over the home the dark shadow of commercialized prostitution with its
+cloud of evil thought, physical degeneracy and defrauded childhood.
+
+=Basic Needs for Equality of Human Rights.=--When women as mothers
+have no power of guardianship of their own children; when they as
+persons have no power of self-defense against cruelty and outrage of
+their own fathers or husbands; when as members of society they have no
+contract-power but must suffer all manner of injustice unless highly
+fortunate in their male representative; when as citizens of a
+so-called democratic state they have no voice in either law or its
+enforcement, then they are indeed a subject class. Any subject class
+dependent upon privilege or special favor for all the order and
+circumstance of life is clearly not a fit part of modern democratic
+society. It is, therefore, of tremendous social importance to the
+family, as truly as to all other inherited institutions, that women
+are now rapidly emerging from that subject condition of perpetual
+minority under the law to the individual responsibility and
+self-protective power of the legal adult. This passage "from status to
+contract" was too long delayed (the position of women after the
+affirmation of liberty and equality for men in modern forms of
+government being so illogical as to cause much disturbance in the body
+politic), but it has, after all, been rapid in its final steps. To-day
+the ideal of equal rights between the sexes and in relationship of men
+and women to society-at-large is fully accepted by a majority of the
+enlightened. What is before us is the slow and in some respects
+difficult task of working out that ideal in social adjustments. While
+at work on this task it behooves us to go over the past experience
+more carefully than many have yet done, to note what the patriarchal
+family gave to society and through society to wife and children as
+well as what of their just due it took from or refused to give to wife
+and children.
+
+=Special Protection of Women Needed in Ancient Times.=--It seems not
+too much to say that in the time and place where men in general first
+attained power of property rights, of military supremacy, and of
+religious priesthood, most women needed some special protection from
+particular men. In such period and condition the sex-relationship
+itself had not attained its present spiritual quality. There was
+apparently required the sense of ownership on the part of one man to
+safeguard those women most generally desired from exploitation by all
+men. Some legal order in the oppression of women by society had to
+precede, apparently, the abolition of oppression of women itself; just
+as to-day the effort is to "humanize war" before we can become wise
+and strong enough to abolish it. No social device that the imagination
+can conceive could be so well fitted to protect motherhood, in an age
+before justice could give power of self-protection, as was that of the
+patriarchal family. The religious aspect of ancestor-worship, the
+political aspect of the building up of great families from which the
+state could derive its power and the economic necessity of having the
+industrial system develop more highly all vocations, combined in the
+patriarchal system to make the family the main expression of social
+order and the chief heir of social privilege. It seems apparent,
+therefore, that a socially delegated power of absolute control by the
+father was highly useful in the period when the state was growing, and
+the school was separating itself from the hearth-stone, and the
+economic system was changing from barter to the complicated exchange
+of the present time, and religion itself was merging its ideals from
+the innumerable private ceremonials of noble families into the worship
+of one chief, emperor, or despot who must receive the homage of all,
+and so on to the incarnation of divine power in one King and Lord of
+Heaven.
+
+"Order" is not only, as we were once told, "Heaven's first law," but
+social order, human experience declares, comes before the recognition
+of equality of personal rights within that order. The great lady of
+the Middle Ages who begged of her King a "new Lord" within a month
+after the death of her husband because her "lands were being taken and
+her estate defrauded by hostile lords who surrounded her castle," and
+only a husband for herself, a new father for her children and a new
+owner for the inherited property could protect from this robbery,
+realized the social advantages of the patriarchal system in
+appropriate social conditions.
+
+To-day, when so much of the community protection surrounds the family
+and so much in education, law, and social custom aids the wife and
+mother toward independent action, we are naturally horrified at the
+thought of life and death power of the husband and father and shocked
+at recital of the humiliations and privations of women's subject
+condition in the past. We have to remember, however, that social
+history seems to indicate that no system of human association has
+grown up and persisted without great need for some, at least, of its
+dominant features. The protection of wife and child, which rested for
+so long upon man's conception of "property" to be defended from
+outside attack, was a chief necessity in the rougher and coarser ages
+of the world.
+
+The main hindrance to social progress, however, is the tendency of
+forms of institutional life and methods of social relationship to
+persist after the need for them has ceased. This hindrance has been
+shown perhaps most harmfully in the retention of the patriarchal power
+of the father after his abdication from the throne was called for by
+ethical and humane considerations. A form of family relationship
+entrenched in institutions of age-long prestige and supported by the
+triple influence of money, military power, and religion, lived on
+after its work in securing social order had been accomplished and long
+after its usefulness was entirely ended. After the father-headship
+ceased to express the highest ideals of either sex-relationship or
+parental devotion, its retention produced social evils and personal
+wrongs which made a conscious and determined movement for "Woman's
+Rights" necessary, and still makes necessary close and definite
+attention to the equalizing of opportunities.
+
+=The Social Value of the Patriarchal Family.=--It is well, however, to
+consider not only the negative but the affirmative side of the social
+inheritance of the patriarchal family, in which has grown up and
+developed the ideal of monogamic marriage. What did the father gain,
+intellectually and ethically, from that patriarchal order, and what
+did he give, not only in protection of wife and children but toward
+their moral development in social life?
+
+The effect of unlimited power over another is generally worse for the
+one who wields than for the one who is subjected to that power, and
+the faults of men have their deepest origin in the family order that
+gave all its members into his complete control. Man's faults of
+dogmatism, of selfish domination, of sacrifice of personal life to
+further desired political or economic ends, have roots in the
+patriarchal family. Man's careless misuse of his own moral ideals for
+purposes of ambition was certainly fostered by this sense of ownership
+of women and children with legal power to use them for pleasure or
+profit.
+
+Something else, however, came to man in and through the patriarchal
+system. Society, that gave him liberty to rule the family, rigidly
+required of him that such rule should be in the social interest, as
+that interest was then understood.
+
+It was obviously for the interest of society that women should be
+chaste, in order not only that a man might know his own children but
+that the family line and inheritance should be preserved from
+insecurity. A man's infidelity to the marriage vow might seem to do no
+perceptible harm if practised outside the family circle, but woe to
+him if he trespassed upon the family ownership of another man.
+
+There might be more than one wife acknowledged as secondary in status
+or a mere concubine slave to help in domestic duties while giving
+pleasure to the head of the family, but there was early a social
+demand for one chief wife whose offspring should inherit the family
+power. Although even in this fixed demand there were loopholes of
+"legal fiction of adoption" by which some favorite child not of the
+actual line of inheritance might be given the place of honor and
+control. Again, if the father under the patriarchal system was the
+recognized economic master he was also legally held to the financial
+support of wife and child. In the collective family life his
+obligation extended far through the line of kinship and of alliance by
+marriage, and to-day in many Oriental countries the father may be
+bound to poverty as the responsible support of a large company of
+dependent pensioners. It must also be remembered that if the ancient
+father, as head of the family, held the permission of society to
+discipline wife and child even to severity of corporal punishment he
+was also charged with the task of insuring their obedience to whatever
+social laws were in force and was himself legally liable to punishment
+if he did not keep his family law-abiding. That moral responsibility
+for the behavior of his family, early outlined in detail, was
+increasingly eased by the growth of personal relationship of women and
+youth to society. That was shown in the laws that defined the extent
+of punishment allowed the father-head. Although he might be secure in
+his legal right and duty to bestow on wife or apprentice "moderate
+castigation," an old Welsh law limited him to "three blows only with
+a broomstick on any part of the person except the head;" and another
+ancient law allowed the use only of "a stick no longer than the
+husband's arm and no thicker than his middle finger" in the case of
+the wife; while Blackstone's well-remembered restriction was to "a
+stick no bigger than his thumb."
+
+The moral responsibility of the father for his children, carrying with
+it as it did the liability of prison or even death for the misbehavior
+of sons, was governed by various statutes which show in the Middle
+Ages a growth toward freeing children from parental control and
+placing upon them when "of age" a definite and personal legal bond and
+penalty.
+
+For example, we read that the Anglo-Saxon law held many children at
+the age of ten responsible for some acts which were forbidden, but
+that most youth were legally minors until the age of fifteen. Until
+the early period of the eighteenth century it was still possible for a
+parent to legally sell his children, "a girl up to fourteen, a boy
+under seven." And after that period a wayward or troublesome son or
+daughter, or any of the offspring, when the parents could be proved
+financially incapable of their care, could be sent to convent or
+monastery.
+
+The ability to bear arms seems to have been the criterion for legal
+coming of age. The Romans, with their heavy weapons, held the son in
+tutelage until the age of fifteen. The Germans, with their use of
+light darts, gave their sons power of self-control at the age of
+twelve. In the heyday of feudalism "a knight's son became of age when
+he could swing his father's sword" and "a yeoman's son when he could
+swing his father's battle-axe," and by that process the fathers were
+released from liability to punishment for their sons' misdemeanors.
+
+On the other hand, after the tenth century, no child under ten could
+be punished for his father's crimes unless it could be shown that he
+was a party to them, and the custom of carrying family autonomy so far
+as to wipe out innocent and guilty alike, when a treason or crime of
+any sort angered the powers in command, was practically ended.
+
+When the beginnings of the modern industrial order appeared and
+burghers shared with knights and yeomen the social responsibility, "a
+burgher's son acquired freedom and legal responsibility when he could
+count and measure broadcloth." The wife gained a growing and perilous
+freedom from laws which increased her direct relationship to the
+state. She attained the power of being punished even by the death
+penalty for broken laws far earlier than she attained the slightest
+influence in the passage or enforcement of those laws. It was
+generally thought, however, until very recently, that if a wife "did
+not behave" it was the husband's fault and right that he should suffer
+the consequences.
+
+=The Responsibility of the Ancient Father Commensurate With His
+Power.=--Again, it must be remembered that if the ancient father was
+by virtue of his military training and activities separated from the
+domestic interests which he so often and with full social permission
+sacrificed to war and preparation for war, he was at the same time
+under perpetual conscription by the community of which he was a part
+to serve as protector of his own family and the families of those of
+the same social group. The social pressure upon the father-head of the
+family was therefore severe and unremitting, since he was in so many
+ways responsible for, as truly as master of, his household. It was no
+light task to be a worthy head of a patriarchal family in all the ages
+when growing law was superseding custom and advancing civilization was
+increasing the complexity of social life. This task when well achieved
+gave to man a serious sense of his duty as well as a firm conviction
+of his power.
+
+We see the fruits of that ethical training in family responsibility in
+many of man's noblest traits; preeminently in his recognition of the
+duty of protection of the weak and young, and in his devotion to his
+own, against the world if need be.
+
+The vast outreach of man's intelligence toward the organization of the
+state, of the industrial order, of the church, of the formal educative
+process, of the means of transportation, of the systems of finance, of
+the development and application of scientific knowledge, and even of
+the arts and of literature, all reveal the effect of his early
+schooling in the representative responsibility of fatherhood to
+society.
+
+We speak to-day of the "father of modern invention" in this or that
+particular. We have not ceased to praise the "good provider" or to
+esteem him highly who has a well-ordered home.
+
+=Moral Qualities in Women Developed by Masculine
+Selection.=--Moreover, we are all now recognizing the fact that we owe
+to the ownership of woman by man a secondary sex-selection of
+inestimable value. It may be an extreme statement to say, with at
+least one sociologist, that the ages of woman's subjection to man was
+not too great a price to pay for the gift to the race of feminine
+beauty and charm. We can assert, however, that some moral values which
+men insisted upon in the women they chose for wives gave the race what
+at one time it needed most and still needs: namely, the habit of
+service to others, and the power of adaptability to changing and often
+difficult conditions.
+
+Man's genius for organization institutionalizes every aspect of
+thought and activity he takes under his control. The institution,
+organized at first for the benefit of personal life and the
+life-process, tends invariably toward a fixity of method and hardness
+of substance that finally sacrifices life-growth to its iron pressure
+until a new form of institution makes its way through struggle and
+suffering.
+
+The relation of women to men and of women to family life demanded of
+most women easy and rapid adjustment to the requirements of others and
+led to their mediation between every institution and the personal
+life. The household mastership of men, and the fact that they could
+choose for favor the sort of women most agreeable to them as masters,
+placed at the centre of the family, and therefore at the centre of the
+life-process itself, the type of womanhood that lent itself most
+easily to social adjustment. And it placed that type at the centre of
+the social order when the "cake of custom" most needed to be broken to
+allow of a more democratic association. The type of womanhood which
+masculine selection, working through long ages, has made the
+essentially "womanly" type, is one in which physical beauty, charm of
+manner, general rather than special ability, affectionate and
+competent response to family, easy adaptability to whatever social
+system her marriage might give entrance, and unswerving loyalty to the
+ethical traditions and religious sanctions of her day and generation,
+combine to attract the love of man and the devotion of children.
+
+Some of these elements of character are especially needed to-day in
+order to make democracy work, and to secure against dangers incident
+to decay of autocratic control, and hence may later prove of great
+social use in the modern state.
+
+The idealization of womanhood by man, which seems never to have made
+him uneasy in claiming control of her person or estate, has embodied
+itself in the artist's pictures of Truth and Justice, and Knowledge
+and Charity, in feminine forms. These bear witness to the fact that
+even when men were most insistent upon father-rights they were moulded
+by intimate companionship with women in the home to some appreciation
+of the value of feminine personality.
+
+While, therefore, the moral discipline which came to the mother in the
+old order of the family, led her to understand the value of
+personality, and the need of ever-increasing effort to make the
+individual lives within the family circle comfortable, happy and good,
+the moral discipline of the patriarchal father led toward an
+increasing conquest of nature, of other men, and of all the social
+forces, in the interest of his own family group. This led at last to
+his impersonation of many ideals in the "eternal womanly that leads us
+on."
+
+=The Higher Ideal of Fatherhood.=--Throughout this many-sided
+discipline of marriage and parenthood there has been growing an ideal
+of fatherhood so noble and so tender that it has easily become the
+central thought in many religions.
+
+The "Heaven-father" is an old picture. The Father in Heaven persists
+in the effort to bring the Supreme near to the human heart. A law of
+obedience unquestioned, a rule of conduct making an actual Way of
+Life, a power unlimited and yet a loving-kindness that marks the
+sparrow's fall and has regard for the prodigal as for the upright
+son--surely there must have been uncounted fathers of goodness and
+wisdom passing praise to have made the name the easiest one by which
+to call the Divine!
+
+Meanwhile, the average life has been working, often unconsciously,
+toward a condition in which the patriarchal father is out of drawing
+with his own industry, his own political system, and his own theology.
+To-day we give the wives and potential wives contract-power, private
+ownership of property, opportunity for economic independence,
+vocational training, entrance to all higher educational institutions,
+adult responsibility under the law, and the franchise on equal terms
+with men.
+
+In the light of these accomplished facts vain is the effort of such
+writers as Devoe, in his _Studies in Family Life_, to show that "the
+Christian family" still makes women "subject" and holds "all goods in
+common" in the husband's name.
+
+=Incomplete Adjustment and Equality of Rights in the Family.=--There
+is, however, great confusion of mind as to the extent of change in the
+father-office which the new independence of wives and mothers should
+effect. Take, for example, the matter of the financial responsibility
+of the husband and father. If a married woman has independent
+property, shall she not be liable as well as her husband for the
+support of the children? If so, what becomes of the suits at law
+against "Family Deserters" heretofore applied alone to husbands and
+fathers? A study of this class of offenders under the law, published
+in 1904, shows that in New York alone something over $100,000 was
+collected in one year in "alimony from men, two-thirds of whom were
+deserting husbands." In these cases the duty of providing financially
+for wife and child pursued the husbands and fathers after they had run
+away from home. In the 591 cases of "Family Deserters" especially
+studied two-thirds were men and one-third women, showing not only that
+the law deals more severely with men than with women, even when women
+are held to be responsible for any sort of family support, but that
+desertion is for the most part a masculine offense. If it can be shown
+that fathers are or should be relieved from the age-long financial
+responsibilities of family support, will the showing in "Family
+Desertion" be different?
+
+There seems to be a consensus of opinion that in present conditions
+that family is likely to be in the best economic condition, in which
+the chief, if not the entire, income is supplied by the husband and
+father, leaving the wife and mother to be specially responsible for
+the translation of that income in terms of family comfort. That is
+admirably indicated in Mrs. Hinman Abel's book, _Successful Family
+Life on the Moderate Income_. Does that condition still carry with it
+the sole economic responsibility of the husband and father for the
+wife as well as for the children? Or shall the phrase now beginning to
+be used in laws passed against family desertion apply to the wife only
+when it is proved she is "in necessitous circumstances" without her
+husband's provision? For the children the newer laws say "him" or
+"her" when providing penalties for "any person," either father or
+mother, "who wilfully neglects or refuses to provide for the support
+and maintenance of minor children."
+
+The claim, then, of the wife seems to be increasingly one of either
+invalid "conditions," or "necessitous circumstances," or "lack of
+other means of support," when defaulting husbands are brought to
+court; and the claim of children upon parents is increasingly extended
+from father to mother whenever there are means at hand from either to
+supply the children's needs.
+
+In respect to the "choice of domicile," always the right of the
+husband and father, there is little change in law; but the strong
+movement to secure to women independent nationality, in place of
+automatic following of the nationality of their husbands, will, if
+carried out, make the supreme choice (that of the country to which one
+shall pledge allegiance) a legal right of women as of men. That in
+itself would make some confusion in cases where international
+marriages give separate national interest.
+
+In respect to man's responsibility for national defense in the
+interest of home and native land, he is alone conscripted to-day, as
+of old, for fighting service on the battle-field, but all manner of
+social demands, almost as imperative as a governmental draft, now call
+women to special service in war time. In peace, the taxes know no sex,
+and the rules of the business game are not amenable to chivalry.
+
+In the matter of professional and vocational training and opportunity,
+men and women are largely on an equal footing, in the United States,
+at least. And apparently for the first time in human history a man and
+a woman, both eminent in their line of work, may seriously ask which
+of the two earns the larger salary, and hence it may be which of the
+two can do more toward family support.
+
+The full consequences of women's moral acts now fall wholly upon her
+in the case of disobedience to law. There is still, it is true, in
+some parts of the civilized world respect for "an unwritten law" that
+excuses a man for killing a rival in his wife's affections, but for
+the most part she stands on her own feet and he on his when there is
+question of crime or misdemeanor.
+
+=The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem."=--The whole
+situation is changing in so many ways as relates to the mutual
+obligation of men and women in family life that Havelock Ellis is
+right when he says "the marriage question to-day is much less the
+wife-problem than the husband-problem." That is to say, the single
+headship of the family is invaded and yet the methods of adjustment of
+two heads are not yet clear in either law or custom. As the Bishop of
+Hereford said at the meeting of his brother Bishops, in which the
+resolution to omit the word "obey" from the marriage service of the
+Church of England was withdrawn (on the ground that if presented it
+would be successfully opposed), "It is obvious to every one that it
+would not be convenient to have two heads to a family."[5] There are
+already two heads in every up-to-date family in the United States! The
+real difficulty now is to see how best to adjust mutual
+responsibilities toward each other and toward the children involved,
+and to write a consistent and uniform set of statutes into the law.
+That law respecting marriage and the family, partly inherited without
+change from the patriarchal order, partly altered in particulars in
+obedience to some popular demand based on cramping conditions made by
+the law whenever it was enforced, after it was already outgrown, needs
+careful revision. Ignored so often by the moral and intellectual
+elite, inconsistently set aside by new measures passed without regard
+to what is already established as precedent, all laws respecting
+marriage, the family, and the parental relation which have come down
+from the past, need thorough overhauling and the best wisdom should be
+exercised in full revision and codification.
+
+The husband and father, meanwhile, many times holds firmly to his
+old-time fine chivalry and adds justice without spoiling his
+relationship to the family. The wife keeps her inherited aptitude for
+loving care of husband and children, and adds a new independence of
+thought and action without danger of confusion of ideal or function.
+
+=Can Women Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old
+Privileges?=--Some women, however, are trying the absurd and dangerous
+experiment of seeing how much they can take from men in the old lines
+of "support" and how little they can give in the old lines of service;
+how much they can gain in the new freedom and how little they can pay
+for it in individual work. These are the women who are willing that
+the family property shall be in their name for the purpose of cheating
+creditors, and at the same time acknowledge no obligation to support
+the children from a common family fund. These are the women who demand
+their liberty to achieve and deny their duty to help. These are the
+women who take "alimony" from a man with whom they will not live and
+have married for their own convenience. They are the women who have
+independent incomes from inheritance or from vocational success and
+yet excuse themselves from any responsibility toward even invalid
+husbands, and never see the parental bond as now binding both fathers
+and mothers alike.
+
+Many men are struggling in some confusion of mind as to the outcome of
+this new tendency to equalize rights and opportunities, and to the
+credit of most of them, be it spoken, they want to do the right thing.
+
+It is now for women to preserve the father, the best of him, and for
+men to still call for the mother, the noblest of her, in the new
+adjustments that wait for full realization of the new democracy in the
+family.
+
+Here, again, we need not wait for perfect consistency in law, or full
+understanding of social tendencies and their outcome, to find our way
+in life. Love shows the way--love between intellectual and moral
+equals, who, in trying to adjust their own lives to a higher law in
+which "self-reverencing each and reverencing each," settle all
+problems on the higher levels of thought and feeling.
+
+=New Social Advantages for Fathers.=--Meanwhile, again, the
+father-office stands out in actual living function as never before.
+The fathers that now show what fatherhood was meant to be--they are
+legion. Holding the wife and mother in her place of sacred honor, they
+are to their children the Supreme Court of appeal in grave questions
+of discipline, the highest functionary of the family in the
+distribution of honors and rewards, the best comrade in fun, the most
+delightful companion in games, the strongest challenger in effort, and
+the symbol of knowledge and power of the community life.
+
+With the new partnership of men and women in the family the father has
+a chance to be a companion and friend as never before. He has an
+opportunity to show his children that side which the ancient father
+often failed to develop, the side of friendship and understanding. To
+the boy a clear picture of what he would be, to the girl a declaration
+of the kind of man she would marry, the modern father of the highest
+type makes possible a modern mother who shall show her son what
+womanhood may become in freedom, and who can lead her daughter to be,
+like herself, the flower of all the best of the past.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER
+
+  1. What, in general, have been the social demands upon husbands
+     and fathers, and how have these been met in the past?
+
+  2. What effect has the new freedom of women had upon the autonomy
+     of the family and the legal obligations of the husband and
+     father?
+
+  3. Should the relation of men and women to family life be
+     identical? If not, why not? If so, what new agencies can or
+     should be developed to secure what husbands and fathers are now
+     legally obligated to provide?
+
+  4. What ideal of fatherhood should we now secure and maintain?
+
+  5. In Minnesota, recent bills presented to the Legislature
+     "relating to and regulating marriage" include among the items
+     "prohibition of marriage within six months after a divorce has
+     been granted from a former spouse; and forbidding of marriage
+     between persons either one of whom is epileptic, imbecile,
+     feeble-minded, insane, an habitual drunkard, affected with a
+     venereal disease, or addicted to the use of opium, morphine, or
+     cocaine." This indicates the trend of newer laws regulating
+     marriage. Is this trend justified? If so, how do the laws of
+     your own State compare with others in this particular?
+
+  6. Doctor Devine says, "Home is not a boarding-house, but a
+     complex of relations, physical and spiritual, which were never
+     more beautiful, more enduring or more ennobling than in the
+     modern family." Is that true? If so, what contribution must the
+     father continue to make to family success?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] See "Education of the Australian Boy," by A.W. Howitt, in his book,
+_Native Tribes of Southeast Australia_, showing the Initiation
+Ceremonies that separated the youth from family influence.
+
+[5] Since that decision a General Convocation of the American
+Protestant Episcopal Church has voted to eliminate the word "obey" from
+its marriage service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GRANDPARENTS
+
+  "From my grandfather I learned good morals and the government of
+  temper. From my great-grandfather to know that on education one
+  should spend liberally. From the reputation and remembrance of my
+  father, modesty and a manly character. From my mother, piety and
+  beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds but from evil
+  thoughts; and, further, simplicity in way of living. To the gods I
+  am indebted for having good grandparents, good parents, a good
+  sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and
+  friends."--MARCUS AURELIUS.
+
+  "Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of years, nor
+  that is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the grey hair
+  unto men and an unspotted life is old age. The multitude of the
+  wise is the welfare of the world; and the righteous live
+  forevermore."--THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.
+
+  "Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not a
+  matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a temper
+  of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the
+  emotions; it is the freshness of the springs of life.
+
+  "Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over
+  timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. We
+  grow old only by deserting our ideals. In every heart there is a
+  wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope,
+  cheer, courage and power from other men and women, and from the
+  Infinite, so long is every one young."--SAMUEL ULMAN.
+
+    "Grow old along with me!
+    The best is yet to be,
+    The last of life, for which the first was made."
+                       --BROWNING.
+
+
+=Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life.=--The outstanding fact
+concerning the aged is that they increase proportionately to
+population as civilization increases. Easier conditions of living make
+for longer life. Public sanitation, private hygiene, good heating
+arrangements in each house, good water and plenty of it, sidewalks
+and porches for easy airing, medical science and the art of nursing
+made more widely available even for the poor, more physical comforts
+of every sort, more widely distributed, all tend toward the
+preservation of life after middle age is reached. They also tend to
+keep alive many babies who would have died in harder conditions and
+prolong the life of many invalids who would have succumbed to
+hardships in early youth. Indeed, Doctor Holmes declared that "the
+best insurance of a long life was to acquire an incurable disease when
+young;" while the average of robust health in all modern communities
+is certainly lowered by the modern methods of preservation of the
+delicate and the aged.
+
+=Savage Treatment of the Old.=--In the annals of savage life we find
+many gruesome tales of intentional disposal of the aged. The use of
+the old grandmother as a target for the training of young boys in the
+art of slaying one's enemy is an extreme example. The pathetic couple
+left behind when the tribe migrated, often with a small supply of food
+saved for them by some pitiful member of the family from the scanty
+hoard that must suffice until the next harvest or the next hunting,
+the neglect and the actual abuse that often made the last days quickly
+ended, all show that when life is too hard there is no room for the
+old.
+
+=The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for Aged Men.=--Two
+things, at least, helped to give the aged a better place in the social
+esteem and in the provision for necessities as primitive life
+developed toward civilization. One was ancestor-worship, which made
+the father and the grandfather a link, indispensable and therefore
+honored, in the chain of blood relationship which carried on the
+generations. This type of religious belief and practice did not,
+however, work to ease the lot of old women. If the young wife did not
+have a child, especially a son, she could be repudiated often, and
+lose her standing in the family relation and hence be subjected to
+hardships that made her early old and often ended her life while still
+in middle age. If she had a son and rose to be a grandmother she might
+attain a most honorable position, having her son's wife to be her
+servant and her son's son's wife to be her slave. Even with the best
+intentions, the patriarchal father could not attend to all the details
+of government within his usually extensive household, and no man has
+yet lived who could manage unassisted a group of women, such as legal
+polygamy and concubinage brings under one roof, each one determined to
+get from him the best possible conditions for her own life and that of
+her children.
+
+=The Position of Chief-mother in Ancient Family.=--These facts often
+made the position of the chief-mother in a family one of such
+importance that they became her insurance against want and
+ill-treatment. The position of the chief-mother in the collective
+family is now one of the vital problems of Eastern nations trying to
+adjust the family system to modern ideas. The father's power is so
+much a delegated responsibility and the relationship between the
+lesser wives and the younger wives so much closer to the chief-mother
+than to the chief-father that the grandmother's position may be that
+of a tyrant. A series of questions which a group of Chinese students
+in an American university has drawn up include such as the following:
+"Where a young girl is brought into the home to be reared as the
+future bride of the boy in the family, is there any limit to the
+authority of the mother-in-law?" The mother-in-law in such cases being
+usually the older or chief-mother, she is really the
+grandmother-in-law.
+
+=Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life.=--The position of aged
+men in primitive life secured some advantages because of the
+dependence upon memory for the carrying on of continued and conscious
+social existence before literature was born. The aged man who had been
+an important member of some military order or "fraternity" and
+remembered the exact words and motions of a valued ritual could be
+sure of having his continued life provided for by all those who
+desired to learn and to retain the means of perpetuating the religious
+cult thus expressed. Also those who remembered vital tribal
+occurrences and dealings with other tribes and could rehearse the same
+with exactness must have been considered of social use, and the older
+they were the more their memory gathered and the more their recital
+seemed sacred and hence the more the reciter was cherished.
+
+Nothing corresponding to this social value of the aged man, who could
+make permanent in ritual or in song or in story the experiences of the
+group, can be traced in the valuation of the experience of the aged
+woman in the periods before written literature. There were, however,
+as we can clearly see, traditions and customs, taboos and permitted
+familiarities so many and varied that old women with good memories and
+a personality that commanded attention must have had some accepted
+value within the inner circles of family experience. We get from
+folk-lore some clear intimations of this prestige and power of the
+ancient old woman in intimate social relationship.
+
+The power of old men received a great accession when political and
+religious orders and legal rules began to make social organization
+more definite and precise. "Old men for council; young men for war"
+had an early meaning. "The venerable Senate" is not a modern phrase.
+The "reverend father of the church" is an ancient allusion to the
+respect for and leadership of the aged in religious circles. The Popes
+of to-day begin their high service at an age that is in many positions
+a "dead line." The hardening of the social arteries in religion,
+government, politics, and law, however, while making old men more sure
+of their place in life, made old women less valued and worse treated.
+The ages of mediaeval experience and of the feudal order, until
+chivalry began to affect the sex-relation, show almost unbelievable
+cruelty toward many aged women. The idea of the church fathers that
+women were, at best, a necessary evil and at worst the form most often
+assumed by the Devil of temptation, made it seem that all divergence
+from the purely domestic type was proof of collusion with evil powers.
+And all nervous ailments were once deemed a sign of the witches
+compact with Satan. Hence, since the unmitigated drudgery and the hard
+conditions of the lives of most women made them not only prematurely
+old but also given to nervous prostration (before that title appeared
+in the medical lists), the numbers of old women tortured, burned,
+drowned, beaten, and stoned to death, and otherwise destroyed, seems
+almost incredible to modern ideas, although so well authenticated in
+history.
+
+=Old Women and the Witchcraft Delusion.=--The young woman, being
+necessary for the bearing and rearing of children and the carrying on
+of important, although despised, labors, might escape active ill
+treatment. The old woman, old at thirty-five or forty, often, was not
+only considered a useless burden but a positive nuisance if she were
+at all "highstrung" or "meddling." Hence the natural conception, in a
+time of superstitious fear of evil spirits, of her complicity with
+those spirits made her seem a danger to society. The history of the
+witchcraft delusion and the cruelties that were a part of that
+delusion show that aged women almost alone suffered from that
+nightmare of human ignorance.
+
+Doubtless, however, there were even in those days grandmothers beloved
+and protected, busy even to the last with caretaking of childhood and
+the rites of hospitality; grandmothers whom their sons and even their
+sons-in-law revered for some quality of gentleness and sympathy found
+useful in family emergencies; grandmothers whose shrewd wisdom of
+experience and fine gift of understanding made them invaluable members
+of the family circle. Folk-lore and ancient song give hint of these.
+
+The waste of old age in women, however, is, as has been indicated
+elsewhere by the writer, the greatest of all social wastes since time
+began. The idea that women were serviceable only for the procreative
+function and the hardest drudgery of family service, and that they
+lost all social value when they ceased to be attractive to the senses
+of men or ended their personal ministrations to their own little
+children, long obtained. This idea is responsible for the further
+conception of old women as not only useless but a disagreeable burden.
+
+Hence, while old men rose during many ages in social regard and
+protection and care, old women became more and more miserable and
+ill-treated where the collective family was superseded by the newer
+type of individualistic bond between one man, one woman, and their
+children. In the ancient patriarchal and collective family the oldest
+mother might reign as queen. In the more modern type of family, made
+the social fashion by what is called Christian civilization, the aged
+woman, the grandmother, unless exceptionally attractive and
+sweet-tempered and exceptionally able to help in the household tasks,
+was the victim of the change from one system to the other. The fact
+that women, if well-developed and well-treated, are younger at seventy
+than are men and that more women than men live to be aged than when
+the conditions of living were less favorable to the weak and delicate,
+gave early in our civilization what must have seemed far too many old
+women.
+
+While women had the constant burden of a "steady job" within the home,
+harder and more continuous than men had in their handicraft labor, yet
+men were killed in battle in large numbers, and were physically able
+to dangerously overdo in some labor "spurt" and hence more women than
+men lived to be old. Hence, again, there were far more grandmothers
+than grandfathers in the family in all mediaeval life. This led to many
+cruelties to old women who were deemed "superfluous." While, however,
+the actual experience of common people made conditions so hard for
+grandmothers, the idealism within the religious field was favorable to
+the mother of any age. The same church fathers who shunned marriage as
+a cowardly concession to the body, and who wrote flaming
+animadversions upon women in general, gave the Virgin and Child their
+adoration and made a place of honor and of comfort to those women who
+chose the religious vocation outside the home.
+
+=Older Women in Religious Vocations Honored in Middle Ages.=--These
+women, the Ladies of the Abbeys and the special servitors of the
+Church, reached the first independent places of distinction which
+women in Christian civilization attained and to them, at least, age
+added power and veneration. Hence, even while they ignored their
+relationship to common womanhood, they often allayed superstitious
+cruelty toward other old women.
+
+Whenever any subject class develops within it a genius or a quality of
+talent or a specialty of activity that gives personal prestige, that
+class as a whole gains recognition. The Carlisle Indian who beats at
+the game of football; the Afric-American artist whose works claim
+admiration; the representative of the backward nation who shows power
+of achievement formerly supposed to be the sole accomplishment of the
+conquering peoples, not only makes a place for himself, he opens the
+door to wider opportunity for his class. So the woman of the religious
+orders, when of scholarly achievement and of commanding intellect,
+showed these qualities in increasing example as she grew older and
+more experienced, and so worked to make a place for the older woman in
+every sphere of life.
+
+Slowly it began to dawn upon the common consciousness that the
+individualistic family of one young couple and their children needed
+props from within if it had lost those from without--those ancient
+props which sustained as well as controlled young fathers and mothers
+in the collective family. Hence grandmothers, and grandfathers, as
+well, became of recognized use in the care and upbringing of children.
+The picture of the grandmother by the fireside holding the youngest
+baby and the grandfather coming in with a gift for the young mother,
+who is manifestly pleased, with the young father in the background
+delighted at the family welcome for his offspring, is not only old but
+the theme of many of the world's best-loved paintings and stories.
+
+=To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at Seventy.=--To-day there has
+come about a wholly new condition in the most advanced centres of
+social life in respect to the aged. In the first place, there are few
+"old" grandmothers left. There are grandmothers, but they are
+sprightly and give little token of being passee or laid on the shelf.
+There are few old men left. There are those who have passed the
+allotted term of threescore years and ten, but they well know and make
+all others understand that this was a mistaken limit to human powers.
+They look forward to usefulness until eighty, at least, and now are
+encouraged to feel that one hundred years is the natural span of life.
+There are, it is true, few really important studies of how to keep
+people from growing senile and really old before the time now set for
+failure of powers. Such studies, however, are prophesied in a small
+"endowment for the study of diseases of the aged" already given, and
+more in the statement of appeals for increase of such endowment. The
+tendency now is setting strongly not only toward the lengthening of
+life but toward the lengthening of the mental and physical power that
+alone makes long life desirable.
+
+We shall see more and more of this interest as medical science reaches
+out further and further toward lessening all the ills that flesh is
+heir to.
+
+Meanwhile, what is the actual condition in the various strata of life,
+in our own country, for example, in respect to the protection, the
+care, the comfort, the happiness, and the general welfare of the aged?
+In the first place, the speeding up of machinery has made many manual
+workers prematurely old. The worst thing, perhaps, about child-labor
+has been that, owing to premature "laying off" of the fathers, the
+children have been set to earn money for family needs, and have
+acquired, with their pay envelope, a contempt or disrespect for the
+father in ways that have reversed the natural relationship and given
+society much use for the Children's Court. This disrespect shown the
+father, even when he is only of middle age, passes on in increased
+measure to the grandfather who has been pushed aside from self-support
+and family support while still comparatively young and has never been
+able to again catch on to the wheels of industry. The fact that he
+eats and does not work; that he takes space in the crowded tenement
+and does not aid in paying its rent; that he has no light employment
+that can give his fading mental powers an impulse toward ambition and
+energy, all make the position of the grandfather in many homes of
+struggling poverty a most unhappy one. In such homes the grandmother
+is often still seen to be really useful. She may make it possible for
+the young mother to earn outside the home. She may, if skilled in
+sewing, ease the expense of ready-made clothes. She may, at least, and
+usually does, relieve the mother of much care of the babies. There are
+several reasons why more aged men are sent to public institutions for
+final care than aged women of the same general type of family, but the
+most important reason is that most women have skill in domestic
+matters; and domestic service is needed everywhere, no matter how many
+unemployed walk the streets. Needed most in the poorest home, the help
+of the grandmother is often appreciated in inverse ratio to the
+income.
+
+In the circles above the poverty line there is much variety in the
+estimation and in the treatment of grandfathers and grandmothers. The
+ideal picture of a family always has in its background, if not in the
+very front, an old man and an old woman, benevolent and sweet-natured,
+who can be depended upon to be more indulgent to the children than
+even the father or mother and who appear always in family emergencies
+to renew their youth of service in behalf of the younger generation.
+
+What is thus ideally pictured is a fact in thousands of families. No
+one can say that it is always best to have three generations under one
+roof, but all who have had a happy family experience believe that the
+grandparents should be "handy by," to use the Scotch phrase. The
+grandparents' house in the country is best of all, where all family
+and national holidays can be celebrated with due form and in
+accordance with ancient tradition. The grandparents' house for the
+city children is next best, if in a suburb near by where more space
+and independence of movement are possible than in the city residence.
+The grandparents' house or apartment in the same or a near-by city is,
+however, not at all to be despised as a refuge when "Mother does not
+understand," or "Father is so particular."
+
+=Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families?=--Although the proverb
+says, "No house was yet made large enough for two families," the
+residence of one grandparent (oftener the mother than the father)
+within the family circle has often proved highly successful if only a
+few rules have been observed. One of these rules is that each adult
+person shall have one place strictly his of her own. Another is a
+rule, so difficult for some aged persons of both sexes to obey,
+namely, that each person married is doubly entitled to individual
+choices in action without interference even from parents, since each
+such married person has to adjust his or her ideas to another person.
+To work out full agreement between themselves is all that any married
+couple should be expected to accomplish. Hence, in the nature of
+things, the grandparents who are so near the new family that they know
+and see everything have a far more difficult role to play than do the
+grandparents who have their own home and simply visit and are visited.
+It is, however, often a necessity of financial provision and often a
+choice of ease in ministration to the needs of the aged, that brings
+one grandparent or even two within the daughter's or son's household.
+The time-worn jokes about the "mother-in-law" are based upon the fact
+that it is more often the daughter than the son who is expected to or
+needs to personally care within her own home for the mother. The son
+is not so bound by social custom to take his mother in. Hence, more
+husbands than wives have trials with their parents-in-law.
+
+=Reasons Why Husbands Desert Their Families.=--The statistics of
+deserting husbands, as compiled in a careful study made by Lillian
+Brandt and Roger Baldwin, show that among the chief causes of "leaving
+home" is "trouble with the wife's relations." In these cases it is not
+only the grandmother, although she is often a member of the disturbed
+family; it is also often other relatives--a sister, a brother, or a
+first husband's people--who cause trouble. The wife's mother is,
+however, often enough a member of the household the husband leaves
+behind to give some point to the coarse and often unjust jokes
+concerning the mother-in-law.
+
+Where the feeling is right, and both generations reasonable and just,
+there are still many problems of adjustment arising from an attempt to
+bring either or both parents of the married couple into the same
+household. The first problem is that of the financial support. It
+ought not to be the case that any aged couple or any widowed father or
+mother should be left wholly dependent upon their children. The demand
+for better economic provision for the aged is one of the most vital
+and pressing of social needs. The difficulty of taking care of the
+father and mother when the children are coming on with pressing needs
+of their own is felt acutely in cases of narrow income. The call is
+almost universal to provide more adequately for grandparents. How can
+we meet this call?
+
+=The Financial Provision for Old Age.=--In the case of those whose
+earning capacity is not equal to saving a sufficient old-age provision
+while at work the claim for an Old-age Pension is growing. This may be
+either a subsidy from the state, a joint pension from the state and
+the employing business in which the man or woman has worked, or it may
+be a threefold provision contributed to from the savings of the
+laborer, the quota from the employer, and the state subsidy. Since no
+insurance system that discourages thrift, or fails to encourage it, is
+socially sound, the latter seems the best ideal. There may be, in
+addition, or as a substitute, a family provision on the plan so well
+suggested by Mr. Taber in his book, _The Business of the Household_, a
+plan that calls for the definite setting apart of an "Old-age Fund,"
+to which each child shall contribute in the years when he is earning
+most, not as a gift but as a "deferred payment," as it were, for all
+that the parents give in childhood. To this Old-age Fund any savings
+of the father and mother may be added until a sufficient sum is
+secured for comfortable care in old age. Mr. Taber indicates that at
+least five dollars out of every twenty-five saved should be thus
+assigned and invested only in the safest manner and held inviolate, no
+matter what the temporary needs of the family may be, until the
+work-time has passed. Whatever plan may be adopted, it is certain that
+family well-being and the happiness of the aged alike call for a
+better and more adequate old-age provision.
+
+The laborers who earn less than the required sum for a decent standard
+of life for father, mother, and children cannot, of course, make any
+provision for their own old age or care for dependent parents. In such
+families the public institutions or privately endowed and managed
+"Homes for the Aged" offer the only and often a comfortable and
+sometimes a happy place for the grandparents. The movement for this
+social care of the aged has many phases. In some countries, as in _The
+Danish Care of the Aged_, so well described by Edith Sellers in her
+book of that name, there is a far more complete and generous use of
+public funds than we have in the United States, a possibility of
+careful grading of persons in appropriate groups, and a removal of the
+crushing sense of public charity which those of English ancestry so
+often feel when obliged "to go upon the town;" yet this leaves much to
+be desired.[6]
+
+In the grade of economic condition above that in which it is a dire
+struggle to make both ends meet for the husband, wife, and their
+little children, there are to be considered five ways in which the
+care of the aged can be made adequate and not too great a burden upon
+those of young and those of middle life.
+
+=Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age.=--First: There must be devised,
+as indicated above, better and surer ways of insurance, savings, and
+pensions, by which the grandparents can be made more or less
+independent even in families of limited means.
+
+Second: There must he measures established for the prevention of
+premature old age, measures operating in health and in labor-power to
+prolong self-dependence by means of individual earnings, to the
+fullest extent possible.
+
+Third: There must be for men, as for women, provision in vocational
+training by which each person may have in reserve some light and
+interesting form of activity, possibly of earning value, which may
+serve as occupation when strenuous work is outgrown.
+
+Fourth: There must be a clearer understanding of the mutual
+obligations of parents and children so that the care of the aged may
+seem more often, what it really is in most cases, not a charity from
+within the family circle, to be passed around with jealous eye for
+just distribution of family burdens within the group of children, but
+a family debt, for the payment of which early and constant provision
+must be made by all members of the family during the years of largest
+earning power. If the grandparents have had a chance to save enough to
+pay all their own share of the family expense to the end of life, well
+and good. If, on the contrary, as is so often the case (now that the
+social standard for child-care and child-education has risen to such
+heights of parental requirement), the parents, now old, have spent so
+lavishly on the schooling and marriage setting up of their sons and
+daughters that they have not been able to save for themselves, then
+the obligation of the children is clear and the grandparents should
+never feel themselves pensioners.
+
+Fifth: Actual old age, senility, failure of physical and mental power,
+should be postponed in each case as long as possible by active
+measures of mental and moral discipline consciously undertaken by
+personal effort. "The making of mind" is not an art of youth alone. It
+is an art of middle age and of the older years. Says William James:
+"The man who daily inures himself to habits of concentrated attention,
+energetic volition and self-denial in unnecessary things, will stand
+like a tower when everything rocks around him and when his softer
+fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." Such a one also
+will resist the decay of powers and be able to keep young when the
+years tell of many birthdays.
+
+To go over these points with greater detail: The first requirement,
+namely, to make sure that all possible financial provision is made for
+grandparents while they are yet young and capable enough in their work
+to save, is one that is more and more recognized. Moreover, the
+tendency in every country is increasingly toward state recognition of
+the duty of society toward its aged members. The proposition of Victor
+Berger, then the solitary socialistic member of the Congress of the
+United States, to pension every person over the age of sixty is one
+that will hardly be carried into effect. The objection, however, to
+much existing pensioning by the state which this blanket proposition
+was intended to offset is that its benefits are mostly for those near
+the poverty line or below it and hence may be and often is a
+discouragement to thrift and self-dependence rather than an aid to
+individual effort.
+
+=Pension Laws.=--For example, in Great Britain, the pension law made
+all eligible to state aid who were over seventy years of age and whose
+personal income did not exceed one hundred and five dollars per year.
+Such were entitled to aid to the extent of $1.25 a week, and those
+having incomes above that sum were entitled to receive a graduated
+series of state benefits. This aid from the state has doubtless made
+the condition of many aged persons far more tolerable and even happy
+in families where, previous to the passage of that Act, the extra
+expense involved in caring for the grandparents was the last straw
+that broke the back of independency. In all cases where the addition
+of a few dollars weekly to the family income is an actual and obvious
+help to family comfort, state pensions for the aged have worked good
+results in family feeling and good-will and affection. Where, however,
+the state aid comes without any contributory savings from the
+individual or his employer and where to qualify for its benefit all
+must have an income of very small proportion, it is in effect a class
+measure and obviously for the relief of the very poor.
+
+The higher family interest demands that every system of insurance or
+of subsidy, or of occasional aid to any member of the family, should
+tend directly and powerfully toward and not away from thrift, work
+capacity, and sound business principles. Society-at-large must now
+make good in some makeshift fashion for many social failures of the
+past, but its main currents of pressure upon the individual life
+should be in the production of a line of normal and successful men and
+women, rather than attempts to make all share alike, whatever their
+personal quality, when old age comes on. This principle makes it
+imperative that some larger and wiser plan than has as yet been
+attempted shall make all systems of financial care of the aged a
+positive aid toward self-dependence and social serviceability.
+
+=Old-age Home Insurance.=--In this connection a radical suggestion is
+offered, namely, a scheme for Old-age Home Insurance. It is a
+well-known fact that the waiting list of most private Homes for the
+Aged is long, and that men and women wait piteously for the death of
+an "inmate" to give them entrance to the only place of comfort and
+security life can offer them. It is also well known that there are
+more aged persons who need the companionship of those of their own
+generation, who need quiet and relief from the noise and excitement of
+young children, than can now secure those requirements in the homes of
+their daughters or their sons. It is again true, although not so well
+recognized or understood, that most aged persons unable financially to
+retain a personal home would prefer a choice between residence in a
+child's family, however dutiful and generous that child might be, and
+residence elsewhere. It is also true that the care of aged parents in
+her own home is often too great a tax upon the time and strength of
+the housemother when there are many young children. Again, it is true
+that many aged people prefer a place they can call "home," even if it
+is only one room, to which they can invite their friends and from
+which they may pay visits to their relatives, even their nearest and
+dearest, and return to their own small quarters at will. It is also
+true that although most elderly persons live for years in quite good
+health and need little actual nursing, they do profit by occasional
+attentions which a nurse can give, and few such elderly people can
+afford or obtain this occasional service in either a home of their own
+or in one shared with a child.
+
+These facts indicate a need for a larger and a more democratic
+provision of homes for the aged, a provision that can be more easily
+made by personal effort through the younger years of life, and one
+that can receive social aid at less cost to personal dignity and with
+less rigid rules of managing "Boards" than the present prevailing type
+of Homes for the Aged supply. The boarding house sought by many aged
+persons who prefer independence of life to living in the family of
+their children, and sought also by many well-to-do elderly widows and
+widowers who find that the personal home is too lonely or too
+expensive to keep up for one alone--the average boarding house is a
+sorry substitute for a home. For the young, who hope to escape it
+soon, it is tolerable. For the aged, who need to feel settled, it is
+often a most unhappy dwelling-place. Beside, any one who tries to find
+a place for the elderly boarder will find that prices are often
+prohibitive for all but the rich, and few boarding mistresses want old
+people.
+
+A state pension has often, as has been said, been proposed for all
+aged people. Let us suppose that instead of this some scheme of State
+Insurance for Old-age Homes be devised; a scheme in which after the
+payment of a certain specified sum a share in a Boarding Home might be
+secured. If the state or if any private Agency or Foundation could
+provide the "plant," a suitable building and its repairs and
+fundamental expenses of upkeep, with one salaried superintendent whose
+character and ability could be guaranteed, the running expenses of a
+Boarding Home could be met easily by the limited means of many who now
+lack the security of an institutional provision and in consequence
+lack also many essentials of old-age comfort.
+
+A skilled budget-maker could determine the numbers required in each
+household to make the board low and a sympathetic social worker could
+suggest the cooeperative features of management most likely to give
+successful results in the composite home. The entrance age in such a
+Boarding Home could be lower than that required in the usual type of
+privately endowed Home for the Aged and thus a felt need be met for a
+suitable home for those between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five.
+In these privately endowed Homes for the Aged the entrance fees range
+from $100 to $1,000, and beneficiaries are required to give up all the
+property of any kind of which they may be possessed when they enter
+this permanent residence. This is not unjust, but it is often an added
+trial to the independent nature. There is need of far larger provision
+for the old in Homes for Aged Men, Aged Women, and Aged Couples. No
+one can give anything but gratitude for the opportunities they now
+offer or fail to hope for their increase. There is, however, a special
+need for some social engineering which can initiate Boarding Homes for
+the Elderly. Many of these are still strong and well, but need special
+consideration in particular ways. Many others are not ill, but
+delicate, and in need not of full-time nursing care but of occasional
+good offices of trained helpers. One nurse, a "practical nurse" or a
+trained nurse past in age and strength full service of her profession,
+could easily give occasional service needed for twenty or more elderly
+persons in usual health or for ten or more aged, in greater need of
+care but not helpless, if all were under the same roof. The
+cooeperative plans that often fail in serving the family of father,
+mother, and children, may be found exactly suited to special classes,
+and among them the aged. The Social Settlements were started to serve
+and have served the neighborhood needs of the poor and the immigrant.
+They have also, incidentally, demonstrated the financial advantages of
+cooeperative housekeeping. A company of congenial people living
+together in groups of twenty to forty can secure the essentials of
+food, shelter, and necessary service at a cost per person far below
+the average expense for boarding or private housekeeping. This does
+not mean that families can combine easily in multiple households. The
+personal equation counts for its greatest influence in the real family
+group, of father, mother, and their children under eighteen years of
+age. Few, if any, schemes of cooeperative housekeeping have as yet
+worked well for the combination of such groups.
+
+The aged, especially the aged widow or widower, are not in the direct
+family group. They belong to but they are not inside the inmost
+circle. If one alone is left the life of the personal home is broken
+for the elderly, however dear and kind the children may be. For such
+there surely needs something easier than the attempt to maintain a
+separate home with half its life gone. And also something more
+independent and more secure than either enforced residence with
+children or compulsory use of the ordinary commercialized boarding
+house.
+
+=To Prevent Premature Old Age.=--The second social demand, that
+premature old age shall be more effectively prevented, is one that is
+pressed upon this generation with new and imperative considerations. A
+knowledge of health conditions shows that although infant mortality is
+greatly lessened and infectious and epidemic diseases greatly brought
+under control, the diseases of middle age, such as hardening of
+arteries and kidney and digestive disorders, have increased
+relatively, while insanity is much more frequent than of old. These
+facts give us all deep concern. From the failure of health in middle
+life comes the premature senility and the invalid weakness of old age.
+The cause of the increase of middle-life diseases, relatively to those
+of other periods of life, seems to be principally the pressure of
+business and industrial life upon the worker. The high speed of
+machinery, the extreme competition in business, the monotony of the
+specialized manufacturing groups, the weight of great financial
+enterprises and the struggle to make the family setting equal to the
+family desires or even the family needs, all tend to make men in
+middle life fail so often in health and so often leave behind their
+better sheltered and more tenderly cared-for wives. There is a new
+movement of great social importance, and one tending directly toward
+the saving of one-half of the family circle, which is now taking a
+front place in social interest; namely, the movement for annual
+medical examinations. The work of the Life Extension Institute leads
+toward this end and seeks the better adjustment of life and work in
+the interest of simplicity and mutual service in the family and the
+better health of all its members.
+
+It is not, however, in the power of the wisest and most unselfish of
+individuals to so manage the work-power as to insure against premature
+old age from too great speeding and overstrain. There must be social
+movement of the most thorough-going sort to prevent the waste of the
+laborers in all fields. Social workers should remember that it is not
+alone important to try to safeguard the health and strength of mothers
+and of potential mothers by laws protecting women and girls in
+industry. It is as vital a need to safeguard the health and strength
+and perpetuate the work-power of fathers and potential fathers in
+order that old age may be not a terror but a blessing to the family.
+This is emphasized by recent indications that the increase of the
+diseases of middle age is already checked and that we are gaining
+ground in this particular.
+
+A recent report of the Federal Department of Commerce through the
+Bureau of Census shows that there has been a decline in the death-rate
+for all age periods during the last decade. In the rate for infants
+under one year of age a decline of twenty-six per cent., or from
+13,804 per 100,000 in 1910 to 9,660 per 100,000 in 1920. The
+death-rate for middle-aged and old people shows an encouraging
+decrease, that of twelve per cent., in the period above seventy-five
+years of age. This shows that we are gaining on disease and premature
+death with every new advance in preventive medicine and the crusade
+against bad living conditions. This, again, means that in the future
+we shall have more aged persons in ratio of population than we have
+had in the past, and indicates the great need of taking measures
+betimes to make old age not only more mentally strong but more happy
+and comfortable in condition.
+
+=Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor.=--There are many
+requirements for youth in offered opportunities of training and of
+work which are distinctly detrimental to respect for, and possibility
+of continued service of, the old. Take, for example, the age limit in
+many departments of business and manual labor. During the war we had
+in the countries most denuded of young men a new sort of trial of the
+middle-aged in positions where it had been thought youth was required.
+What was the result? The trial made in Chicago by fifteen large
+employers of labor under the leadership of Mr. Benjamin Rosenthal, was
+distinctly, to use his words, "to upset the fallacious theory that men
+between the ages of 45 and 65 are fit only for the scrap-heap." The
+result of this experiment showed that in some phases of work the older
+men did as much work in a given number of hours as the younger men; in
+other departments they did as much in the week or month, from their
+steadiness and devotion to their work, but not as much in any one day.
+That is, the older men were less quick, but more steady and,
+therefore, in the end accomplished as much. In some kinds of labor the
+older men did better than the younger because usually more patient of
+detail and less restive in monotonous toil. In the larger enterprises
+older men are proverbially less speculative, more conservative, less
+venturesome than the young. American business would, perhaps, not
+suffer if a larger admixture of these qualities were found in all the
+walks of commerce and business.
+
+The fact that when a man is at the head of a concern, large or small,
+he is valued usually more at sixty-five than at thirty-five, and the
+further fact that thirty-five is often the dead-line for admission to
+the lower ranks of the same industry or commercial position, is a
+proof that this age-limit of the worker in lower position is not one
+of definite knowledge of actual incapacity after forty years of age
+but rather due to other conditions. Those conditions are, first and
+foremost, the easier management of younger than of older subordinates.
+It is hard for many men to "order about," in peremptory fashion, a man
+older than themselves, and few men can command without abruptness or
+sharp orders. It is still harder for most men to order about as office
+assistant or clerk or secretary a woman older than themselves. And
+fewer men can assume a respectful yet commanding attitude toward women
+than can do so toward men in their employ. Some embarrassment has yet
+to be worn off in business relations of the sexes. Moreover, the
+tendency toward upspeeding of all mechanical manufacture is a part of
+the rushing spirit of an age which has invented more fast-going things
+than it has as yet mental power to use wisely or with social safety,
+and it is true that fewer men over forty can rush in their work than
+can do so below that age.
+
+Youth is nimble; youth can be snubbed for errors of accomplishment
+without hurt to a "gentleman's instincts;" youth, although so careless
+as to often get injured by the swift-going machines, can yet exult in
+their rapid swing; and, above all, youth is flexible and can be shaped
+to any form of business requirement decided upon by those higher up.
+Hence a fictitious value is assigned to youth in all departments of
+work to-day. Hence, again, a special movement for actual trial of the
+relative values of workers of different ages in special kinds of work
+is necessary if we would know whether or not it is possible to prevent
+that premature old age and tragical financial helplessness at
+fifty-five or sixty, which makes the workless man or woman a burden
+where many believe he or she might be still a help to the family
+income.
+
+We have been a nation of the young. We shall more and more balance the
+different age-periods, as is already done in the older countries. We
+should prepare, betimes, for this new aspect of the future's census,
+by providing against preventable old age by the wiser use of all
+laborers as long as work-power can be made available for
+self-dependence.
+
+=Need of Experience in Many Fields of Work.=--There are certain fields
+of work on the higher side of social ministration in which the more
+experienced are more needed than the young. Some one has said that "no
+man is fit to be a pastor of a church until he has been something else
+for several years and knows something of life." There is a very real
+demand for any one, man or woman, who ventures to deal with the
+spiritual life that he or she shall have more than youth can give of
+sympathy and understanding. There is need also for larger experience
+and greater breadth of view in professional social work of all sorts,
+more than the young man or woman can give who has had college, plus
+"School for Social Work," and nothing else; but who, because
+"trained," feels expert. There could not be a greater social mistake
+than is made by schools which attempt to train for child-care, family
+visiting, rehabilitation of the dependent, aid to the "down-and-out,"
+succor to the tempted and help to the weak, and yet deny the
+opportunities of their classes to men and women over thirty-five. The
+giving of "auditors' privileges," or "special courses for volunteers,"
+or like makeshifts for regular student privileges is not what is
+required; for such provisions carry with them the idea of less than
+professional standing and usefulness. The initiation and maintenance
+and increase of schools of training for social work is one of the
+great educational and social achievements of the past quarter-century,
+but the age-limit for entrance in many such schools is a huge mistake.
+The very essence of true social service to individuals is experience
+in life. The girl or boy who has had none or little may make a good
+technician in many departments and may make a fine showing in work
+that is not personal, and may collect material or knowledge about
+groups of persons who need help. But the man or woman who is able to
+be of great value as a "social doctor" is not only born to such
+service but also is one who has not begun a specialty of social
+technic too young to have learned something of the difficulty of
+living. Young students? Yes. But many more who have come later in life
+to a sense of their social responsibility and to a desire to learn how
+best to serve society with all that they have gained in rich
+experience. The psychology of social training must envisage a wider
+range of years to be most effective.
+
+=Prepare Vocationally for Old-age Needs.=--The third demand, that
+every man and woman in early youth or in later youth shall be trained
+in some light and agreeable occupation that can be pursued, perhaps to
+economic return, in the days when strenuous labor can no longer be
+carried on, is one that has as yet received little attention but which
+should be a matter of deep concern. The fact that so many old women of
+little physical strength and who require much personal care can yet
+be useful and therefore actually wanted as helpers in many families is
+indicative of the fundamental fact in industrial life that a general
+training for general usefulness, such as the housewife has had through
+the ages, has some advantages still.
+
+Before Mrs. Perkins Gilman gets all women into some specialty,
+alongside of the already highly specialized men workers, let us see to
+it that men get a chance for a more general training! The restless
+idleness of the man whose specialty of manual labor or definite type
+of business interest is now beyond his strength or opportunity is a
+sad thing to see. We have had to develop a special charity to furnish
+a work-interest to aged men in public institutions. They were so
+miserable and pathetic without that occupation. Women fare better in
+this, as in many other elements of labor, for they can do so many
+things, usually have to do so many things, most of them, in the
+family, that some one sort of work, at least, is left to them for
+special old age. "Mother's pies" or grandmother's cakes or needlework
+or knack at dusting or baby-tending or what not keeps her young and
+makes her actually a helper even when old. Grandfather's loss of his
+job, of his specialty of effort, of his hold on the great industrial
+machine, leaves him too often hopelessly at sea for the passing of
+time still left to him.
+
+Well-to-do women in the United States, moreover, have acquired through
+the large leisure inherited wealth or their husband's means have
+supplied, a social business that has not only delayed old age but
+nearly obliterated its ancient signs and tokens. The Clubs, the
+Leagues, the Alliances, the charitable agencies, the institutions of
+care for the defective, the friendless, the infirm, the dependent
+children, the countless societies and cooeperative social organizations
+for social serviceableness, in which women are leaders and chief
+workers, bear witness that "grandmother" has found a place for her
+energies after the children have grown and set up households of their
+own.
+
+If such a grandmother is a member of the daughter's family she is not
+half so objectionable to daughter's husband as when mother-in-law had
+a permanent place at the fireside, perhaps in the exact spot where he
+wanted to put his easy chair, and had to be "taken out" if she ever
+ventured into the great world. She now has her own interests, often so
+many and vital that her day is more completely filled than when she
+was younger. She has her own set of friends and her own use for the
+energy and power of direction that often in the old days made her a
+troublesome member of the family. If only she has a chance at her own
+little cooking, and her own individual sitting room, and has her own
+income, if ever so small, she may fit well into even a city apartment
+and no other member of the family be the worse. The thing required for
+old men and women alike is some work suited to slower motion and
+lessened strength and greater need for quiet and independent thought.
+This is a need which more women than men have met to-day, we repeat,
+but it is one that must be understood and effectively satisfied for
+men and women alike.
+
+Edward Everett Hale said every man needed "both a vocation and an
+avocation"--something by which he earned his living and something by
+which he maintained his interest in activity. It is the avocation that
+must be planned for. The vocation is often thrust upon one by
+necessity or chance association. If every aged person had something to
+do that made each day short and each night a welcome rest much of the
+friction between the older and the younger members of families would
+be avoided and life would piece the generations together more
+perfectly.
+
+=The Attitude of Mind Toward Old Age.=--Life calls upon us all to
+prepare while yet young for the lessened power of old age. The removal
+from the commanding place to the honorable but more difficult position
+of the ex-leader and the chief-emeritus is a step that requires care.
+
+The attitude of mind that can keep in harmonious touch with the
+oncoming generation and yet not lose the value of its own day of
+contribution to the social inheritance is an art to be acquired only
+by effort and the exercise of moral and mental power. There was,
+perhaps, never in the history of our civilization so great a gap
+between the ideals and social practices of the grandparents and those
+of the third generation. The parents even are feeling themselves too
+far from the children; the grandparents often realize a vast distance
+between themselves and the rising generation. The distance is not
+always the measure of progress. It is not seldom the effect of rapid
+changes in mechanical appliances, in material agencies and economic
+conditions, in literary taste and in ideals of culture; an effect
+which has unsettled youth in the inherited ways and not yet settled
+them in well-considered new rules of living. The experience that might
+aid in easing the process of readjustment is not always at hand and
+not always used when it is attainable. The experience of age is too
+often shown in dogmatic rules. The inexperience of youth is too often
+the accompaniment of a childish conviction that everything that has
+been is wrong and everything that promises to be is best.
+
+There is, therefore, greater need, perhaps, than ever before for
+wisdom and patience and sympathetic understanding of those from whom
+one differs within the family life. It is for the grandparents to set
+the fashion for these new adjustments. They have loved most because
+they have given most. They have learned most, or could have learned
+most, because longer in the school of life. And they have but a little
+way to travel on the long road their children and their children's
+children must go to meet their fate.
+
+To the lasting credit of human nature be it said that the grandparents
+of to-day measure as well for the most part as do the parents in these
+difficult tasks of family adjustment to a rapidly changing social
+order. It is often the grandparent who sees what the different life of
+his or her children have meant to the still greater difference in the
+condition of the grandchild, and can interpret to the latter the
+reason for the restraint of the parent. It is often through the
+tenderness and devotion to the aged called out by the grandparents
+that the son and daughter learn the real depths of parental love. It
+is often the partial affection of the grandparent for the grandchild
+that makes a new tie in family love and enables that family love to
+grow wiser as well as stronger. It may be, as quoted before, that no
+house is large enough for two families. It surely is true that no
+family living room is spacious enough for the continuous use of three
+generations; but it is still more true that with new interests all
+around the circle of family membership a more varied family life can
+be managed without friction or loss of privacy for any member if only
+there is the right attitude of mind. To-day the ideal of the
+Heaven-father fastens itself as easily to the child's affection for
+grandpa as on his dependence upon his father. To-day the ideal of
+mother-love, never lessened even by wrong-doing of the child, is as
+securely fibred upon the picture of grandma, ever ready to heal and
+comfort, as upon that of the mother, whose daily ministrations make
+the child comfortable.
+
+=The Special Gifts of the Old to the Home and the World.=--In some
+ways it is surely more easy to believe in goodness at the heart of
+things because some aged man or woman, closely related by blood and
+breeding, has been a living example of what must be revered. Moreover,
+to the family, as to the world-at-large, old age brings a special
+gift--if that old age is what it may be. Each period of life has its
+own gift to make. Age should make a precious contribution, even the
+central faith of life.
+
+Youth, eager, responsive to all noble ambitions and touched by all
+noble dissatisfactions with what is, makes its plan for what should be
+on a strictly logical basis. His rejected Evil is wholly evil; his
+chosen Good without a flaw. Children are all Calvinists; and youth,
+for the most part, separates its ideas of good and bad as the sheep
+and goats within its mind. Well that it is so. The law of growth in
+life is so far from logical, so operative by inconsistent
+fluctuations, that it is of the greatest social use for each fresh
+generation of reformers to hew to the line and express that
+intolerance of compromise which helps the struggling moral sense to
+clarify the issues of each new day.
+
+In middle life, if the individual worker for better things is not
+merely a prophesier but has become an actual agent for the realization
+of his ideal in practical achievement, he suffers many a disillusion,
+not in respect to his ideal, but in respect to the ease of working it
+into the body politic or into the compelling purpose of the social
+mind. That is the time of danger; and how many lose heart and hope and
+fall weakly by the way when they first learn that to state a truth
+with power is not enough to insure its acceptance! That one should set
+himself with courage and faith to the long, slow processes of actual
+change of the social order after he has learned how difficult that is,
+is to be indeed a hero--a hero of the actualization of the ideal, even
+though he dies with the promised land hardly in sight.
+
+In later life comes to many, and should to all, another gift. Not
+alone the vision of youth, never lost and always dear; not only the
+strength of open-eyed effort to achieve so much of the ideal, even its
+very least atom, as the times and the conditions allow and not lose
+heart that it is so little, but also the interpretative and
+harmonizing spirit of those who see, beyond the personal ideal and
+vision and far beyond the personal achievement, the upward march of
+all mankind--not alone the leaders of that march; not alone those who
+will and know the upward way, but all who feel the under-current
+pressure "toward the better, ever onward toward the best," This
+pressure even those feel who fondly imagine they are holding all life
+to outgrown patterns, and they prove its power by their unconscious
+response.
+
+Another gift of insight they may have who grow old in the spirit of
+youth. It is the gift of seeing in one picture those who have come a
+long way up the path of progress and those who have but just entered
+upon it. The harsh judgments of youth, so tonic and useful, that
+measure moral actions by their exact position in ethical perception
+(judgment so tonic and useful that youth without that element misses
+its own gift to human progress) cease to serve in old age for purposes
+of just discrimination. In later life may come the wisdom of
+understanding those from whom one differs, the gift of seeing the
+helpful interrelations of newer and older "mores" in normal human
+development and the glad recognition that even defective moral vision,
+though retarding needed changes, may be used by the powers that
+balance our complex life to hold, its course steady in chaos of
+change. These gifts may add patience and love, sweetness and light, to
+the zeal of the reformer and yet not dull his ardor for the next
+morning-hour of progress.
+
+Not the old, then, because it is old, nor the new because it is new;
+not the few who will hold no parley with that which to them is evil,
+nor the many who cling to what they have inherited lest they lose
+life's best treasures; not to those who call aloud in the market
+place, "Behold the coming of the Lord!" nor to those who sit at the
+fireside and cherish their own only; not on or to any one
+manifestation of the life in which we have our being can the old, with
+the spirit of youth, fibre their faith and trust.
+
+In all the struggling, mistaken, weary, selfish, cowardly, alike as in
+all the brave, heroic, unselfish and lovely, is manifestation that
+makes "no good thing a failure, no evil thing success." This is the
+testimony of a ripe and wise old age. In that they must trust who have
+tested the real things of life in the real world of effort, nor lost
+hope in the Onward Way for all.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE GRANDPARENTS
+
+  1. What have been the general tendencies in social treatment of
+     the aged?
+
+  2. What are some of the social needs in respect to public and
+     private health, vocational training, wages and standards of
+     living, family and personal insurance and educational
+     opportunities which must be met if old age is to be prolonged
+     as far as possible and made happy and comfortable to the end of
+     life?
+
+  3. What should be the aim of youth and middle life in respect to
+     preparation for old age?
+
+  4. Read _Old Age Support of Women Teachers_, by Dr. Lucille Eaves,
+     _A Study in Economic Relations of Women_, by the Department of
+     Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of
+     Boston, Mass., and read "The Trade Union and the Old Man," by
+     John O'Grady, Catholic University of America, published in
+     _American Journal of Sociology_ of November, 1917. Are the
+     suggestions in these articles along needed lines?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] See _The State and Pensions in Old Age_, by J.A. Spender.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN
+
+  "The members of the ancient family were united by something more
+  powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the
+  religion of the sacred fire and of dead ancestors. This caused the
+  ancient family to form a single body, both in this life and in the
+  next,"--DE COULANGES, in _The Ancient City_.
+
+  "Land belonged to the clan and the clan was settled upon the land.
+  A man was thus not a member of the clan because he lived upon or
+  even owned the land, but he lived upon the land and had interest
+  in it because he was a member of the clan."--HEARN, in _The Aryan
+  Household_.
+
+  "Three things if possessed by a man make him fit to be a chief of
+  kindred: that he should speak in behalf of his kin and be listened
+  to; that he should fight in behalf of his kin and be feared; that
+  he should be security on behalf of his kin and be
+  accepted."--WELSH TRIADS (cited by Seebohm).
+
+    "I cannot choose but think upon the time
+    When our two loves grew like two buds;
+    School parted us; we never found again
+    That childish world where our two spirits mingled
+    Like scents from varying roses that remain one sweetness.
+    Yet the twin habit of that earlier time
+    Lingered for long about the heart and tongue.
+    We had been natives of one happy clime
+    And its dear accent to our utterance clung.
+    And were another childhood world my share,
+    I would be born a little sister there."
+                    --GEORGE ELIOT, in _Brother and Sister_.
+
+    "When love is strong it never tarries to take heed
+    Or know if its return exceed
+    Its gift; in its sweet haste no greed,
+    No strife belong.
+    It hardly asks if it be loved at all, to take
+    So barren seems, when it can make
+    Such bliss, for the beloved's sake,
+    Of bitter tasks."--H.H.
+
+
+=Ancient Kinship Bond.=--The relation of brothers and sisters in the
+family group has passed through many changes and must at times have
+caused much confusion and difficulty in the home. For example, in that
+state of familial association in which all the brothers of a certain
+relationship were considered as husbands of all sisters within a
+certain bond there must have been some heart-burnings and several
+kinds of family unpleasantness. We have some hints of these from many
+historical sources. In the era of complete subjection of the
+individual to the community such unpleasantness may have counted only
+for negligible unhappiness on the part of a few social rebels, but the
+custom alluded to did not prove to work well enough to become
+permanent.
+
+Again, the form of family bond which demanded that a man take to wife
+the widow of his dead brother and "raise up children to the name" of
+the deceased had a long but not a permanent life. In the well-known
+passage from Deuteronomy, the 25th chapter, the faithful are commanded
+that "if brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no
+son, the wife of the dead shall not be married without unto a
+stranger: her husband's brother shall ... take her to him to wife, and
+perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her. And the first-born
+... shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his
+name be not blotted out of Israel." The same passage shows that while
+it was doubtless at first an imperative social law, there came a time
+when the living brother had a choice as to whether or not he should
+take to wife the widow of one who had died. Perhaps there might have
+been an economic pressure that made it difficult to perform this
+ancient duty. Perhaps there might have been objection from the wife or
+wives already in command of the household matters. Perhaps the widow
+was sometimes of a type to make the brotherly and family duty seem
+very hard. At any rate, there came a time when, as the writer in
+Deuteronomy says, "If the man like not to take his brother's wife" he
+could refuse the family service. It cost him, however, in such cases a
+severe ordeal. He could be haled before the elders on the complaint
+that he "refused to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel." The
+widow "could loose his shoe from his feet and spit in his face" and
+say "so shall it be done unto the man that doth not build up his
+brother's house."
+
+The large requirement for the brother, thus indicated, passed outward
+to the next of kin in certain circumstances. There are many deeply
+interesting accounts of readjustment of family life through the taking
+over by the living of duties once undertaken by the dead. The lovely
+idyl of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, shows this widely spreading
+brother-duty. Here the mother-in-law, so sweet and so wise that her
+sons' wives loved her deeply, shrewdly manages a contact between Ruth
+and Boaz to the lasting service of her son's inheritance of name and
+land. The whole story is redolent of the finer side of ancient forms
+of familial duty, the man being rich and generous enough to take on
+his more remote relative's responsibilities, the young widow being
+sweet and charming enough to capture the interest of the rich man even
+before he knows who she is, and the mother-in-law showing
+statesmanship of the highest order in managing the affair, together
+with such fine character of her own that all respect and love her.
+
+To-day we have left in law and custom but the shadow of these ancient
+demands upon brothers in the family. That shadow is limited to the
+purely economic aspect of brotherly responsibilities. The old law of
+inheritance made the sons the preferred heirs. Only when there was no
+son could the daughter inherit if at all. The responsibility of that
+heir, however, was often made commensurate with his inheritance. He
+must financially care for the near relatives--the father and mother
+first, the sister and brother next, the uncles and aunts and cousins
+not to be forgotten.
+
+=Present Demands of Kinship.=--The existing statutes make it incumbent
+upon any man in receipt of income beyond his own immediate needs to do
+what is possible to prevent his near relatives from requiring aid
+from the general public. The custom of all charitable organizations
+when appealed to for aid for individuals, or for a family, is to ask,
+"What can your relatives do for you?" The pressure upon those
+connected even by marriage to help relatives privately, and so reduce
+public relief, is often very severe. In those of English ancestry the
+disgrace of having a near relative, even so distant as a great-uncle
+or great-aunt or sister-in-law, "come upon the town" is felt keenly.
+The sacrifices of many people of limited means to prevent such a
+catastrophe would make a long and heavy list of discomforts and
+privations. The duty of brothers, sisters, and next of kin to help
+provide for the poorer members of the family connection is thus still
+held firmly by social ideals. That all people, however, pay this debt
+of family responsibility or that as many struggle to do it as used to
+do so cannot be affirmed. On the contrary, many charitable societies
+make it a serious business to discover and hold to responsibility
+shirking members of families in which there is great discrepancy in
+financial condition.
+
+There is now, however, no recognized social responsibility for giving
+support to poorer members of the family within one household. There is
+no pressure to bring those needing material relief tinder the roof of
+the well-to-do of the family circle. Even parents cannot claim
+residence with adult children, although they can claim by law some
+support commensurate with their children's income. It is seen now that
+the duty of aid does not carry with it the obligation for personal
+association. That is, on the whole, a gain, especially in cases where
+there is temperamental incompatibility.
+
+The whole relationship of brothers, sisters, and next of kin is
+simplified and placed more securely on bases of affection and ethical
+ideal in modern life, and people are good brothers and sisters or good
+family relatives in proportion as they are unselfish and useful in all
+their other social relationships. There is a real family tie, however,
+which still holds. We see it in the Family Reunions, in the listing of
+relationships in those devoted to genealogy, and in the patriotic
+societies that indicate by membership what ancestors fought in the
+Revolution or held office in Colonial days. There is the permanent tie
+of blood that makes a peculiar bond unlike that of friendship and
+unlike that of marriage--a tie sometimes carried to extremes, as in
+the case of the woman who, angry with her husband for a breach of
+etiquette, declared she "was glad that he was no relation of hers!" On
+the whole, in reasonable moderation, one of the best ways we have
+to-day of helping a group is by means of the generosity of the more
+successful members of that group.
+
+=Special Burdens of Women in Family Obligations.=--Brothers, usually,
+marry and have their own households to take care of. The unmarried
+sisters, coming from a long line of women who were supposed to work
+entirely for the family, with no commercial value placed upon their
+household service, feel a call to duty from ancient times to carry
+family burdens. The sons, however, do not escape the parental call for
+help and have often in the immediate past (when women ceased to have a
+large economic value in the home and had not yet acquired the capacity
+or desire for self-support) borne a heavy burden of financial aid for
+unmarried sisters. The tables are well-nigh turned now, however, and
+the number of self-supporting women who have relatives of varied
+nearness and ages dependent or partially dependent upon them, is much
+larger than that of spinsters care-free and independent. In all cases,
+however, whether of men or women, those who respond loyally to the
+needs of those kin to them are the unselfish and capable. The slogan
+of socialism, "To all in the measure of their need; from all in the
+measure of their capacity," may never be accepted by society in
+general, but it is now the rule in the family relation.
+
+=Disadvantages of the Only Child.=--In the individualistic family of
+the modern monogamic type the chief need is for every child to have
+brothers and sisters or at least a brother or sister. The "one-child"
+plan, which places a solitary little creature as sole recipient of
+money, affection, and care of the household, is one that shows poverty
+of condition for the child concerned, no matter how rich the parents.
+Such a child lacks a chief aid in its development. Nature sometimes
+sends, even in a large family, all boys or all girls and makes
+coeducation at the start difficult. Usually, however, when there are
+two, three, four, or more children they are mixed in due and helpful
+proportion. When the family is too large, as it so often was in the
+older days, it must subdivide according to ages and tastes, and in
+many old-fashioned families some brothers and sisters were near in
+sympathy and love and others wide apart. In the moderate-size modern
+family, however, where there is enough companionship within the home
+for family good times and not enough to cause breakage into groups
+within the group, we have the ideal conditions for child development.
+For the only child there are happily some substitutes for this home
+companionship in the "residential school," or the school with long
+days of group relationship of like age and condition, but it is not
+the same and seldom as good as the home circle of the right size and
+variety.
+
+The modern conditions make the old ties seem less important to many.
+In the United States, where people move about so freely across the
+vast spaces of our continent, and where in the large cities so many
+move each year to try vainly to better themselves in hired houses, the
+ties of family outside of the immediate circle seem remote and to be
+easily set aside. It is not, however, a sign of advanced social spirit
+which makes a young girl declare "she has no use for her relations;
+she cares only for her chosen friends," and it is often of the essence
+of social danger that a young man wants to give up all connection with
+his family. The fact is that one can understand better how one came to
+be what one is by knowing something of one's forbears and one's living
+relatives.
+
+=Permanent Value of the Family Bond.=--The feeling that one belongs to
+a blood group, the feeling so old and so wonder-working in the past,
+gives at least one ideal of permanence in a world of affairs whirling
+in such rapid change that the common mind becomes dizzy and the common
+idealism confused. On the other hand, it is cause for gratitude
+unspeakable that the old bondage of the family life is relaxed, never
+to be tightened again to such oppression as once prevailed. The fact
+that inheritance is now seen to be so varied and so unpredictable that
+one child in a family may "take back" to one ancestor and another to a
+different one to ends of complete divergence of character and
+capacity, shows that the old attempt to keep them together, whether
+they could love each other or not, was a social mistake. To-day we are
+more reasonable. We even say that fathers and mothers may not be
+taken into the home of their children if it best serves the mutual
+happiness for them to have separate homes. We seldom now in
+enlightened families make the mistake of holding to "living together"
+when living apart is clearly the wiser thing.
+
+The old sense of family responsibility is, however, happily not lost
+and in its new ways of working often gives a finer representation of
+mutual aid than was common of old. The will of one rich man which
+included many gifts to sisters, cousins, and nieces, and left
+directions to the principal heirs to find out if there were any
+relatives of the same nearness left out and if so to make them equal
+sharers, is but a type of many who, with or without large means, share
+generously with all their name and kin.
+
+On the other hand, we have examples of those who, in the effort to
+leave a large fortune for some specific object of education or of
+public charity, wholly neglect, often with cruel indifference, the
+needs of some member or members of their own family. One man of
+conspicuous gift to education left a sister and her two daughters
+without means for comfortable living while piling up money for his pet
+scheme. Many men skimp themselves and also their wives, children, and
+still more their parents and more remote kin, to hoard a monster sum
+for some charity to be forever called by their name. These, however,
+are unusual examples of losing sight of the near in the remote. The
+average man and woman has in mind a series of concentric circles,
+those nearest to be helped first, those next beyond to share next, and
+the world outside to have what is left when these inner claims upon
+love and generosity are fully met.
+
+If it were not for this general tendency society-at-large would have
+far more responsibility for all sorts of care of the aged, of the
+incapable, of the unsuccessful, of the invalid, of the defective, of
+the insane, of the "cranky" and of the lonely. Finally, without this
+innate tendency to feel a sense of responsibility for those nearest
+related by family ties much of the discipline toward social usefulness
+would be lacking in the lives of average people. We learn the larger
+duty through faithful response to the nearer and closer obligation.
+For this reason the family holidays and reunions, the family birthday
+celebrations which include all the relatives within reach, the
+pressure of the law and of custom upon those able to care for those
+less strong and competent within the kinship bond, are all socializing
+influences which it is well to keep warm and consciously active.
+
+The lovely spirit of Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's "Tembarom" when he finds a
+"real relative" is duplicated by many immigrants who after years of
+loneliness greet one of the family on the shores of the new country;
+and the member of the eastern family "gone west" is the most
+hospitable of all relatives to the visitor from the old home who has
+the same family tree.
+
+The gratitude of the ancient poet that "God has set the solitary in
+families" is not a sentiment to be outgrown. Those who feel that it
+is, lose something precious from the basis of human affection. The
+adjustment of this old bond to the new individualistic life is not yet
+made even in the Western world, while in the Eastern the vital
+problems of family adjustment press in supreme unrest. The one
+principle that should guide us in this as in all inheritance from the
+past is surely this, that while the sacredness of personality of any
+one member of any group, even of the family, shall not be wholly
+sacrificed to the needs and demands of any other member, yet "they
+that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak" in the old
+spirit of unselfish service.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN
+
+  1. In the monogamic system of the family what, in general, has
+     been the legal responsibility toward blood kin?
+
+  2. Is the inherited legal and social responsibility for the care
+     and well-being of relatives lessened at the present time? If
+     so, is that for good or for ill in the wider social fabric?
+
+  3. How far should accepted obligations toward near relatives be
+     met in ways to bring under one roof more than the fathers and
+     mothers and children of a given generation?
+
+  4. Should natural kinship weigh heavily in considering
+     arrangements for material relief in poverty? In the care of
+     orphans and half-orphans? And in provisions for aid to the
+     aged, the sick, and those out of work?
+
+  5. What special conditions make appeal to family feeling difficult
+     in a population like that of the United States with many
+     immigrants and great mobility in industrial relations?
+
+  6. Is there any way of strengthening family feeling without
+     attempting return to older forms of family autonomy?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE
+
+    "The path by which we twain did go,
+      Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
+      Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
+    From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
+
+    And we with singing cheer'd the way,
+      And, crown'd with all the season lent,
+      From April on to April went,
+    And glad at heart from May to May.
+
+    And all we met was fair and good,
+      And all was good that Time could bring,
+      And all the secret of the Spring
+    Moved in the chambers of the blood."
+                    --TENNYSON.
+
+  "There is no man that imparteth his joy to his friend but he
+  joyeth the more; and no man who imparteth his grief to his friend
+  but he grieveth the less."--BACON.
+
+  "True, active, productive friendship consists in equal pace in
+  life, in moving forward together, steadily, however much our way
+  of thought and life may vary."--GOETHE.
+
+  "Accept no person against thy soul."--ECCLESIASTICUS.
+
+    "Your love, vouchsafe it royal-hearted Few
+    And I will set no common price thereon;
+      But aught of inward faith must I forego,
+    Or miss one drop from truth's baptismal hand,
+      Think poorer thoughts, pray cheaper prayers, and grow
+    Less worthy trust, to meet your heart's demand.
+      Farewell! Your wish I for your sake deny;
+      Rebel to love, in truth to love, am I."
+                    --D.A. WASSON.
+
+
+=The Power of Friendship.=--The man who said, "Our relations are
+thrust upon us; thank heaven we may choose our friends" expressed a
+feeling shared by many, that fate may handicap us by giving us birth
+in an uncongenial circle, but we may recoup ourselves by chosen
+friends and enjoy companionship with them which our kin cannot
+furnish.
+
+Friendship has inspired many of the greatest deeds and many of the
+noblest poems, and has given us examples of heroic devotion almost
+passing the love of man for woman. It is not within our purpose to
+recall these great friendships, but they are familiar and furnish the
+unfailing stimulus of finer sentiment in youth as the classic examples
+are recited to each generation. Real friendship is a sacred thing.
+There are pinchbeck imitations which are neither sacred nor helpful.
+The "mashes" and the "crushes" of school-life are not even good
+imitations. The bargain-counter exchange of services--"you give me
+society uplift, and I will give you under-current influence," as one
+woman frankly stated it to another, although it may be called
+friendship, has no element of real affection in it, as the first one
+to fail in "value received" so clearly understands. The unwholesome
+absorption of one woman with another, so that no minute apart can be
+endured, may be long-lived or an ephemeral expression of a weakness on
+one or the other side, but it is not the best type of friendship.
+Among men the submergence of one personality in another, so that
+although there are two people there is but one mind and one purpose,
+may be friendship, but it is not that equal comradeship which the
+healthy-minded seek. The friendship between a man and a woman which
+does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life-long
+experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle
+of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both
+a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added
+that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in life-long
+friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to
+wed, to make such a three-cornered comradeship a permanent success.
+Friendship at its best is a task as well as a gratification. Nothing
+in this world can be had for nothing. "Earth gets its price for what
+earth gives us." A really great friendship is a test and a challenge
+and a "time-consumer," as Emerson says. It is, next to marriage and
+parenthood, the most exacting of human relationships. For this reason
+few men and women can have a great friendship that does not lead to
+marriage, and at the same time have a complete marriage with another.
+For this reason again, the great friendships are generally between two
+unmarried men or two unmarried women.
+
+=The Newly Wed and Old Friends.=--Much is written of the sad
+disillusion experienced by the newly wedded man when he finds his
+friends are not as welcome at his new fireside as he had expected.
+These friends of his are not of the sort prophesied by the love of
+David and Jonathan, but they are valued comrades and he has
+anticipated sharing the delights of his new home with them. Many a
+woman in her desire to be all in all to her husband and in the selfish
+absorption of an undisciplined affection, starts married life the
+wrong way by making no place in the home life for these old friends of
+her husband's bachelor life. That reacts often in the worst possible
+manner upon his affection for her. She forgets too often that she is
+not called upon to give up her friends. They can come, and do come,
+when her husband is away at his work, while his friends, if they come
+at all, must come in his leisure hours which she often wishes to
+preempt for herself alone. It is the most short-sighted of follies for
+a woman to try to sweep clean of all former interests and friendships
+the life of the man with whom she is to try the great adventure of
+marriage.
+
+The most a wife can accomplish by selfish denial to her husband of his
+right to keep his friends and enjoy the old as well as the new
+companionship is to make it impossible for him to enjoy his friends in
+her company. She can thus send him off on hunting trips or other
+outside enjoyments which leave her lonely at home. The fact that few
+worth-while men or women have lived to the marriage day without deep
+affection for some friend, or perhaps for many friends, is not a
+testimony to need of change when a new relation is formed but to the
+enlargement of both circles of comradeship and their amalgamation into
+friends of the family. This may be a difficult achievement. Many men
+and women have found, to their surprise, that although they are in
+love with wife or husband they are not at all in love with the
+respective families and still less inclined to accept each other's
+chosen friends as their own. One angle alone of the many-sided
+character may have "made the match;" quite other angles have already
+attracted and still hold the friends. These often mutually incongruous
+friends of both sides must somehow be made to attach themselves to the
+marriage plan or they may work much harm to the new home.
+
+The art of holding on to old associations and yet substituting, where
+substitution is wise or necessary, a new for an established
+relationship is a great art. In the case of the newly married whose
+friends have been in widely different circles, it is often an
+impossible one.
+
+Here is where the social wisdom that in some manner essays to make the
+twain to be later one a part of the same or a very similar social
+group, shows its finest results. When marriage was arranged by the
+elders of the respective families there was likely to be a similarity
+in the social standards of the two circles from which the bride and
+groom were drawn. Their friends were usually so inevitably of the same
+financial standing and of similar cultural ideals and manners that
+they would be likely to be congenial to each other and all to both
+husband and wife. When the one chosen was selected by the fathers and
+mothers there were some essentials for successful married life secured
+in advance. We have now come to feel that each couple must choose for
+themselves and that conscious, selective love is the very essence of
+that choice. It is well, however, to name over the essentials secured
+by the arranged marriages, to which such an enlightened country as
+France still gives much heed and still holds to some extent in family
+control.
+
+=Some Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders.=--The old
+arranged choice for marriage, in the first place, secured, and still
+secures in countries not yet changed in this particular, a similar
+financial position. Often greed of family prestige made the money end
+the chief one and sacrificed everything else to the bringing together
+of two great fortunes. Yet the fact that family choices usually united
+those of similar financial standing and power of gratification of
+taste did lead toward an easy adjustment of the young couple to life
+together. One of the chief causes of unhappiness in marriages wholly
+from personal choice and in response to an impulse of passionate
+attachment is that the taste and "style" of living of the two has been
+so different that it is hard, after the first glamour wears away, to
+settle down to agreeable compromises. As a rule, "the beggar maid and
+King Cophetua" can get on better than the young woman heiress and the
+ex-chauffeur in such compromises; for it is always easier to extend
+one's income than to contract it, and women can still owe all to the
+loved one with better grace than men can bear the position of one
+"marrying above his lot." The tendency of the older custom, however,
+to limit all marriage choices on the basis of money to be contributed
+to the common fund was, and is when now in force, as destructive to
+real happiness in marriage as any ill-considered leaping across social
+barriers could well be. It is well, therefore, that it is outgrown.
+
+The second condition believed essential to success in marriage from
+the point of view of family stability, when the marriage choice of the
+loved one was made by the elders, is far more important than that of
+financial equality. It is the congeniality of the two families to be
+united by the marriage. The custom of betrothing their children as a
+means of carrying on the close friendship of a lifetime beyond its
+natural limit into the generations yet to be, is an old and not a
+wholly bad one. It insures for the young couple a genuine love from
+both sides the family line. To be sure, that love may be an oppressive
+and undesired gift which one or the other of the young people ardently
+wishes to ignore or to be freed from, but it contains also some
+elements of a good start for those same young people in a mutually
+devoted double parentage. When, however, as in Eastern countries, it
+leads to betrothal in infancy or very early childhood and sets the
+girl who is to be the wife in the family of her betrothed when she is
+too young to know her own real nature or to have a mind to make up
+about what she would wish for herself, it may be and generally is an
+evil thing. In the questions concerning the family set forth by the
+Chinese inquiry, to which allusion has already been made, the first
+set of problems relates to "Early Engagements," and it is asked, "Is
+the practice of parents in arranging for the engagement of a girl
+while still a mere child productive of happiness in the future home?"
+And, again, "Can a woman refuse to marry a man whom her family decides
+she should marry, after the formal engagement has taken place?" To our
+Western ideas the answer is so plain to both these questions that one
+may be impatient at their repetition here. Yet it is certainly true
+that many people freely engage themselves to their later unhappiness
+and there have been many family virtues bred on even the outgrown
+fashion of family choice. Where unhappiness has been prevented in the
+results of family choice doubtless the friendship of the two family
+heads has had much to do with such mitigation of bad effects of
+extreme parental control in marriage.
+
+Social protection of the young has in a measure superseded the ancient
+family arrangement, but where it has not, a young person may be found
+to-day in as bad a position through personal choice as that of the
+girl set in a home without her own consent to be the future wife of a
+man she has not seen. The difference is, however, a vital one.
+
+In the case of the Chinese girl the status is fixed. In the case of a
+girl of the Western world, even of most unfortunate circumstance or
+weakness of character, there is a possibility of escape from even the
+worst conditions into a new relationship to life and to marriage. We
+have suicides in the Western world, and some of them of young girls
+who, free to choose their mates, loved not wisely but too well; but
+the toll of suicides of wives in China is one that testifies that
+polygamy and the power of fathers over their daughters in marriage and
+even in their sale for immoral uses, and the legal right to hold girls
+in domestic slavery, are evils not made tolerable even by the
+high-minded who try to perpetuate the friendship as well as the power
+of leading families by intermarriage.
+
+An early Massachusetts law declared that "No female orphan could be
+given in marriage during her minority except with the approbation of a
+majority of the selectmen of the town." This was proof that in this
+country from the first, the social power was used not to make girls
+accept husbands that might be chosen for them but to protect girls
+from exploitation of designing persons, and if they had not a family
+protection they were held secure in that of the officers of the
+community. The law of 1719, in New York, that no person under
+twenty-one should be married without the written consent of parent or
+guardian was a step in the direction of social control. This law aimed
+not to make marriage choices for any young person but to safeguard
+such choice from possible harm.
+
+The ancient family choice in marriage tried in the third place to give
+every one an equal chance to be married. The families concerned, when
+the age thought to be marriageable had been reached, sought to give
+the young persons a place in the family order. The idea of bachelors
+and maids of mature years was not only repugnant, it was an indictment
+of the vigilance and good offices of the elders. When a certain Doctor
+Brickell practised medicine in North Carolina in about 1731, he
+declared that "She that continues unmarried until twenty is reckoned a
+stale maid, which is a very indifferent character in this country;"
+and in New England the unmarried man, as elsewhere, was subjected to
+special tax and social odium.
+
+The family arrangement for marriage of the young did one thing, at
+least, in a time when women and girls enjoyed little protection or
+financial security outside of marriage--it set at work forces to
+provide husbands for many girls who would not be the first choice in a
+free competition for masculine favor.
+
+=Some Ancient Spinsters, But Few.=--There were, however, some
+distinguished women of the older time who never married. Margaret
+Brent, of Maryland, for example, whose appeal for "voyce and vote with
+men," in the making of laws to which she must owe allegiance, is
+historic. And that Mary Carpenter, sister of Alice, wife of Governor
+Bradford, who, at the beginning of her ninety-first year, was declared
+a "godly old maid;" and, again, that "ancient maid of forty years,"
+who is said to have founded the town of Taunton, Massachusetts. Others
+of distinction might be mentioned. These show clearly that the right
+not to marry at all, and the right not to marry a person whom she had
+not seen or, having seen, did not want as husband, was well sustained
+in the case of young girls in our own country from the first.
+
+The lot of most women here in the United States, as elsewhere in the
+world, includes marriage; and although no one wants to go back to
+family arrangement of nuptials, the desirability of marriage within a
+congenial and familiar circle--that which the family arrangement
+distinctly set out to secure--is still obvious.
+
+The fourth element of family stability and well-being which the
+ancient parental arrangement of marriage was intended to secure is
+deliberation and chance for learning all the facts on both sides, so
+that there may be no marrying in haste to repent at leisure. The
+reaction from this deliberation in tying the nuptial knot is seen in
+"running away to be married" without the slightest knowledge on either
+side of the qualities or capacities of the chosen partner and without
+giving the parents any opportunity of safeguarding from disastrous
+choice. This is the swing of the pendulum in a new freedom, often to
+personal disaster. Social ideals and legal provisions are alike
+engaged more and more to prevent too ignorant and too hasty marriages.
+Such may turn out to have been made in heaven as nearly as the average
+union, but the chances are against that happy consummation.
+
+=New Demands for Social Control of Marriage Choices.=--Social wisdom
+obliges more deliberation in the case of young people seeking a
+marriage license on their own initiative and perhaps after a very
+brief acquaintance. There is a strong demand that a certain period
+shall elapse between the request for the license and its granting and
+that sufficient publicity be secured to make it easy for interested
+parties to ascertain any facts concerning both the man and the woman
+involved, which might make the marriage either illegal, as bigamy, or
+a catastrophe, as uniting one unfit for marriage with an unsuspecting
+person blinded by sudden attraction. More than this, many States of
+our Union are beginning processes of law to require certificates of
+physical fitness, of freedom from infectious or dangerous disease, and
+some statement of facts as to previous obedience to law and ability
+for self-support such as alone would make marriage successful.
+Ministers of religion of various sects are taking more and more a
+stand against marriage of persons whom they know are of bad habits or
+otherwise likely to give a married partner an unhappy life. Insanity
+in the family is now considered in some States a disqualification for
+marriage, and statutes requiring some family testimony to facts
+concerning that inheritance are coming into enactment and enforcement.
+The tragedy of marrying ignorantly into a certain and hopeless fate of
+union with one who can never be of sound mind is so terrible that the
+state itself is trying to safeguard carelessness on that point. The
+medical profession is more and more acting a parental part in
+requiring the registry of diseases that are most unsocial in their
+effect--diseases incident to vice, and which make any man while
+suffering from them unfit for marriage. It is proposed by many, and by
+law required in some States, that no marriage license shall be given
+without a certificate of both mental and physical fitness, to be
+handed to the officer before registry of the application, in order
+that there may be no public refusal on such grounds of unfitness after
+it is known that a license to marry has been sought. This would be far
+better than, as has been proposed by some persons, for clergymen to
+take the initiative in requiring such physical and mental tests after
+a request to marry two people and after a license has been secured.
+After a matter has gone so far as to result in a request to a
+clergyman to officiate at the marriage ceremony, the exaction of an
+examination which the state has not previously required would
+inevitably, as has been already shown in some instances, lead to
+suspicion and bad feeling. The duty of the state, which alone in our
+country gives power to marry (the clergyman performing the ceremony
+pronouncing the couple married "by virtue of the power invested in him
+by the state"), is clear. That duty is to take all initiative in all
+previous inquiries aimed at preventing the marriage of unfit persons.
+If the state does take such initiative and for all alike, no matter
+what their social standing or reputation may be, then there is no
+stigma for any individual and no suspicion aroused to injure any class
+of persons. There seems as good reason why a compulsory physical and
+mental examination, together with an inquiry into the main facts of a
+person's life in order to prevent fraud and exploitation, should
+always precede the giving of a marriage license as for the required
+physical and mental examination of children when they enter the
+tax-supported public school. It is, in both cases, a way by which
+society secures itself, in the interest of the family and of social
+life, against the fostering or continuance of evils that may be
+prevented from poisoning the sources of moral and intellectual growth.
+
+The fiat has gone forth in the Western world that no one shall be
+compelled to marry against his or her will. The first revolt from
+family control of marriage, that which made so many persons believe
+that any one should be allowed to marry any one whom he or she might
+choose, is now, however, waning. Elements of social control are
+superseding the "marriage broker" and the parental office in deciding
+what unions shall be allowed.
+
+=The Young Should be Helped to Make Wise Choices.=--Wisdom and
+consistency are not yet developed in this new way of helping the
+young, even against their will, to avoid mistakes of ignorance and
+folly, but they are developing. Meanwhile, many children still revere
+their parents' wishes and ideals, even if the wild few do as they
+please without regard to their elders. Most marriages in our country
+are not only safely entered upon but happy in results because of
+tendencies and tastes engendered in homes of love, truth, and
+goodness. The increase of social control in the direction of knowledge
+and caution even among the best people, and the safeguarding of the
+less advantaged in family training, must go on until all the good
+things parental choice gave to marriage arrangements are retained more
+perfectly and all the bad things outgrown.
+
+The fifth element in the ancient parental control of marriage choices
+was the definite placing of youth under the leadership of age and thus
+holding firm the inherited "mores" to make the family stable in ideal
+as in practice. We have now a revolt of youth against the leadership
+of age. We have now, even among those whose affection for their
+parents is strong in feeling and generous in action, an idea that the
+convictions and reverences of the older generation are outgrown and
+for the better. There is a general impression, perhaps speeded unduly
+by the war, that what is new must be good, and what is old must be, if
+not bad, at least not the best. The decay of family religion lessens
+respect for old sanctions. The fact that business and pleasure alike
+take the different members of each family on different ways all the
+week and Sunday, too, make each age represented in the household
+influenced chiefly by its own set of friends. The way in which
+mechanical invention gives unexampled speed in opposite directions to
+the young and the old alike intensifies the segregation of each group
+and minimizes the influence of the family bond. The fact, perhaps of
+all most significant, that every form of art, from the lowest to the
+highest, is changing before our eyes into something new and strange
+tends toward the unconscious absorption by youth of new ideals of what
+is desirable in life. These things all conspire to make youth
+impatient of age.
+
+=The Revolt of Youth.=--Many of the boys who went to torture and
+cripplement in the war have returned to declare that the old life is
+gone, and if there can be no better one devised and realized then the
+old world should go too. Many of the girls who went overseas to a
+vivid excitement and a stimulus of unwonted comradeship with men feel
+that they have so much more insight into real things than do their
+mothers that they know not only what is best for themselves but what
+is best for all youth. Many women, for the first time earning
+independent livelihood during the war-struggle, feel that now, at
+last, they have arrived; and what have they to do with old-fashioned
+behavior? More than all else, the modern economic independence of
+women of good breeding and assured position, in social classes which
+used to consider that only women in direst need could properly earn
+money, gives a wholly different aspect to many social questions. The
+tendency to individualism, so often seen in the modern woman,
+unbalanced by study of the past or its lessons or by any real
+grappling with present problems as they relate to possible future
+adjustments, now begins its strongest revolt at the fireside and makes
+the daughter often a stranger to her mother.
+
+Only the older woman who has kept in touch not only with young life
+outside her own family but with the problems that modern changes in
+education, in industry, in art and literature, press upon the mind,
+can understand why so many young people to-day distrust everything
+that is old and welcome everything that seems new, however ancient it
+may actually be. Many of the newest things proclaimed are old mistakes
+of human nature revamped for a masquerade. A little study, for
+example, would show many young people who think they are responding to
+fresh revelation of the right relation of the sexes that they are
+really coming under the spell of some ancient and discarded plan of
+getting all satisfaction out of a relationship without assuming any
+obligation in return.
+
+=The Wisdom of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth.=--There is no
+chance of putting youth back into tutelage to age in any personal
+relation and in the old sense. Wise older people do not wish that.
+What is happening, and will be accelerated in action when the first
+flush of youthful consciousness of power is a bit balanced by
+knowledge of life's difficulties, is this; the wisdom of the ages, not
+the wisdom of their own parents and family alone, will be available to
+youth and used by youth in ever-increasing reverence. Not that some
+one who has lived longer shall of right determine a young life, but
+that young life shall learn more than in any past time it could do
+what the experience of the race has to teach. Happy the child whose
+parent can interpret this wisdom of life and happy the parent whose
+child can even now see that there is wisdom from the past to
+interpret.
+
+Meanwhile, the fact that so many people marry and so many marriages
+turn out happily speaks well for the wisdom of youth or else gives
+testimony of the kindness of the fate that watches over lovers. We are
+told that at the ages of twenty to twenty-five half of the women and
+one-fourth of the men in the United States are married, and at the
+period of life between thirty-five and forty-five years only seventeen
+per cent. of the men are single and only eleven per cent. of the
+women; while at sixty-five years and over only six per cent. of either
+sex are listed as having never married. If out of this large
+proportion who dare matrimony on their own motion, and often without
+even the parental approbation, only one marriage out of ten to twelve
+turns out so badly that the parties ask to be released from their
+marriage vows, surely it argues well for independence in choosing
+one's partner for one's self even if there are mishaps and disasters
+for the few.
+
+=Personal Choice in Marriage Has Now the Widest Range.=--One fact
+which many overlook when making estimates of the mistakes in marriage
+(and drawing therefrom dire prognostication for the future of the
+family in our country) is that personal choice among a circle of
+friends was not only never so free for young people but also never
+able to cover so wide a range of divergent national and racial
+backgrounds as in the United States. Marriages in this country often
+bridge or try to bridge a chasm between centuries of social
+development and continents of educational influence. It is estimated
+that of the 3,424 languages and dialects spoken in the world, about
+one-third, or 1,624, are spoken in some part of the American
+continent. The English language is spoken by more people than use
+either the German, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese,
+but the 150,000,000 who thus preserve the "mother-tongue" of the early
+American settlers have to come into intimate contact with those of far
+different lingual background. This difference in language, which is
+found so often a barrier to unity between the respective parents of
+the young people who choose each other in marriage, is but a sign and
+symbol of deep-seated and ineradicable divergence in family tradition,
+in fashion of customary ways of living, in scale of moral values and
+in personal habits. It is rather a matter for astonishment that so
+many "mixed marriages" turn out well than that a minority prove
+disastrous. Mixed marriages will continue and with wider range of
+alignment in the future than in the past. That is inevitable with our
+increased complexity of life, which brings together in school and in
+labor, in social gatherings and in political association, all sorts
+and conditions of men, and women. Love not only laughs at prison bars,
+love scoffs at parental differences as well as at parental control.
+Yet is it true that wide divergence in family background is
+accountable for many of the tragedies of broken families after love
+has cooled and the facts of sober obligations incurred have become
+obvious.
+
+The great social need in the United States is for means of
+acquaintance and friendship for the young in lines of association in
+which a safe and helpful marriage choice may be made. William Penn
+said, "Never marry but for love, but see that thou lovest what is
+lovely." The effort of all social arrangements for the young in
+families where the elders do not try to reinstate parental control but
+rather to give a chance for safeguarded independence of choice is to
+bring together young people who should find, each one of them in that
+group, a chosen one of the right sort. Financial capacity, mutually
+congenial relatives, suitable age and similar tastes, after
+acquaintance giving reasonable basis for hope for permanent agreement
+in essentials, might insure suitable marriages. The many advantages of
+close friendships within a group bound together by similar culture and
+outlook is the real reason for "society." Often foolish in its ways
+and defeating its own higher ends, it is yet a real effort to give a
+new and more democratic guidance through favorable circumstances,
+rather than through personal will or family rule, to the marriage
+choice of youth.
+
+The reason why one is chosen and another not is never clear to any but
+the ones who make the choice. To them, indeed, it may be a mystery,
+but one they are sure must have its source in the necessity of things.
+To others it is often a puzzle past understanding because so many of
+the friends of each of the twain "would have chosen so differently,
+you know."
+
+Something of racial need both for mixture and for persistency of type,
+something of hidden demand of temperament for a complementary
+personality, something of easy awakening of passion and easy holding
+of attention, something of requirement for a larger sympathy than most
+friends can give and the favored one seems able to supply--all these
+enter into the selection of the chosen one from all the rest of one's
+friends. The need is for as wide a range of personalities and for as
+large a chance to make friends with the suitable and truly congenial
+as can be given to youth in order that the choice may be really free
+and the result happy.
+
+=The Value of the Church in Social Life.=--In our day the best
+opportunities for such a choice within social ranges most likely to
+offer the right choice is found in the churches. Whatever they may
+lack in power of leadership, the churches have a social activity
+to-day which gives the very best opportunity to youth in its quest for
+the perfect other half. It is not necessary or best to do as the
+Friends have done, turn out of the communion those who "marry out of
+meeting." It is not a wholesome sign when religion puts bars before
+the marriage altar, for one's true mate may be found in another temple
+than that in which one was consecrated in infancy. It is often the
+very difference in family faith that unites two people whose religious
+inheritance has slipped away from bondage and gives only a reminiscent
+glow. It is, however, true that like beliefs, like forms of worship,
+like use of the same tabernacle, Sunday after Sunday, which bring
+parents and elders of families together, give chances for the young to
+form wide and strong attachments of friendship within a circle of like
+quality and tastes. In spite of the fact that many people bridge vast
+social chasms with high success in a marriage venture, the majority
+of happy marriages are of those who do not have to engage an outside
+interpreter in order to understand each other in reaction to social
+habit, ethics, and culture.
+
+It is often made a reproach to the modern church that it is so much a
+supplement of the home, so largely a social opportunity rather than a
+controlling moral force. In some sense the reproach may be a just one,
+but in a very real meaning of human service, the church that aids
+young people to find themselves and each other in a friendly circle of
+the like-minded, like-mannered, and like-spirited, within the circle
+of whom a really good marriage choice may be made, can claim
+recognition as of those functionaries that meet a need not met so well
+by any other social agency. The straining of this point by advertised
+"courting parlors" for the friendless and homeless may not be the
+right thing, but what is needed is an opportunity providing the right
+atmosphere and chaperonage for easier acquaintance among young people
+away from home.
+
+The sad fact that so many young men and young women never meet the
+right mates in youth and marry perforce, if at all, any one that
+"comes along," makes any organization that naturally and simply
+enables those who need it to make acquaintance with those among whom a
+congenial mate may easily be found socially useful.
+
+Either as substitute for home surroundings or as supplement to unhappy
+or inadequate family life, the church home may be a benefactor in this
+direction of enabling young people to find what all need, friends and
+possible chosen ones among those friends.
+
+The prophetic mission of the church, laments an earnest reformer, is
+now too much in eclipse. Perhaps so, but it may be truer to say that
+the prophetic mission has now escaped all walls, even of grandest
+cathedrals, and is now busy at organizing that mission into
+specialties of social reform and social progress. However that may be,
+the church as a home-extension meeting-place of the higher, broader,
+and finer friendly association, in which all ages can come together,
+in a friendly spirit and for worship of all that is lovely and of good
+report;--the church as such a home-extension service has a noble place
+to fill in modern life.
+
+=Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage Responsibility.=--At any rate,
+by whatever means of help, or however left to struggle alone with its
+problems, the youth of to-day has taken all life's choices in its own
+hands, especially the choice that puts one friend above all others and
+takes the first step in the founding of a home. If any one thinks that
+it is so slight a thing to do this now, since if one is not satisfied
+one can get a divorce, he or she is not giving the choice a fair
+chance. It must be held within the heart and purpose as a permanent
+bond or the marriage will not be likely to realize its own
+possibilities.
+
+The real lover is sure that he will love forever the same. It is that
+feeling that consecrates the marriage and gives most assurance of its
+success. If we could get rid of romantic love we should have no good
+start toward married happiness. If we got rid of the ideal of
+life-long devotion we should not build the home on sure foundations.
+The psychology of permanence is an essential of true marriage.
+
+On the other hand, if we tried to put the family back into the bondage
+of the old time, when youth was subject and could never exercise its
+own power of choice, we should lose the one precious gift of freedom
+to love, the power to find and keep one's own. If we fear the future
+of the family because now the spiritual essence of marriage is
+demanded, even if the form of its first enclosure prove too strait for
+its growth, we cannot turn back to the harsh practice and coarse
+ideals that once made all unions seem right that preserved a legal
+bond and all men and women wrong-doers who sought freedom from
+intolerable ills.
+
+=New and Finer Marriage Unions.=--There is a way of life, full of
+difficulties and not yet clear, a way of life that leads to such a
+noble comradeship and such a type of loving union as the world could
+rarely see in the older days.
+
+Our children and our children's children will know how to use freedom
+for service, and service for mutual growth, and mutual growth for
+community betterment, in those "world's great bridals, chaste and
+calm," which the future shall make the common glory of the home.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE
+
+  1. Does youth now take its own way in choice of companionship as
+     never before? If so, does it mean better or worse choices in
+     marriage?
+
+  2. Should early marriages be encouraged? If so, how should the
+     social opportunity for wise choices be secured to youth? If
+     not, how can the social dangers of postponement of marriage be
+     minimized?
+
+  3. Should young people in shops and manufactories, in college, in
+     school, in recreation centres, and elsewhere, be guided into
+     social circles in which marriage choices are likely to be
+     wisely made? If so, how can this be done?
+
+  4. How can the disproportion in numbers of men and women in given
+     localities, which is an acknowledged cause of late marriages
+     and failure to marry at all, and which is largely due to
+     economic conditions, be mitigated?
+
+  5. Is the "revolt of youth," so called, a passing phase of rapid
+     social changes, or is it evidence that old institutions in
+     which the elders had superior power are becoming permanently
+     outgrown?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HUSBANDS AND WIVES
+
+    "First, the love of wedded souls; next, neighbor loves and civic,
+    All reddened, sweetened from the central heart."
+                    --E.B. BROWNING.
+
+    "Two shall be born the whole wide world apart
+    And speak in different tongues, and have no thought
+    Each of the other's being and no heed;
+    And those o'er unknown seas to unknown lands
+    Shall come, escaping wreck, defying death,
+    And all unconsciously shape every act
+    And bend each wandering step to this one end--That
+    one day, out of darkness, they shall stand
+    And read life's meaning in each other's eyes."
+                    --SUSAN MARR SPAULDING.
+
+    "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
+    I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
+    My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
+    For the ends of being and ideal grace.
+    I love thee to the level of every day's
+    Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light."
+    I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
+    I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
+                    --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+  "A home is not an accidental or natural coming together of human
+  souls under the same roof in certain definite relationships; it is
+  a work of art, to be builded upon fixed principles of life and
+  action."--HENRY WARE, in _Home Life_.
+
+    "True love is but a humble, low-born thing,
+    And hath its food served up in earthenware;
+    It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
+    Through the every-dayness of this work-day world,
+    Baring its tender feet to every roughness,
+    Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
+    From Beauty's law of plainness and content;
+    A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile
+    Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home."
+                    --LOWELL.
+
+
+=Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.=--The
+fairy tales ended with the wedding and "they lived happily forever
+after." The dramas and novels of to-day are often devoted to telling
+how they did not live happily ever after and what or who caused the
+unhappiness. Although no one need be alarmed that some people get
+divorced when marital unhappiness becomes acute, every right-minded
+person wishes that every marriage should turn out happily. We now,
+however, demand that it shall be genuine, not make-believe happiness,
+and that places a heavier strain upon all concerned. We have grown
+wise enough to see that holding people together who should never have
+been brought into close relationship does not really conduce to high
+family morality or social well-being. That, however, only makes it
+seem the more important that we should somehow learn how to prevent
+the marriage of those who cannot make their union a success. The part
+that social control can play in preventing the attempt to marry by the
+wholly unfit in body, mind, or work-capacity has been already
+suggested, and that pressure of the community upon the individual
+choice will, without doubt, largely increase as the bad results of too
+great individualism in the family relation are more clearly perceived.
+
+=Social Restrictions on Marriage Choices.=--There will, in time, be a
+narrowing of the circle within which personal choices can be made, so
+that the markedly defective in mind, the victims of disease inimical
+to family well-being, and the pauper strains of inheritance will be
+ruled out before young people have a chance to marry according to
+their own inclination.
+
+With such helpful narrowing of choices there would still remain many
+dangers to be avoided if the divorce statistics are to be held within
+bounds of social safety.
+
+The part that the family elders once played in settling vital
+questions of adjustment within the marriage bond has now, for the most
+part, to be undertaken for consideration and decision by the young
+people themselves. To name these most important questions of
+adjustment and discuss them in the light of modern ideals and desires
+is to get a better impression of the difficulties they indicate.
+
+=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Name?=--In the first place, the
+matter of the name for the married couple must be now considered.
+Shall it be one or two? Shall the new sense of personal dignity, so
+common to the modern woman, increase the already spreading fashion of
+retention of the maiden name, her inherited family name, as
+permanently her own, untouched by the fact of marriage union? No one
+can be cognizant of the conviction and practice of many feminists
+without understanding that this is a real problem to be settled surely
+before the marriage ceremony. There is already in the field a "Lucy
+Stone League" to give the support of the practice of a great and
+beloved woman to the fashion of keeping one's own name. The question
+of the desirability of having children bear the same name as both
+parents is left for the most part in abeyance by those who thus
+advocate two names for the married couple. It may be that each child
+is expected to bear as a second name his mother's and as a last name
+his father's family name, as, for example, John Jones Jackson, Jones
+being the mother's and Jackson the father's personal signature; but
+when the child marries, by what name shall the family line be carried
+on?
+
+To most of us who see in the family name adopted by both husband and
+wife at marriage a sign of family unity not to be lost without serious
+embarrassment to offspring, and some danger of easy drifting apart
+without the knowledge of others, the name seems not to be of vital
+importance. Why, then, it is asked, should the woman always give up
+her family connection as indicated by inherited name, and the man
+retain his? The fact that the custom has grown up by reason of the
+legal absorption of the wife's life in that of the husband is obvious,
+and gives much color to the claim that now, when a woman is a
+recognized personality in the law whether married or single, she
+should keep the name by which her personality has become known. That
+is easily seen to be advantageous in the case of professional women of
+wide influence. The great singer, the great writer, any creative
+genius or artist, continues, as a rule, to be known by the name under
+which greatness has been achieved. In such cases, however, women often
+bear two names, the professional name either of family inheritance or
+a chosen _nom de plume_, and the social name, which is their husband's
+and engraved on calling cards. The tendency now is increasing to keep
+the one designation to which one is born and make no concessions to
+conventional nomenclature. It must be remembered that in such cases it
+is the father's name by which the married daughter is called and the
+mother's maiden name is lost with all the rest of the silent majority
+of her sex. The fact that men have given the wedded name for ages, and
+that men are most often senior partners in the marriage firm, and the
+fact that any other suggested plan gives two names for one family
+instead of one seems to make that a part of the old inheritance that
+may not cause great uneasiness if one accepts it without revolt. There
+is a compromise method which long has been a custom among Friends and
+is growing even more rapidly than that of holding permanently to the
+full maiden name. That is the plan of keeping the father's name, or
+the "maiden name," as a middle one, and adding the husband's name; so
+that Miss Mary Jane Wood shall, on marrying John Hartley Stone,
+become, not Mrs. John Hartley Stone, but Mrs. Mary Wood Stone. That
+keeps in memory her family designation and yet gives her children a
+chance to call themselves by the one name which is a sign of the
+family unity. However the settlement may be made, the point is that
+such a vital question, entering into the legal signature for business
+purposes as well as into all social relationship, shall reach
+conclusion before the two enter upon the marriage bond.
+
+=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?=--In the second place,
+there is now a question of nationality to be settled, a most important
+one in all its political and legal bearings. The old law made a wife
+the subject of her husband's national law and took her automatically
+away from her own country if her husband was born and was citizen of
+another country. The national allegiance of her birth and her family
+was thus automatically transferred to that of the man she had married.
+The suffering of many a woman in the late war when her husband's
+national allegiance made her legally an "enemy alien" to her own
+beloved land has sharpened the claim that now, when women have the
+franchise, they should have complete choice of the body politic to
+which they owe allegiance. If they wish to marry men of another
+country they shall have the determination of whether or not they shall
+become naturalized by his government or whether they shall keep
+political relation with their own native country. The League of Women
+Voters is now hard at work to make the national allegiance of women,
+as of men, a personal matter whether women are married or single. The
+Federal Bill that is called for by this body would make it incumbent
+upon all women of foreign birth desiring to use the franchise in the
+United States to become naturalized, and would protect any woman on
+marrying from the loss of her own national allegiance, whatever her
+husband's might be.[7] Surely such a protection of individual
+citizenship is best for both men and women, whatever their marital
+state. It is, however, a matter that often comes up for adjustment in
+international marriages. It is matter of importance that women of
+foreign birth as well as men coming to this country from other lands
+should personally seek for full citizenship and not have it handed to
+them with a marriage certificate. It is equally of importance that no
+person should lose allegiance to the country of his or her birth and
+affection simply by reason of marriage. This question of what country
+shall one continue to belong to after marriage is one for settlement
+on high grounds of patriotism and civic duty before the marriage is
+consummated.
+
+=Who Shall Choose the Domicile?=--In the third place, the matter of
+chosen domicile is now up for discussion or may be in the near future.
+The law from time immemorial has given the choice of residence of the
+family, wife as well as children, into the complete control of the
+husband and father. A woman may be "posted" in the public press as
+"leaving her husband's bed and board," and thereby the husband may be
+released from any responsibility for her debts or support. The
+inference is that married women have no rights in marriage that can
+survive independent choice on her part of a residence apart from the
+husband. Now we have a movement that if successful would place the law
+behind an equal choice by married men and married women, of domicile,
+and of all that goes with that possible separation of residence. There
+are those who declare that separate residence for husbands and wives
+might keep the flame of romantic love burning longer and more
+ardently, since "familiarity often breeds contempt" and the absence of
+the loved one often kindles desire. This is not, however, the general
+feeling, and the demand for independent choice of domicile has many
+side-issues not at present fully met, if at all understood, by those
+who make the demand noted above. The legal right of choice of domicile
+goes consistently with the legal obligation to "support," The law
+still makes it incumbent upon a husband to give financial support to
+his wife commensurate with his earnings or income and still more
+demands of the father the full support of minor children. Naturally,
+if he has these obligations to meet, a man must go where he can earn
+sufficient to meet them. He may be unwise or mistaken in his choice,
+but, having the responsibility, he must try to meet it as best he can,
+and among the necessary elements in that trial are free movement to
+the place or places in which he can find work.
+
+If, therefore, the family are all to be kept in one residence, father,
+mother and children, this economic aspect of the father's
+responsibility must be considered. If the father and mother each "gang
+their ain gait," and decide for business reasons or from personal
+preference to live in separate places, perhaps far apart from each
+other, then which one is to have the child or children? The old idea
+that men should have the power to hold women in wholly unsuitable
+surroundings, and that no matter what home was offered her a wife must
+submit and accept, is long outgrown in all the States of this Union.
+The wife has now the right to help choose domicile, and in point of
+fact, at least among the older Americans, has often more than an equal
+share in such determination; but to pass a "blanket law" that at once
+gave the suggestion of two choices for the family domicile without any
+qualifying statement of release of men from "support" clauses in the
+family legislation as those clauses relate to wives might be neither
+just nor wise. The one in the family upon whom is placed the heavier
+economic burden for support of children must have much freedom of
+choice of residence. To restrict that freedom might be to add to
+present family difficulties without really giving women better chances
+in marriage. Now, any woman who feels herself oppressed in the matter
+of domicile has the remedy in her own hands. She can make complaint to
+a court or she can leave her husband and no one can prevent her, and
+she can establish a separate establishment if she has the means and
+make herself eligible thereby to a practical if not a legal divorce.
+But if the twain stay together, and mean to do so, there are mutual
+considerations that require an adjustment, and there is now little
+danger of women having to submit to injustice in the matter of choice
+of domicile, except in cases where no home together would seem
+desirable to either or to both.
+
+The matter of choice of domicile is now in the United States so much a
+mutual question and to be decided upon economic grounds, that it is
+one of the things that it is well to discuss from the bottom up if two
+people wish to marry, provided there are any reasons why the relative
+merits of two or more places of residence are involved in the issue.
+The reasonableness and generosity of the average American man quite
+equals the like qualities in the average American woman; hence the
+domicile question may well be left in abeyance in any struggle for
+"equality of rights between the sexes" and confined to personal debate
+and decision; but in that personal debate and decision it should have
+recognized place.
+
+=Shall the Married Woman Earn Outside the Home?=--The fourth question,
+now sometimes a burning one, and one most intimately related to that
+of choice of domicile, is that concerning the continuance of
+professional or business connection by the woman after marriage. Shall
+I keep on with my work or not? This is the problem that besets many a
+woman when the question of marriage with the chosen one is imminent.
+For the woman who is a teacher, and already established in the
+educational field in the city or town where both the man and the woman
+concerned find it easy to choose to live after marriage, there is a
+probability that she can continue her work after marriage with
+comparative ease. The laws that used to penalize the woman teacher who
+married are rapidly ceasing to operate, and although the common legal
+requirement for a two years' vacation from public school employment
+when a child is to be born may exert a strong influence upon the
+birth-rate (either for or against) the fact that marriage does not
+disqualify for teaching and that teaching is so near the home interest
+may lead to much continuance of that type of professional work after
+marriage. The question, however, is not one for the woman alone to
+solve. Many women find that the ideal of "taking care of his wife,"
+which long ages of law and custom have ingrained in man's nature, may
+stand in the way of her earning outside the home after marriage. To be
+settled right this question must be settled by full consent of both
+parties and that consent may be hard to get from the man who fears
+that he will be considered incapable if he "lets his wife earn." What
+is to be done in such a case? That must be determined by the
+possibility of compromise on both sides.
+
+If the woman has attained a high position in some profession, law, or
+medicine, as preacher, teacher, or nurse, as business manager or
+welfare worker, the chances are that she feels she can best help in
+the family life by hiring things done in the household, which she has
+little skill, perhaps, to do herself, and keeping on with the vocation
+for which she has been trained and in which she has already gained a
+place. But she may have attained her vocational opportunity and to
+keep it must continue to live in a locality remote from the man's home
+and work. What then? To be near each other and to live together is the
+chief desire of genuine lovers. That would be no home which had two
+centres of vocational activity miles apart. Circumstances may compel
+such separation for economic reasons long after marriage has bound two
+lives together so closely that distance even cannot really separate
+them. But at the outset, if two people are to belong to each other,
+they must be able to combine their home life if that is to be a help
+and not a hindrance to the joint affection that alone makes the two
+one. The question of domicile, bound up with that of whether or not
+the woman shall continue her vocational connection after marriage,
+sometimes becomes acute in this manner:--the woman earns more than the
+man and her place of earning is in a far-away location from his and
+the transplanting of his life has no promise of economic readjustment.
+Shall she give up her larger salary and go with him to a place in
+which she is less likely than if single to gain a professional
+foothold and they both make the smaller income do? Or shall she
+insist, if he is willing, that the economic advantage of the married
+firm requires his removal to the seat of her labors at any risk of his
+getting another hold upon vocational opportunity?
+
+Those who ask such a question should remember that the facts of life,
+social and economic, all make the upsetting of the man in his work
+seldom a safe or a happy solution. In the first place, the position of
+a man who even temporarily depends upon his wife's vocational success
+and relinquishes his own economic position, is far more difficult than
+that of a woman who sacrifices her own professional standing to go
+with her husband to a new centre. Any woman asks more of a man in the
+way of sacrifice, both of his standing as a man and his chances as a
+worker, if she demands that he take her income as the basic economic
+element in the joint family treasury (when such demand entails a
+change of residence and a giving up of assured income on his part)
+than any man asks of a woman when the conditions proposed are the
+reverse. No woman loses "caste" who depends upon her husband in an
+economic sense. Perhaps the time will come when it will cost a woman
+the loss of social prestige and of the best chance for work outside
+the home (as it now does a man) when the choice is made to follow the
+larger income from one locality to another. Now, however, it means
+that a woman can adjust herself to such change far better than a man,
+and hence that equal right to demand sacrifice and equal duty to
+mutually help each other demand that where such acute problems arise
+the woman shall give the man's relation to his work right of way.
+Moreover, even those who, like Doctor Patten, believe that women
+should continue vocational work after marriage place the chief
+economic burden of the family permanently upon the husband and father.
+The wife may earn outside the home if both agree and the opportunity
+offers in the place where the man's work already is; but the
+maintenance of the economic standing and the improvement of social
+condition remain, as of old, with the man. And for the obvious reason
+that if the woman has children they may take a large portion of her
+interest and of her strength and energy and, in any case, the married
+woman, if she really makes a home, must mix her vocational work with a
+more or less extended devotion to that home-making. Also, although a
+woman at marriage may be in receipt of a larger income from vocational
+service than is the man she wishes to marry, he will be more likely,
+if worth-while, to gain steadily toward a much larger compensation.
+The positions which women fill are for the most part self-limited.
+They are fast developing high qualities for routine work in the
+professions, like school doctor and hospital clinician and workers for
+legal aid and other like salaried employments. These are not highly
+paid, but have manifest advantages for women in that they give a fixed
+income, if small, and in that they allow for regulation of hours of
+service that may easily be made half-time work in case of divided
+effort. Hence, although at a given point in earlier life (when the
+usual greater precocity of women give some women the advantage in
+salary and position), a woman may have a higher salary at marriage, a
+far greater rise in both income and leadership may be on the husband's
+side as the years go on.
+
+=Economic Considerations Involved.=--At any rate, the question of
+whether or not the woman shall earn outside the home after her
+marriage must wait upon the deeper question, shall she do anything
+which will disturb or render more difficult the man's economic
+adjustment? There are exceptions, a growing number of exceptions, but
+as a general thing the question of domicile and the question of which
+one shall give way when there is difficulty of both being well
+situated in individual work in one place, must be settled on the basis
+of the man's longer, larger, and more continuous responsibility for
+the economic standing of the family.
+
+The exceptions make their own excuse and shape their own defense. The
+average married woman carries on two vocations if she keeps on with
+her own work, one inside and one outside the home. The one in which
+she earns outside the home must in the long run and the large way be
+subordinated to the joint partnership of the household in which she
+bears a larger share of the internal management and he the heavier
+burden of the outside support.
+
+Any thorough-going discussion of the questions involved in the
+wage-earning of married women and mothers outside the home must
+include study of actual expense of alternate plans. The fundamental
+question may be one concerning the social value of the woman's
+vocational work. The next must certainly be what would the family
+treasury gain or lose by the housemother's continued vocational
+service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by
+Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled _Successful Family Life on the
+Moderate Income_, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with
+definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many
+that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before
+continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by
+tables at pre-war prices that unless a married woman has a high-grade
+profession with a good independent income the duties performed by the
+average housemother within the home cannot be hired without a distinct
+economic loss to the family treasury. For example, reckoning
+conservatively the cost of the full-time hired girl or working
+housekeeper at $600 to $1,000 per year, and estimating the economic
+value of the woman who does all her own housework except washing and
+heavy cleaning at only fifteen cents an hour, the saving by the
+average married woman who is competent and well and does all her own
+work is a large one. There are the best of reasons, therefore, why,
+for the woman who is in ordinary circumstances and not so averse to
+household care and work as to insure her failure in it, the answer to
+the question, Shall I keep on with my outside earning after
+marriage?--should be in the negative. The old notion that all women
+were domestic and would enjoy housework if only they could do it in
+their own homes is indeed exploded. The natural differences among
+women are now allowed. The advantages, social, economic, and in
+matters of health and control of work-time and of leisure, which the
+average housemother enjoys over the average woman who works at manual
+labor under the factory system of industry, were, however, never
+better known or more justly evaluated. The proof of this is in the
+inclusion of training in household arts by the Smith-Hughes Bill,
+under which the Federal Government makes large appropriations for
+vocational training directly aimed at improving the efficiency of
+women whose labor is confined to the private home.
+
+It is a sign, among other things, of desired and needed flexibility in
+domestic arrangements that there were listed in 1910 as married
+twenty-five per cent. of the women at work in "gainful occupations."
+Not all the conditions indicated by this count were socially helpful;
+since in the textile industries, in which many married women are
+employed, there are fewer children born and more die before the end of
+the second year than in the average population. It does, however,
+indicate that among those of higher opportunity in life there is a
+growing disposition to treat the question of women's continuance in
+vocational service outside the home after marriage as a real problem
+and one to be settled in freedom, and with social approval of that
+freedom, by the two persons most deeply concerned. Only, it must be
+insisted, that all a married woman gains in salary or wages cannot be
+reckoned as increase of the family income. The economic value of the
+average housemother's contribution is now definitely computed and must
+be reckoned hereafter as so much actually contributed to the family
+income. And so far, if a woman is physically able, temperamentally
+adjustable, and adequately trained for household tasks, she can in the
+vast majority of cases serve her day and generation in no better
+fashion than by assuming and carrying the multiple duties of the
+private home.
+
+Hence, although freedom means new choice, prudence and affection alike
+oftenest point to the old paths of family service for the average
+woman. As Mrs. Abel well says of the competent housemother who chooses
+full and personal service to the home and the family, "At her best she
+represents individual effort fully utilized. She fits her tasks
+together; she utilizes bits of time; she invents short cuts in her
+work," Of such it may be truly declared, in the new time as in the
+old, that she translates every dollar of the family income into many
+dollars' worth of comfort, of health, and of happiness.
+
+=Is It Bad Form to Earn After Marriage?=--One more consideration,
+quite new in its full significance, should be given place in any
+discussion of the wife's relation to work outside the home. That
+consideration is concerned with the use of her time not needed in
+household tasks. The modern aids to those tasks, of which mention has
+been made, give many women who assume full responsibility for the
+housemother's work a considerable amount of strength and time which
+may be used in some chosen way outside the strictly family service.
+The general idea is that such time should be given in gratuitous
+"social welfare work" or in some form of activity divorced from
+regular vocations. An able President of the Federation of Women's
+Clubs, the body most distinctly representing the interest and service
+of women in volunteer social service in this country, has said, in
+addressing her large constituency, "Sport is work we do without
+pay--we are all sports." The sentiment was applauded and with evident
+sense of superiority to the "paid worker." The feeling, so general in
+many circles of society, that women lose "caste" if they work for
+wages or salary, reaches its maximum of prejudice in the case of
+married women. It is thought highly honorable to sell things in a
+"Fair" for a good cause and come in contact with a crowd of strangers
+in the process among people who would consider "keeping a shop,"
+unless from dire necessity, a very questionable proceeding. It is
+thought most virtuous and wifely for a woman married to a minister of
+the church to give her time and strength gratuitously in multitudinous
+religious helps to the organization which usually counts on getting
+the service of two first-class people for a second-or third-class
+salary for one. But for the wife of such a minister, realizing that
+the income is generally insufficient for proper living, to work
+outside her home, even for a few hours each day, for pay, is to lay
+herself and her husband also open to harsh criticism; even if her
+house is kept well and her children properly cared for. It is also
+thought by many people that the only really justifiable use of time
+that can be spared from household duties is in furthering the
+husband's work, if he is struggling up; or, if he has "arrived," in
+these miscellaneous gratuitous social services in which the club-women
+so abound.
+
+There is great need that this judgment be revised. Not only is this
+true in the interest of women whose devotion to a chosen vocation has
+right of way in justice when the debate is on as to the use of any
+left-over time she may save from domestic duties. It is also true that
+we can not have the democratic feeling and influence from women of
+social position which our political life so sadly needs unless it is
+understood that it is as honorable for a woman, married or unmarried,
+to earn money for her work as it is for a man with or without an
+inherited fortune. The class feeling that makes all married women
+range themselves with those of their sex who have inherited fortunes,
+and leads them to place those who serve the community in salaried
+positions as less unselfish and less honorable social workers than
+themselves, is one to outgrow. An interest divorced from professional
+standards or professional compensation is not necessarily nobler or
+more useful. This fact makes the choice of women before marriage as to
+the use of time that may justly be spared, even when the home makes
+its heaviest demands upon them, a choice of social as well as of
+personal significance.
+
+Every year social effort once strictly of private provision and
+support becomes a public service, with organized supervision and
+standardized compensation. When such volunteer social effort becomes a
+public service it is highly desirable that the trained women it
+demands for its staff should (some of them, at least) be married
+women. Otherwise, the same loss of efficiency that the rapid turn-over
+of the women teaching staff of our schools occasions will be
+discovered in our social work as it changes its centre of gravity from
+the private to the public organization.
+
+There is a far greater need from this point of view for reorganization
+of hours and details of work so as to give more half-time or
+quarter-time employment to women of proved ability, than for any
+wholesale condemnation of the woman who works outside her home for
+pay, even when her husband is able and willing to "take care of her."
+It is for society to say, indeed, that women marrying and having
+children owe first duty to the home. It is for women themselves to say
+whether they shall use any time at their disposal after that duty is
+met in continuing such relation to their vocation as is now possible,
+or in being "sports."
+
+The fact that men are trying to see both sides of this vexed question
+and that women, as a rule, are trying to make adjustment that will
+hold an equitable and happy balance between the personal and the
+family well-being means that this problem will work itself to a
+democratic result without social loss.
+
+=Shall Parenthood be Chosen?=--The fifth question that should come up
+for serious discussion and some measure of agreement in advance of the
+wedding ceremony is that of children. Shall there be any? If so, how
+many, if we can afford them? If so, how soon shall we try to call
+about us the new life? If not, why not, and how shall we live together
+without hope of offspring? These are vital questions. For want of
+agreement, or at least of understanding of disagreement before
+marriage, many unions are shipwrecked.
+
+In the old days there were no questions of this nature. Every woman
+must have as many children as nature allowed, and when she could bear
+no more must give way to a new wife and a step-mother to carry on the
+family life; and if there were more children in a family than the
+father and family friends could support, they had to be cared for by
+the community. The modern condition is the same in the case of those
+below a certain grade of intelligence and self-control. But as human
+beings become more rational in other respects, they apply reason,
+common sense, and prudence to the great function of parenthood.
+Indeed, so much is this the case that the social danger of breeding
+only from below the higher levels is felt to be an increasing one.
+There are not wanting those who believe that rationalism in parenthood
+is wrong and should be prevented, if possible, but those are the
+people who decry the use of reason in all other matters, except it may
+be in the strictly economic field. The fact is that whatever may be
+said on the side of ancient religious sanction and inherited
+sentiment, the tendency on all sides is irresistibly toward the
+personal choice in parenthood as in marriage.
+
+=Some People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless.=--There are
+many, however, who believe that no one should marry unless wishing and
+expecting to have children. That is a belief which will doubtless be
+more and more outgrown. There are young people, children of dependent
+parents and near relatives, who see no way of starting a family of
+their own, who yet should not be denied the comfort and help of
+married life. The tragedies of sons and daughters made to drag out a
+lonely existence and either condemning the one they love to like
+denial or else giving up the hope of union and seeing their chosen one
+wedded to another--the sort of tragedy that forms the subject of many
+novels--is a tragedy to be outgrown. It may be that social burdens in
+behalf of parents or other dependents can not be lifted to the extent
+of making a completed family life possible to some young people. All
+the more, two people who truly love each other and are bound to one
+great sacrifice, namely, that of children of their own, should be able
+to escape another, that of denial of marriage.
+
+There are other cases in which marriage is right and childbearing may
+be wrong. There are tendencies to disease, in which, although there
+may be a long and useful life for the one bearing a family taint, it
+may be socially wrong to risk carrying on that taint. If all who need
+to know are agreed, and there is a chance of living many years of real
+union together, no law should step in to prevent, and no inherited
+view of the limitation of marriage to those seeking parental relation
+should refuse assent to the union. There are many conceivable
+limitations to parental functioning, even for those who are keenly
+aware of the social significance of parenthood, which do not apply to
+marriage of those truly mated in thought and purpose. It is, however,
+the height of irrationality, and will more and more be seen to be
+such, for men and women to enter a relation the natural result of
+which, in the vast majority of cases, is the bearing of children, with
+no idea on either side as to what is the ideal and the wish and the
+purpose of the other party in the marriage union.
+
+The question, again, for those who are agreed that they want to start
+a family as well as begin a mating is definitely to be considered,
+namely, that of the right time to begin the family they wish to have.
+It may be, as many believe, that too hasty adding of the strenuous
+discipline of parenthood to the often difficult task of adjustment of
+two mature and forceful natures, such as marriage so often brings
+together, is likely to give an unnecessarily hard start in the new
+life. Two people who have just got used to themselves, perhaps, have
+at marriage to get used to each other. It may be that they could
+succeed better in this great task if they had not so often to adjust
+themselves during the first year to the needs and masterful claims of
+a baby. There is no form of tyranny equal to that of the infant, who,
+assured of his right to unlimited service from all in sight, makes his
+demands at all times and in all ways. He pays for his subjection of
+parents and grandparents and they are all usually willing slaves. But
+it is often a great advantage if the parents, at least, have had a
+chance to make full acquaintance with each other's pet weaknesses and
+each other's best qualities before "the baldheaded tyrant from No
+Man's Land" makes his appearance. It is, therefore, clearly a matter
+of frank and full discussion and settlement before marriage not only
+as to the fundamental question of whether or not there shall be
+children, but also if, as is the case in the overwhelming majority of
+cases, the young people hope for offspring, when they shall begin to
+call them to the home.
+
+The thing of all others to be avoided is the outgrown idea that
+heavenly magic attends completely to these matters. It is earthly
+wisdom and unselfishness and good intent that are needed in this as in
+all the great decisions of life. Hence, there can be nothing more
+absurdly out of drawing with a rationalized civilization than any law
+which forbids the serious discussion of this most vital of social
+questions or one that forbids the full dissemination of scientific
+knowledge needed by those who would do the right thing in the parental
+as in all other relations of life.
+
+=What Is the Just Financial Basis of the Household?=--The sixth
+question that has right of debate before the marriage ceremony is that
+of the financial support of the household and of the distribution of
+the joint income. The use of the words joint income prejudges the case
+on this point. The old idea was of one purse, of right that of the
+"head of the family," and whatever it held was his to disburse. He it
+was who determined how the wife should be fed and clothed and
+sheltered. If he were generous and kind she fared well; if the
+opposite she fared ill. Her legal right was only the same as that of
+her minor child. Now the case is wholly different. In spite of some
+inconsistent left-over laws that can make a showing of belated tyranny
+when culled from old statute books, the financial right of the wife in
+the household is generally recognized. It is, however, still true that
+no logical system of financial sharing has been worked out so clearly
+as to be accepted by the common mind. We still have talk of a wife
+being "supported" when, as housemother, she works harder and more
+hours than her husband. We still have listing of those housemothers,
+who are the majority of the women of every country, as "without
+occupation." It is possible for men to speak of "giving" their wives
+what they think is needed for the household and without reference to
+any personal preference of the wives in expenditure, as if it were an
+act of charity and not a debt owed the family life.
+
+On the other hand, some women, having achieved partial or entire
+financial independence of the husband and earning handsome sums in
+work outside the home, look upon all that the man earns as "belonging
+to the family," and all that they earn as wholly belonging to
+themselves. "What's John's belongs to us all; what is mine belongs to
+me," said one wife, without any idea of the absurd injustice of taking
+all the advantage that new conditions had made possible for women and
+at the same time hanging on to all that old-time privilege gave to
+wives. There is need of the strictest and most balanced thinking along
+the line of the economics of the household.
+
+If, as seems in the vast majority of cases the best plan, the husband
+and father can be and is depended upon for the entire financial
+support of the family in the matter of earning and the housemother
+gives an actual service of great economic value in saving and service
+(as the competent housewife assuredly does give), then what is earned
+and what is produced by housework and management makes in justice one
+family treasury. If to that is added some special earning outside the
+home which the housemother is able to mix in with her family service,
+then that also is a part of the family treasury. After the marriage
+there should be a real partnership. There may be a separate account on
+either side of the gifts of inheritance or savings preceding the
+marriage, but after the twain are one in home-building they may justly
+be one in a common treasury. Two bank-books they may have, it is true,
+and perhaps better so, although many find one in the name of both
+husband and wife sufficiently convenient. The main thing is to get
+firmly in mind on both sides before any actual adjustments are
+necessary what, on the financial side, is the right attitude and plan
+of married life. The best way seems to be, for some people, at least,
+the division of the family treasury into three distinct parts. The
+first, and alas, in most families the much larger share, to be
+dedicated to common household expenses. The excellent work of
+specialists in family budgets shows us how this fund should be
+distributed in details of rent or dwelling, cost of food, clothing,
+reading, church, recreation, etc. Any one can now make up with
+prudence and wisdom such an estimate in proportion to the known income
+and the ascertained cost of living in any given locality. After this
+common expense is provided for, with due regard for the duty of saving
+for future needs, the remaining portion, be it much or little, should
+be equally divided as the personal fund of the husband and the wife.
+Some of those who have written on the family budget think that the
+contribution of the housewife in work, for which wages would have to
+be paid if she did not give this personal labor in the home, should be
+estimated in wages value, and should go into her part of a separate
+fund, after the common household expenses are deducted. That, it
+seems, would not be fair, for if the man puts in his labor value the
+woman should put in hers for the first and indispensable expense of
+the common life together. What is to be made right is the old custom
+of reckoning the savings and common property acquired after marriage
+as "his" estate. It is the estate of both, and should be so
+considered, even if he has earned outside and she saved and earned and
+helped him earn from within the household only.
+
+=What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living?=--The final question
+that must be considered by the two who are to marry and set up
+housekeeping is the scale of living they shall aim to attain. It has
+been well said that "the standard of living is what we desire; the
+scale of living what we can achieve." What is desired often, and what
+seems to the young only reasonable for all to have, is the scale of
+living the parents' households have attained after a life of hard
+work. It is a matter for profound ethical thinking to decide what
+measure of increase in expense of home upkeep should follow upon
+increase of income where there are children to be affected by changes.
+It may sometime be seen to be a social duty to keep much farther
+within bounds the natural desire to expand expense as income
+increases; both for the reason that income may decrease with advancing
+years for the parents and retrenchment be necessary when it is
+hardest, and also for the more important reason that children
+naturally make standards at the height of parental expenditure and may
+find it thereby the more difficult to "begin at the bottom" when they
+marry. At any rate, the young couple starting out must keep within
+their means or suffer from the worst of fortunes, the dread of
+arriving bills and the shame of inability to pay them. That means some
+agreement before housekeeping begins as to what is involved in that
+adventure.
+
+A witty woman said, "I love to travel with my friend Mary, for her
+economies and mine are the same." Some uniformity of temperamental
+reaction both to regular economies and to occasional extravagances is,
+if not an essential, a valuable basis for happy marriage. That means
+that the engaged couple might well start a game of "Must Haves" and
+"Would Like to Haves" in the moments that can be spared from other
+pursuits, a game in which without the other's knowledge each should
+write the secret wishes and requirements to be later compared for
+mutual enlightenment. The woman who would gladly go with two meals a
+day for a fortnight in order to get a ticket for the opera or
+symphony, and the man who would sacrifice a needed new suit of clothes
+with pleasure for a fishing trip, may be able to compromise on
+essentials, but will find it difficult in the matter of extras unless
+warned beforehand. Affection bridges many chasms, and sensible people
+learn that even in the best regulated families father, mother, and the
+children may all get some of their best times apart. A basis of mutual
+understanding is, however, essential. The necessity to get at a common
+plan for the economic standards of the household is a vital one. How
+many men have run in debt for what they believed essential to the
+wife's happiness because she had such things in her father's house,
+without letting the wife know that economy was necessary, only to find
+out that if full confidence had been given a mutual effort would have
+secured better results. How many women have gone without things they
+might have had for want of knowledge of their husband's income and
+suffered fears that need not have been in the mind. How many also,
+alas, both of men and women, have lived beyond their means from
+selfish demand one upon the other, a demand which might have been
+chastened, at least, if full knowledge of economic resources had been
+attained before the scale of living was fixed.
+
+All these items of suggested conference and decision given above are
+counsels of prudence and wisdom. Many, perhaps most, however, of the
+young couples starting out in life "go it blind" in all or some of
+these particulars. The wonder is that these who start on the most
+serious of compacts and the one leading to the greatest extremes of
+both happiness and unhappiness with so little knowledge of each
+other's condition, capacity, or deepest wishes, get along, on the
+whole, so well. We see them on every side starting on the sea of
+married life with gaiety of heart because the chosen one is obtained
+for company and with no conception of the difficulties that may make
+the voyage tempestuous. But they often make safe harbor of comfortable
+comradeship for middle life and old age, and if they have had a harder
+time than they need have had at least prove that "love is the greatest
+thing in the world."
+
+=The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage.=--The
+rising tide of divorce, however, gives point to the plea of this
+chapter for a more careful charting of the sailing course in advance.
+The fact that so many get their discipline of knowledge and direction
+as they go along and do not make shipwreck even if matrimonial storms
+grow frequent or heavy, is a very good testimony to the native
+goodness of men and women and to their ability to make good their
+mistakes and work out success even from failure provided the
+indispensable north star of unselfish affection leads them on. It
+would be well, however, to lessen the failures if that can be done.
+When men and women show what marriage can become for the wise, the
+idealistic, and the loving, it gives a picture of satisfaction and
+mutual service that makes most other human associations seem trivial
+and short-lived. Only parenthood is equal or superior to marriage in
+its possibilities of moral discipline and personal development. To
+make it successful is worth striving for.
+
+Literature, science, and art have many great marriages to their
+credit--men and women brought together by identical tastes and similar
+capacities, working together in high pursuits through a long life of
+achievement. They illumine the way of life with a peculiar glow.
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang:
+
+    "Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
+    Our ministering two angels look surprise
+    On one another as they strike athwart
+    Their wings in passing."
+
+but her union with Robert Browning showed that they were nearer alike
+than in her sad humility she had fancied. Jonas Lie, the Norwegian
+novelist, and his gifted wife, it is said, "knew the felicity of a
+perfect union," and he himself has testified, "If I have ever written
+anything of merit, my wife has as great a share in it as myself, and
+her name should appear on the title-page as collaborator." The joint
+discoveries of the Curies are well known, linking husband and wife
+together in a great gift to humanity. In humbler circles of the gifted
+and the talented the married couples are becoming more numerous each
+decade whose work as well as whose affection binds them together.
+
+=The Supreme Satisfactions of Successful Marriage.=--Take it all in
+all, although no particular marriage may be "made in heaven," the sort
+of union that monogamic marriage has worked out at its highest reaches
+is without a rival in depth of feeling, in satisfaction of
+association, in wealth of comradeship, and in social value as a
+foundation for family life and for initial training toward social
+serviceableness. No wise person can do aught to lessen its opportunity
+for ethical drill, or for that due mingling of attraction and duty
+which make all the vital associations of human beings helps toward the
+higher life. No wise person will continue in the ancient error of
+mistaking show for substance in these weighty matters.
+
+All who believe that the family is an institution whose gift to the
+social order is not yet outgrown and whose possibilities of social
+value are not yet fully developed, must work to make the right
+marriages easier to secure, and the wrong ones less easy to be
+consummated, and to purge the ideals of home of selfishness and of
+superficiality by constant portrayal of the best in the married life.
+
+The stage and the moving picture should more often portray the world's
+marriage successes rather than perpetual reproductions of the marriage
+failures. The novel should more often show how many people save, so as
+by fire, the dreams of youth in rescue of their married life from
+threatening ills. Such portrayal would not be against a realistic
+ideal of art, but a more perfect and balanced use of realism. The rise
+of people on "stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things"
+is quite as dramatic as the succession of falls that land them in the
+pit of despair. The struggles that succeed are quite as capable of
+exciting emotional response as are those that fail.
+
+Real life shows a larger measure of successful achievement than of
+bitter failure, else would life not go on. Marriage at its highest is
+yet to be used in any adequate measure as the theme of the artist and
+the stimulant of response to art.
+
+The day will come when "Main Street" will reveal its best and not its
+worst; its richest, and not its poorest products, for the satisfaction
+of universal sentiment.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON HUSBANDS AND WIVES
+
+  1. Are there any subjects upon which husbands and wives must be
+     in substantial agreement in order to secure a successful
+     marriage? If so, what are some of them?
+
+  2. Are there any radical differences in belief, respecting
+     religion, politics, education of children, ways of living,
+     business relationship, etc., which marriage may successfully
+     bridge, provided there is genuine and faithful affection? If
+     so, name some of them.
+
+  3. How can "engaged" couples make sure that essentials of
+     agreement, and non-essentials of agreement to differ, are well
+     understood in advance?
+
+  4. Are there any new spiritual relationships of men and women in
+     marriage made possible by the modern tendency toward the
+     democratization of the family? If so, what are some of them?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] This bill, the so-called "Cable Act," was passed September 22,
+1922.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY
+
+
+  The human being arrives:
+
+    "Immense have been the preparations for me,
+    Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me;
+    Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
+    For room to me the stars kept aside in their own rings,
+    They sent influences to look after what was to hold me;
+    Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
+    And forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me;
+    Now, on this spot I stand with my robust soul."
+                    --WALT WHITMAN.
+
+  "The child grows up in a setting of social functions of a type
+  higher always than that of his private accomplishment. He must grow
+  by gradual absorption of copies, patterns and examples."--BALDWIN.
+
+  "He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world; much more
+  he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. Nature has implanted
+  within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety; to bring
+  these to maturity is the object of education. All men require
+  education, and God has made children unfit for other employments
+  in order that they may have leisure to learn."--COMENIUS.
+
+  "The most critical interval of human nature is that between the
+  hour of birth and twelve years of age; this is the time when vice
+  and error may take root without our being possessed of any
+  instrument to destroy them; the first art of education, then,
+  consists neither in teaching virtue nor truth but in guarding the
+  heart from evil and the mind from error."--ROUSSEAU.
+
+  "A ladder leading to heaven is let down to every child, but he
+  must be taught to climb it. Education should decide for every
+  child not only what is to be made of its life, but should seek an
+  answer to the question, what was it intended that child should
+  become?"--PESTALOZZI.
+
+  "An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy."--OLD PROVERB.
+
+  "Come, let us live with our children!"--FROEBEL.
+
+
+=Conditions to be Secured for Every Child.=--There are several
+conditions which must be secured for every child to insure that it may
+be born and reared according to high standards.
+
+These may be listed as follows:
+
+  I. Two parents, to secure in advance a favorable social position.
+
+  II. A competent mother, to insure his first two or three years of
+        life in health, happiness, and growing power.
+
+  III. A competent father, to stand back of the mother and help make
+        a home adequate at least to the minimum of normal life's
+        demands.
+
+  IV. Community surroundings that will make possible the successful
+        achievement of parental duty.
+
+  V. Census provisions for vital and social statistics that will
+        make it sure that every child is counted in the population
+        of his nation, state, and community, and that he is
+        accounted for in all social relationships.
+
+  VI. State protection against industrial exploitation, vicious
+        influences, harmful use of leisure time, and generally
+        unwholesome conditions.
+
+  VII. Health standards in the community, fixed by experts and
+        maintained in essentials by public provisions.
+
+  VIII. Education standards, fixed by experts and maintained, at
+        least in normal minimum, by community provision.
+
+  IX. Such vital relation between the family, the school, the
+        political system, and all cultural opportunities as shall
+        insure to each child his just share of the social
+        inheritance to which all are heir.
+
+=The Need for Two Parents.=--The first point noted is the need of two
+parents for every child. The illegitimate child is handicapped. It is
+a sound social movement that aims to make every "slacker" father
+accept his share of responsibility in the case of the unmarried mother
+and either marry the woman or give financial aid for the child. It
+does not thereby secure two actual parents for the child. The orphan
+child, the half-orphan child is handicapped; more so if bereft of
+mother than of father, but if the father dies or deserts after
+marriage, all experience shows that even if the mother lives and is
+capable and faithful, the child who lacks a father has many
+difficulties to overcome. The child of parents who have come to
+dislike each other is seriously handicapped. A forced tie between
+those who no longer love each other creates an atmosphere often fatal
+to comfort and happiness and one to which children, sensitive as they
+are to the feeling of their elders, react most unfavorably. The child
+of divorced parents is handicapped; perhaps not so often or so
+seriously as when held for years in an atmosphere of mutual hatred,
+suspicion, fault-finding, and distrust--handicapped, however, by many
+social embarrassments, by shock to affection given, perhaps, to both
+parents equally, and by the often great difficulty of finding a
+suitable home for the child of the divorced couple. The child that is
+not wanted and comes into a world hostile to his birth is handicapped
+in proportion as the influence reaches him at the moment of conception
+or lessens the power of the parents to give him what he needs before
+or after he arrives.
+
+There must, then, be two parents, in love, as in law, to start a child
+right--two parents who live until he has reached age of independent
+direction and support, two parents who pull together for themselves
+and for him, two parents who are equally recognized in law as acting
+for him in guardianship throughout his minority.
+
+The recognition of some of these needs of every child has been more
+general and intelligent than that of others. For example, the equal
+guardianship of the father and mother, their mutual responsibility for
+financial support when financially competent, their equal control over
+the family life and their common pledge to the community of parental
+care--this has not been recognized until recently, is not now in many
+of the States of the Union and perhaps not perfectly in any one.
+
+At an Annual Meeting of the Uniform Laws Commission, at Cleveland,
+Ohio, Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, partner with her husband in the
+firm of McCulloch and McCulloch, Chicago, Illinois, and representing
+the League of Women Voters, secured an almost unanimous recommendation
+for uniform laws giving equal guardianship to fathers and to mothers.
+As Mrs. McCulloch is the successful mother of four children, besides
+being Master in Chancery of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Cook
+County, and has long represented the legal interests of women in the
+largest organizations of progressive women in the United States, she
+could, and did, speak with special authority in urging the right of
+mothers to protect their children on equal terms with fathers, by a
+"Uniform Joint Guardianship Law."
+
+Some facts have given color to the claim of the extreme feminist that
+if you can only get the right sort of mother the father is more or
+less a negligible quantity. The history of the family, however,
+proves, if it proves anything, that to actively engage two adults in
+the business of rearing children is an immense asset to those
+children.
+
+The two parents insisted upon as foremost necessity for child-care
+may, however, be of a poor sort, perhaps only furnished with good-will
+toward their task. Even so, whatever the lacks may be, however small
+the capacity, feeble the will and poor the purse, however
+society-at-large has to make up for deficiencies in the parents, it is
+at least one step toward a successful life to have two recognized
+parents who mean to do the right thing by their offspring and never
+fail in love toward each other and toward the children whom they call
+their own.
+
+=Every Child Should Have a Competent Mother.=--The second demand of
+child-life is for a competent mother--competent in health, that the
+baby may get really born alive, competent in nursing and household
+skill, or in power to secure that skill from others, in order that the
+baby may be sure of that first long start of two or three years toward
+physical, mental, and moral sanity and strength. It is in those first
+years that the child gains power to begin his own conquest of the
+world at an advantageous point. That many women are not competent
+physically for even the first test of childbirth we know from many
+sources of inquiry. The facts brought out in legislative hearings by
+those urging support for the so-called "Maternity Bill" amply prove
+this. Taking the figures for New York State alone, in the year 1920 we
+find a total of thirteen mothers out of every thousand dying in
+childbirth, with an estimate from physicians that with proper care
+two-thirds of these women could have been saved. A competent mother,
+then, physically speaking, means not only one measurably strong but
+one sufficiently cared for to prevent overstrain before the
+birth-hour. Again, in New York State alone, we find that eighty-six
+babies out of every thousand die before they reach the end of their
+first year. This may be from ignorance on the mother's part, or it may
+be from her physical weakness unequal to the care of the new baby. It
+may be there are already too many children near that baby's age who
+also make heavy demands upon time and energy. It may be that
+discouragements from unhappy family conditions or worry over economic
+disabilities sap the mother's vitality. It may be that taints of blood
+doom the child and the mother. Whatever the cause, it is reason for
+deep concern that a great state, like New York, for example, has a
+rate of infant mortality nearly twice as high as that of New Zealand
+and ranking eleventh in the twenty-three states of the registration
+area in which the death of babies is set down with care. When we add
+to this loss the death of at least 25,000 women each year in
+childbirth, most of whom could have been saved under right conditions,
+we are still more concerned. Of the 250,000 babies lost last year we
+are safe in estimating at least one-half whose lives could have been
+spared with even a minimum care. The effort now making all along the
+line of social advance to give every child a decent start in life is
+obviously necessary and wise.
+
+If the mother is proved wholly incompetent in mind or character we
+have acquired a social right to take her child from her and place it
+where it can receive better nurture and training. We are beginning to
+recognize the corollary duty of social aid to all women of good
+character, motherly feeling, and any fair degree of intelligence in
+their function of motherhood. There are those hopelessly incompetent
+who should never be allowed to have children. There are far more with
+power to bear and rear children successfully whom adverse
+circumstances submerge to incompetency. These, we are now learning,
+must be helped in some way, for society's sake even more than for
+their own, if they are willing to undertake parental service to the
+race.
+
+The passage of the so-called Sheppard-Towner Bill is one answer in the
+United States to the right of the child and its mother to life and
+health. There are those who deplore the tendency to seek for such aid
+to individuals through the Federal Government. The Governor of New
+York State, for example, although a man of progressive ideas and
+liberal point of view, opposed "starting aid to mothers and babies
+from the Washington end," declaring that work for the "welfare of
+citizens of any class should start at the locality to be benefited."
+He would not have the people educated to depend upon the Federal
+Government for benefits. He feared that the Sheppard-Towner Bill would
+tend to "make the public expect to be nursed from the cradle to the
+grave" and be a detriment to the public life rather than a benefit.
+New York State made a good appropriation for its own aid to mothers
+and babies, but did not apply for the Federal aid in addition. By the
+middle of the second month of 1922, however, nearly thirty states had
+accepted the Act as a welcome help in their welfare work, and few will
+be left outside of its provisions by the end of the year. The fear
+that such an Act would make the general government the active
+controller and director of the lives of parents and their children in
+most intimate ways seems not justified by the facts. The Bill, when
+passed, simply provided money to be given to the states on the
+fifty-fifty basis "for the purpose of cooeperating with them in
+promoting the welfare and hygiene of maternity and infancy." The
+specific plans for each state are to be made by the state agency in
+charge of the work and the only Federal supervision is that of
+standardization, by which the Chief of the Children's Bureau, the
+Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, and the Commissioner of
+Education must approve those plans as "reasonably appropriate and
+adequate to carry out the purposes of the Act" before the money of the
+Federal Government is passed over to any state.
+
+It is rather as a help to states desiring aid in this particular than
+as a compulsory requirement that the Act is intended to operate. There
+are those, however, who fear any extension of power of the National
+Government even through influence acquired by subsidies for necessary
+aids to the common life. It is a matter for thought and unprejudiced
+study what form of public aid is, on the whole, the best for our
+country. It cannot be denied, however, that different states have
+differing burdens to carry for the immigrant, the ignorant, the
+destitute, and the defective. It is at least desirable to press the
+point that no state lives to itself and no one dies to itself. Disease
+knows no boundary lines of political government and the death-toll of
+mothers and babies does not halt at geographical limitations. We are
+all one country insofar as bad social conditions are concerned. We are
+all helped when any smallest country town most remote from the centres
+of population is raised in its social standards and conditions. Hence,
+perhaps, we may not fear national aid to each locality in need or feel
+concerned as to what agency accomplishes a required social advance.
+
+Ellen Key declared that every mother should be maintained by the state
+during the first year of every child's life and that afterward each
+child should have one-half its support from the state and one-half
+from the father. That may not be the ideal. We may believe that to
+thus reduce the father's responsibility would mean a dangerous
+lessening of his energy and devotion to the family well-being. It is
+true, however, that while there are so many in every community without
+essentials for care in childbirth or for the early nurture of infants,
+we must find some way of providing these essentials, or the state is
+endangered at its vital centre.
+
+=Every Child Should Have a Competent Father.=--The third demand of
+childhood is for a competent father. That takes us at once into the
+area of wages and economic conditions. When the Children's Bureau,
+itself a testimony to the awakened social conscience in respect to
+childhood, shows from careful investigation that in families where the
+father earns only ten dollars or less a week more than twice as many
+babies die before the age of two years than in families where the
+fathers earn twenty-five dollars a week or more, we can see with
+clearer vision than ever before that to give babies a fair chance in
+life the father must be fairly paid for his work.
+
+The following table shows this fact in graphic form:
+
+ [Illustration: INFANT MORTALITY RATES. ACCORDING TO FATHERS'
+ EARNINGS
+ COMBINED FIGURES FROM SEVEN CITIES STUDIED BY US CHILDREN'S BUREAU.
+ The baby death rate rises as the fathers' earnings fall.]
+
+=Economic Aspects of the Father's Competency.=--The death-rate of
+babies in families in which the mother has to earn outside the home
+under factory conditions of labor in order to secure absolute
+necessities is so high that it is seen to be not socially thrifty to
+thus place a double burden upon mothers. The death-rate and
+sickness-rate of families in which the children do not have sufficient
+nourishing food, in which the mother is half starved and wholly
+deprived of rest and pleasure, and the father is under terror night
+and day lest the rent money will not be ready when the landlord's
+agent comes, cannot give us ease of mind. The families in which
+unemployment is frequent or overwork keeps the father as well as the
+mother under the pressure of nervous exhaustion, are the families in
+which the right of the child to two competent parents is grossly
+denied. The aid given the mother, by even the best of "Maternity
+Bills," insofar as it transcends the wider dissemination of knowledge
+and gives actual financial aid in economic distress, seems only a
+makeshift. The sick have a social claim for social care and the
+ignorant of all ages have a special claim upon the community for
+instruction, whether from separate Commonwealth or from the Federal
+Government, it matters little. The financial aid given, however, the
+"material relief" that must be rendered in family emergencies, should
+not be needed by the healthy, law-abiding, thrifty, honest, skilled,
+or even half-skilled workman. He should be able to earn a necessary
+minimum for himself and for his family by his own labors. We cannot
+here enter into the economic problems involved, but must register a
+conviction that real social progress must include not only a competent
+father for every child but also a fairer chance for every man to
+become that competent father through fairer sharing in the profits of
+industry. Widespread and careful inquiry as to reasons for dropping
+below the self-supporting line list as one cause of "necessity for
+material relief, having in the family more than three children under
+the age of fourteen." This fact must give us thought. At fourteen in
+many states the child may begin to earn something toward his own
+support. The question may well be debated whether or not an average
+man in ordinary economic general conditions should be unable to care
+for more than three children below the earning period if his wife is a
+competent housemother and thus earns her part. If such a condition of
+restriction upon family increase is accepted as inevitable and
+permanent in our industrial order, then surely the cost of rearing
+children must be far more widely distributed. In such a condition
+there would be needed social help for fathers and mothers far more
+definite and inclusive than merely the aid to expectant mothers. If it
+is true that it takes from three and one-half to four children from
+each married pair to keep up the population considered necessary for
+national well-being, and if there is an increasing number of men and
+women deterred from furnishing even two of that quota by the expense
+involved, then it is high time that we consider at least how the
+family burden may be more equally distributed.
+
+=The French Plan of Family Extra-wage.=--One plan of meeting this
+unequal social burden of parenthood and the social danger involved in
+too few children born, France has devised by the family extra-wage.[8]
+This is simply a provision by which married workers with children are
+preferred before married workers without children, and much preferred
+before bachelors, in the matter of wages. French work-people with
+families, irrespective of their station, rate of pay, premium or
+bonus, receive:
+
+1. An indemnity of 200 francs at the birth of a child.
+
+2. A suckling indemnity, which is given to the wife, of 100 francs a
+month during the first year.
+
+3. An indemnity of 3 francs a day for each child under fourteen years
+of age, which becomes a part of the family income. The Paris district
+alone for the first four months of 1920 shows 39,266 families in
+receipt of these allowances, with 62,176 children benefited, at an
+expense of 4,115,014 francs. The money comes largely from a pooling of
+funds by combines of manufacturers in many industries, so that
+although business pays the extra charge it is distributed equally
+among all engaged in the same industry. The trade unions have not been
+wholly pleased with this discrimination in favor of fathers and
+mothers. They work for the strict equalization of wages. The national
+need for more children of strength and health, however, and the effect
+of low wages upon mothers and upon infant life have led to this social
+measure.
+
+Surely, this is a way not wholly unreasonable by which a society can
+help pay for the children it demands.
+
+=The Endowment of Mothers.=--In England, a different plan has been
+developed, although not yet applied. _A Proposal for the National
+Endowment of Motherhood_, advocated by K.D. Courtney, H.N. Brailsford,
+Eleanor F. Rathbone, A. Maude Royden, Mary Stocks, Elinor Burns, and
+Emilie Burns, has been published. In this plan the ideal is "that
+within each class of income the man with a family should not be in a
+worse position economically because he has a family than the single
+man in that class." They demand that "the standard of living be not
+lowered by children." The authors of this plan declare that in the
+present system "The mother is still the uncharted servant of the
+future who receives from her husband at his discretion a share in his
+wages." They want the mother to receive from society, through the
+Government, "a weekly allowance sufficient in amount to cover the
+primary cost of physical subsistence, paid to the mother for herself
+and for each of her children, throughout the period when the care of
+the children necessarily occupies her whole attention." They claim
+that such a plan would, in the first place, make "equal pay for equal
+work" for men and women really possible, since the argument that "men
+should be paid more because they have families to keep" would be
+outgrown. They claim also that such a plan would remove economic
+restrictions on parenthood which now often work social harm. They also
+claim that the health of children requires this public allowance for
+their care.
+
+The authors of this plan, although frankly stating objections to this
+point, claim that the payment of this allowance should be directly to
+mothers "as the first step toward raising the status of women and
+blotting out, in what has been called the noblest of professions,
+those conditions which compare only with the worst of sweated
+employments." The whole discussion of this plan is worthy most serious
+attention of all interested in preserving the family from injury
+through economic inequalities.
+
+=Does This Plan Make Too Little of Fathers?[9]=--There is one
+question, however, among others, to be asked of the authors of this
+plan, and that is, Can not some means be devised to make the father's
+share in the care of the children more definite and better rewarded,
+less often shirked or incompetent, in any scheme for state subsidy for
+the care of young children? The difficulties that inhere in all
+subsidies for children are chiefly those that make people of small
+intelligence and little conscience trade with the state for larger
+subsidies for larger families, begotten by the less fit for parentage
+and with an eye on the public purse. This catastrophe, not unknown in
+the past history of England, must be avoided. If there shall develop
+any scheme for equal sharing by all the community in the expense of
+raising the coming generation then there must surely be no special
+honor paid to those that have very large families. Better, for social
+purposes, that no children above a reasonable number should in any
+family receive a special allowance, even if older brothers and sisters
+did do so. It may be that in France large families are desperately
+needed. Not so in the United States. The number of five or six should
+certainly be the limit for which any just scheme of family subsidy
+should mulct the taxpayer.
+
+=Just Limits to Number of Children in Subsidized Families.=--The
+difference between the three under fourteen years which in so many
+cases can be cared for unassisted by the average workman, and the four
+and more that bring the family down to the danger-point of financial
+dependence, might be a subject for consideration in any scheme of
+family subsidy, and some clear idea of social need in family fertility
+should be a part of any proposition to make allowance from the public
+funds for each child under the earning age. In any case, the father's
+share in the self-sacrifice and burden of parenthood should have some
+clear recognition in any law dealing with such state aid. In the last
+analysis, unless some extreme form of socialism is better than the
+present industrial order and to be sought, the best way to help the
+family is to make fathers and mothers competent to take care of their
+own children without too great effort for themselves and without
+injurious consequences to the children. Those Trade Union leaders may
+be right in principle when they hesitate to accept any public family
+aid scheme lest it make wages less rather than more and bring on a
+condition in which heroic struggle for one's own, the very pith and
+marrow of manhood in its relation to the family, be less esteemed and
+less practiced.
+
+We are confronted, however, both in the movements for aid to maternity
+in care before and after childbirth, and in all the many provisions
+for child-saving that publicly supported Boards of Health are
+everywhere inaugurating, with a tendency of the greatest strength and
+social appeal, tendencies toward a sharing by all of the burdens
+heretofore borne only by the heads of families. Some way must be
+devised by which such sharing will not cheat society of any gains to
+character and to sense of family responsibility which old systems of
+economic support of children have given the race. Some way must be
+devised to recognize as economic assets of society the special
+sacrifice and service of the housemother in her function of life-giver
+for the coming generations and yet not ignore the father but rather
+bring him nearer to competent fatherhood as social conditions make it
+easier for him to bear his part of the family load. The place for full
+discussion of these important considerations is not here, but the need
+for the child to have a father who can be the efficient partner of the
+competent mother in the task of rearing him must be always insisted
+upon, else reform measures that help the mother will only take us
+backward instead of forward.
+
+=The Right of a Child to be Officially Counted.=--The next right of
+the child we must consider is the right to be listed as a member of
+the population. A registry of facts concerning himself and his
+condition that will enable the community to see where he is, what he
+is doing, and how he, in general, fares, is essential. The fact that
+only about one-half of the Commonwealths in our Union have full
+registration of births, deaths, health conditions, school attendance,
+and other vital matters concerning each individual, and of immense
+importance to society as a whole, is a confession of social
+incompetency too shameful for a nation that calls itself civilized.
+Where there is no adequate registration babies may be easily lost
+sight of altogether. Children may escape the call to school and child
+labor be unchecked. When an investigation of conditions in almshouses
+and remote country districts of a certain southern state was made the
+numbers of defective and blind and crippled children brought to light
+was appalling. Yet one political leader of that state, at least,
+declared when the investigation began that "it was not only
+unnecessary but an insult to an enlightened state." The enlightened
+state simply did not know how many children were born dead, how many
+died the first month or year of life, how many went to school later
+on, how many were not able to profit by instruction because of
+congenital defectiveness, how many needed special care and training by
+reason of some special handicap, and how many ran away from such
+public institutions as gave poor harbor to those without family
+protection. One of the fundamental rights, surely, of every child is
+to be counted, to have the community of which he is a part know
+something about him, and have his record kept where those interested
+in his protection and care, in his health, his schooling, his
+vocational training, may find out what they need to know in order to
+aid his progress or check his wrongdoing.
+
+=Every Child Should Have Social Protection.=--In the next place, the
+demand of every child must surely be for community protection against
+those who for greed or evil purpose would exploit his life. The first
+law passed for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which aimed even
+at parents who did not act a parent's part, was the Magna Charta of
+child rights. After that the door was opened for all manner of
+protective legislation for the benefit of the young. Yet we still have
+many men and some women whose business it is, and a very profitable
+one, to debauch youth or despoil children.
+
+Surely the time has come when all decent people should unite to
+abolish such evils.
+
+=Child-labor.=--In the field of child-labor we have model laws, not
+always well enforced, laws that aim to keep inviolate for childhood at
+least a few years of schooling.[10] We have health laws which aim more
+and more at reducing the diseases of children and making it possible
+for all to share in the power and joy of normal existence.
+
+Yet, although something has been done for the child who would
+otherwise be at work in factory, shop, or sweated trade at home, there
+are, it is said, still "Two Million Overworked Farm Children." In the
+South, in some sections, the little black children still pick cotton
+for the little white children to weave in mills. In the North
+undersized and mentally undeveloped youth still testify to industrial
+exploitation even where laws against child-labor are on the statute
+books. The agricultural workers, numbering more than any other class
+and spread all over the United States, count too many little children
+in their lists. It is estimated that in our country there are
+38,000,000 living on farms, and of this number only 8,000,000 adult
+men are listed as laborers; we hence can well believe that children
+and youth are a disproportionate element in the working of those
+farms. This makes the slogan proposed by Owen E. Lovejoy, the
+Secretary of the National Child-labor Committee, "Keep the Farmer
+Through His Children," a highly compelling one. In the tobacco fields
+of Connecticut, boys and girls ten years of age and over; in the truck
+gardens of Ohio among the onion beds; in the Michigan sugar-beet
+fields; in the California asparagus beds; in the Southern cotton
+fields, where children as young as three years of age have been
+found--in all these and on lonely farmsteads doing general work we
+find these children. Cut off from regular schooling, herded often in
+the poorest substitutes for homes, moving about from place to place
+with fathers and mothers unskilled or handicapped by weak character,
+these children are defrauded of every right of a child at every turn.
+It is not true, as some complacently assert, that all is done that
+should be to prevent the sacrifice of young life to the industrial
+demands for large returns for investment. It is not true that such
+organizations as the Child-labor Committee can rest content with
+accomplished tasks and disband.
+
+The exemption of agricultural labor from the legal protection of
+children given in many states in the field of manufacture, and the
+total lack of realization by the general public of the newer
+conditions which specialized and scientific farming make for the
+tenant hands, make this particular form of child-protection in farming
+a question of supreme importance.
+
+As this book goes to press the Supreme Court decision which declares
+the Federal Child-labor Law unconstitutional places upon those working
+through state channels a still heavier burden of effort at
+child-protection. This decision of the Supreme Court may well be
+understood as indicating no indifference to child-welfare but rather
+as a call to clear the method of child-labor reform from any
+entanglements of taxation or doubtful alliance with Federal
+officialism. The principle of child-protection, whether by national or
+state laws, holds the moral devotion of our citizenship more firmly
+than ever before.
+
+=Children Must be Protected in Recreation.=--The need for the
+protection of children from commercialized recreation with its centres
+set near all manner of vicious influences has aroused the conscience
+of the nation. The investigations of social conditions near the Camps
+of Training for our army in the Great War and many forms of social
+service carried on by men and women in connection with the Red Cross
+have given impetus to the general movement to "clean up the cities" to
+make the rural communities and village centres more helpful to moral
+living, and to make the streets safer for "the spirit of youth."
+
+Yet the rural schoolhouses are so many of them lacking in provisions
+of decency and of playground supervision, and the village
+lounging-places are so often the scenes of vicious association, and
+the absence everywhere of sufficient provision for healthful and
+safeguarded recreation is so obvious, that we know we have still a
+long and heavy task before us to accord children their admitted right
+to social protection from moral evils against which even the best of
+parents can not adequately stand alone.
+
+=Standards of and Aids to Health.=--Health standards in the community,
+fixed by experts and maintained, at least in minimum essentials, by
+public provision, is the seventh right of children which society
+should insure to each one.
+
+The difficulties and dangers which inhere in any form of financial
+payment to parents, either fathers or mothers, in aid of their
+parental tasks, are not so clearly present, if present at all, in
+special aids given to all the population in matters of public
+sanitation, personal hygiene and the care of the sick. If we make our
+public aid topical rather than by classes, and to all citizens alike
+in definite aid, we avoid much of the taint of charity. Few, if any,
+propose, for example, to give maternity aid to the rich. Fewer still
+advocate old-age pensions for those of independent incomes of moderate
+size. Many see, however, that health aids should be so distributed
+and so universally offered and used that the standard of health may be
+equally raised thereby for all. The idea that there are no people
+between the rich, who can pay anything asked, and those poor who can
+pay nothing for hospital care, diagnosis, or general medical and
+nursing service, is becoming an exploded one. There is general
+agreement among those most intelligent in such matters that what is
+needed more than anything else in the field of physical culture and
+physical care is provision for the people of small incomes who desire
+to be self-supporting. It is a common saying that no one but a
+millionaire or a pauper can afford a surgical operation or a trained
+nurse. We are moving, too slowly, but still moving, toward some form
+of provision of doctors, nurses, hospital and convalescent care, to
+which people of refinement, of independent feeling but of limited
+purse, can resort when they need such aid without a sense of
+humiliation or incurring the danger of wholly unsuitable
+companionship. Whatever difficulties there may be in securing adequate
+aid of this sort to adults, there can be none in the case of children.
+When we started Boards of Health we definitely outlined a path from
+the doctor's office and the nurse's service to the public school and
+from the public school to the home. We saw more clearly as the years
+went on that that path must be worn by many feet if we would have
+adults strong and well and ready for the work of the world. We have in
+many Boards of Health (as so efficiently working in New York City
+under Dr. Josephine S. Baker) Children's Departments, officered by
+those specially engaged in baby-saving, in child hygiene, in the
+health of school attendants, and in the general instruction of mothers
+in the care of children. This is an achievement which needs only to be
+more widely understood, applied and supported to be of the greatest
+social value. We have now the Federal backing in these matters in many
+provisions outside that of the special Maternity Aid Bill with its
+fifty-fifty financial plan to make the general government partner with
+the states and with the various local communities in health aid to all
+the people. What we need now is to make the care of the minor child
+seem to all, as it now does to so many, a duty that can be isolated in
+the mind from any doctrinaire socialistic plans, a duty to include all
+the population in wholly free health-service from the state. There
+are differences which may well be stressed between schemes for placing
+medical service of every sort under state regulation and wholly
+supporting it by public tax, and any plan for radically abolishing the
+capitalistic regime.
+
+We are fast coming to a united conception of social duty as requiring
+help to all parents that they may bring up their children in health
+and give those children the physical training which they need. Let us
+all, then, push hardest first for the standardization of health in the
+case of children and youth and the best possible arrangements of
+tax-supported aids to the realization of that standard. That is surely
+one of the ways in which the parental burden of child-care can be
+socially shared without starting embarrassing questions of radical or
+conservative theories of logical next steps.
+
+=Health Boards Should Help All Alike.=--We can, however, thus divorce
+health activities from economic disputes only by making the
+investigation of children, the provisions for free examination and
+treatment, and the establishment of hospital and clinic facilities
+exactly the same for the children of the rich and of the poor. A
+recent investigation of the diet of children deduced from reports of
+undernourishment furnished by doctors specializing in children's
+diseases, showed that in some cities, at least, the children of the
+well-to-do were as often underfed or wrongly fed as were the children
+of the poor. Sometimes the fact that a family is financially able to
+employ a nurse, but not intelligent or conscientious enough to employ
+a competent nurse, results in worse conditions, as to food and other
+particulars, than are found where poor mothers do the best they can
+with limited means.
+
+=Items of Work in Child Hygiene.=--The standards of health and the
+public provisions for their realization, which even now in the crowded
+city of New York are so ably enforced by "The Division of Child
+Hygiene," show that "the hazardous business of being a baby" is much
+reduced in risks. The list of details of work undertaken by that
+Division of Child Hygiene as so fully reported in the document of 1914
+and in later publications may be of use if here repeated. They are as
+follows:
+
+  I. Control and Supervision of Midwives.
+  II. Reduction of Infant Mortality.
+  III. Supervision of Foundlings Boarded in Private Homes.
+  IV. Inspection and Supervision of Day Nurseries.
+  V. Inspection of Institutions for Dependent Children.
+  VI. Medical Inspection and Examination of School Children.
+  VII. Vaccination of School Children.
+  VIII. Enforcing of Child-labor Law in Issuing Work Certificates.
+
+For this many-sided work physicians, trained nurses, and various other
+helpers are required. Could the public purse be drawn upon for a more
+vital public necessity than this list indicates?
+
+When it is remembered that from forty to fifty per cent, of births are
+in charge of midwives in the foreign-born population and that the
+condition of housing and of water, air and food supply are deplorably
+inadequate in manufacturing centres, and that in rural communities
+there are few doctors and nurses and little hospital service, it will
+be seen that the idea of having Federal aid for this large health
+requirement was not one of concentration of power in the Government
+(as some have thought), but rather of a diffusion of standards and
+better sharing in all parts of our country. The health crusade is not
+bounded by state lines, diseases may cross those lines without
+consciousness of any check. The help toward the abolition of all
+preventable illness, the protection of child-life from all manner of
+preventable weakness, abnormality and suffering, seems to be the
+business of society in general, if anything can be so called. The
+children must be saved if the nation is to prosper. It used to be
+thought that a high birth-rate was a sufficient indication of national
+well-being. It is now seen that a low death-rate and a high level of
+strength and vitality, of health and mental power, are still more the
+required national asset.
+
+As Dr. Helen D. Putnam well says, "Democracy must finally depend on
+its department of education for establishing the right: for mothers,
+intelligence, health, economic opportunity to care for their babies;
+for babies, either rich or poor, intelligent, physically competent
+caretakers," If this be true, then the work of Health Boards and
+kindred agencies is a part of general education as it has long been a
+part of accepted charitable duty. The children stand first in line for
+receipt of that health education because they are the promise of the
+future.
+
+We must take humane care of all the misfits, all the crippled, all the
+weak, all the defective, all the abnormal and the insane. This is now
+admitted. We must prevent, so far as we are able, such weight and
+burden falling upon our children and our children's children, as
+charity now presses upon us. In this matter, at least, "we must begin
+with the grandfathers if we would reform the world."
+
+=The Educational Rights of All Children.=--The right of every child to
+a minimum of education, which was our eighth point, is also conceded,
+and the duty of making public provision in tax-supported schools for
+these essentials of reading, writing, fair knowledge of arithmetic and
+the rest, is acknowledged. The idea, however, that some people have
+that all the children in the United States have an elementary
+schooling is erroneous. This is not a treatise on education, and
+elsewhere the statistics of length of schooling per year for the
+different parts of the country and of dearth of school seats in cities
+and famine of teachers everywhere must be considered. From the side of
+the family, however, the claim must be made that equal rights in some
+accepted minimum of school training, and that determined in quantity
+and quality of teaching by those who know what education means, should
+be the demand of all fathers and mothers. In the older time young men
+going through college on the way to one of the three learned
+professions then listed, law, theology, and medicine, taught often in
+the country school to earn an honest penny. Such teaching on the way
+to some form of vocation deemed far more honorable was not of a sort
+to make teaching a profession in itself. Later, some measure of higher
+education was given young women in Normal Schools to fit them for
+teaching little children, and the teacher of the elementary school
+became, thereby, a professional. To-day few young men teach to help
+themselves through college and only a few choose teaching as a
+profession. To-day, also, the profession of teaching, which once was
+almost the sole opening for higher vocational work for women, now
+competes with a large number of professions or types of business or
+applied art, and fewer women proportionally are headed for the
+schoolroom when they leave college or normal school.
+
+This tendency to take other lines of work increased to unprecedented
+extent during the Great War, which opened new worlds of paid work to
+women. This gives us the present teacher shortage, which all who know
+conditions feel to be the most serious menace to universal education.
+There are not only not enough teachers to go around, there are still
+fewer teachers fit to teach. If it is the right of every child to have
+a good education in essentials, to be well taught as far as he goes in
+schooling, how shall that right be realized if the teacher famine
+continues?
+
+=The Use of Married Women as Teachers.=--The interest of the family is
+specially concerned in one way to ease that shortage of teachers. That
+way is the use of married women in the public schools. All women who
+have "verified their credentials" as good teachers should be held on
+to when they marry with all possible strength of appeal to fulfil a
+social duty as a part of the teaching force of the locality where they
+live. The old absurdity of making women resign from the teaching force
+when they issued wedding cards, or conceal the fact of their marriage
+if they were not scrupulous, so as to keep their positions, is fast
+passing. Few communities hold on to this penalizing of the woman
+teacher when she marries, but many school boards retain a sentiment
+against urging the continuance of any married woman on the staff. This
+must give way to an intelligent understanding of two things: one, that
+experience in teaching is an immeasurable asset to the schools and
+must not be lost in so great proportion of women as it has been; and,
+in the second place, that teaching lends itself in unique manner to
+half-time work, to vacations for maternity duties, to combining of two
+or three married women in positions that might be filled by one
+spinster, and to other social expedients favorable to married life;
+and that all that is needed is good sense and some skill of
+administrative adjustment to keep the larger majority of good teachers
+in the field after they are wives and mothers.
+
+Moreover, from the point of view of the family, it is injurious for
+social practice to keep women who have the qualities of good teachers
+from marrying lest they lose their beloved profession. It is one of
+the best, although one of the least tried, ways of bringing the school
+and the home together by giving a good many teachers a clearer idea
+from personal experience of what the home needs from the school, and
+giving mothers a clearer idea of the reasons for school rules by
+having them serve in both capacities. The normal school education of
+women was obtained by appeals based on the fact of the first half of
+the nineteenth century that unless women teachers were secured and
+trained for the task the elementary school could never be enabled to
+fill the need of the public school system. The fact of the early part
+of the twentieth century should be as deeply pressed, the fact that
+there are not enough women teachers of education and character for
+elementary school service unless we mix teaching and marriage for many
+of them. This fact should make a social appeal to-day equal to that of
+Horace Mann's great mission.
+
+If we are to have enough elementary school teachers and continue to
+increase the number from the most fit women for the task, we must also
+institute a new social backing for the profession. In this connection
+one is obliged to deal with the disrespect shown the average teacher
+of little children and even of the high school and college instructor
+as compared with leaders in other professions. The teacher of little
+children is most often a woman, and if a woman away from home and
+especially in some rural communities is very nearly a social outcast.
+The "teacherage" is just beginning to be called for as the suitable
+home for the teachers of a school; a "teacherage" which can become a
+social centre if near the school building, and thus be uniquely
+useful. The jointure of all the best homes in a community with all the
+wisest teachers in that community, not alone for the occasional
+discussion of "School Problems" or "Home Problems," but for some
+common public work which will link both teachers and parents to the
+larger life of the community--this is a necessity if we would have
+enough teachers of the right sort.
+
+The attention to the physical details of school housing, school
+gardens, school playgrounds, school lighting and seating, all these
+the family life which furnishes the children must be keen about in
+the interest of each child. The curriculum must not be left to a
+school board chiefly interested in other matters than text-books,
+except it may be for a business interest in the latter. The supply and
+testing of teachers must not be left to a body more concerned in
+getting places for relatives and friends than for securing the best
+available teaching staff.
+
+In all the things that experts should direct, and in all the things
+that mean health and comfort and happiness to individual children,
+parents, even if not very learned, should have a voice and seek to
+make their convictions work to actual progress.
+
+=Individual Sharing in the Social Inheritance.=--For the last point of
+our list, namely, the right of every child to be made a conscious heir
+to the social inheritance of his time and place in the world, little
+need be said. The tendencies in American life which give thoughtful
+people the most satisfaction are the tendencies toward extension of
+culture privileges in public libraries, lectures, tax-supported and
+educationally supervised playgrounds, in young people's organizations
+like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, in summer camps (not all for the
+rich), in vacation houses full of the flavor of the best of life, in
+the varied clubs and classes of the settlements, in the pageants and
+other forms of pictured world-life--all these, and more that might be
+named, show an exuberance of effort to share with utmost speed and
+fullest generosity the things that seem to the privileged few the most
+precious heritage of our race.
+
+Yet, with all our effort so much more needs doing that multitudes live
+and die wholly ignorant of the world they have come to or of the
+race-life of which they are a part. Doctor Du Bois, in his classic
+appeal for human comradeship for all, _The Soul of Black Folks_, has
+shown what suffering comes to the cultured black man who finds all
+cultured men and women of white races forcing him to be an alien
+because of his skin. There is a sadder and more terrible, because
+unconscious, deprivation; it is that of any one, white or black, rich
+or poor, who loses the chance to partake of the culture of the past.
+The man or woman, whether able to accomplish much or little on the
+practical side of vocational service, whose outlook is bounded by the
+narrow, the superficial, the personal, the ephemeral, is missing the
+best part of his social inheritance, the capacity to "look before and
+after and pine for what is not."
+
+Such a little time we are here! Even a Methuselah might wish to have
+in his mental furnishings the glory of the past and the prophetic hope
+of the future. All children, not merely a fortunate few, should have
+this sense of a group-life of which each is a part, should be able to
+see life and see it whole in the social inheritance that belongs alike
+to each one of us. Children make a large order upon each generation as
+they come into a vast group of all that have been and reach
+consciously toward the expanding life of the coming time.
+
+The family must begin that culture by which the order shall be filled,
+but no family can answer even the least of the social demands by
+itself. "Culture," says Emerson, "shall yet absorb chaos itself,"
+Every child has a rightful citizenship in that order-giving world of
+thought, of history, of poetry, of art, of science, and of religion.
+
+What a nation we might become if only every child had this, its right,
+recognized and fulfilled!
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY
+
+  1. The eighteenth century was called the century of man, the
+     nineteenth century, of women, and the twentieth, that of the
+     child. What facts justify this statement?
+
+  2. What are the main elements in the modern standard of
+     child-care, child-protection, and child-nurture?
+
+  3. What of these elements can and should the private home supply,
+     and what must be the community provision and control?
+
+  4. In trying to effect both private and public conditions
+     favorable to the best development of child-life, what should be
+     the scale of values used, or what should be the order of
+     effort?
+
+  5. Dr. Alice Hamilton, in a Chicago study of I,500 families, found
+     that the infant death-rate in large families of six children
+     and over was two and one-half times greater than in small
+     families of four children or less. Was that an indication that
+     infant mortality rises with fecundity or was it one of many
+     indications that the better-to-do have smaller families? In any
+     case, should such statistics always include the statement of
+     the social standing and the income of the groups studied?
+
+  6. In _The Child_ of August, 1920, Miss Julia C. Lathrop
+     summarizes the Child-welfare Standards proposed by the
+     Children's Bureau as follows:
+
+     (1.) Minimum standards for children entering employment:
+
+          A. Minimum age, sixteen years in all employments;
+              eighteen years in mines and quarries; twenty-one
+              years for girls as telephone or telegraph messengers;
+              twenty-one years for special-delivery service of U.S.
+              Post Office; prohibition of minors in dangerous,
+              unhealthy, or hazardous occupations.
+
+          B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between
+              seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year.
+              Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally
+              employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight
+              hours a week.
+
+          C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working
+              children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of
+              work unless found to be normal in physique and health.
+
+          D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or
+              forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of
+              night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as
+              part of working-day.
+
+          E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar
+              agency.
+
+          F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision.
+
+          G. Employment certificate as needed protection against
+              industrial exploitation.
+
+     (2.) Minimum standards for public protection of health of
+          mothers and children:
+
+          A. Maternity aids; B. Infants; C. Pre-school children; D.
+              School children; E. Adolescent children.
+
+     (3.) Minimum standards in relation to children needing special
+          care:
+
+          A. Adequate income; B. Assistance to mothers; C. State
+              supervision; D. Removal of some children from their
+              homes; E. Home care; F. Principles governing
+              child-placing; G. Children in institutions; H. Care
+              of children born out of wedlock; I. Care of
+              physically defective children; J. Mental hygiene and
+              care of mentally defective children; K. Juvenile
+              courts; L. Rural social work; M. Scientific
+              information.
+
+     (4.) General minimum standards:
+
+          A. Economic and social; B. Recreation; C. Child-welfare
+              legislation.
+
+  Read the above and compare your local conditions with these
+     standards. Do you think all these demands necessary?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Described briefly in _The Survey_ of November 12, 1921.
+
+[9] In New Zealand, which has so many "modern improvements" in
+government, the proposition has been made to fix a basic wage for a man
+and wife without children, and make it the same as for a single man. In
+addition to this sum, each employer would be required by law to pay
+into a State Fund a sum slightly in advance of this wage for the single
+man and the childless married man, and that excess sum would be
+distributed in the form of a children's allowance to each parent
+according to the number of children. It is estimated that under this
+plan the total sum paid out in wages would not exceed that now
+distributed, but the receipt by the workers would be proportioned to
+responsibilities.
+
+[10] See publications of the National Child-labor Committee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY
+
+
+  "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
+  faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in
+  action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the
+  beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"
+
+    "Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,
+    Looking before and after, gave us not
+    That capability and godlike reason
+    To fust in us unused."
+                    --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+  "The apostolic of every age are ever calling for a higher
+  righteousness, a better development of the human race, a more
+  earnest effort to equalize the condition of men."--LUCRETIA MOTT.
+
+  "To every period its leaders: and the rise of every leader is
+  according to his watching for opportunity; and the chief quality
+  of leadership is the jewel of equity, by which alone the obedience
+  of men is justified."--ARAB SAYING.
+
+    "He presses on before the race,
+    And sings out of a silent place.
+    Like faint notes of a forest bird
+    On heights afar that voice is heard;
+    And the dim path he breaks to-day
+    Will some time be a trodden way.
+    But when the race comes toiling on
+    That voice of wonder will be gone--
+    Be heard on higher peaks afar,
+    Moved upward with the morning star.
+    O men of earth, that wandering voice
+    Still goes the upward way: rejoice!"
+                    --EDWIN MARKHAM.
+
+
+=The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre.=--In Dr. T.S. Clouston's
+suggestive book, _The Hygiene of Mind_, he estimates that at least
+four-fifths of the human race are legally "sound" and of average
+capacity. Of the remaining one-fifth who are "unusual" he and other
+investigators name only one-tenth of one per cent, as entitled to the
+distinction of "Genius." Clouston adds to this a class of "lesser
+genius," often extremely useful to the race but often personally
+unhappy from ungratified ambition or lack of temperamental balance. He
+lists "reformers" for the most part in this class and "inventors who
+do not succeed." He also specifically indicates a class of "all-round
+talent" from which successful social and political leaders are drawn
+and heads of big business and administrators of large enterprises in
+educational fields. Dr. Lester F. Ward, on the contrary, believed that
+we estimate the rate of genius and potential genius far too low and
+that special talent is vastly more common than the usual observer
+thinks. He says, "What the human race needs is not more brains but
+more knowledge." In his clarion call for the better education of all
+people of every race and condition, he affirms his faith in
+environmental opportunity and a finer personal development as the
+chief things needed to send the race onward. Professor Woods, of
+Dartmouth College, writing on "The Social Cost of Unguided Ability,"
+confirms this conviction of Doctor Ward.[11] He declares that "for ten
+men who succeed there are probably fifty more who might succeed with
+adequate development and specialization of effort." He shows how
+"education as an agency in the selection of personal ability fails
+because of undue abbreviation of the period of training for most
+individuals and the omission of elements of training of real
+significance for the purpose of adjusting individuals to the specific
+task." When we note that before the fifth elementary grade is reached
+there is a drop in attendance showing only 80 per cent. of those found
+in the second grade, and in the sixth grade only 66 per cent., and in
+the seventh grade only 50 per cent., and in the eighth grade less than
+40 per cent. remain of those entering the first and second grades, we
+see good reason for his statement. When the high school statistics are
+added, with the drop year by year in attendance until at graduation
+only one in fourteen pupils remains to the end, we feel that this
+author is right when he says that "Society suffers less from the race
+suicide of the capable than from the non-utilization of the
+well-endowed."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+=Eugenics.=--When Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and one of
+the first to apply to human beings the ideas of "selection for better
+breeds," published in 1873 his article on "Hereditary Improvement," he
+used the word "Stirpiculture" as indicating the application of
+evolution to the method of improving mankind by the selection of the
+superior in the process of reproduction. He later changed the
+designation to "Eugenics," which is now held as the term best applying
+in this connection. In 1891 Dr. Lester Ward himself said, "Artificial
+selection has given to man the most that he enjoys in the organic
+products of earth. May not men and women be selected as well as sheep
+and horses? From the great stirp of humanity with all its multiplied
+ancestral plasms--some very poor, some mediocre, some merely
+indifferent, a goodly number ranging from middling to fair, only a
+comparatively few very good, with an occasional crystal of the first
+water--why may we not learn to select on some broad and comprehensive
+plan with a view to a general building up and rounding out of the race
+of human beings?" So keen an observer and philosophic thinker as
+Doctor Ward, however, could not long accept the first allurement of
+this idea. He soon began to show with his convincing power that "the
+control of heredity is possible only to a master creature. Man is the
+master creature of the animal world. Society is the master of its
+defectives. But normal people are their own masters. Any attempt on
+the part of society to control the choice of partners in the marital
+relation would be tyranny." Recognizing the need for "negative
+eugenics" fully, and declaring in its name that "mental and physical
+defectives of society should be kept from perpetuating their defects
+through propagation," he insisted that "eugenists must recognize and
+admit the enormous force of personal preference" in marriage.
+
+Doctor Ward gives a figure--as above--which might be used to indicate
+the conclusions of Galton, in his _Hereditary Genius_, and of Ribot
+and others. Doctor Galton himself gave in his volume on the _Social
+Order_ a chart somewhat more discriminating. In any case, however, the
+eugenists must depend upon the mass of the mediocre for a supply of
+geniuses and those of exceptional talent and depend upon the process
+of reproduction for securing that supply. Doctor Ward, on the
+contrary, looks to education, controlled and improved environment, and
+the stimulus for all people to be gained from more scientific
+knowledge more widely distributed. In his famous article, entitled
+"Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics,"[12] Doctor Ward says that
+"eugenists tend to emphasize unduly the intellectual qualities" and
+"manifest more or less contempt for the affective faculties."
+"Nature," he thinks, "is far wiser and seeks to prevent all extremes."
+He also reminds us that "much that is called genius is pathologic and
+linked to the abnormal and the insane." Perhaps few would agree with
+Doctor Ward that "genius is scattered somewhat uniformly through the
+whole mass of the population and needs only favoring circumstances to
+bring it to conscious expression." But that thought challenges
+attention. He would improve mankind, first, by getting rid of error
+through the full use of demonstrated scientific knowledge and, second,
+by a "nurture" in accord with the laws of progress.
+
+=Euthenics and Eudemics.=--The pioneer treatment of "Euthenics," or
+"The Science of Controllable Environment," with its "Plea for Better
+Living Conditions as a First Step Toward Higher Human Efficiency,"
+was given by Ellen H. Richards in 1910. Doctor Ward, in alluding to
+this, reminds us that "there is a tendency for the avenues of progress
+to become choked and normal upward movements checked" and that "we
+must at all times take vigorous action and in the direction of the
+betterment of the human race." In respect to "Eudemics," or the
+doctrine of the welfare of the masses of the people-at-large, Doctor
+Ward uses the term first suggested to Doctor Dealey, of Brown
+University, by Doctor Koopman, Librarian of that University, with
+approval, and gives it a meaning of the greatest social helpfulness.
+In his view it is not a misfortune that society is being to so great
+an extent recruited from the so-called "lower classes." If there are
+signs of decadence anywhere, he thinks, they are not in the
+"proletariat;" they are among the "pampered rich," not the "hampered
+poor."
+
+=New Types of Genius.=--Again, his plea is for universal education in
+real knowledge and true inference from facts of life and a universal
+sharing of the really best things to secure a just quota of genius and
+talent from all classes. It seems clear that we are not obliged to
+limit our hopes for "flowers of the family" to the few at the top of
+the social pyramid. For the testimony of history agrees rather with
+Doctor Ward than with the extreme eugenists, and we have often had
+arising from the common life splendid examples of human capacity and
+achievement. When the eugenists list their double columns of those
+whom humanity takes pride in and those of whom humanity is ashamed it
+is most often from the degenerative or defective members of society
+that the second list is taken. From the great common life of average
+condition, neither too rich nor too poor, too cultured nor too
+ignorant, for "human nature's daily food," one rises now and then to
+leave a mark high up on the list of great ones of the earth. Hence,
+humble fathers and mothers can build magnificent hopes on the newborn
+baby of their love. It is to be considered also that there is
+difference of opinion as to what constitutes genius and what may be
+called exceptional talent. One sociologist thinks that there are but
+three really important classes of men, namely, "Mechanical Inventors,
+Scientific Discoverers, and Philosophic Thinkers." Another type of
+judgment may consider that genius shows itself almost exclusively in
+those creative minds that give us great music, great pictures, great
+sculptures, great temples, and great books of poetry, drama, and the
+novel. Another type of mind, now growing fast among us in this
+machine-dominated industrial era, may find genius the most appropriate
+name for the master engineer or business-builder who rules a wide
+realm of successfully administered economic order. There is, also,
+although it is not often bold enough to claim loud voice, a small
+section of those who look for supreme excellence in religious or
+ethical attainment, a line of genius in mastery of the Way of Life.
+Certainly serviceable goodness, that which does big things for others'
+safety or help, may be given some place among the specially talented.
+For example, the little French girl of nine years of age who, bereft
+of her mother by the accidents of war, has brought up almost unaided
+five little brothers and sisters, the youngest only seven months old
+when her task began, and for two years, it is said, washed, cooked,
+and dressed her charges, and "saw to it that those old enough went to
+school where she went herself and took prizes for her scholarship,"
+might well be called one of the "unusual." The prize of 500 francs
+awarded this "little mother" after two years of such able family
+engineering and personal care of those dependent upon her shows that
+some people at least rank those with ability to do social services and
+the high purpose to achieve the best possible for others' welfare as
+having a place In the company of the specially talented.
+
+In an inconspicuous book called _The New Party_, edited by Andrew Reid
+and containing selections from many "labor" leaders, these words
+occur: "We have had politics for politics' sake, religion for
+religion's sake, science for science's sake, literature for
+literature's sake, art for art's sake: we want politics for justice,
+religion for right, science for happiness, literature for love of
+humanity, and art for the social pleasure of all." Those who can thus
+translate the separate achievements of mankind which taken at the top
+have won the title of works of genius are beginning to be seen above
+the human horizon as among the great of earth.
+
+It is still, however, as of old, the man or woman who has a special
+gift of voice or pen or brush or sculptor's tool or command of
+instrument or ability to compose music or to write literature fit to
+live forever, or build temples that command wonder and admiration, or
+who in some form of creative activity makes his mark upon history, who
+is most often spoken of as a genius. It is now only a little while
+since we began to add to this list the scientific, the commercial and
+the political genius. The military genius has held a place for ages,
+but his specialty is losing standing as a social asset, and we can
+foresee a time when he must learn constructive rather than destructive
+methods of action in order to qualify for the "Hall of Fame."[13]
+
+=Only Men in Lists of Geniuses.=--Genius along any line has for its
+topmost reaches the names of men only. Few women have even attained
+the secondary place of the talented. When we remember that higher
+education for women is a child of less than a hundred years' growth,
+and that all the higher walks of achievement in the intellectual, the
+political, the scientific, and the industrial field have been
+masculine monopolies in custom and even in law for ages after men had
+opportunity of specialized development and work, this is not a sure
+proof of the intellectual and vocational inferiority of women. Until
+women have had several centuries of equal education and freedom of
+activity with men no one can tell what they can do in any special
+line. It is therefore idle at this date for any one to argue either
+for or against the possibilities of a more balanced list of the sexes
+in those at the top of human achievement.
+
+What we are now beginning to be sure of is that all talent is
+precious, all special power a social asset, all leadership to be
+conserved, and all real genius a priceless treasure--hence, that all
+children who are gifted, whether boys or girls, shall be developed to
+the height of social power. This means that although every gifted
+child is born in a private family, society must see to it that its
+chance for right nurture and fitting education is not limited to the
+resources of any private family, especially to those of the poorer in
+economic power.
+
+Galton estimates two hundred and fifty in a million as in the
+"distinguished class," If, as Doctor Ward and others think, many more
+might be able to qualify for that position if favorably situated, then
+society, which is the loser by every undeveloped person, must learn to
+know the possibilities of children as indicated by scientific study
+and lessen the present waste of potential talent. Dr. Carl Kelsey says
+"Heredity determines what a man may become, but environment determines
+what he does become." This is not entirely true, perhaps, since many
+noble and wise have risen from untoward surroundings, but it is
+largely true.
+
+=Social Need to Learn What Children Are.=--If society is to really set
+about the business of getting from the mass of mankind all the
+intellectual and moral power and all the real leadership that may be
+available for social uses, then surely we must learn first to know
+more about all the children in every family. How can this be done? In
+many cases children are slow in development and may have powers quite
+unsuspected until the time for most skilful cultivation has passed. In
+many cases parents are so partial that "all their geese are swans." In
+other cases the nervous excitability may be such that precocity leads
+to overstimulation and later there is arrest of development, and the
+promising bud does not develop into the flower of the family. In any
+case, the parents alone can not, as a rule, attain full comparison and
+due balance of judgment even between their own children and certainly
+not as between their own and the children of other parents.
+
+="Charting Parents."=--There is, to be sure, a new plan of "Charting
+Parents" to find out what they are able to do and what they are
+actually doing in the moral training and physical care of their
+children. "The Parents' Score Card," prepared by Dr. Caroline Hedger,
+of the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, and published in the
+_Woman's Home Companion_ of March, 1922, aims to enable fathers and
+mothers "to size themselves up as parents." The points to be noted and
+on which parents have a rating as good, bad, or indifferent, comprise
+those concerning "physical defects attended to," "adequate supervision
+of athletics and recreation," "regulations concerning the below-weight
+or nervous child," on "team-work in parents" (whether they pull
+together or apart in the discipline of the child), and some very
+drastic examination points on "fault-finding," "lying to child,"
+"punishing when angry." The chart deals, in general, with the
+character influence of the parent. It is said that only one child in
+three hundred had a perfect "score card" in an investigation of a
+large number of children, and hence only a small proportion of parents
+could be supposed to measure up to all the requirements of the
+parent's outline of duties.
+
+This new device of putting parents to the test is being adopted in
+many differing ways by health boards, by school boards, by children's
+courts, by church committees of investigation, and by the
+superintendents of charitable agencies. This all means that a standard
+of child-life is being attained, a measure of the normal, divergence
+from which is an indication of the abnormal, either in capacity or
+condition. This is a wholesome movement, although sometimes carried
+out in unwise and unsympathetic ways. This should enable parents to
+find out if they have average children and what to do with defects
+that are remediable. This is also one of the ways by which we measure
+the social need to help parents who are themselves handicapped in any
+way to do their duty by their children.
+
+What we need, however, is more than this--we need some definite
+knowledge of what sort of children we have in one generation with
+which to build the next generation. We need to be able to take account
+of our social stock as we go along. To do this the home must be
+supplemented specifically and adequately by the school. In the school
+we have opportunity of wide study of varying types, of comparison of
+differing rates of progress, of getting at actual knowledge of actual
+quality and capacity in a child as related to the like in other
+children. This investigative function of the school has been used for
+the most part to ascertain what children were defective. This is
+useful. We need, also, to use it with far more ingenuity to ascertain
+what children are most promising and most likely to dower the race
+with special gifts.
+
+=New Observation Records for Children.=--A very important "Observation
+Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in the Elementary Schools"
+has been drawn up by Julie A. Badanes, which has been published with
+an introduction by Dr. Saul Badanes. In this introduction it is well
+said that "the idea of establishing a norm for every school year" is a
+new one. The measurement of intelligence by Binet dates only back to
+1905. In the treatment of the "Intelligence of Pupils," Meumann
+declares "that the problem of measuring the intelligence of school
+children is the basic problem in education." Recently William Stern
+has dealt at length with "The Selection of Gifted Children in Public
+Schools" and with related elements of investigation of the
+intelligence of children. William H. Allen, in his book, _Universal
+Training for American Citizenship_, has, as Doctor Badanes notes,
+given a chapter to the "Training of the Specially Gifted." We are all
+concerned with growing earnestness in the problem of getting in
+democracy the leadership which all social organization requires. It
+is, therefore, of the most intense interest to all thoughtful people
+how the flower of the family is nurtured and in what manner it is made
+to bloom.
+
+This "Psychological-pedagogical Observation Record," which has been
+devised as an aid in finding out if a child is specially gifted, and
+if so in what way its gifts should be developed and how it should find
+its way to achievement, is very suggestive. Any parent might well
+study its itemized outlines for help in effort to understand the child
+that is unlike the average. The "Record" requires attention to the
+"general condition of the senses and nerves," to "memory and power of
+learning," to qualities of "imagination," to strength and expression
+of "emotions," to facility in "language," to "manner of work," to
+"relation to home and community life," and in respect to "adaptation
+to new demands." These things are vital not only to know about and
+understand as respects one personality but to compare on the same
+basis a number of personalities in order to get a ranking that is just
+and useful for guidance in education. Suppose a father and mother feel
+sure that a child of theirs is one of the exceptional, the gifted,
+perhaps of great talent, even possibly a genius in the making. They
+may get much help in arriving at sober judgment by many books and
+treatises now available. But far clearer would be their own approach
+to the matter in hand if they could study some such chart as is here
+alluded to and get a clear direction as to what to look for and how
+to measure what they find. If such parents, however, would be really
+assured in their first appreciation of their child they need the
+cooeperative observation and fuller opportunity of comparison which a
+teacher of a school, who is herself or himself a good psychologist,
+can place at their service. All of us can see our own children at
+their best; few can justly estimate what the power of that best may be
+in a competitive world.
+
+=What to Do with the Specially Gifted Child.=--The child may be one of
+the few elected to leadership in some field. All who watch and study
+and understand may agree that it is the gift of its birthright. Then
+what is there to do? The question often arises, Shall the other
+children in the family be given less opportunity in order that this
+gifted one may have the larger chance which genius and great talent
+really demand for fulfilment of promise? There was no doubt of the
+answer to this question in the minds of those who believed that a
+special gift carried with it special privilege provided the special
+gift discovered were of a sort understood by all. For many generations
+a boy feeling a "call" to the ministry of religion as rabbi, priest,
+or preacher would be sure to have, if necessary, all the resources of
+his family at his command and all possible aid of friends even at the
+sacrifice of the elementary education of his brothers and sisters. In
+the same way in a more limited circle the child who could do any
+creative work of imagination in art would be considered entitled to
+any self-sacrificing devotion of other members of the family which
+might be needed to carry forward his work. In a larger way many have
+looked upon all higher education as solely for those who have shown a
+power of potential leadership. Not long ago the old saying was
+revived: "Colleges are for the exceptional individuals who may become
+the world's intellectual elite." On the other hand, the growth of
+State Universities and of many forms of adult education, and the
+offering of college courses in the evening to those employed in
+earning-work during the day, show that the opportunities of culture
+are more and more made free to all and that the conviction is growing
+that it is not alone leaders who should be educated but that the
+common life must be raised in mental and moral power in order for true
+leadership to work effectively for the advance of social well-being.
+
+In the family the genius or near-genius is likely to get all that
+should be its privilege and often more. And this not only from pride
+in his talent and from desire to give that talent its proper chance of
+expression but because genius and near-genius have often a
+self-protecting and self-acquiring quality that make sure of much
+unselfish care from others. If, as has been said, "The genius is
+composed of a man, a woman, and a child," and there is much in life to
+give color to that idea, then it is easy to see why the flower of the
+family so often gets the larger share of every family advantage and
+when the family resource fails is sure to find friends and helpers on
+every side to help on his development. This is not unjust provided the
+talented member can serve well in this specialty. The great trouble is
+that many think themselves geniuses and find others, in youth at
+least, to confirm their judgment of themselves, who are only a trifle
+above the commonplace. This leads too often to selfish claims upon
+others that tire even the family affection. It would be well on this
+account, if no other, if every child could be wisely and adequately
+diagnosed in respect to mental power so that fewer mistakes would be
+made in confounding greatness with showiness or creative power with
+mere discriminating taste.
+
+If the family really cuts off the education and vocational
+opportunities of the less gifted below the point required for average
+success in life, in order to give greater advantages to the gifted
+one, it is an injustice. The mediocre have their innings now, and it
+is one of the great demands of democracy, both within and without the
+family, that the commonplace shall not miss its chance for learning
+how to serve and enjoy the best it can. The family life must be for
+all, the one place in which no life is wholly sacrificed to another
+life.
+
+What, then, shall be done for the gifted whose talent, like that of
+music, for example, means a high demand for expensive culture? The
+answer we are beginning to give is that social agencies shall aid the
+parents in securing that culture. Aristocracy had its "patrons" for
+artists. Democracy must have its special educational aids for the
+gifted. Already that demand is being met in countless ways that will
+readily occur to all. Meanwhile, there is the public school organized
+to meet the needs of the "average child." At first the grade-system
+had a Procrustean bed that made it impossible to meet the needs of
+those below the average and almost as difficult to meet the needs of
+those above that average. We started special schools and special rooms
+for those subnormal, retarded, slow, or specially difficult to manage.
+Now we are beginning to consider how we can best make the
+tax-supported public school serve the interests of the specially
+gifted. The first thing we see clearly now is to find out which
+children are exceptional on the upper side, and for that the newly
+devised forms of scientific observation and measurement may be useful
+if care is taken to mix every formula with common sense, patience, and
+human sympathy. The next essential is to decide whether the children
+who can go faster shall be passed along through the grades by special
+arrangement more rapidly or whether they shall be kept on the regular
+track of school promotions and be given extra lessons to "enrich their
+curriculum." The part of wisdom, it would seem, is to find out what
+kind of gift the exceptional child has and hasten his regular course,
+or add to it, in accordance with his type of talent. If he is to be
+one of those who are to mix with men and lead others in professions
+that demand administrative and executive power, the chances are that
+he should have the regular course in the usual order and add studies
+that will early give him the facts of practical life and an
+acquaintance with many phases of political, business, and scientific
+activity that would serve in such work as he is likely to find to do.
+If, on the other hand, the gift is creative, and the career nature has
+seemingly marked out is one where the impulse will come from within,
+and some special technical training can alone give that impulse
+expression, then the chances are that the sooner such a child "gets
+through with school," emerges from formal education into his own
+atmosphere and his own free alignment with the masters in his own art,
+the sooner he will really begin to be educated for his task. It seems
+to be true that the more a human being is set apart by nature for a
+specialty of art the less he gets from all teachers save those in his
+own field of interest. It seems also true that the wider a human
+being's range of dealing with other human beings in business, in
+politics, in religious organizations, in educational work, the surer
+it will be that "all is grist that comes to his mill" and there can be
+no study that is at all worthy that fails to enrich his mind. Hence,
+the new tendency to examination for the sake of finding out the
+specially gifted children and giving them the special opportunity in
+education which they need and will profit by, must be one guided
+toward details of differing gifts as well as toward quantitative
+power.
+
+=Genius Universal in Nature.=--If any family has in it a real genius,
+that family shines forever in the reflected light of its choicest
+treasure. Yet a genius belongs to no family, even to no country. Such
+belong to the world. Mary, we are told, "pondered the things in her
+heart" which marked the boy Jesus out from all the other lads who
+played about the carpenter shop of Joseph. And it is not alone poetic
+imagination that shows her as troubled as well as humbly proud at the
+testimonies of His coming greatness. Many other mothers of those
+destined to high achievement have had misgivings as the shadow as
+truly as the sunlight of that greatness passed across their vision.
+For true greatness is solitary and often dedicated to tragedies of
+experience. The family life may be the only refuge from a
+misunderstanding world while the hero lives and only after death may
+the high quality of his service be known to all.
+
+=Genius Its Own School-master.=--The most comforting thought to
+parents who have children "different" and perhaps different in ways
+not yet appreciated by the world around them, is this: nature, which
+takes care that we shall not have too many geniuses and doubtless will
+still take such care when we grow wise enough to give all the children
+a chance to prove whether or not they are geniuses--nature sees to it
+that the most gifted among the children of men carry within themselves
+their own school-master. If the regular lines of education do not suit
+their needs they promptly emancipate themselves from the useless
+pedagogy, and going after what they personally demand for inner
+nourishment, get it at all hazards. Sometimes, not infrequently, all
+the gifted child needs is a library and a chance to be free, or a
+studio and the companionship of an artist and just his own sort of
+training, at the time he can best appropriate it.
+
+=Varieties of the Gifted.=--Happily all the flowers of the family are
+not geniuses or specially talented. Some are just beautiful to look at
+and yet unspoiled by flattery. It is a great gift of nature to be able
+to give happiness just by allowing people to look at one! The contour
+of the face, the turn of the head, the light in the eye, the freshness
+of the complexion, the grace of the movement, and the sweetness of the
+voice all go together, if the manner and the feeling only match the
+coloring and the form, to make it well worth while just to be alive.
+
+And some flowers of the family are not beautiful but charming, those
+of tact and graciousness and understanding of others and consideration
+and unselfish behavior. These are they of whom one has said, "The
+charm of her presence was felt when she went, and men at her side grew
+nobler, girls purer, as all through the town the children were gladder
+who pulled at her gown."
+
+Some flowers of the family bloom late and come to their beauty only
+when some disaster threatens destruction of the home or some sorrow
+wrecks its happiness. Simple, plain, unassuming, neither very wise nor
+very strong in other matters, they have a heart that can love with
+such intensity that it warms the coldest spot and is the refuge most
+sought when misfortune appears.
+
+And sometimes the flower of the family is but a memory of one who
+early passes on. Emerson sang in his beautiful "Threnody":
+
+    "The gracious boy, who did adorn
+    The world whereinto he was born,
+    And by his countenance repay
+    The favor of the loving Day,--
+    Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
+    Far and wide she cannot find him;
+    My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
+    ......................................
+    Nature, who lost, cannot remake him;
+    Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;
+    ........................................
+                                    the feet
+    Of the most beautiful and sweet
+    Of human youth had left the hill
+    And garden,--they were bound and still."
+
+It is of such that affection speaks most tenderly.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY
+
+  1. How far should the general family life be burdened for special
+     development of the genius, the near-genius, and the specially
+     talented member?
+
+  2. What added social provisions should we seek to secure to aid in
+     the self-training of the specially gifted?
+
+  3. What type of education may lead more surely to the discovery of
+     talent and special faculty in the mass of children?
+
+  4. Should the chief aim be to bring the subnormal or backward up
+     to grade or to give a free and helpful range of opportunity to
+     natural qualities of leadership? If both should be aimed at
+     equally, how can the public school aid in the double task?
+
+  5. A suggestive list of Books for Parents, issued by the
+     Federation for Child Study, headquarters at 2 West Sixty-fourth
+     Street, New York City, includes several of special value in
+     determining the mental powers and special requirements of
+     children diverging from the average quality and capacity. Read
+     at least one of the books indicated and compare local
+     provisions for examination of children with those advocated as
+     desirable.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for November, 1913.
+
+[12] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for May, 1913.
+
+[13] See chapter on "Democracy and Distinction," in _Social
+Organization_, by C.H. Cooley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP
+
+    "It was perhaps an idle thought
+      But I imagined that if day by day
+      I watched him and seldom went away,
+    And studied all the beatings of his heart
+    With zeal (as men study some stubborn art
+      For their own good) and could by patience find
+      An entrance to the caverns of his mind--
+    I might reclaim him from his dark estate."
+                    --SHELLEY.
+
+    "One man, at least, I know,
+    Who might wear the crest of Bayard
+      Or Sidney's plume of snow.
+                        Behold him,
+      The Cadmus of the blind,
+    Giving the dumb lips language,
+      The idiot clay a mind.
+    Wherever outraged Nature
+      Asks word or action brave,
+    Wherever struggles labor,
+      Wherever groans a slave,--
+    Wherever rise the peoples,
+      Wherever sinks a throne,
+    The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
+      An answer in his own.
+    Knight of a better era,
+      Without reproach or fear!
+    Said I not well that Bayards
+      And Sidneys still are here?"
+                    --WHITTIER'S tribute to Dr. Howe.
+
+
+=The Defective Children.=--Not those who die young, full of promise,
+to leave a memory of exquisite budding loveliness cut short by
+untimely frosts, but those who live on from infancy to childhood and
+from youth to physical maturity and even on to old age, yet never
+become responsible adults--these are the children we must consider.
+
+The demand of the eugenists that such, if obviously defective, should
+be prevented from bringing forth after their kind is clearly the only
+social wisdom. The statistics of social pathology all point to mental
+defectiveness as the prolific cause of crime, immorality, vocational
+incompetency, illegitimacy, family failure, and marital tragedy. In a
+recent study of one hundred families in which feeble-mindedness was
+obvious, a study carried on by the Massachusetts Society for the
+Prevention of Cruelty to Children, immorality was found in 58 per
+cent. of them; extreme filth and bad home conditions were found in 30
+per cent.; and in 47 per cent. one or more members of these families
+were public charges. Where the mother is subnormal there is almost
+certain to be a line of feeble-minded progeny, and in this study,
+while there were only 7 per cent. of the fathers hopelessly deficient,
+in 25 per cent. the mothers were notably defective in mind.
+Thirty-seven of these families showed illegitimate children--a far
+larger number than the average of normal population. Physical
+deficiencies also figured largely in these family records.
+
+This particular study takes us into the region where Doctor Fernald,
+Doctor Goddard and many others have prepared material for convincing
+the public mind that no one thing so increases social degeneracy and
+so adds to the sum of human misery as the unprotected freedom of
+defectives to procreate and pollute the family currents.[14] This is
+not a treatise on social pathology and elsewhere must be found the
+details of investigation and information that justify this statement.
+What is here attempted is only a study of what should be the attitude
+of fathers and mothers toward feeble-minded children if such should be
+their tragic problem.
+
+=Custodial Care of the Defective.=--In the first place, the attitude
+of mind of the parents, if they are themselves normal, is to be
+considered. What gives us feeble-minded children from feeble-minded
+parents is clear. The social prevention for carrying on known
+degeneracy cannot be too strongly stressed, and hence the first duty
+of normal parents is to consider the social danger of leaving a
+feeble-minded child, especially a feeble-minded girl, to any chance of
+parenthood. This leads to the question of removal from home of
+feeble-minded children to permanent custodial care in institutions
+provided especially for their segregation, possible teaching and
+thrifty use of small work-power. Alexander Johnson, who has done so
+much in the United States to make all philanthropy wise and effective
+and particularly has helped to form public opinion concerning right
+methods of care and training of the feeble-minded, tells us that
+"one-half of the mentally defective can become one-third of a normal
+person," can be made happy and useful to the extent of considerable
+aid toward self-support if under constant supervision and given the
+trained care of special teachers.
+
+There are few private homes in which any feeble-minded boy or girl can
+attain such a condition. The children who are "different," if having
+the sole devotion of father and mother, may be protected and made
+happy in the measure of their power for happiness. But if there are
+other children in the family neither they nor the afflicted one are
+comfortable. The measure of feeble-mindedness is usually the measure
+of unhappiness when the normal and abnormal are in close
+companionship. In most families it is not possible for either or both
+parents to give entire time, strength and devotion to one subnormal
+child. Where it is, there is no security that death will not prevent
+the permanency of that devoted care. Hence, it is generally safer and
+better for all concerned to place the feeble-minded in collective
+homes where their own kind are cared for exclusively and where
+segregated control can be complete and permanent through life. There
+is no horror of such places for those who have seen what flowers of
+happiness and what miracles of devotion may be found in "Training
+Schools for the Feeble-minded."
+
+The affectional side of the nature of a mental defective may be of
+unusual strength and may find special objects of love among those
+still more handicapped than itself. Those visiting intimately in such
+School-homes may see a higher-grade imbecile caring for a lower-grade
+with patience and devotion; they may see the competitive element in
+training, reduced in levels for the accommodation of the slender
+stock of mentality, producing on that lower level the same good
+results that normal children gain from trying to imitate and to excel.
+Small attainments are sources of pride in a class of defectives which
+if exhibited among the normal would give bitter experience of
+contrast. By making the standard of behavior and of attainment suited
+to their little power, the delight of conquest over difficulties need
+not be denied to the feeble-minded.
+
+Hence, again, it is far from wise and often far from most loving to
+keep the child who can never grow up in the company of those who
+follow the usual path from infancy to maturity. This means, of course,
+if this idea of the more general use of special homes for the
+subnormal is to be carried out, a large increase in provision of such
+homes. Such large increase is often opposed by short-sighted economy.
+The expense of establishing and maintaining such homes in adequate
+number and of scientific and humane provisions is counted over and
+taxpayers made alarmed at the sum total. What is lacking usually in
+the count is the sum total of the enormous sums society now pays out
+for the unregulated and socially dangerous neglect of this class of
+unfortunates. Doctor Goddard's "Kallikak Family" and many other
+accurate showings of what it costs to leave uncared for one
+feeble-minded girl in unbefriended freedom should convince any sane
+person that the most wasteful extravagance any community can commit is
+such neglect of what Mr. Johnson has called "the divine fragments" of
+humanity.
+
+To make provision for the insane is seen to be a social necessity and
+the family more than any other social institution profits by the
+hospitals and asylums for the treatment and care of such. The relief
+of having an insane relative taken away from the home, after months
+and perhaps years of anxiety, fear, and suffering on the part of every
+other member, cannot be too strongly pictured. The effort now making
+to secure early treatment for the first symptoms of mental derangement
+and to give even "border-line" cases and exceptionally "cranky" and
+nervous people special treatment in mental hygiene marks the
+beginning, we must believe, of effective preventive work in this line.
+The feeble-minded, however, have a claim of perpetual childhood upon
+the parental sympathy, and that, together with common ignorance
+concerning their condition or numbers and the social dangers inherent
+in their neglect, give us the alarming discrepancy in numbers between
+the feeble-minded in suitable segregated care and those left to find
+their way or lose it in the usual walks of life. Since Doctor Seguin
+wrote his _Treatise on Idiocy_ in 1846 the verdict of science and of
+philanthropy has been accumulating as to the need for the full and
+complete protection of all who cannot manage successfully, even in the
+simplest details, their own lives and the lives of those with whom
+they are most closely related. Yet to-day, it is claimed by many
+observers, we have only about fifteen per cent, of those requiring
+special protection on this account adequately cared for by society.
+
+The family must be relieved of personal care of its insane, its
+lower-grade feeble-minded, and its moral idiots. It must be so
+relieved for the sake of the normal members of the family. It must be
+so relieved still more for the sake of lessening vice, crime,
+degenerative tendencies, and actual waste of public money in public
+court procedure and in other public institutional provisions.
+
+To induce the state of mind in parents which will help on the better
+and more adequate social care of these afflicted members of society,
+the sense of shame and the keen suffering from social stigma in such
+cases must be mitigated. It must be seen that although it may be the
+fault of one or both parents that such a child has come into the
+world, it is an added and deeper fault, even in many cases a social
+crime, to leave that child in ordinary relations of life. It is true
+that what Dr. Caleb W. Saleeby well calls "racial poisons" are often
+the cause of the damaged germ plasm that starts the handicapped human
+being along his devious course. Alcohol, syphilis, and other elements
+of degenerative action may have doomed the child and in such cases the
+father's or mother's sin or carelessness is the cause of the child's
+tragical condition. In such cases the dullest conscience must feel
+remorse. It is, however, not always the fault of the immediate
+parents. It may be a far more remote inheritance that has started the
+degenerative psychosis that results in either insanity,
+feeble-mindedness, dipsomania, or "general debility of character."
+
+=Heredity.=--Prof. E.G. Conklin says, "Heredity may be defined as the
+appearance in offspring of characters whose differential causes are
+found in germ cells." Doctor Galton says "the two parents between
+them contribute on an average one-half of each inherited faculty, or
+each parent one-quarter. The grandparents contribute between them
+one-quarter, or each one-sixteenth." The responsibility for a poor
+specimen of humanity, therefore, is not solely the parents'; they may
+share it with a considerable group. Many a defective obviously owes
+his condition to some remote ancestor, "to the third or fourth
+generation," as the old Scripture said; and many a charming trait, for
+which the immediate parents would like to take credit, is really a
+gift from some great-grandparent.
+
+This fact should make it easier for parents of defectives to bear the
+burden and easier to make it seem less a shameful confession of
+individual responsibility and more a sad confirmation of the fact that
+we are all members one of another and no one lives to himself alone.
+
+=Difficulties in Care of Morons.=--The case is clear as to treatment,
+so all enlightened social workers and social students agree, in
+respect to the obviously defective or insane. The difficulty is to
+care protectively and yet justly for the higher-grade defective or
+what is now called the "moron." Doubtless we should all see it best to
+begin at the lower levels of defectiveness and abnormality for
+pressure upon society to socially protect in segregated institutions
+all the afflicted. The point at which compulsory methods should be
+used might be placed at a widely differing level by many most
+acquainted with the need for some form of social control of and for
+this class. Parents in particular would resent any snap judgment and
+should do so as to the mental condition of children not obviously
+imbecile. It is certain that the high-grade moron makes much trouble
+and gives social tragedies without number, but it is still more
+certain that no social machinery has yet been devised ingenious enough
+to really classify such persons and place them where they can do no
+more harm. As Dr. Lightner Witmer well says in his warning against
+careless diagnosis, "In training clinical examiners I advise them not
+to diagnose a child as feeble-minded unless they feel sure they have
+sufficient facts to convince a jury of twelve intelligent men that the
+diagnosis of feeble-mindedness is the only logical conclusion to be
+drawn from the facts." It is undoubtedly true that many high-grade
+imbeciles or morons would be adjudged not feeble-minded by most
+juries. It is also undoubtedly true that many youths who are
+"peculiar" or "backward" or unusually susceptible to influence from
+others or especially lacking in power of self-control are in social
+danger and need some form of social protection more effectual than is
+required in the case of the normal child and youth. Higher grades of
+abnormality and those less understood must be approached, however,
+both in matters of examination and of care, from different angles of
+observation from those used in discovery and treatment of the
+obviously imbecile.
+
+In this connection mention must be made of the efforts to give
+supervision of special sort and under official direction to those able
+to earn their own living or partially so, at least, and who yet need
+special protection and care. _The Proceedings and Addresses of the
+Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Sessions of the American Association for
+the Study of the Feeble-minded_ contain specially valuable articles on
+"Extra-institutional Care" and on education of the higher-grade
+defectives. Two articles published in _Mental Hygiene_ of April, 1921,
+on the vocational elements in such extra-institutional care are most
+enlightening as to possibilities in this difficult field. The first of
+these, entitled "Experiments to Determine Possibilities of Subnormal
+Girls in Factory Work," by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, shows that certain
+kinds of routine work may be followed successfully by girls who are
+mentally under the normal. The second article, "Vocational Probation
+for Subnormal Youth," by Doctor Arnold Gesell, of Yale University,
+shows how the courts may use probation power and agency in the
+interest of self-support and a helpful industrial relationship. The
+new Children's Code recently recommended to the Connecticut
+Legislature by a special Commission advocates giving Juvenile Courts
+power at discretion to establish the status of "Vocational Probation,"
+under the supervision of officers of the Court, in place of commitment
+to an institution, provided helpfully supervised employment may be
+found for the boy or girl in which they may become self-supporting.
+
+=The Colony Plan.=--The Report of Dr. Anne T. Bingham, Psychiatrist of
+the New York Probation and Protective Association, based upon 839
+mental examinations of girls and women coming under notice because of
+breaking the laws or because manifestly in moral danger, is an
+important study. Doctor Bingham highly recommends the "Colony Plan"
+for the care of the higher-grade feeble-minded. In this plan small
+groups of those who show mental deficiency or any special need of
+social care are established under necessary supervision and control in
+colonies, near their own homes if possible, and given suitable work in
+the profit of which their families may share if destitute. The natural
+homes of such girls and women are often lacking both in helpful
+discipline or moral protection and to leave them in full charge of the
+parents is often the worst possible neglect. This Colony Plan is
+described in an article by Charles Bernstein, entitled "Colony and
+Extra-institutional Care for the Feeble-minded," published in _Mental
+Hygiene_ for January, 1920. The needed supervision, protection and
+care for higher-grade morons is difficult to secure unless some form
+of official control is initiated. That official control is often only
+available for those who have already suffered some serious consequence
+of their abnormal condition. What we need to work out is a better and
+more effective means for helping the family to do what is needed for
+the mentally handicapped child.
+
+=Mental Hygiene.=--No adequate treatment of this vital movement can be
+given here, but the family need for social provisions along this line
+must be urged. Few families can afford the money, few parents have the
+wisdom, to secure the right sort of special treatment for minds not so
+diseased as to be legal subjects for insane hospital care or for
+institutions for the feeble-minded, which yet make the family life
+miserable and the family success difficult. There is growing a
+conception of the need, especially in our complex modern life, that so
+often unsettles or overburdens the mind, to have all manner of free
+clinics and economical methods of care for those who can not well care
+fully for themselves. This movement will go on until the mental
+invalid of every sort will find as ready social sympathy and as
+adequate social aid as does the physically weak, ill, or crippled.
+Such a serviceable little pamphlet as that of Mr. Brady's on "Mental
+Hygiene in Childhood" gives useful suggestions. Meanwhile, the family
+interest is keen and must become more active and commanding in ridding
+society of the inducing causes of diseased germ plasm. The whole
+"social-hygiene" movement, so-called, is in the direction of cutting
+off the supply of the defective and making every family less likely to
+have children who never grow up.
+
+The call during the War, and a call heeded by many who had been
+ignorant of all the facts taught them in training camps, was "Keep Fit
+to Fight," The call of peace, and may it be heeded as the facts of
+inheritance are better known by all, is, Keep Fit for Parenthood. The
+sins of youth, so often sins of ignorance, carelessness, and unbridled
+passion, which doom childhood to blindness, to congenital deficiency
+of all kinds, to permanent twist of mental powers, or to lack of
+ability to meet life's demands--these sins of youth will be less in
+evidence when education is fitted to life's full responsibilities of
+choice instead of being side-tracked in narrow lines of scholarly
+acquirement alone.
+
+Meanwhile, for the parents whose children number one or more of the
+handicapped there is the comfort of securing for such all that science
+and special arts of teaching and institutional provision can give to
+make the life of those who can never grow up at least comfortable and
+free from exploitation by evil influences. That some of the noblest
+and best of men and women are giving their lives in wise and loving
+ministration to these least among the children of men is proof of the
+overmastering power of human sympathy. Meanwhile, again, we are
+finding out that the more discriminating observation of children and
+their more truly scientific rating will take many children from the
+lists of the "backward" and the "difficult" and even the supposed
+feeble-minded into the ranks of the educable toward full normality.
+
+=Special Rooms in Public Schools.=--The special rooms in the schools
+and the special schools in the school system and the school nurses and
+school doctors and the visiting teacher, with her power of making
+connection between the home and the school and playground, all show
+that we are coming to a point where every child will have a better
+chance for having his mental and moral as well as his physical
+diagnosis correctly made. And such a diagnosis we have already learned
+often shows that no congenital doom marks the child labelled
+"different," but rather some curable bad condition in his life that
+needs only wisdom and economic power to correct. The "Observation
+Cards" to which allusion has been made as helping toward discovery of
+the specially gifted may also, if used with discriminating judgment,
+show that many whom we thought lagged behind their mates from native
+disability can be made to keep up with the procession if they are
+rightly fed, have enough sleep, get a chance at fresh air, and are not
+made the victims of industrial exploitation.
+
+The new gospel of environmental change in the interest of better
+physical, mental, and vocational opportunities for all, includes not
+only the better care of all incompetent for self-control,
+self-support, and self-direction, it also is coming to include a far
+more searching investigation of the causes of degeneracy and
+backwardness, and many children are thereby lifted from the hopeless
+classes to the group of those requiring only special care and teaching
+to be able to be classed as normal.
+
+=Training the Nervous System.=--Professor James said, "The great thing
+in education is to make the nervous system the ally, not the enemy.
+For this we must make automatic and habitual as many useful actions as
+we can and carefully guard against growing into ways which are likely
+to be disadvantageous." His advice for self-discipline is to "seize
+every first possible opportunity to act on any resolution made, and on
+every emotional prompting in the direction of habits one aspires to
+gain." Professor Thompson, in his book on _Brain and Personality_,
+says, "We can make our own brains, so far as special functions or
+aptitudes are concerned, if only we have wills strong enough to take
+the trouble." These and many other admonitions in the direction of
+more effective mental training show the trend of modern education. How
+many a will has been weakened by bad methods of family influence! How
+many nervous systems made the enemy of education rather than its ally
+by bad family conditions!
+
+The Parent-Teacher Associations are doing valiant service in bringing
+to the home the best thought of the school and in bringing to the
+school the best feeling of the home. It is not too much to hope that
+when the jointure between real education and pure affection is made
+more complete we may lessen the toll of incompetent personality and
+raise the social standard of human powers. In this connection one
+vital thought must not be over-looked, namely, the social advance we
+may reasonably expect from the new power of women to select the
+fathers of their children. Doctor Sumner said, "During the ages of the
+man-family men could not make up their minds what they wanted woman to
+become." If that be so, it is still more true that now, as the age of
+the man-and-woman-family begins, women are undertaking to make up
+their own minds as to what they want to be and to do and are attaining
+a freedom of sex-selection such as they have not had before in the
+civilization we call our own. Doctor Todd says truly, in his _Theories
+of Social Progress_, that "from now onward the centre of selection is
+shifted from without to within, from passive adaptation to active
+self-determination;" and he adds, "To rationalize sexual selection and
+make it serve progress will be to revise the 'mores' and inject into
+them new principles." While women had no real power to select their
+mates in marriage; while their economic helplessness led them almost
+universally to marry as a means of support even when no real affection
+softened and sanctified the process; while they had no power over laws
+or customs, or knowledge of actual life outside the household, and
+hence had to take wholly on trust the character and protestations of
+the man they married; while women were in this subject condition they
+could not contribute to family life either a high standard of choice
+of parental quality or a forceful demand for previous purity and right
+living in the husband. Hence, women have up to a recent time been more
+sinned against than sinning if they passed on defective germ plasm or
+doomed their children to suffering lives.
+
+=Responsibility of Women in Marriage.=--Now the case is different. No
+woman of usual physical strength or natural ability or average
+vocational efficiency is necessarily tempted to make "marriage a
+trade." If she has any strength of character she can make her own way
+and find many good things in life for herself. She can, therefore,
+exact such a standard of character and attainment from any man who
+seeks her in marriage as he may well demand of her and can pass by as
+incompetent to family demand all who do not measure up to the
+requirements.
+
+This may mean (in some circles of society, it is already coming to
+mean) what Wallace indicated when he said, "Woman is to be the great
+selective agent of the future." This cannot be, however, unless women
+hold themselves to the best standards that men in the past have
+exacted of their sex and so holding themselves (where the race needs
+that they should stand) hold men also where the race needs that men
+should find their place. The defrauded children of every generation
+call with pathos of unique appeal upon men and women that the "racial
+poisons" shall be abolished, and evil inheritance be checked, and that
+every potential father and every potential mother shall hold sacred
+the torch of life to pass it on the brighter for their handling.
+
+Meanwhile, such agencies as "The Committee on Provision for the
+Feeble-minded," with its central office in Philadelphia, and the
+"National Committee for Mental Hygiene," with its headquarters in New
+York City and its important quarterly publication, together with local
+associations of similar type, are at work, as is well stated by one
+national body, "to disseminate knowledge concerning the extent and
+menace of feeble-mindedness and to suggest and initiate methods for
+its control and ultimate eradication from the American people." On
+such social effort afflicted parents of a defective child may depend
+for aid and direction.
+
+In Whittier's tribute to Samuel Gridley Howe, the pioneer in this
+social care of defectives, one false hope is pictured, namely, that
+"the idiot clay" could "be given a mind." That hope could not be
+realized. The gates of destiny close at birth for many of the children
+of men. What we can do and are now beginning to try earnestly to
+accomplish is to prevent so many idiots from burdening the currents of
+life, to wipe out the social disgrace of leaving neglected wanderers
+on the highways of human effort who are unable to find the path of
+safety and of success, and to make a protected place of guidance and
+possible training for all the weak-minded and abnormal. We can, now we
+increasingly understand, do more than this; we can help with ever more
+ingenious and devoted care to give the merely slow and backward a
+better chance at life's opportunities and help to make these least
+able to adjust themselves easily to the common ways of the world more
+amenable to life's discipline and happier in life's restrictions.
+
+=The Call for Preventive Work.=--The new call for social service for
+the children that never grow up is along new lines of preventive work
+as truly as in demand for more tender care of all who cannot be helped
+radically toward self-control and self-direction. The family, once
+overwhelmed by tragedies of abnormality, can now be aided as never
+before in lessening or in bearing the burden of such troubles. For the
+less seriously handicapped yet specially in need of social
+consideration--the blind, the deaf, the crippled, those of cardiac
+weakness, and the children born tired who might become rested and
+strong--the family has helps in education, medical treatment and work
+opportunities suited to the particular need, such as no previous era
+could furnish. Agencies for finding employment for the handicapped now
+show ingenuity of the highest sort in fitting the work to special
+needs, and the way in which the blind are taught to rise above their
+misfortune in happy use of the faculties and powers they actually
+possess is marvelous. The deaf have as yet been able to triumph over
+their misfortune in less degree, but the art of reading from the lips
+and other educational devices used in their behalf make their
+condition so superior to that of the deaf-mutes of old that it is
+cause for gratitude to every parent of a deaf child. The crippled
+children now are seen not to be different from other children in their
+educational rights and as needing only more consideration of physical
+requirements to be fitted for useful work.
+
+The significance of the removal of educational provisions for the
+blind, the deaf, the crippled, and the invalid children from the
+provisions of Boards of Charity and their assignment to departments of
+state and local Boards of Education, is great. It shows that we are
+becoming as capable in the community-at-large of understanding the
+radical difference between those who are defective in mind and those
+who are merely handicapped by loss of some special sense or some
+physical power as loving and wise parents have been when either
+defective or handicapped children have called upon them for special
+care. The children that find it harder than most of their age and
+station to grow up to full enjoyment and use of life's opportunities,
+because of some weight of affliction, are, we now know, entitled to
+all the training that the normal child receives and whatever else of
+special education their condition requires. The children that can
+never grow up to mental maturity, even with all that educational
+ingenuity can offer, are the permanent members of Society's Infant
+Class.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP
+
+  1. What is the modern social program in respect to the care and
+     training of the feeble-minded?
+
+  2. What should fathers and mothers of the feeble-minded do to help
+     realize that program?
+
+  3. How far should social control compel the segregation or
+     sterilization, or both, of those obviously unfit to become
+     parents?
+
+  4. What can be done by mental hygiene to lessen the numbers of the
+     insane, the "queer," the weak-willed, and the slow-minded?
+
+  5. The consensus of experts seems to indicate that the first need
+     is to segregate in suitable institutions under permanent
+     custodial care all the markedly inferior who cannot be
+     self-supporting and who lack power of self-protection against
+     the grossest forms of exploitation; the second need is to
+     introduce new methods of supervisory control and humane
+     protection and training in the care of those who are not normal
+     but who, under favorable conditions of vocational guidance and
+     direction and with a new home environment suited to their
+     peculiar needs, may become wage-earners and fairly useful
+     members of society. In the town for which you seek better
+     conditions, which of these efforts is most needed at the
+     present time? Is it to meet the needs for institutional care or
+     for supervision adequate and well applied for those left either
+     in their own homes or placed in colony-care?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] See "Mental Diseases in Twelve States," as reported in 1919 by
+Horatio M. Pollock, Ph.D., Statistician New York State Hospital
+Commission, and Edith M. Forbush, Statistician of National Committee
+for Mental Hygiene, published in _Mental Hygiene_ of April, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS
+
+    "Because of fathers' sins the cost
+    Is counted in the children's blood;
+    They starve where once they might have stood
+    Content and strong as bird or bee."--H.H.
+
+  "The primary function of social science is to interpret men's
+  experience in passing from stage to stage in the evolution of
+  human values."--ALBION W. SMALL.
+
+  "Every wrong-doer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we
+  measure it by his past alone, or is it due any one to regard him
+  as a man having a future as well? As having possibilities for good
+  as well as achievements in bad?"--JOHN DEWEY.
+
+  "Judge not, that ye be not judged. He that is without sin among
+  you, let him first cast a stone."--JESUS.
+
+  "The Sage is ever the good Saviour of men; he rejects none. For
+  the good men are the instructors of other good men and the bad men
+  are the material for the good men to work upon. The good I would
+  meet with goodness, the not-good I would meet with goodness
+  also."--LAO-TSZE.
+
+  "The good man is apt to go right about pleasure and the bad man is
+  apt to go wrong. It is only to the good man that the good presents
+  itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about
+  the principle of action."--ARISTOTLE.
+
+  "I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich,
+  absorbing all the energies of life, predisposes to mental
+  degeneracy, to moral defects, or to outbreaks of insanity in the
+  offspring."--MAUDESLEY.
+
+  "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or out of it which
+  can be called good without qualification except a Good
+  Will."--KANT.
+
+  "The object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and
+  methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an
+  analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular
+  situation in which he finds himself,"--JOHN DEWEY.
+
+  "I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which
+  does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to
+  precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new
+  and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself
+  forth in fresh and higher exertions."--CHANNING.
+
+
+=Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son?=--A young woman deeply
+interested in social service was asked by the warden of a prison to
+address its fifteen hundred inmates on a Sunday morning when they
+should be all assembled in Chapel. Hesitating at undertaking such a
+difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should
+talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on
+the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have
+read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the
+young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what
+is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work
+out your own salvation.'" It is really a bit difficult to find just
+the right audience for a preachment on that appealing parable. The
+harsh-natured fathers who most need its lesson are not likely to be in
+church when it is read and the tender fathers often need to be
+stiffened up to work with all the rest of society to make the prodigal
+behave better; and the elder brothers, the hard-working "sons of
+Martha," who have to save in order to pay the taxes for the
+institutions and agencies that take care of the prodigal, should not
+have the fact that their sacrifice and service are usually taken as a
+matter of course unduly emphasized when they meet their fellows.
+
+The fact is that the prodigal, like the genius, is often one who takes
+life's practical affairs so lightly that until he is really hungry in
+the far land whither he has taken himself for pleasures denied at
+home, he seldom considers how his behavior affects the rest of the
+family. Moreover, the prodigal is often such a charming and engaging
+creature that all is forgiven him many times more than is good for his
+soul, and who, therefore, has many fatted calves set before him in
+renewed festivals over his repeated home-comings.
+
+Yet, when all is said in the way of caution against overindulgence of
+the wayward, the one thing about parental love that marks it as the
+supreme type of affection is the fact that it holds all its own in
+permanent bond whatever the character of the child or his return for
+devotion.
+
+=Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and Defective in Criminal
+Class.=--The parent who has a prodigal son or daughter to-day has the
+benefit of much social wisdom and much educational treatment of the
+wayward, unknown in the past. In the first place, we are learning to
+sort out in the criminal and vicious classes those who are mentally
+responsible and those who may be supposed to be the helpless victims
+of their instincts and tendencies.[15] If it is true, as one has said,
+that "the test of sound moral character is that it possesses coherence
+under liberty and has learned those various arts of adaptation to
+ever-varying circumstance which make it a working quality, constant,
+rational, and automatic," we must perceive the intimate connection
+between mental power and moral competency. In point of fact, we now
+know that the overwhelming majority of criminals and constantly
+vicious persons, in ordinary times when no social hysteria of recent
+war gives a "crime wave," come from the mentally feeble or perverted
+types.
+
+The draft examinations in the Great War gave a shock to all students
+of social conditions in their revelation of the widespread
+deficiencies, physical and mental, of young men of our country. Mr.
+Henry Wysham Lanier, writing on this topic, shows "that out of a total
+of fifty-four millions of men twenty-six millions were either in the
+Army or Navy or registered and ready for call," and that of these
+"three millions out of thirteen were unfit to serve their country as
+soldiers." Nearly three-quarters of a million had some mechanical
+incapacity, defects in bones, joints, etc. About one-half million had
+imperfections of sense organs and nearly as many serious troubles of
+the circulatory system. A third of a million showed nervous and
+mental incapacity for the soldier's work. About 300,000 had
+tuberculosis or severe venereal disease. About the same number had
+skin or teeth ailments. Altogether, the first severe examinations
+weeded out as unfit for the service nearly one-third of those who were
+drafted.
+
+In addition to the revelation of physical and mental defects in the
+average young manhood of our country, it was found by further
+examination that five and a half millions of our young men were
+illiterate. These facts show that in the mass of people from which
+criminals and vicious people are recruited, large numbers have defects
+of body, mind, or education, which handicap them in pursuit of an
+honest living or in the search for helpful pleasures. The step to be
+taken in order to help the family to deal justly and humanely, but
+with due response to social duty, with the prodigal sons and
+daughters, may be briefly outlined as follows:
+
+First and foremost, the weeding out from every field of competitive
+life those manifestly incapable of holding their own in
+self-protection and self-support. The unemployable among the
+unemployed, the hopelessly criminal and vicious who cannot be rescued
+from their condition, the more permanently backward among the school
+pupils, the incompetent among parents, and the dead weight of the
+"born paupers," all these must somehow be socially carried with least
+expenditure of social force and at least cost to family stability and
+family well-being. We have not yet learned to do this, but in every
+field of social effort the primary need is to see what is the right
+thing to do. When the ideal is accepted we are already a long way
+toward learning the lesson of the method to be pursued to carry out
+the ideal.
+
+=Moral Invalids.=--In the second place, when we have really
+ascertained who among criminals and the habitually vicious, and who
+among the recipients of "material relief" who are constantly returning
+for more aid, and who among the unmarried mothers, and who among the
+dependent children are really feeble-minded or morally imbecile, we
+must segregate these as fast as we are able to supply the right
+artificial environment for their weakness and treat them as incurable
+moral and mental invalids. We must cease to deal with such as with
+responsible human beings, who might do better if only they would. The
+"indeterminate sentence" is a step toward such treatment, but it is
+often rendered wholly futile by being mixed with "reward of shortening
+term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls
+gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside
+those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to
+have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable
+to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great
+misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used without
+the most scientific knowledge of the mental power of the man or woman
+concerned, and without utmost care in selection of work-place and
+living conditions of the paroled prisoner. The essential thing in all
+social effort to do justice to the wayward is to find out about them
+and manage for them the essentials of environmental influence. If, as
+many think, after careful study of large groups of wayward and
+criminal, more than half, almost two-thirds of those who come before
+the law for punishment are of less mental capacity than normal
+children of twelve years of age, then we must take social care of them
+as we would undertake to do if they were really under twelve. And the
+parents of prodigal sons and daughters must help with all the might of
+their parental affection in inspiring and supporting a public opinion
+to that end.
+
+=Rehabilitation of the Competent.=--In the third place, for the
+one-half to one-third of criminal and habitually vicious left after
+the mentally incompetent are given proper care, we must use all the
+rehabilitation methods that society has devised and be more ingenious
+than we have yet been in adding to them. When such methods as Thomas
+Mott Osborne used fail, they generally fail because they are applied
+to those whom we should put under perpetual care, those indicated
+above as incompetent to life's demands. To try and make over a nature
+too weak in fibre to have anything of will or determination to "stitch
+to" is to have a response only when under constant supervision, and
+inevitable backslidings follow as soon as self-control is called for.
+
+It is true, however, that many who have gone far wrong make good and
+reach to a high attainment of character. They are the "occasional
+criminals," the "fallen" who met with extraordinary temptation, the
+too hardly used by fate, the too early exposed to evil influences, the
+wild natures too strictly curbed by mistaken methods of control, the
+orphans without parental love and guidance, the victims of broken
+family life, the "under-dogs" that could not make a way out to
+successful vocation or to happy human companionship. These occasional
+criminals among men, and the women or girls leading to sex
+temptations, may be often saved if so as by fire, and live to help all
+others to a stronger and better life than they have known. As this
+book is written the news comes of the death of such a woman in
+Chinatown of New York slums, a girl who had descended to the depths of
+vice but who came up at the call of the Salvation Army and spent the
+life left to her in helping others, such as she had once been, to hear
+and obey that call. Some men show such power of moral recovery as to
+put to shame those never tempted to a fall. These prove that mental
+power and the raw material of character, even after many untoward
+experiences, may take a fresh start and enable men and women to "rise
+on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things."
+
+=The Right Use of Leisure Time.=--In the fourth place, the agencies of
+social protection of child-life must cooeperate with all parents,
+whether those parents are wise or foolish, strong or weak, in
+preventing occasional criminality and preventable vice.
+
+The helpful use of leisure time is a vital factor in the prevention of
+vice and crime. The pioneer study of "Public Recreation Facilities" in
+the _Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science_ of March,
+1910, indicates lines of social service in this particular which have
+been followed to great social advantage.
+
+=The Moving Picture.=--The influence of the "movies" is the strongest,
+the most all-compelling influence to which children have ever been
+subjected. There has never been an agency that so appealed to all the
+senses, especially to the eye with its supreme registry of
+impressions, and we have so far let it play upon child-life with
+little direction from the educative process. What it is right and
+helpful to read is not always right and helpful to put upon the stage,
+with the more vivid and popular appeal to eye and ear and with the
+lessened opportunity of the drama to explain and soften and balance
+the presentation of tragedy and evil. What the drama may safely give
+to the smaller and generally older audiences which it draws may not be
+suitable from any point of view, either of art or of moral influence,
+for the coarser and more pronounced representation of the moving
+picture. There is a place for film presentation that is unique and it
+may easily become the greatest educational agency in all recreational
+life. That place, however, seems self-limited to pictures of life that
+can be imitated without social harm, insofar as very young children
+are concerned.
+
+=Needed Supervision.=--Although much will inevitably be given in the
+moving pictures which contains incidents that any wise person would
+not take part in for themselves, the main ideal and the outcome of the
+situations must be such as to leave a tendency toward good and not
+toward evil, if children and youth are safely to receive its strong
+impressions. This is understood by those who are "trying to elevate
+the moving picture," but too often the reformers and the educators are
+so far removed from the main sources of control of any business or art
+centre that they only brush the outskirts of the agencies that purvey
+to public amusement and fail to reach any citadel of real control.
+There is a general uneasiness, however, among many people of all
+classes, even those usually very easy-going about any social
+influence, as they read the tales of children testifying in the courts
+as to their "hold-ups" and their burglaries that they did them "like
+the movies" they had seen. It is surely true that the next thing we
+must do is to tame these "movies" and make them work in social harness
+for the better, and not the worse, in the lives of children and youth.
+What line of cleavage may be drawn between what the elders may see and
+what should not be allowed so vividly to impress the younger minds, no
+one can predict. The recent public announcement of a determination to
+cleanse and uplift the moving picture business from within its own
+management is a most hopeful sign. But surely no parent can throw all
+the blame of any evil influence of a film exhibit upon the managers of
+a theatre! Where are the parents, and what are they about, that they
+do not know what pictures their children see and how often they go to
+any place of amusement?
+
+=The Automobile and Its Influence.=--The same thing is true of the
+automobile, that now so often takes the youth of the well-to-do
+classes too swiftly away from necessary social safeguarding. The
+inventors and makers of these machines are not responsible that
+criminals use them for unprecedented escape from arrest, and boys and
+girls go to destruction of honor and purity in a whirl of wind and
+dust. As in all the new inventions and discoveries, we have gained
+more control over material things than we have yet learned how to use
+for either our physical or moral good. We shall sober down, no doubt,
+and learn to wholly profit by the new wonders of motion and of
+recreation.
+
+=Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training of Children.=--Meanwhile,
+the parents who are trying to make the right atmosphere and secure the
+right influences for their children have a more difficult task than in
+any previous time; for the young can so much more easily take on all
+the new appliances as a part of their daily life and can so swiftly
+change from old ways to the unaccustomed. Some of the most selfish and
+cruel of the prodigal sons and daughters of our time find it easy to
+escape from any parental appeal in the air or by the whirling wheels
+of the machine or in any of the various ways by which space and time
+are now annihilated. And "out of sight, out of mind" is true of their
+psychology. All of which makes it clear that to-day, as in no previous
+time, we must all stand or fall together. The old home privacy is for
+the most part gone, the old home isolation wholly departed. All
+recreation is more and more in the open and appeals at one and the
+same time to all youth. The standards have to be raised for all or
+they cannot be held firm for the favored few. Democracy, which aims to
+make all better, may work to make all cheaper in taste, more vulgar in
+language, less capable of fine expression of noble ideals, unless a
+social conscience and a social intelligence take command of the common
+life.
+
+It is, therefore, to-day, not enough to call upon parents to try and
+keep their own sons and daughters from the prodigal life, it is a
+necessity, stronger than ever before, to make the influences which all
+must share what all careful and wise parents wish for their own
+children.
+
+This is a mighty task, one that in the United States of America, with
+its cosmopolitan population, and its multitude of people with a
+smattering only of education or culture but with economic ability to
+gratify their undeveloped tastes, is more vast and more pressing than
+any nation has yet tried to accomplish. While we are working at it we
+may well comfort ourselves by remembering that each generation has to
+meet new problems, and that somehow, even when the young start wrong
+or meet with overwhelming temptations or fail to get at the right time
+the impulse toward the best which they need, life has them in hand and
+teaches by experience much which helps them onward. The tendency of
+life is toward strength and health and goodness and idealistic aims
+and choice of the best each person knows. It is true, and the best
+thing in human experience, that what parents cannot do for those they
+love, life itself does for them, perhaps with needless suffering that
+the wise and loving parent would have saved them had they but heeded,
+but with a thoroughness which experience alone can give.
+
+=Parental Love for the Black Sheep.=--The attitude of parents toward
+the black sheep who does not change his ways of evil and does not
+become a comfort but remains always a burden and sorrow, is one of the
+saddest and one of the noblest of human exhibits in sympathy and
+affection. A woman of the finest nature who as a girl was captured in
+imagination by a man of brilliant quality but of peculiar cruelty and
+wickedness of nature, and guilty, after their marriage, of many
+crimes, had two sons. One was like herself and became a man honored by
+all, and of the greatest help to his mother. The other seemed the
+image of his father in all ways, personal beauty, brilliant talent,
+and a naturally depraved character. He landed in prison, sentenced for
+many years for forgery and long-sustained robbery of a bank. His
+mother said with truth that she never had had a moment's relief from
+the most wearing anxiety until he was safely behind prison bars, where
+he could no longer torture his young wife or hurt anyone else by his
+wrong actions. Yet that mother, when he was breaking her heart by his
+actions and most willing to do it, never failed in love, in patience,
+in deep understanding of his moral twist and incapacity.
+
+A girl born of ordinarily intelligent and moral parents became a
+prodigy of sex perversion and the accomplice of thieves and murderers.
+She gave untold misery to all her family, but the father never gave up
+his search for her when she left the home and never failed to give her
+succor and the most tender care when she came back worn and ill, and
+at last left all other interests in life to snatch her away from bad
+companions and try to establish her in a new place and a better
+surrounding.
+
+The story of the prodigal son was taken from life itself; it is the
+moving story of the one greatest affection of the family bond, that
+for the bone of bone and the flesh of flesh, the child that needs most
+the tenderness of the parent, the child that has worn out all other
+patience and lost all other consideration and has only the claim of
+its deep need to insure its parent's service.
+
+=Children's Courts.=--Society has lately become wise and humane enough
+to establish Children's Courts for Juvenile Delinquents. These,
+beginning merely in "Separate Hearings" in Boston Courts, and assuming
+definite and autonomous form in Chicago, have become more widespread
+and more inclusive in character. Now we are securing, as by a recent
+State Law in New York, the County Courts for children, in which the
+limitations of local sentiment and neighborhood reluctance to testify
+of family conditions are surmounted and yet the near-at-hand interest
+in the children is preserved.
+
+All modern philanthropy tends toward dealing with wayward boys and
+girls as those who need and should have not punishment but education,
+necessary but kindly restraint, protection from bad surroundings and
+training toward self-support. To this we are adding Domestic Relations
+Courts dealing with juvenile delinquents not, as some one has said,
+"so as to punish parents for the wrong-doing of their children," but
+rather as indicating the recognition of the fact that one member of
+the family cannot be "saved" without an effort to save all the other
+members, and that in the family relationship there are permanent bonds
+that courts should recognize and seek to enforce and make more helpful
+to every individual concerned.
+
+=Domestic Relations Courts.=--When the history of cases coming before
+either Children's Courts or Domestic Relations Courts is studied,
+certain facts of social condition stand out prominently as causes for
+juvenile delinquency. First of all, the broken family, one in which
+there has been separation of father and mother, is a cause of
+child-neglect and consequent wrong-doing. The death of either parent,
+also, is often the cause of such unhappiness or privation in the home
+as to induce disobedience to law and bring the child before a court.
+The lack of employment by the father or his too low wages, which
+reduces the family income dangerously and makes the mother attempt to
+be both breadwinner and care-taker of the home, and hence lessens
+family comfort and sends the children on the streets for amusement, is
+also a cause often appearing as a reason for delinquency. The evils of
+housing congestion, too many families living in one building or in one
+neighborhood without chance for privacy, choice of companionship or
+household arrangements conservative of domestic virtue or happiness,
+these evils constitute a heavy indictment of society in the returns of
+Children's Courts. The complex problems which the immigrant faces,
+with his children early learning the language of the country to which
+he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for
+much juvenile delinquency. Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling
+description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the
+"tough" from the children of parents who, well-meaning and in their
+own ancestral land capable of parental control, here lose command of
+the family life because the children have to become the interpreters
+and representatives of the family in the new country to a degree that
+reverses the natural order of dependence and direction in the family
+life, and gives the children undue power of leadership in family
+affairs. As Professor Cooley wisely says, "It is freedom to be
+disciplined in as rational a manner as you are tit for." We might give
+the converse of this truth in the statement that it is not freedom but
+dangerous tendency toward anarchy and disaster to be called upon for
+rational decisions in advance of our intelligence and will-power, and
+a tragedy to lose the habit-drill of parental control in the period of
+life when that is a necessary foundation for wisdom in independent
+choice. The child of the immigrant often lands in the Children's Court
+not because he is bad or stupid or even mischievous by nature, but
+because he is too early forced by circumstances into a position of
+command and of unrestricted choice in action, due to the ease with
+which the young can learn new ways and the difficulty of the old in
+mastering strange language and manners.
+
+=Dangerous Rebound from Ancient Family Discipline.=--Again, the
+Children's and the Domestic Relations Courts bear testimony to the
+fact that to-day we are in a rebound from inherited forms of
+discipline of children and youth which have given to all, immigrant
+and native-born alike, a feeling that society exists for their benefit
+and that they owe nothing to society in return. The very
+standardization of child-care by public demand, in matters of health
+and education, of free books and free recreation and free music and
+free parks and playgrounds and even free lunches in schools, and free
+baths and medical and nursing care--all that is increasingly called
+for and provided out of the public purse for the nurture and
+development of child-life--tend toward giving children and youth the
+idea that the world belongs to them.
+
+The old crushing and often cruel pressure of older life upon the young
+is happily gone. The new ideals of education, within the school and
+the home, which emphasize the right of each human being to its own
+development into a unique, a free and a happy personality, are ideals
+that must grow in realization more and more if we are to have fit
+people for making democracy work toward the rule of the best. It is,
+however, profoundly true that we have gone farther in demand for and
+effort toward individual freedom than we have in any translation of
+the old social pressure upon the individual conscience and life to
+assume social obligations and bear them worthily and usefully. There
+is a dry rot at the core of any class or any nation which turns its
+inmost psychology toward what it can get from life without regard to
+what it should give back to life. Too many children and youth in
+conditions in which, happily, the old despotism of age is outgrown,
+have unhappily missed the old sense of obligation and old call to
+service which the earlier forms of family and school discipline
+implanted in all responsive natures.
+
+=Do Modern Youth Need New Community Disciplines?=--There is abundant
+evidence that William James was profoundly right when he suggested a
+need in youth for some required devotion to "the collectivity that
+owns us," some "moral equivalent for war" and the military drill of
+older forms of civic order. When the Athenian youth took his oath of
+devotion to the city of his birth, he signalized his coming of age and
+expressed the ideal of service of each to all and all to each. This is
+not the place for detailed discussion of what is lacking in modern
+training of American Youth analogous in spirit and effect to this
+classic custom. It must be insisted, however, as we discuss the
+conditions that make for juvenile delinquency, among the children and
+youth otherwise normal and capable of useful life, that we have not
+done all that democracy demands when we have made children healthy,
+sent them to tax-supported schools, prevented them from too early
+earning at "gainful occupations," and instituted all manner of
+recreative and stimulating provisions for their free use. We must also
+give them some sense of what Seneca meant when he said, "We are all
+members of one great body; remember that each was born for the good of
+all." We must also burn deep into the consciousness of youth in some
+fashion that shall be through our modern mechanisms as effective as
+were the old "Fraternities" of primitive life, and as are still the
+outworn but persistent forms of military discipline, that idea of
+subordination of private whim to public well-being which lies at the
+base of all true and ordered social advance. The Children's Courts are
+a response to the effort of society to give each child a fair chance
+in life. There are needed, also, devices of education and of
+compulsory social service and social obedience which may tend to give
+society a fair deal from every adult.
+
+Prodigal sons and daughters, therefore, who are abnormal, weak,
+morally invalid, must be cared for in the way easiest and best for the
+social whole. Parents must help and not hinder in that task.
+
+Prodigal sons and daughters who are normal save for some accidental
+divergence from legal or actual right-doing must be helped to come
+back into the line of social usefulness. And, above all, the facts of
+juvenile delinquency should give us impetus, strong and intelligent,
+toward a social and family discipline that shall make freedom and
+happiness of childhood a way to social order and never a pathway
+toward social degeneracy or personal wrong-doing.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS
+
+  1. What has been the general trend of social ideal and practice
+     in the treatment of the criminal and the vicious?
+
+  2. What part has the family played in restraint of evil tendency
+     or in responsibility before the law for offences against social
+     order?
+
+  3. What part should the family now play in these vital social
+     matters?
+
+  4. What is "sentimentality" and what is "justice" in dealing with
+     the prodigal?
+
+  5. What can be done through physical and mental examinations, by
+     experts, of all children, to prevent development of
+     criminality, vice, and waywardness?
+
+  6. In 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for
+     action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally
+     deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what
+     he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild
+     beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the
+     law is "knowledge of what is right or wrong in the particular
+     case." Following the same line of change, our statutes now ask,
+     in addition, if the person on trial is generally competent to
+     understand and to obey social rules of conduct. Is this trend
+     toward the lessening or toward the increase of crime and vice?
+
+  7. What does social well-being require shall be done for and with
+     those proved incapable of social habits?
+
+  8. Head "The Socially Inadequate; How Shall We Designate and Sort
+     Them?" by Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring
+     Harbor, Long Island, in _American Journal of Sociology_, July,
+     1921. This is an attempt to introduce a blanket term under
+     which feeble-minded; insane; criminalistic, including
+     delinquent and wayward; epileptic; inebriate, including drug
+     habitues; diseased, including tuberculous, lepers, and others
+     with chronic infectious diseases; blind, including all of
+     seriously impaired vision; deaf, including those with seriously
+     impaired hearing; deformed, including the crippled; and
+     dependent, including orphans, old folks, soldiers and sailors
+     in "homes," chronic charity-aided folk, paupers, and
+     ne'er-do-wells, may be listed. This article attempts to make a
+     classification inclusive, yet subject to minute subheading,
+     which may make reports more definite in listing human beings.
+
+  Is such an attempt wise, and if so, how would each member of this
+     group classify the "socially inadequate?"
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[15] See a valuable study by Dr. Bernard Glueck, Director Psychiatric
+Clinic at Sing Sing Prison, entitled, "Concerning Prisoners," and
+published in _Mental Hygiene_ for April, 1918, showing the need for
+mental examination of all convicted persons as an indispensable basis
+for right understanding and treatment of prisoners.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BROKEN FAMILY
+
+
+  "Every social ill involves the enslavement of individuals. Freedom
+  is that phase of the social ideal which emphasizes
+  individuality.--All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of
+  right intercourse within a social group.--The ideal of service
+  goes with the sense of unity.--A likeness of spirit and principle
+  is essential to moral unity. The creation of a moral order on an
+  ever-growing scale is the great historical task of mankind, and
+  the magnitude of it explains all shortcomings."--CHARLES H.
+  COOLEY, in _Social Organization_.
+
+    "The sanctity of oaths
+    Lies not in lightning that avenges them,
+    But in the injury wrought by broken bonds
+    And in the garnered good of human trust.
+    'Tis a compulsion of the higher sort,
+    Whose fetters are the net invisible
+    That holds all life together.
+    'Tis faithfulness that makes the life we choose
+    Breathe high and see a full-arched firmament.
+    We may see ill
+    But over all belief is faithfulness
+    Which fulfils vision with obedience.
+    No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
+    The undivided will to seek the good;
+    'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
+    A human music from the indifferent air."
+                    --GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+    "Genuine government is but the expression of a nation
+    Good or less good; even as all society
+    Is but the expression of men's single lives--
+    The loud sum of the silent units."--E.B. BROWNING.
+
+  "There is no other genuine enthusiasm than one which has travelled
+  the common highway--the life of the good man and woman, the good
+  neighbor, the good citizen."--THOMAS GREEN HILL.
+
+    "Let me not to the marriage of true minds
+    Admit impediments. Love is not love
+    Which alters when it alteration finds,
+    Or bends with the remover to remove:
+    O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
+    That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
+    It is the star to every wandering bark,
+    Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
+    Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
+    Within his bending sickle's compass come;
+    Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
+    But bears it out even to the edge of doom."
+                    --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+=The Problems of Divorce.=--Having treated in some detail the subject
+of "Problems of Marriage and Divorce" in a former book, _Woman's Share
+in Social Culture_, and also in articles published in _The
+International Journal of Ethics_, _The Harvard Theological Review_,
+_Harper's Weekly_, and other magazines, this chapter, to avoid
+repetition, will simply rehearse in brief outline the points of view
+previously expressed.
+
+In the valuable and suggestive treatment of the family by Professor
+Ellwood in his book, _Sociology and Modern Social Problems_, he says
+that "divorce is but a symptom of more serious evils that in certain
+classes of American society have apparently undermined the very
+virtues upon which the family life subsists." If that be so, then no
+tinkering with the laws which aim at preventing divorces will reach
+the seat of the difficulty. The treatment must be more radical, and
+the character of individuals be made more noble and strong, if the
+family is to be made more stable and marriage more successful.
+
+=Frequency of Divorce in the United States.=--The first point to be
+noted in any discussion of the broken family is the frequency of that
+social tragedy in the United States. The pioneer study by Professor
+W.P. Willcox, made in 1885 and reported in his volume entitled _The
+Divorce Problem_, showed the fact that we had in this country at that
+time more divorces per year than were recorded in all the other
+so-called Christian countries put together. For 1905, statistics show
+nearly 68,000 divorces in the United States as against the highest
+number from Germany, which is only a trifle above 11,000, and from
+France, 10,860, and running down rapidly to the number of 33 in
+Canada. In England, in 1905, there was but one divorce to 400
+marriages. In the United States, in the same year, one divorce to
+every 12 marriages. Since that count was taken, there has been no
+evidence of a halt in the tendency of the United States to lead the
+rest of the Christian world in this matter of separation of those once
+joined together by marriage vows. In some of the States, the showing
+is more pronounced on the side of free divorce than in other States,
+since in Washington, Oregon, and Montana one divorce to every five
+marriages is reported, in Colorado and Indiana one to every six, and
+in Oklahoma, California, and Maine one to every seven marriages. We
+need not accept the doleful suggestion of Professor Willcox that if we
+go on this way, "by 1950 one-fourth of all marriages will be
+terminated by divorce, and by 1990 one-half so terminated," for it is
+not necessary or likely that we shall "go on" in this particular.
+Already, movements toward the strengthening of family ties and the
+better training of youth to responsibility, movements that tend to
+make marriage less brittle, are inaugurated.
+
+=Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy.=--There are several points that
+all must agree upon if we are to stay the rush to the divorce courts
+and yet not attempt the futile task of turning the family order back
+to the patriarchal or the monarchical types. In those types there was
+little or no legal divorce, it is true, but in them inhered social
+evils that often killed the spirit of marriage, and doomed the
+children of enforced unions to physical weakness, mental
+defectiveness, moral taint, and affectional suffering.
+
+First of all, it should be noted that, although the divorce statistics
+are serious indictments of American life and bode ill to American
+society, they are not wholly a testimony to bad conditions. They are
+also a testimony that he who runs may read, to the determination of
+men, and especially of women, to exact a higher reality of mutual
+love, mutual respect, mutual service, and mutual cooeperation within
+the marriage bond.
+
+=New Standards of Marriage Success.=--When it was decided to
+investigate the causes for the backwardness of school children, why so
+many "failed to pass" and were "retarded" in the march from grade to
+grade in the elementary classes, the first inquiry took no note of the
+exactions of the grade standards. All who failed to move on at the
+scheduled moment for "promotion," in any school examined, were listed
+as "backward." Later, it occurred to the investigators, that the first
+thing to find out was whether or not a given grade standard was one
+that true pedagogy would approve, and second, whether there was a
+serious discrepancy in that grade standard between the different
+schools from which the children came for examination.
+
+In much the same way the first inquiries as to the evil of frequent
+divorce seemed to take for granted that all who sought divorce were in
+circumstances that might have been socially and usefully continued
+within the marriage bond. We know better now. We know that the first
+question to ask about a broken family is: What was its condition
+before the break? Did justice, and a fair estimate of the quality of
+the union and its effects upon the man and the woman involved, and
+their children, demand that the family hold or be held together, or
+was there a condition that made society more interested in the ending
+than in the continuance of that union?
+
+If, as is beginning to be understood, it is not for the interest of
+society that men and women should marry who are so physically
+diseased, or mentally defective, or morally perverted as to make them
+injurious members of a family circle, is it not as clear that in many
+cases such persons when married are not helpful members of any family;
+and if so, again, is it not clear that there is justification in
+social need itself for the removal of such persons from the family
+circle they have already polluted or injured in vital ways, to prevent
+their doing more harm to family life?
+
+Whatever may be thought by many who view all divorce with horror,
+there is a tendency within that movement toward free divorce, toward
+the freeing of the currents of generative life from evil influence,
+from despotism, from degenerative tendencies, and from the worst forms
+of social wrong-doing. There is, also, of course, in that movement, a
+testimony which should make all earnest lovers of their kind learn
+how to urge socially therapeutic treatment, a testimony to human
+weakness, to a lack of the sense of responsibility, to a love of
+personal pleasure at any cost to moral obligation, and to a need for
+social control of the whole family relation.
+
+The causes, in our country, for which more than 90 per cent, of the
+divorces are granted, are the serious ones of adultery, cruelty,
+imprisonment for crime, habitual drunkenness, desertion, and neglect
+to provide for the family. This indicates that in most cases there has
+been a failure on the score of basic family requirements from husbands
+and wives, and from fathers and mothers, before the court was called
+in to break the legal bond. Does this also indicate that such failure
+of character has increased among our people to the extent of its
+increased legal recognition in divorce? We can not think so. There are
+special reasons why all bonds of intimate association are strained in
+modern life, with its separate industrial, social, and educational
+affiliations for each individual. But that all of us are going
+downward, or most of us, is not a provable contention and should not
+be an undemonstrated inference.
+
+=Dangers of Extreme Individualism in Marriage.=--The primary fact is
+that we have allowed individualism in marriage to go beyond limits
+which are socially safe, just as in the economic order and in the
+administration of political affairs, we have supposed that the
+"let-alone-policy" would work social good. No other civilization has
+been able to secure successful family life without some support,
+supervision, control, and aid to the married couple and their
+children, from without. We cannot return to the collective family of
+other days. We must learn how to make society in general work toward
+the ends of stability and social order in the family, as in other
+social institutions, and by methods that reverence and secure personal
+freedom and fit well into a democratic state.
+
+=Free Love Not Admissible.=--Professor Ellwood says that "while
+material civilization is mainly a control of the food process, moral
+civilization involves a control of the reproductive process, that is,
+over the birth and rearing of children." He argues from this that
+social organization "precludes anything like the toleration of
+promiscuity or even of free love." Most students of social history
+will agree with this statement. We may, therefore, say that the
+attitude of law, of custom, and of social standards, must be that of
+demanding legalization of permitted sex-relationship, and the effort
+to make legal sex-relationship permanent where possible without
+sacrifice of the substance of family life to its outward form.
+
+=Must Work Toward Desired Permanency in Marriage.=--This means a quite
+new approach to the problems of marriage and divorce. It means the
+inauguration of legal and educational mechanisms in the interest of
+making people want to stay married, rather than toward an effort to
+make people stay wedded when they wish to separate. In this, more,
+even than in any other field of social effort, we should take heed to
+and obey the advice of Dr. Lester Ward "to use attractive rather than
+compulsory methods of reform."
+
+=Needed Changes in Legal and Social Approach to Divorce.=--What are
+the main points of change in our legal and social approach to the
+divorce situation, which the modern need for social control through
+democratic measures demands most clearly and strongly? They are,
+first, a longer period of delay between reception and granting of the
+request of a man and a woman for a license to marry. Several State
+legislatures are now considering statutes which require an "interval
+of three days" between the application for and the granting of
+marriage licenses. This is certainly a short enough time in which to
+find out if either of the parties is likely to commit bigamy if the
+license is granted, if both of the parties are really of adult age
+claimed, if either of the parties is afflicted with an infectious
+disease that would make marriage dangerous to the other party, if
+either of the parties has been a resident of a criminal or pauper
+institution, if either or both of the parties are competent to
+financial support of the twain, if there is any "just cause or
+impediment" against the legal union. We may find it wise to return to
+the old "three weeks publishing of the banns" in order to know what
+the state is about in granting and what two people are about in
+demanding a marriage license. In the second place, there are limits
+outside of which society should not allow legal marriage to receive
+its sanction. During the legal interval required there may develop
+knowledge of facts that make it a social crime for one or the other or
+both parties to be allowed to start a new family. This is matter for
+serious and long-continued study, and the experimentation of our
+different Commonwealths in determining the useful or necessary
+restrictions upon legal marriage is not without value. The main thing,
+however, is for society to recognize that there are just restrictions
+upon marriage and that this is proved by the actual social burden
+which unfit persons place upon their fellows when marrying and
+bringing forth after their kind. The third point, which must be
+emphasized more strongly than has been the case heretofore, is the
+need of making the state, through its courts, the ally, not the enemy,
+of marriage permanency. As it is now, the Divorce Court exists to
+secure divorces. Its very existence invites to its use. The court
+procedure in all cases of marital unhappiness which has become acute
+enough for legal freedom to be sought should be a court procedure that
+aims at arbitration, at "trying again," at winning harmony by just
+concessions from either or both the parties, a court procedure
+consciously and definitely set to the task of making more marriages
+successful even when they have developed difficulty of adjustment,
+rather than one allowed to act as a means of easy separation of even
+fickle, selfish, and childish people on grounds of superficial
+difference.
+
+=Prohibition of Paid Attorneys in Divorce.=--_The absolute abolition
+of any paid service of any attorney in the interest of getting anyone
+a divorce, is a primary social demand._ The establishment of a
+"Divorce Proctor" service in a Domestic Relations Court, with sole
+jurisdiction over applications for divorce, is a second vital social
+demand. Some form of legal provision which would make judges of a
+special and honored class the paid representatives of society's demand
+for marriage to be as permanent as individual justice will allow is
+essential to any genuine divorce reform. The often highly-feed
+advocate of personal wish of two dissatisfied people, the agent that
+deals with divorce problems as a lucrative trade, is one cause of the
+prevalence of divorce among the idle and pampered rich. Those who have
+greater social opportunity than they have brains or conscience to use
+them aright, and who can pay lawyers so extravagantly, give us a heavy
+total of marital separations and of remarriage of divorced persons in
+the United States.
+
+Judges, the best and the wisest, must sit on all cases where the
+breaking up of a family is the issue, and all privately paid attorneys
+(in other kinds of social arrangement and difficulty also a hindrance
+rather than an aid to justice) must be banished from every divorce
+court and from every divorce proceeding, both of the richer and of the
+poorer classes.
+
+=Divorce Proceedings Should be Heard in Secret.=--Newspapers should
+not be tempted or allowed to gain advantage from the weakness, the
+folly, or the vice of any member of any family which may be revealed
+in such divorce proceedings. The fact of whether or not a divorce
+applied for is granted, the fact of whether one or the other party or
+both have received freedom, the fact of whether one or another was
+pronounced guilty of treason to the marriage bond--these are all
+subjects for news. The reasons for these decisions of wise and good
+judges should not be given to the public in detail. The main
+objections to the present publicity of divorce proceedings is, first,
+that publicity is generally in proportion to the wealth of the
+parties, as is also the prolongation of the proceedings; and second,
+that such reports are generally of a demoralizing nature for the
+public to read; and third, and not least, that few if any couples
+seeking a divorce are without fathers or mothers or relatives,
+children, or near friends, to whom the public revelation of the
+marital unhappiness or the personal wrong-doing of the parties
+involved is a pain and a shame.
+
+=Earlier and Better Use of Domestic Relations Court.=--Another way by
+which society should undertake to supply in newer and more democratic
+forms the supervision, the control, and the support to the individual
+married couple and their children, which the older collective family
+organization sought to supply, is an earlier and a better use of the
+Domestic Relations Court, or of some advisory agency to prevent the
+breaking up of families. There should be something analogous to the
+old "family council," some body of advisers well known and well
+equipped for actual service, to help the bewildered and the unhappy.
+The religious ministry should be able to supply such help. It often
+does do so. The circle of friends may sometimes contain those of
+wisdom and understanding who give needed aid toward a resumption of
+broken relations on a higher and more enduring plane. There is
+needed, however, something between the court to which people go for
+relief from bonds, and the solitary struggle with difficulties before
+that relief is sought, something which, if related officially to the
+Domestic Relations Court, would be of a more flexible and private
+nature than most of its proceedings. We need more an aid to avoidance
+of marital rocks than a rescue, as from a life-boat, after the
+shipwreck.
+
+There are many forms of advice and help which the teachers and medical
+practitioners in mental hygiene are now developing and offering which
+may be used later on, when we are wiser, in this work of preventing
+families from breaking up. Regularly constituted "social doctoring"
+for the prevention, even more than for the treatment of social disease
+as it manifests itself in family life, is surely called for.
+
+=The Children to be Affected Society's Chief Care.=--Above all, we
+must place the children affected by any decision that gives society a
+broken family in the front rank of interest and of protective care. If
+the paid attorney were eliminated, divorces would certainly be
+lessened in number. If publicity were avoided in all divorce
+proceedings, much of the harm to children arising from separation of
+married couples would be avoided. If, in addition, there were advisory
+aid to the confused and unhappy, many now drifting to complete
+division of interest and affection would be enabled to start on again
+toward better realization of married opportunity. If, in further
+addition, the Domestic Relations Courts were changed with the
+supervisory care of all children whose parents were legally separated,
+and the well-being of those children made the chief legal concern even
+if it required the complete separation from both father and mother,
+more fathers and mothers would hesitate to place themselves where
+their parental control and their parental influence would be so
+minimized. Yet who doubts that among the rich as well as among the
+poor such judicial protection and care of the children, whom the
+broken family leaves without true parental care, is needed? To give
+children into the hands of either parent alone is in many such cases
+no fitting substitute for the normal home influence. In any case,
+there should be an external conscience and an external solicitude
+enlisted in the interest of every child whose parents have made such a
+failure of marriage and the home that the divorce court is the only
+refuge.
+
+This does not ignore the fact that many couples separate to the
+advantage of the children, that many parents are quite innocent of any
+cause for the broken family, that many times there is a rehabilitation
+of the family life on other lines that means full nurture and
+development for the children. The fact remains, however, that the
+average child of divorced parents has to meet difficulties and face
+disadvantages in life which the child of permanently united fathers
+and mothers does not suffer, and, for such, some exterior protection
+and supervision should be provided.
+
+=A Uniform or Federal Divorce Law.=--Many persons deeply interested in
+lessening the number of divorces in the United States place much
+dependence upon a "Uniform Divorce Law" for the whole country, as
+giving a basis for wise legislation. Recently, Senator Jones, of the
+State of Washington, introduced in the Senate a resolution proposing a
+new amendment to the Federal Constitution by which, if it passed,
+Congress would have power "to establish and enforce by appropriate
+legislation uniform laws as to marriage and divorce." The fact that a
+couple may be legally married in one state of our Union and illegally
+practicing bigamy or adultery in another state gives a plausible
+reason for such a Constitutional Amendment. And perhaps the searching
+investigation and discussion which would precede such a definite
+change in our national law, if such change were made, would be of
+great use in clarifying the public mind, and securing a consensus of
+opinion as to what should and what should not be allowed in this
+matter. Yet it is doubtful if such a law would, in itself, bring down
+the number of divorces, now estimated by those advocating the law as
+"one in every eight to ten marriages," or prevent the ratio of
+increase in divorces to increase in population (now estimated "as
+increase in population in a given period, 60 per cent., and increase
+in divorces in the same period, 160 per cent."), or really mend our
+family ills. The dependency upon Constitutional amendments and upon
+legislation of every kind has, many believe, reached the utmost limit
+of social serviceability in this country. The deeper question in all
+such propositions is this: What, under the Constitution as first
+affirmed and later amended, is proper subject for Federal legislation,
+and what should be left to state and local action? We have not reached
+a political unity as to the basic elements of just and effective
+political method in the division of social control between the nation
+and the various states. The habit of rushing to the National Congress
+for Federal legislation with no plan or logical aim in relation to
+such division, is one that may well be curbed.
+
+=Education Our Chief Reliance.=--Meanwhile, all must insist that
+education, character-training for strong, unselfish, noble
+personalities, is our main dependence, and must ever be in the effort
+to make family life more stable, and more socially helpful. Men and
+women must be made competent to self-control, and steadied with a
+sense of obligation to others, and animated by an ideal of
+faithfulness to contract, and of devotion to securing mutual rights in
+a mutual plan of life together. Such education for character, must be
+our chief dependence in efforts to lessen divorces, as in the effort
+to do away with all social evils. There is no magic in marriage, there
+is no magic even in parenthood, to make weak, and selfish and
+superficial and ignorant and stupid and despotic people into guardians
+of the best interests of home. A man or a woman is successful in the
+family order, only on the same basis as is demanded in all other
+relations of life, the basis of justice, good sense, right feeling,
+and an honest effort to realize high ideals.
+
+=Helps Toward Family Unity.=--What remains for society to do, after
+general moral training has worked its full service of individual
+preparation for good intent and wise choices and competent mastery of
+family arrangements, must be done or attempted on the basis rather of
+helps toward permanence, than of prohibition of release from marriage
+mistakes and wrongs.
+
+We have left undone much we should have done to make it easier for
+young people to find their true mates, to start right in married life,
+and to bear the burdens of parenthood without stumbling on the way.
+Let us not add mistakenly to the duties left undone the attempt to do
+things we should not, namely, to overbear instead of aiding the
+personal life.
+
+There is nothing that works more tragedy of suffering than broken vows
+in marriage, whether the fact of the actual separation be publicly
+acknowledged or not. How many a disillusioned man or woman has felt
+with the poet:
+
+    "To look upon the face of a dead friend
+      Is hard; but there is deeper woe--
+    To look upon our friendship lying dead
+      While we live on, and eat, and sleep--
+    Mere bodies from which all the soul has fled,
+      And that dead thing year after year to keep
+    Locked in cold silence on its dreamless bed."
+
+=Shall Society Favor the Remarriage of Divorced Persons?=--Now that
+the moral sense of most people allows another trial on Love's Rialto,
+there are many individuals who can leave "that dead thing" to find its
+own grave, and in the light of some new and dearer affection go on to
+a renewed promise and joy of life. Can we think that wrong? Who shall
+dare to say that alone of all mistakes of youth, a mistaken choice in
+marriage shall be for all life a sentence of doom? Who shall dare to
+limit the power of rehabilitation of the family order, even when what
+has failed is the central heart of married love? Our gospel of hope
+and courage, and renewal of opportunity, and rebirth of affection must
+know no limits if we would rightly trust the spirit within our being.
+
+But for the shallow, and the selfish, and the pleasure-seeker without
+reverence for the right way of life, and for the scoffer at all high
+moods of feeling and of ideal aim, there can be little to justify his
+flitting about on the very outmost limits of true love. For such, some
+check must be had in ordered rules and legal bonds, in order that the
+race-life shall go on in safety and in social health. Meanwhile,
+although there is much to give us pause and to demand serious study
+and earnest and wise social work in the situation revealed by the
+divorce court statistics, there is nothing that need give hysterical
+alarm lest the home is being destroyed and the family abolished. On
+the contrary, there probably was never a time when so many people were
+really happy, each and every member of the family, in the home
+relation; and hence never a time when it was clearer that to keep the
+home stable and permanent, and make marriage successful in the vast
+majority of cases, we have only to get better and wiser people in
+larger proportion.
+
+To understand the real reason for marital unhappiness and for family
+instability, to know that such reason inheres primarily in personal
+character and not in any statute, is to begin work for the real cure
+and prevention of such unhappiness and instability. The broken family
+may be a sad necessity, alike for individuals concerned, and for the
+well-being of society. To prevent that tragedy is a social duty than
+which none is more pressing or more open to social effort.
+
+=Turning From Compulsory to Attractive Methods of Reform.=--To
+undertake that social task, the psychology of social effort must be
+turned from compulsive methods of prevention of legal divorce, when
+such divorce is sought, to ways of making marriage choices wiser,
+marriage experience more sane and better balanced by sense of
+obligation to the nearer and more remote of social relations, and by
+putting at the command of all, the helpful sympathy and the social
+guidance that can alone hold to firm and noble lines the wavering and
+the weak.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE BROKEN FAMILY
+
+  1. Is the admitted increase in divorce wholly a testimony to
+     moral degeneracy? If so, what can be done about it? If not,
+     what else does it indicate?
+
+  2. What are the main points to work for in order to reduce the
+     number of divorces, and to remove the social evils of which
+     divorces are only the symptom?
+
+  3. Should the social psychology be directed principally toward
+     preventing people from getting divorce or from remarrying after
+     divorce, or toward making marriage so generally successful that
+     fewer people want to separate?
+
+  4. What is specially needed in education both of youth and the
+     adult in the United States in the interest of family stability
+     and family success?
+
+  5. Make a list of causes that in your opinion justify legal
+     separation or divorce and find out whether or not these causes
+     are named in the statutes of your State. If they are not, what
+     should be done about it?
+
+  6. What is done for and with the children of legally separated and
+     divorced persons in your State?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS
+
+  "It is all work, and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed,
+  articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred world. For the
+  thistle a blade of grass, later a drop of nourishing milk, later a
+  nobler man. Man perfects himself as well as the world by
+  working."--CARLYLE.
+
+
+  "Every man's task is his life preserver."--EMERSON.
+
+    "What was his name? I do not know his name.
+    No form of bronze and no memorial stones
+    Show me the place where lie his mouldering bones.
+      Only a cheerful city stands,
+      Builded by his hardened hands;
+        Only ten thousand homes,
+          Where every day
+          The cheerful play
+        Of love and hope and courage comes;
+    These are his monuments, and these alone,--
+    There is no form of bronze and no memorial stone."
+                    --EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
+
+    "Let us now praise the artificer and the workmaster
+    Who is wakeful to finish his work.
+    These put their trust in their hands
+    And each becometh wise in his own work.
+    Though they sit not in the seat of the judge,
+    Nor understand the covenant of judgment;
+    Though they declare not instruction nor utter dark sayings
+    Yet without these shall not a city be inhabited
+    Nor shall men sojourn therein.
+    For these maintain the fabric of the world
+    And in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer."
+                    --ECCLESIASTICUS.
+
+
+=Changes from Ancient to Modern Forms of Labor.=--The change from the
+domestic and handicraft stage in industry to the capitalized,
+power-driven, machine-dominated, and highly specialized work-system of
+the present day has been often described and is a part of all the
+economic problems of modern times. We do not need here to rehearse the
+details of that change or to speak of its effect upon workers in
+general. What we must do, however, is to trace specifically some of
+the results of that industrial change in the constitution and in the
+development of family life.
+
+In the old order the worker owned his tool, selected his material,
+controlled the process of his task, and often was master of the sale
+of the finished product. Hence, as has so often been shown, the
+character of a man was so obviously a part of the stock-in-trade of
+the worker, his judgment, probity and skill were so clearly causes of
+his success in handicraft, that the ethical training of life came
+definitely through the exercise of work-power. Now, as we are often
+reminded, the worker is divorced from the management and control of
+his work-process and is a "hand," merely attached to a machine that
+others must choose, buy and install, the product of which is in only
+an infinitesimal part his responsibility and of the profit from which
+another takes the lion's share. This has made many feel that ethical
+training in life must come to the worker from his leisure hours only,
+and that his task must be always merely a routine one, to be got
+through with as soon as possible each day in order that he may "live"
+in the hours left from work. This idea cannot be accepted by anyone
+who realizes the character-drill that may inhere in any form of useful
+labor. The need is to permeate the methods of modern industry with the
+creative spirit, to mix the management of all business and
+manufacturing with the brains of workmen as well as of directors and
+to make a new connection, strong, obvious, and thought-compelling,
+between the worker and the control and responsibility of his work.
+While this is being accomplished the results of the change from
+handicraft to machine work in the family order must be understood and
+unsocial elements in that change minimized. It must be remembered that
+among the opportunities of character-training in work lost by the man,
+the woman and the child and youth, by the change in industrial
+methods, is the constant influence of the home life while at work. The
+old industries clustered about the fireside. It made the household a
+work-place, and some feel that this was a detriment to home life and
+that we have a better chance to make real centres of love and
+happiness now that we have taken out of the domestic field almost all
+the elements of manufacture and of trade. However that may be, this
+much is sure, that when father and mother worked together, and
+children learned how to work while still within the family influence,
+it was easier than it is now to make the daily task one of mutual
+cooeperation and mutual service within the family circle.
+
+=The Old Household a Work-place.=--We have passed laws now, forbidding
+"home industries" because so many "sweated trades" find their last and
+often impregnable fortress in the crowded rooms of the tenement
+living-places. This may be necessary and may be well to do, but the
+fact remains that something inhered in the old domestic training of
+children and youth in useful work within the home which was lost when
+the factory was built and the young workers had to seek their jobs
+outside the family circle. And that something of work-drill and
+habit-forming in the interest of self-support and family usefulness we
+are now trying to reintroduce into the education of children and youth
+by elaborate and costly "manual training," "Pre-vocational and
+Vocational courses" and similar departments in the schools.
+
+=Welfare Managers in Modern Times.=--The fact that hours of work and
+conditions affecting the workers can be standardized more easily when
+those workers are massed in large numbers under one recognized owner
+and manager of a great industry has sometimes blinded us to the need
+of each young person to have constantly near at hand a personal
+representative of society's interest in the development of his
+character; some interpreter of social customs and ideals to follow
+which will make for his advantage. We are trying now to get "Welfare
+Managers," paid chaperons, nurses and teachers, into business concerns
+to take the place of older forms of social direction and care for
+youthful workers. These functionaries often do much good and are
+recognized expressions of the social interest of employers. Since they
+are installed avowedly for the purpose of making conditions better for
+the younger, weaker, less trained and more needy of the workers,
+"Welfare Managers" often find a hostile or at least indifferent
+attitude toward their efforts on the part of the higher paid, the
+better established, and more competent women workers, especially those
+organized in Trade Unions with the slogan of "Not Charity, but
+Justice." They do, however, reach with light and leading some of the
+darker sides of modern industry as related to the younger workers.
+
+=Child-labor.=--The student of industrial history knows that
+child-labor is not a new evil. Children were often overworked and
+cruelly driven when parents, guardians, and those to whom they were
+"bound out" as apprentices were the only taskmasters and their labor
+was wholly within the household. Indeed, Hutchins and Harrison, in
+their _History of Factory Legislation_, declare that "it is not easy
+to say whether children were really worked harder in the early
+factories than under the domestic system which they replaced." Edith
+Abbott, in her excellent summary of _The Early History of Child Labor
+in America_, shows clearly that at the bottom of the ancient desire to
+use very young persons in industry was a conviction that work,
+constant and hard work, is the only safeguard against evil. "Satan
+finds some mischief still for idle hands to do" was not a figure of
+speech to our ancestors, it was statement of a sober fact. This
+feeling led naturally to the conditions that gave Samuel Slater, the
+pioneer in textile manufacture in New England, a collection of child
+workers in his first mill as his only laborers and at ages between
+seven and twelve years.
+
+We are now able to see and remedy some evils of child-labor in the
+factory system which passed unnoticed and for which no prohibitive law
+was in existence in the handicraft stage. It is true, however, as all
+must recognize, that the modern specialization of labor and modern use
+of machines allows a wholesale exploitation of youth and of physical
+weakness impossible in older forms of industry. Hence the facts of
+modern industry justify and make necessary the "Child Labor Movement."
+Yet vital and strong as that movement is, we have to-day, as has been
+stated in another connection, a misuse of children by millions in
+industry. We have also a dangerous overuse of youth in industry, and
+we have a reckless waste of mothers and of potential mothers in
+unsuitable work. We have also certain dangers to family life in the
+turning of attention and of ambition of young people away from family
+interests into fields of industrial activity which are inimical to
+family success. This makes the problem of the family and the workers
+one of great difficulty and one to be given the most serious attention
+on the part of those who are themselves above the economic conditions
+which operate to complicate that problem among the poor and
+struggling.
+
+=Increase in Women Wage-earners.=--In the first place, we must note
+the tendency toward rapid increase of the numbers of women listed by
+the census as in "gainful occupations." Without noting in this
+connection the conditions just before and during the Great War,
+conditions not at all indicative of normal increase in the numbers of
+working-women, we trace in the period from 1880 to 1910 a rise from
+2,647,157 to 8,075,772 of the number of women in receipt of salary or
+wages for work outside their own homes. The estimate of 1920, now
+given, of nearly 41,609,192 "persons of both sexes and of ten years
+old and over engaged in gainful occupations" shows us 8,549,399
+"females." Of these, over a million are engaged in "Professional
+service" (a larger proportion than of men so listed and, of course,
+indicating the great majority of women in the teaching profession).
+More than two millions are listed in "Domestic and Personal service."
+That leaves over three millions working in "agriculture, forestry,
+animal industry, manufacture and mechanical industries," and nearly a
+million and a half in "clerical occupations." The use of ten years of
+age in such lists is now obsolete as an indication of custom in
+employment of youth. Fourteen years of age is the norm in the listing
+of youthful workers and the age limits should be revised to suit that
+rise in the legal age of the child wage-earner as generally practised
+now in the United States. With that understanding, the statistics for
+"Child Labor Certificates" issued by the large manufacturing cities of
+our country show an army of young workers, more than twenty thousand
+in New York City alone, annually entering the competitive industrial
+field with full consent of society. This all means that millions of
+women and very young persons who under the earlier forms of industrial
+life would have been employed (however steadily or with whatever
+handicaps or even cruelty) within some family circle, are now under
+the full control of mass-direction, mass-standardization, and
+mass-influence in their daily work.
+
+=Social Pressure on the Individual Worker.=--This pressure is in
+itself almost a sufficient reason for the family instability now seen.
+To divorce all the working-time, and all the work-tendency, and most
+of the work-training from home life is to weaken the hold of the
+family upon the average worker. Members of a family in which each has
+definite and firm relation to some different requirement and control
+connected with a daily task are likely to acquire an independent
+relation to society in general. In such eases it requires a far more
+vital and enduring affection, a distinctly superior mutual
+understanding and sense of justice, and a far larger natural equipment
+of tact and power of adjustment than was required in other economic
+conditions, in order to make the family life enduring and happy. The
+economic self-interest of each member of the family in the domestic
+circle was obviously that of every other member when the household was
+a workshop. Even, the land and all which it implied was a family
+possession in primitive days. And the worker's equipment, owned
+privately, was limited in the early days. We read that "tools,
+weapons, slaves and captured women and the products of some special
+skill were generally private possession, but products of group-work,
+such as the capture and killing of buffalo, salmon, and all larger
+game among the North American Indians, and the maize which individual
+women tended but which belonged to the household or the tribe in
+common, were all shared as community property." When to this communal
+possession of products of group-activity were added control over
+marriage portions, however those might be appropriated, and the
+management of all property thought to be of group-value, we can see
+that all of economic weight of influence now so individualized once
+went into the family asset.
+
+In the mediaeval times, when laborers were gaining slowly a class
+consciousness outlined by Guilds and Unions of special groups of
+workers, the family was still the main centre of work-direction and of
+united profit from work, and hence it was evident to the dullest mind
+and the coldest heart that members of a family should work and save
+together. Now the whole trend of industrial relationship is toward
+making independent and individualistic connection between the worker
+and his job outside of family unity. Even movements for legal
+protection of the worker against exploitation by masters in industry
+often take little account of family relationship or the varying
+inherited family ideals. Setting the well-being of one member of the
+family against what is supposed to be the well-being of other members
+of the family, as in the case of some child-labor laws, may be
+necessary and socially wise, but it surely does not lead to family
+stability.
+
+=Demands of Family Life Upon Industry and Labor Legislation.=--The
+demands of family life should at least be stated and have some weight
+in any further attempts to make the lot of the individual worker
+better, and should be considered in any drastic attempts to enforce
+labor legislation which sets the parent and the child against each
+other in the courts, or which hampers a mother in what she deems of
+vital necessity in the carrying out of her parental duty.
+
+"The Code for Women in Industry," issued by the division of Women in
+Industry of the Department of Labor, in cooeperation with the "War
+Labor Board" and the "War Labor Policies Board," when the questions
+concerning standards for employment of women in war plants were acute,
+as published in the _Survey_ of January 4, 1919, is in brief summary
+as follows: No woman employed or permitted to work more than eight
+hours a day or forty-eight hours a week. One day of rest a week
+demanded for all and no night work for minors or women. The basis of
+the wage-scale to be form of occupation, not sex; and no lesser wage
+for women permitted unless it can be proved that their employment
+lessens the output of work. A legal minimum wage for all women, which
+should include cost of living of dependents as well as of individuals.
+All work conditions to be good and safety adequately secured. Women to
+be prohibited from working in occupations where exposure to heat or
+cold or to poisonous substances, or where bad position or too great
+muscular strain, endanger health. Home work prohibited.
+
+=Should Adult Women and Children be Listed Together in Labor
+Laws?=--There is grave question whether some of these items listed as
+essentials in the protection of women in industry, and certainly
+useful in the peculiar conditions of munition manufacture into which
+women rushed in such vast numbers in answer to the call of war, should
+form a permanent outline of the relation of law to women workers.
+Some of them have, and clearly, a place in any future code in peace
+time. The requirement for one day of rest in seven; the demand that
+quality and power of labor, not sex, shall set the wage-scale; and the
+legal requirement for sanitary, safe, and moral conditions in
+workshops and factories, all are vital to sound social demand in the
+interest of women workers. Are these not also demands for just labor
+conditions of men? The eight-hour day is now fixed as a standard for
+men and women alike, with the forty-eight hour a week definition. A
+minimum wage, including cost of living for dependents as well as for
+individuals involved, has justice at its base, but requires for its
+application less a blanket sum indicated by law than a wages-board or
+other form of discriminating commission with power to adjust flexibly,
+with due consideration of place and of quality of work, the wages to
+the task. Conditions of labor should be "good" in all cases, and what
+is good should be fixed by disinterested persons. Physical safety and
+moral protection must be secured at all hazards, and in the case of
+women special protection, particularly for those under twenty-one
+years of age, is needed. Any work which is peculiarly a menace to
+health and to the race-life for mothers or potential mothers may well
+be forbidden by law. The absolute prohibition of night work and of
+home work to adult women may well be left in the background, however,
+until the industrial situation is clearer for all women workers. The
+evils of night work for the "sweated" woman, untrained for any
+lucrative labor and who has to catch on to the labor wheels at any
+point open to her effort at middle age, must not blind us to the fact
+that one of the most precious things in the inheritance of brave and
+loyal natures is the determination to earn for one's own support and
+for that of one's dearest. The tenement labor, which is such an evil
+in many of our cities and one so impossible to deal with adequately by
+ordinary inspectorship provision, is not all there is to "home work."
+It may well be that, as has been before indicated, the new uses of
+electrical power may return to the home, and in ways to the advantage
+of the family, some of the processes now wholly under factory control
+and provision. The point is that while there cannot be too much
+protective legislation for children and youth, the place of adult
+women in the labor world must not be too firmly and exclusively held
+by the side of children lest we add to the difficulties women still
+experience in finding and keeping a place in the world of modern
+industry.
+
+=Women in War Work.=--In England, we are told, there were one million
+women employed in war plants during the great struggle with Germany.
+In every variety of munitions manufacture women were found in great
+numbers, often furnishing eighty per cent, or more of the total number
+employed. It is a fact that they "made good." It is also a fact that
+the average of health among the working women of England rose in many
+localities where women were employed at these unwonted tasks. The
+reason given for this by one keen observer being that the higher wages
+earned enabled many thousands of women, before undernourished because
+of their poverty, to have "three square meals a day." When we remember
+that in England there are nearly two million more women than men, and
+that the men who served in the army and have returned physically and
+mentally able to take back the jobs they left for army service are
+clamoring for them, and when we remember that the struggle for a
+standard of living never goes backward and that women workers once
+used to good wages will not willingly take poor ones again, we can see
+what difficulties the war has made in our sister country for both men
+and women in industry.
+
+In our own country the one and a quarter million women engaged in
+industrial work directly or indirectly connected with the war service
+when the first investigation was made in fifteen states, under the
+auspices of the National League of Women's Service, were but a section
+of the army of women who were enlisted in war work, paid or unpaid and
+of various kinds. Now we have an unemployment problem of our own with
+something of the same complaint of the men of England that the
+returned soldier finds a woman in his place, a woman who is still
+wanted, perhaps, by the employer and who does not wish to relinquish
+her job.
+
+When Mrs. Muhlhauser Richards took charge of the Woman's Division of
+the Department of Labor in the effort to make a clearing house of
+women's work in the interest of help to the government it was not
+simply a measure for temporary use or of temporary value. The idea
+still persists in peace as well as in war, and justly, that the
+interests of women in industry require a special division of the Labor
+Department in order that we shall be able to know what is needed for
+their protection in the interest of family life as well as understand
+what individual women require in justice when they are wage-earners. A
+minimum wage is demanded and in several states made a legal
+requirement, but to name a definite sum per week puts a stated figure
+where a movable and changeable condition inheres in the situation.
+Experts in labor reform, therefore, urge the passage of legislative
+bills providing for "wage commissions to determine living wages for
+women and minors," and such have been secured in several states.
+
+The linking of women of all ages with minors may be necessary for
+protection of individual women from exploitation, but again, it must
+be insisted that such a blanket cover for women workers of all ages
+may not be for the ultimate good of the adult, competent yet
+struggling women, who are trying to compete with men for a place in
+the world of labor. The fact is that we often approach the problems of
+work and wages and general labor conditions from the angle of the most
+needy, the most exploited, the least trained, and the poorest in
+opportunity. This may be the highway of philanthropy and to be
+travelled in the interest of social helpfulness, but it is not all the
+roads labor reform must use.
+
+=Minimum Wage for Fathers of Families Real Need.=--When we study
+questions of labor as related to family well-being we must begin with
+an ideal of what the normal family requires of its members, men,
+women, and older children, and place in the first position of economic
+requirement the family demand upon the husband and father. He must, we
+have said, be in position to be a "good provider" for his group. That
+means he must be trained to be a worker, faithful, efficient,
+intelligent, who does something which society needs to have done and
+for which employers can and will pay adequate wages. That means
+vocational training, guidance, and opportunity. That means, also, an
+economic system not easily convulsed by bad times and ups and downs in
+the industrial world. That means, again, ease and cheapness of
+transportation in order that families may live in decent homes and yet
+the chief wage-earner go back and forth to his work without too great
+strain of strength or purse. That means some social control of housing
+facilities, food supply, public sanitation, and educational facilities
+which will secure the essential of human living to all workers and
+their families. To work harder to secure these vital elements of
+family well-being is the task of all. If we were as anxious as
+citizens to secure opportunity for the men and women who make up the
+great army of average workers, self-supporting but at cost of struggle
+often too severe, as we are anxious as philanthropists to ease the
+burden and protect the weakness of the more backward members of the
+industrial army, the current of upward movement of all in gainful
+occupations would be stronger and more socially helpful. The family is
+most of all concerned with the minimum wage of adult men who marry and
+have children.
+
+=The Attitude of Women Toward Labor Problems.=--The family is
+concerned next with the attitude of women who are wives and mothers,
+or daughters partially supported from the family purse, toward the
+whole area of industrial problems. It may be always right, as it is
+often necessary, for married women, even when mothers of young
+children, to earn in the outside labor world. It is, however, always a
+social crime for women who try simply to piece out an insufficient
+family income to do it in ways to bring down or to keep down wages in
+the specialty of work they take part in, especially to bring down or
+keep down the wages of men in that specialty of work. It may be best
+(it usually is) for young daughters to earn wages even if they do
+kinds of work which in the labor market will not secure a return
+adequate for full self-support. The work may be educational in its
+quality; much that young girls do in department stores is of that
+character; but wages too low for full self-support must be reckoned as
+part pay for a work-opportunity mixed of training and service, not one
+that lists the worker in full competitive position.
+
+=Necessary Protection for Children and Youth in Labor.=--Where young
+boys or young girls enter into the industrial world they should step
+from either a Trade School, and if so, with the guidance and care of
+some representatives of that school to aid them in making physically,
+morally, and vocationally helpful alignment, or else should be given
+half-time employment in the factory or shop that takes them on as
+helpers and find in some "Continuation School" a right use of the rest
+of the work-day. The right sort of protective aid to boys and girls
+between the ages of fourteen, when the law allows some form of
+wage-earning, and that of sixteen to eighteen years, when they may
+safely shift for themselves, should halve the wage-earning hours (four
+instead of eight each day or twenty-four instead of forty-eight a week
+or alternate weeks at work or study); should double the numbers set to
+each stated task in shop or factory; should treble the supervisory
+control of society, in a union of Health Board, School Board, and
+Employers' and Employees' Council; and should quadruple the fitly
+trained teachers, the school sittings, the adequately equipped
+recreation centres and all incitements to higher uses of leisure time.
+The early years of every child should be held sacredly apart from the
+whir of wheels and the din of machinery; he should then rehearse in
+some degree, as will be later shown, the handicraft age of industry
+and its personalizing influence. His entrance into the world of modern
+labor should be not a plunge or a tumble but along a regulated highway
+of well-outlined endeavor, with social influences on either side to
+make his passage into wage-earning safe for himself and useful to
+others.
+
+Social protection should be less a club marked, "Thou shalt not," and
+more an opportunity inscribed, "Chances to rise, win them!" For the
+woman, married and a mother, there must be not so many new ways of
+enforcing prohibitions of what are deemed for her harmful forms of
+labor, as more ingenuity in providing half-time work, better
+adjustments of earning facilities to domestic duties, far more
+cooeperative machinery for reducing the cost of living and for securing
+the family against economic exploitation in food, clothing, and
+shelter.
+
+=Women and the Cost of Living.=--There is a field of family
+conservation which has been until lately almost wholly neglected by
+women; a field which must be mastered by them, the field of
+combination of all family interests in behalf of each family need. The
+attitude of the new voters among women who have organized into a
+League to enable them to become better and more efficient citizens is
+eminently encouraging. When the League of Women Voters takes hold
+definitely, consciously, and with intelligent devotion of the problems
+of cost of living, market supply, distribution of essentials of life
+and the whole range of economic interests which lie next to family
+well-being, it means that women are taking into the electorate a new
+and vitally needed form of social control and social service. That in
+itself, alone, would justify the struggle of women to obtain the
+franchise. More and more men in political life will come to understand
+what a League of women, for the most part "home-women" and
+family-serving-women, will demand of officials in the area of basic
+essentials of comfort and security in the home.
+
+=The Family Demand upon Unmarried Women.=--The social demand upon
+women who are at work in any field of personal endeavor, whether that
+be professional, clerical, manual or artistic, has been outlined
+before in this treatment of the relation of the home to society in
+general as involving sortie special consideration of family needs.
+This may seem a negligible quantity to many women, unmarried, with
+relatives all self-supporting or well-to-do. There is no reason why a
+daughter should be called "undutiful" or "selfish" who is absorbed in
+her own work than why a son should be so esteemed when there is no
+special reason why other members of the family should hold that
+daughter's time and effort at their disposal. The selfishness may be
+on the other side, and often is where parents or near relatives within
+the family bond try to burden the young woman with odds and ends of
+family service, which others might as well assume, and leave her with
+no ambition or opportunity for personal achievement. There are,
+however, in this complicated life of ours many contingencies of family
+experience which still demand from daughters a share in time and
+strength which sons may more easily concentrate upon their own work.
+This fact, often operating unconsciously, leads many young women to
+choices of types of work which have fixed hours and easy adjustment to
+frequent absences from work. These give little chance for rising in
+wage or position and often give low wages from the start. This
+tendency keeps many women from success in work and is often a reason
+why men distrust and oppose their entrance into a new field of
+industry.
+
+The first essential of character, it must be insisted, is the power of
+self-support, of self-direction, of self-achievement. This is, now
+seen to be an essential for women as for men. The only adequate
+solution of problems of commercialized prostitution includes for each
+girl capable of that attainment the power of easy and complete
+self-support. Hence, the family has no right to take from its members
+some present advantage which will handicap potential workers, either
+boys or girls, in their struggle to meet adult responsibilities of
+economic life. Hence, again, the whole question of vocational
+preparation for girls, as well as for boys, has right-of-way as
+against any temporary or easily dispensed-with helping in family
+emergencies which may seriously hamper the future wage-earner. This is
+now being seen clearly; and the consequence is that parents do without
+for themselves both luxuries and often comforts, in order that their
+children shall have a chance in general education and in vocational
+training to fit them for later economic success. This fact, so
+honorable to parents, often leads away from family unity by increasing
+a chasm of culture and of condition between parents and children.
+This, again, indicates that the modern standardization of child-care
+and of parental duty has in it elements that demand far more developed
+character in all the members of a family in order to hold together by
+affection, justice, and higher compulsions of tenderness those who
+have by virtue of the self-sacrifice of the older ones lost touch on
+many of the common fields of effort.
+
+=Farming and the Farmer's Wife.=--There is one great area both of
+man's work and of woman's work which supremely needs better
+understanding and more efficient organization in the interest of
+family life. That is the basic industry of all civilized life,
+farming, and woman's service in the farm home. We now generally place
+our farm houses far apart from each other, and we have usually but one
+house on the place and that for the owner and his family. We have no
+adequate provisions by which the seasonal nature of agricultural work
+can be so arranged by ingenious dovetailing with other forms of labor
+as to furnish an all-the-year employment to men who wish to marry and
+bring up families and yet do not own but work upon farms. We have few
+means for easing the burdens of household labor for the farmer's wife,
+and hence the larger the farm, the more property it represents, the
+more men laborers it demands for the owner's successful conduct of the
+business, the more unbearable the pressure upon health, strength,
+time, and energy of the woman who is the farmer's helpmate. These are
+some of the fundamental reasons for the drift away from farm life to
+the cities and the towns, a drift seen to be ominous and if not
+checked socially destructive of national prosperity when the Great War
+forced us to take account of social conditions in the United States
+more seriously than ever before.
+
+The girls of the farms want to go away from home to find easier work
+than their mother's kitchens afford quite as much as do the boys who
+wish to get away from the summer drudgery and the winter dulness of
+the isolated farmstead; and now the girls can get away easily and
+often do. It is the lack of workers to adequately aid those in command
+of agricultural life which is more than all things else the difficulty
+that must be faced, wrestled with, and overcome if we would keep
+adequate numbers on the farms. The effect of the drift away from the
+country upon general family life is too evidently bad to need any
+intensive statement here. The congestion of cities, the street life of
+children which makes legal offenses of acts natural and necessary to
+free play, the walking of city streets by armies of unemployed fathers
+and those who might be fathers while harvests are lost for want of
+laborers, the lack of food in one stratum of society while in another
+there are no people to eat what nature provides so abundantly--all
+this and more rises in the mind of everyone who understands that in
+the right adjustment of agriculture to the people's needs lies the
+best interests of all. The sorry picture of the haggard woman, widow,
+deserted, or divorced, scrubbing on her knees all night long the
+marble floors of a vast office-building, to hurry back to her
+locked-in children in the early morning hours, to fall exhausted on
+the bed until the call of the alarm clock to get breakfast and send
+the little ones to school--this picture has been portrayed often to
+Consumer's League and Women's Club audiences and has made many women
+of position and of influence call for drastic prohibition of such
+overwork of mothers. It has also made women work diligently until they
+secured forms of help from the public purse to subsidize such mothers
+and give them state aid until the children were able to earn something
+for themselves. There are many who can visualize that scrubwoman, and
+who can place beside her as needing social aid the sewing-machine
+operator, the garment-finisher or the flower-maker in the tenement
+sweatshop, who can not see that the farm-house mother is often
+subjected to labor conditions that sap life and health and doom her
+children to weakness. These opposite poles of woman's work both call
+for better social understanding and more intelligent and devoted
+social work. The scrubwoman, or the poverty-bound tenement worker may
+be proper subjects for public or private philanthropy; the farm-house
+mother is or should be the prime object of social justice and social
+engineering for ends of social well-being. Upon the farmer and his
+wife and also upon the miner and his wife and the forest worker and
+his wife rest the very foundations of economic stability and
+industrial security. Those who procure at first hand the raw material
+of manufacture and of commerce are too precious to social order for
+any neglect of conditions in their work. In many foreign countries the
+land seems to shrink dangerously as population grows. In our vast
+country and in the stretches of Canada, North America seems, as Lowell
+said, to have "room beside her hearth for all mankind." And yet, in
+New York City and in other centres of population, there are swarms of
+people, many of them of foreign birth, of varying races and of
+different nationalities, crowding each other to suffocation and many
+of them holding out hands for charity, who might, if rightly aided
+toward a different environment, work to full support of themselves and
+their families in the fresh air and healthful surroundings of the
+country. The need is to transfer city advantages to the country in far
+greater extent, and to transfer the people who cannot find or make a
+human chance in the city to the wide spaces and work needs of the
+country. Rural life must be urbanized, city life must be relieved of
+those who hinder the making of a beautiful and noble civic life, not
+because they are incapable but because there are too many of them who
+have not yet arrived at full capacity for vocational achievement and
+cannot do so in the crowd with which they have to contend.
+
+=Domestic Help and Family Life.=--For the relief of family life in the
+matter of domestic help there must be an intelligent and an earnest
+attack of educated women upon the problems involved. The admirable
+suggestions of Professor Lucy Salmon in her _Democracy in the
+Household_[16] indicate the chief difficulty in getting and keeping
+the right sort of domestic worker. The personal relation is not that
+of equals but of superior to inferior, and the helper in the home is
+isolated socially from the group he or she serves. This is felt
+peculiarly in cases where but one helper is employed within the
+household. The petition of many housewives recently sent to Washington
+to beg that "the restriction upon immigration now in force may be
+lifted in the case of women who seek to enter the United States to
+engage in domestic labor" on the ground of a household need, dire and
+widespread, is an indication that many women, perhaps most, look
+forward to a continuance of the present conditions of domestic work
+but with ever-new sets of domestic workers from other lands. Their
+attitude in this particular is wholly mistaken. Even if the races from
+all the ends of the earth should one by one troop through the kitchens
+of American housewives, most of them would not stay long enough to
+even learn how to do good work in those kitchens. The first chance
+they got the factory or shop or even the canning shed or the open
+field of harvest would take them away. And this is not because the
+work in the home is too hard, or the room and food not so good as
+elsewhere, but because domestic service is the last stronghold of
+aristocracy and no one brought in touch with democratic ideas will
+long accept it. Miss Salmon's ideas, if carried out, would stay the
+rapidity of the current away from domestic service. But a quite new
+approach to the whole problem must be defined and realized by women of
+light and leading if we would have adequate and efficient help In
+household work. The fact that most professional or business women find
+it far easier to get good help where but one domestic worker is kept,
+than do most women who have no outside duties, gives one key to the
+situation. As one woman of character and education far above that of
+most household workers said, "I do housework for Mrs. So and So, for
+she teaches and there is a reason why she needs help. I would not take
+a place where there were women in the family who could do the
+housework themselves perfectly well and wait upon them."
+
+The absurd hypocrisy that in one breath praises all work done for the
+comfort of the family as the highest form of service and in the next
+demands that the family "servant" accept all manner of inherited
+insignia of social inferiority must be outgrown. In the city and
+suburban towns the hour-service and the various forms of commercial
+aids to household tasks may work, as has been before indicated, to
+gradually do away with the servant class, in the old sense of those
+words and without much social consciousness of the change. In the
+small towns and in the rural districts, where is now the most acute
+suffering and need of housemothers, there must be a conscious and a
+wholesale movement to reinstate domestic service on a plane compatible
+with democracy and amenable to high standards of intelligence and
+efficiency. When one thinks of the rural need for teachers, for
+nurses, for doctors, for kindergartners, for recreation managers, for
+community leaders, one is tempted to call for a social conscription
+that shall make all graduates from normal and teacher-training
+schools, from all schools for social work, and all hospitals, from all
+playground classes and settlements, serve for a period of one year or
+two in the country districts as their part in social organization.
+Surely if a government has the moral right to force youth to serve in
+war for purposes of destruction of enemies, it has a right to compel
+youth to serve in peace for purposes of human conservation and for the
+just sharing of social advantages by all the people of a common
+country!
+
+=The Application of Democratic Principles to Life.=--Finally, the
+problems which inhere in work as related to the family have at their
+base the same great demand for equality of educational and economic
+opportunities which inhere in all that relates to the application of
+democratic principles to actual living. This is not an essay on
+economic theory or a statement of the results of special studies of
+economic condition. Still less is it an attempt to make an appeal for
+one or another type of economic reform. It is simply a partial view of
+certain work conditions as they come closest to family life. There is
+to this writer no more merit or demerit in any form of economic
+dogmatism than in any special theologic creed. We may all differ, and
+with reasons sufficient to our thought and without blame, on questions
+of how we can best attain a true democratization of the industrial
+order. We cannot now be of two minus as to the righteousness of such
+democratization. We must all believe in giving all human beings a fair
+chance at the best things of life; security against want, homes that
+offer conditions for family well-being, educational entrance into our
+common social inheritance, and leisure to enjoy the things that make
+for happiness. The baptism of religious idealism by the social spirit
+is now accomplished. As Dr. Walter Rauschenbusch, that great prophet
+of a new social order, well says in his last thought-compelling book,
+"The social gospel has become orthodox."
+
+=Women Must be More Democratic.=--Women have been so long held within
+family interests that they, less than men, have had the discipline of
+democratic life within the labor world. They are often the vicarious
+expressions of man's remaining aristocratic feeling, as Veblen has
+acutely outlined in his _Theory of the Leisure Class_. Husbands still
+wish their wives to be more "select" than they find it wise longer to
+be themselves and more tenacious of inherited conventional forms than
+business or inclination longer allow for themselves. Hence, women have
+not, as a rule, organized their households on as democratic principles
+and methods as men have organized their own work. Women, now that they
+have attained the democratic position in the state which they have
+long worked for must apply the principles they have preached in that
+crusade for political equality in the very stronghold of social caste
+and rigid class-feeling, the family life itself. And even if they have
+to educate their husbands in the process.
+
+Woman may do this, first, by wiping out and forever the stigma that
+attaches or has attached to any woman who earns money outside her own
+home. They may do it, second, by so relating themselves to
+professional, clerical, manual workers among their own sex as to show
+that they really believe in equality of rights and mutuality of duties
+among all classes. They may do it, third, by taking hold of the
+household service problem radically and from the basis of actual
+knowledge of its importance to personal and family well-being. They
+may show actual regard for the dignity of the functions implied, by
+the treatment accorded the competent, faithful, and often
+indispensable domestic helper. There is a big social job waiting for
+women in matters concerning the work of their own sex both within and
+without the family circle; and the social power of women will be best
+shown, perhaps, in settling the worst problems of domestic service by
+the wiser and more efficient use of better educated, more socially
+respected, and more definitely standardized workers within the home.
+
+=The Social Effect of Trade Unions.=--No study of the relation of
+modern industry to family life, however brief and inadequate, can
+ignore the question, "How has the Trade Union organization of
+wage-earners affected the home?" The immediate and direct effect has
+often been disastrous when strikes and lockouts marked the course of
+industrial warfare. All war is bad for family life and especially
+injurious to the development of children. And economic war lacks the
+appeal to the imagination and the ceremonial prestige of war between
+nations or of civil war in one country. We have had in our
+race-experience for untold ages the linking of military training with
+military defence of political ideas and of the fatherland. To fight
+for one's country seems highly honorable. This lift of the sense of
+community unity into the area of supreme struggle gives to men often
+what no other experience so far accomplishes, namely, a feeling of
+spiritual union with all other men who also struggle for what they
+believe to be right. In labor wars; in the strife between employer and
+employed, that sense of race unity even when struggling against a
+national enemy, that which gives what Professor James well called the
+"mystic element in militarism," is lacking. It is a fight between men
+who have and those who have not and feel themselves defrauded of just
+due. Hence, although the fight may be bitter even unto death, and the
+sacrifices of immediate comfort for ultimate ends beyond measure
+heroic and even wise, there can be little of the pomp and circumstance
+that accompany national and international warfare. The Decoration Days
+when heroes of past conflicts are praised and receive from all the
+reverence which patriotism pays to those believed to have saved some
+precious inheritance from harm do not yet, perhaps will never, include
+heroes of labor struggles for equal right and mutual justice. Yet the
+history of industrial changes shows beyond cavil or doubt that in this
+field, as in others, he who would be free himself must win his
+freedom. The basic principle of the Trade Union, the right and
+usefulness of collective bargaining, inheres in the conditions of
+machine-dominated and capitalized industry. In this form of labor
+organization the individual worker cannot bargain individually; his
+place in the factory is too infinitesimal and his power measured by
+that of his employer too invisible for such personal alignment. This
+fact is now not questioned by any but those so enamoured of old
+methods of control of the worker by those who hire him that they
+cannot see what has really happened both to the employer and the
+employed. The labor struggle had to come. The right of workers to
+combine and to work together for what seems to them their best
+interests is as inherent a part of modern democratic ideals as is the
+right of all citizens to vote. And since modern industry has given
+enormous power to a few master leaders and requires so many
+wage-earners to carry out its enterprises the struggle has necessarily
+been hard and long. No one can justly place all good behavior on one
+or the other side in this conflict. No one can fail to see that power
+attained by the Trade Unions has at times been used as selfishly as
+the power of the employers has been. But when we remember that until
+the first quarter of the nineteenth century combinations of workmen,
+even to respectfully ask an increase of wages or a bettering of work
+conditions in lessening of hours and in sanitary and moral provisions
+in work-places, was legally a "conspiracy," and liable to harsh
+punishments, we must be glad that at any temporary cost the main army
+of laborers has been organized from a mob of oppressed individual
+workers. But what a cost to the family has been often paid! Mothers
+already overworked and under-nourished still further starved by the
+"strike relief" that only serves to maintain wretchedness, not to
+abolish it. The sufferings of children who miss even the meagre family
+comfort which the too small pay of the father when at work was able to
+supply. The greater suffering of children shunned and ill-treated by
+school mates when the father is called a "scab." The deeper tragedy of
+experience of men who take work that their labor comrades have refused
+because of the claim of wife and children, and are abused, both in
+body and in denial of sympathy and respect, because they are thought
+to be traitors to their striking fellows. What is hinted at in these
+few words could be made into one of the great dramas of the ages if
+only the social imagination could take into understanding and show
+without partiality both sides of the picture. The time may come when
+it will be seen that in all wars some heroes fall on the side that is
+called wrong and have right to meed of deferred praise. When that time
+comes, the history of labor conflicts will show that in the struggle
+between the father's duty to his children and the wife who shares his
+service to them, and his duty toward the democratizing of labor by
+force of battle for justice and a fair chance for all his class,
+heroes and martyrs have fallen on both sides of the line. Meanwhile,
+the encouraging thing is that Labor Commissions and permanent Boards
+of Investigation and Arbitration and many government devices for
+securing a more even justice all around the circle of wage-earning
+activity are increasing in evidence as a sign that we are on the way
+to bring the common need for peace and order in industry to bear upon
+its warring elements. It only needs that the great consuming public,
+the final and the worst sufferer when labor wars are waged, shall
+understand and use its overmastering social power to bring order out
+of the chaos of opposing interests.
+
+=Women's Trade Unions.=--The entrance of women into the Trade Union
+field is a significant feature of modern industry. Denied in many
+men's Unions the right of membership and in many fields of work
+competing only with those of their own sex, yet obviously in need of
+the same declaration of rights and the same class support of each
+other in securing better conditions of labor that men realized before
+them, the Women's Trade Union members have much the same spirit and
+many of the same methods that men have used in similar bodies. They,
+as a rule, stand, however, for more protective legislation for women
+than men demand for themselves and have one element unique in such
+bodies. That element is the membership within Women's Trade Unions of
+women of social position, of financial security and even of wealth and
+of broadest culture. These women who join the Trade Union League not
+to benefit their own class, which is usually the professional or the
+employing class, but to help wage-earning women to better conditions,
+have often been the laboring oar in the organization and maintenance
+of such Unions. Nothing analogous to this is found in the Men's Trade
+Union movement in the United States. It bears witness to two elements,
+one that women of the so-called privileged classes are growing very
+sensitive to the claims of social justice as these are related to
+wage-earning women, and the other that the average age of wage-earning
+women is so much younger than that of men employed in similar work
+that the need for help from without in any effective effort for relief
+from bad conditions is more apparent. The transitory character of much
+of women's work makes the permanent personnel of any Trade Union
+League of women a smaller minority of its membership than in the case
+of men. It is said that in any trade where both the men and the women
+are well organized the membership of the men's Union will be fairly
+stable for twenty years, that of the women's Union will show a radical
+change each five years, making almost a complete turn-over in the
+twenty years' count. That is, of course, due to the fact that most
+women use for wage-earning only the period between leaving school and
+marrying, usually about four and a half years. That makes the term
+"working-girls" most appropriate and is a contrast to the working
+man's longer hold upon his trade.
+
+=The New Solidarity of Women.=--The fact that women of all types of
+social advantage and disadvantage are already linked together in the
+Women's Trade Union movement, has, however, deep social significance,
+especially as wage-earners' organizations relate themselves to family
+life. No woman who has had right opportunities for education and
+family life in her own experience can work in intimate comradeship
+with those who have been denied such advantages without aiming
+directly for social arrangements in labor which will no longer cheat
+any young life of its joy, its culture, or chance for its possibility
+of right relation in the home. The signs are full of hope that more
+and more members of each class will feel that society as a whole has
+claims upon them above all that any group may attain by working only
+for its own advantage. No law of justice will stand the test of time
+save that which ordains an order in which "Each for All, and All for
+Each" will be the rule in industry as in the nobler state!
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS
+
+  1. What is most important to the success of the modern family, a
+     minimum wage for working women or a minimum wage for men which
+     can supply decent living for a man, his wife, and at least
+     three children?
+
+  2. What effect has the wage-earning of married women and mothers
+     in gainful employments outside the home had upon the stability
+     and happiness of the family?
+
+  3. What effect have the laws protecting women and children in
+     industry had upon family life?
+
+  4. What effect would the proposed increase of legislation placing
+     men and women, married and single women, and unionized and
+     non-unionized labor upon an identical legal plane be likely to
+     have upon family life? As, for example, in the case of
+     "deserting husbands," or in work especially inimical to women's
+     health?
+
+  5. How can the admitted evil of industrial exploitation of
+     children be best and most surely prevented?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[16] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for January, 1912.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL
+
+  "To prepare us for complete living is the function which education
+  has to discharge, and we judge the value of any training solely by
+  reference to this end. For complete living we must know in what
+  way to treat the body, in what way to treat the mind, in what way
+  to manage our affairs, in what way to bring up a family, in what
+  way to behave as a citizen, in what way to utilize those sources
+  of happiness which Nature supplies, and how to use all our
+  faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and of
+  others."--HERBERT SPENCER.
+
+  "The final value of all institutions is their educational
+  influence; they are measured morally by the occasions they afford
+  and the guidance they supply for the exercise of foresight,
+  judgment, seriousness of consideration, and depth of
+  regard."--JOHN DEWEY.
+
+
+  "Socialized education has four aims:
+
+  First. That the pupil shall acquire control of tools and methods
+          of social intercourse,--language, number, social forms and
+          conventions.
+
+  Second. That the pupil shall be favorably introduced to society
+          through acquaintance with science, arts, literature, and
+          through participation in present social life.
+
+  Third. That the pupil shall be trained for an occupation.
+
+  Fourth. That the motives of his conduct, his own individually
+          appreciated and chosen ends, shall be intelligently
+          socialized."--GEORGE ALBERT COE.
+
+  "The unbeliever says, 'You can never construct a true society out
+  of foolish, sick, selfish men and women as we know them to be.'
+  But the believer sees already a better state beginning to exist in
+  men transfigured by the power of education. And there is nothing
+  that man will not overcome, amend, and convert until at last
+  culture shall absorb, chaos itself."--EMERSON.
+
+  "At the present time it may be that only the least effort is
+  needed in order that truths already revealed to us should spread
+  among hundreds, thousands, millions of men and women and a public
+  opinion become established in conformity with the existing
+  conscience and the entire social organization become transformed.
+  It depends upon us to make the effort."--TOLSTOI.
+
+
+=New Forms of Education Demanded by Modern Industry.=--When the
+power-driven machine ushered in the new era in industry it lessened
+both the prestige and the dignity of the individual worker in three
+particulars. First, it destroyed the apprentice system and hence
+reduced all workers to a level in the eyes of the employer of labor
+and the general public. The apprentice system had used for educational
+purposes the important period of adolescence between childhood and
+youth. It had served with its ceremonial of entrance into the
+journeyman's right and public recognition to give distinction to the
+skilled workman, and it had made a nexus of social relationship, built
+upon craftsmanship, between those of the same and those of varying
+trades and occupations. In the second place, the handicraft system had
+given a distinct political right and power to skilled workmen. The
+craftsmen, and the burghers of cities who represented them, had to be
+called upon by kings and nobles to give assent to wars and to furnish
+the sinews of war after the Guilds had gained money-power. And there
+has as yet developed in modern government no substitute for this older
+and more direct political appeal to individuals, through their work,
+to make the vote alluring to the imagination of modern laborers. In
+the third place, the transition from the feudal law of personal
+service from each class to each class above to the tax system of
+modern times, whereby a citizen pays his dues to society in cash
+instead of in such personal service, took place in the era of
+handicraft and was so bound up with the apprentice system and the
+Guild organization that the connection between labor and public right
+and duty was obvious and definite. We feel that it is an advance in
+political development when a man, and now a woman, also, gains the
+franchise directly as a human being without regard to social station
+or vocational approach to life. But when in any country the franchise
+is on simply human grounds and the economic life is founded on class
+distinctions, and class distinctions as wide and deep as those which
+modern industry makes between employer and employed in the great
+divisions of manufacture and the provision of raw material for that
+manufacture, the human basis of the body politic is blurred.
+
+When the socially bad effects of the decay of the apprentice system
+were recognized, and the need for some new forms of distinction
+between the skilled and the unskilled in labor was understood, there
+was a movement to introduce into the school system a substitute for
+that older form of craft-training. The first Manual Training High
+School marked that movement. The starting of Trade Schools in
+connection with certain large industrial plants or groups of plants
+signally demonstrated an effort to reinstate skill as a distinction of
+those who had acquired it. The pioneer work of such educators as Dr.
+Felix Adler in the Ethical Culture School of New York, at first called
+the Workingman's School, to introduce manual training and some
+definite use of handicraft processes for educational purposes in the
+grade schools, and thus make a logical connection with the
+Kindergarten, was a striking example of the new sense of need for a
+new education to fit the new industrial situation. The Kindergarten
+itself, with its response to the natural desire of childhood to make
+things and to do things and to act together in the play rehearsal of
+activities of later life, was a testimony that the school was to be
+called upon from henceforth to do what in the older time was done
+within the home and to do it better than the home had succeeded in
+doing.
+
+The connection between these movements in education and the family
+well-being must be clear to all. Anything that lessens the dignity and
+power of the worker lessens the ability of the average man to be a
+competent and successful father; just as anything that lessens the
+dignity and power of the worker or makes him seem but a machine for
+others to use in building up industrial organization lessens his
+influence in the political order. The importance to the family and to
+the state of the elements of education which are aimed at reinstating
+standards of skill and recognition of superior ability in the
+industrial field, by the school, can not, therefore, be overestimated.
+
+=Education a Social Process.=--These elements are attempts to
+socialize education. We say that education is a process in the
+development of human personality. So it is, but it is also a process
+by which individuals are fitted for serviceableness to the group life.
+
+Education is not now for the first time "socialized" because we now
+theorize upon its social function in a new way. Each group of people,
+in each phase of social relationship, aims to express and to
+perpetuate, through the training of the oncoming generations, the
+ideals, the customs, and the institutional forms deemed by them
+necessary and desirable. The educative process is indeed a personal
+one, teacher acting upon pupil directly to secure individualized
+results; but it has always been socially determined, both in purpose
+and in method, by the group "mores" and the group needs.[17] The
+family has been called "the first and primitive school," but hardly
+with accuracy; since, although the family is the first agency to begin
+the educative process, what each family has demanded in loyalty and in
+activity from each child has been determined, since the beginning of
+social organization, by what the group of which that family was a part
+had accepted as the right and useful end of child-training. The
+limitations of the family, therefore, in early as in later education,
+have been as marked as its powers, as has been well shown by Doctor
+Todd in his book, _The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency_.
+
+=The Three Learned Professions.=--When there were but three learned
+professions, law, medicine, and theology, and the man of action,
+soldier or ruler, thought lightly of them all in comparison with his
+own field of activity, the higher education could be limited to those
+of selected classes. Now the social need is for trained talent in a
+far broader area, and the consequence is that not only is the
+grade-school being made over but the professional goal of college and
+university is being extended beyond the dreams of old pedagogues. When
+physical, economic, and social sciences were born they gradually
+demanded a place in the educational system from top to bottom of the
+line. The study disciplines they introduced, at first by apology of
+the cultured, and later by open response to a social demand for
+leadership in a vastly wider range of activity than was known when
+colleges first came to be, have attained a higher and higher position
+until now the various degrees which aim to differentiate the type of
+social usefulness for which the student is prepared are for the most
+part on a par with each other.
+
+=New Calls for Trained Leadership.=--This pressure of the new
+subject-matter of education from the top down, and the pressure from
+the bottom up of the new ideals in methods of training of the
+child-mind, have made an educational ferment which has often given
+confusion of aim and ineffectiveness of accomplishment, but both mean
+educational advance and educational advance in obedience to new
+conceptions of common social need. All this movement in the
+educational world has a direct and immediate influence upon family
+life. What was good in the old domestic training for individual
+life-work we are trying to put into the school, and what is needed for
+skill and leadership in the modern industrial order we are trying to
+put into the college and university. This means not only that the
+family rule is less deferred to in the education of even the youngest
+child, it also means that if we would save the family influence in
+education we must bring the parents and teachers together in council
+and in united control as never before. This is being attempted; the
+Mothers' Club and the Parent-Teacher Associations now in evidence
+being impressive symbols of a larger social movement through books,
+pamphlets, magazines, reports, and "Foundations," together with clubs
+of more general social type. The value of the Trade Unions and of
+other special forms of organization of workers in the matter of
+securing rights and opportunities in the labor world has been alluded
+to, but the definite educational value of such class organizations
+must not be ignored. It is true that there is a loss of emphasis upon
+skill and good workmanship in much of the modern Trade Union influence
+as compared with the Guild ranking of older craft-unions, but there
+is a type of education for citizenship which, with all its crudity and
+coarseness of ideal, inheres in the Trade Union as in few other
+organizations. To emphasize class feeling, it is said, is to work
+against democracy. True, but to have a political system in which one
+class is ignored, as "hands," not heads, is still more detrimental to
+democratic government. The class consciousness of the worker was
+strong in the days when the Guilds had political power, and it was a
+wholesome check upon the claim of divine right of kings and nobles to
+rule. The class consciousness of wage-earners is needed in modern
+times and should have its due representation in halls of legislation
+where it could meet naturally, in healthful competition and debate,
+the class consciousness already there in the persons of employers of
+labor and managers of legal interests of great corporations. The
+education that will finally unite in better understood cooeperation all
+class interests in public well-being is to be found in such use of the
+school as will show how we are all bound together in industry, as in
+the political body; in work as in voting power. That education which,
+with more or less intelligence and with deeper or more shallow
+understanding, society is now working toward will make the home life
+more secure as well as the state more united.
+
+=The Special Education of Girls.=--The application of new educational
+ideals and methods to the training of girls and young women is of
+first-rate importance in the matter of home relationship to the
+school. And this is the case not only because there are far more women
+than men at work in carrying out those ideals and methods in the
+schools but because if there is to be made valid and useful, conscious
+and definite, union of school and home in one educational approach to
+childhood it must be largely through the mothers and women-teachers
+that such union can be effected. The reasons for this are too obvious
+to require explanation.
+
+There are those who believe that there is no question of
+sex-differences in education, that all that is needed is to open all
+educational opportunities to boys and girls alike and give both
+precisely the same instruction. There are also those who still believe
+that some varying elements of child-training and the instruction of
+youth should be retained and further developed in the case of boys
+and girls. Some basic facts must be in mind when we attempt to answer
+the question, Shall we try for somewhat divergent schooling for the
+two sexes?
+
+First of all, we must remember that we have inherited the fruits of a
+long race-experience in which men and women were for the most part so
+separated from, each other in functioning that the education of boys
+and girls was made wholly unlike after sex-differentiation began, and
+sometimes, as in Sparta, before that period. The difference in ideal
+and in method of training was not, as some have said, that "boys were
+trained for human and socialized work" and "girls were fitted for
+personal and generally menial service alone." Both were trained for
+personal character and for social ends. The men were tied to the land,
+and the political order, and the family responsibility for parenthood,
+and some distinct personal service in behalf of the group life, as
+were the women. The difference, the tremendous difference, was this:
+that the service demanded of men, whatever their part or lot might be,
+was early seen to require a definite schooling for some particular
+vocation, demanding some measure of intellectual concentration and
+technical skill; while the service demanded of women was supposed to
+be of a nature requiring only general apprenticeship within the family
+life. The specialization of labor, as is often shown, took from that
+family apprenticeship of women, one by one, its vocational elements of
+manual work until the housemother seemed to need only that general
+ability which can quickly and wisely use the fruits of others' expert
+knowledge and technical training. It as surely added for men, in every
+division of vocational alignment, an increasing differentiation of
+training and of labor. The reaction upon the educative process of this
+specialization and organization of industrial and institutional life
+has been distinct and far-reaching. The girls were left to the
+experiential apprenticeship of the family, since they were not counted
+as citizens. Even the ancient education of boys was in comparison
+formal and definite, having at its core the group loyalties which
+united them in patriotic devotion to "the collectivity that owned them
+all." When, again, the peaceful industries which women had started in
+their primitive Jack-at-all-trades economic service to the family and
+clan life needed organization into separate callings of agriculture
+manufacture and commerce, and primitive means of transportation had to
+be perfected for interchange of products between nation and nation,
+women were again left out of control of the processes which man's
+organizing genius set in motion. Hence, neither political nor
+industrial changes in the social order gave to popular thought any
+conception of the need for sending girls to school. In point of fact,
+as we need often to be reminded, the fine talk about an educated
+common people referred for the most part to boys alone until near the
+middle of the nineteenth century. All that women needed to know it was
+believed "came by nature." Much of it did come by imitation and
+unconscious absorption, aided by the occasional better training of
+exceptionally able and fortunate women; but the general illiteracy of
+women was both a personal handicap and a social poverty. It is not
+true, however, as some have said, that women have been "left out of
+the human race" and have had to "break in" to man's more highly
+organized life in order to taste civilization. Men and women have
+stood too close in affection, girls too often "took after their
+fathers," the family, even under the despotic rule of men, bound all
+other social institutions to itself too vitally for the sexes to be
+wholly separated in thought and activity. Even when most women had to
+make a cross instead of signing their names on official documents and
+could not have passed the fourth-grade examinations of a modern
+school, they often became truly cultured and by reason of the very
+demands of family and group life upon them. The reason most women were
+denied formal school training so long after such denial became
+actively injurious to the family and group life was because the
+popular conviction still held that the most useful service which women
+could render the state did not require, would even find inimical to
+its best exercise, the kind of schooling which had been developed to
+fit boys for "a man's part in the world."
+
+=Formal School Training of Women New.=--When the principle of
+democracy began to work in women's natures with an irrepressible yeast
+of revolt against longer denial of opportunity for individual
+achievement, and the vitally necessary and too-long-delayed "woman's
+rights movement" was born, its first pressure was against the closed
+doors of the "man-made" school. Enlightened women now demanded equal
+chance with men for preparation for vocations. The school they sought
+to enter was inherited from a past in which not only sex lines but
+class lines held the opportunities of higher education for a small
+clique. The ancient college and university did indeed lead towards
+vocations, but only the three "learned professions" and general
+training for commanding leadership in state and industrial affairs.
+When physical, economic, and social sciences were born the study
+disciplines they introduced into higher education appeared in answer
+to an imperious social demand that leadership should be provided in a
+vastly more varied range than the older civilization required. At
+first the leaders in the higher education of women, like all _nouveaux
+riche_, showed determination to prove themselves adept in the
+traditions of the scholastic world into which they had so recently
+entered. Classic curricula were strictly adhered to and all
+"practical" courses viewed with open distrust except those leading to
+the inherited professions, and to teaching, as these were pushed
+upward toward college professorships. Happily, however, almost
+coincident with the entrance of women into larger educational
+opportunity came the broadening of that educational opportunity itself
+to which reference has been made; and the marvelous growth of the
+State Universities in the United States rapidly increased both the
+more varied vocational stimuli and the wider preparation for
+leadership now opening in our country for women as for men.
+
+=New Training for Social Service.=--Two movements have resulted from
+the widening of the field of higher education, movements not yet
+recognized at their full social value, but already showing immense
+influence both upon the vocational alignment of trained women and upon
+the courses of study in colleges and universities. These two movements
+are, first, so to improve the social environment as to make average
+normal life more easily and generally accessible to the requirements
+for human well-being; and, secondly, the movement to put the social
+treatment, ameliorative and preventive, of abnormal or undeveloped
+life, under scientific direction. When it was discovered that to lose
+in death one baby out of every three born, to prematurely age or kill
+mothers in a hopeless endeavor to make good that waste, to leave the
+majority of the human race the helpless prey of preventable disease,
+poverty, feeble-mindedness, vice, and crime, was to show lack of
+rational social consciousness and effective social control, then it
+speedily became a recognized social duty to provide schools, both
+higher and lower in grade, which might do something to lessen
+ignorance and increase knowledge in the practical arts of race culture
+and of social organization for common human welfare. This conviction
+led on one side to the introduction of courses of study in
+universities, colleges, normal, high, and even some elementary
+schools, which had bearing upon management of sanitation, food supply,
+housing, street control, recreation, economic reform, social
+engineering in politics, and kindred agencies for social betterment.
+It led on the other side to the attempt to make the office of the
+philanthropist a vocation, for which definite training and
+standardized compensation must be provided. So rapidly have these two
+elements of applied social science invaded the vocational field that
+to-day, outside of general and special teaching, they draw the
+majority of women seeking professional careers into work directly
+leading to social and personal betterment. A few women became lawyers,
+doctors, ministers, and now aspire to political leadership; but for
+the most part women are true to their sex-heritage now that they have
+a chance to choose and fit for their work. The nurture of child-life,
+the moral safeguarding of youth, the care of the aged, the weak, the
+wayward, and the undeveloped--these, which have been their special
+tasks since society began to be rational and humane, are still their
+main business in the more complex situations of modern life.
+
+=Departments of Household Economics in Colleges.=--When the
+departments of household economics were added to college courses they
+were hailed on one side as a needed attempt to "make the higher
+education fit women for wifehood and motherhood;" and on the other
+side they were opposed as a base concession to conservative views of
+woman's position, and as leading toward a lowering of standards in
+women's higher education. They were, and are, neither of these. The
+college courses in subjects related to the scientific improvement of
+human beings and their environment are courses leading toward new
+vocational specialties, which the newly outlined science of
+race-culture demands. Women who excel in these specialties do so as
+paid functionaries and are oftener unmarried than married. Nor are
+these studies limited to feminine students, although far more women
+than men choose them. The interrelation of the present social order by
+which a milk or a water supply has to do with "big business" and with
+law, and "a garbage can is a metal utensil entirely surrounded by
+politics," requires some knowledge of these things on the part of men;
+especially if they are to be "heckled" in political campaigns by women
+voters. There are, to be sure, now outlined school training
+"departments of homemaking" intended to help individual women in their
+work in private homes, but such departments are generally of the
+nature of "extension courses." Regular college courses, especially
+those of four years and leading to a special degree, in household
+economics, as in other groups of studies, lead directly toward a
+vocational career, standardized and salaried, related to general
+social organization, and subject to the "factory" tendencies of the
+modern industrial order. Students in such courses, generally speaking,
+graduate either to teach household arts in schools and extension work,
+or to take positions as expert dietitians, managers of hospitals and
+other public institutions, directors of laundries and restaurants, as
+trained nurses, assistants or directors in chemical laboratories,
+architects, interior decorators, landscape gardeners, and what not.
+All these specialties are essential to social progress, and all are
+linked to family life in general, but none of them is particularly
+related to any one family group of one father, one mother, and their
+children. They, therefore, while tending to make family life in
+general far more successful than of old, fit no woman surely for
+wifehood and motherhood; and they cannot do so unless omniscient
+social wisdom can tell in advance what girls will marry and have
+children and social control becomes despotic enough to oblige such
+girls to take these courses in preference to any others; or unless
+society returns to its old drastic compulsion for all to marry and
+bear active part in the race-life as parents.
+
+=Society Now Based upon Man's Economic Leadership.=--Any study of the
+needs of the family in relation to the school, especially in relation
+to the tax-supported, free, and compulsory educational system, must
+take account of two outstanding facts: namely, first, that the whole
+arrangement of society as we have inherited its condition is based
+upon the economic leadership of the husband and father in the home
+partnership. This continues to be the rule even in social strata
+where the sense of justice gives both parties a common purse and where
+finest quality of affection and of comradeship makes it a negligible
+matter which one makes the larger contribution to the united treasury.
+
+=Women Socially Drafted for Motherhood.=--The second fact which must
+have its recognition in any study of education in relation to the
+family, is that no married woman is exempt from all demands of
+motherhood unless some "selective draft," more delicate in its
+evaluation than any we have yet evolved, shall indicate her right to
+exemption, and that if marriage is to continue on anything like its
+present basis commonplace women cannot have all its advantages without
+paying some adequate price.
+
+=Father-office and Mother-office Still Differ.=--We are now in the
+midst of a social order in which the father-office and the
+mother-office do differ essentially in their requirements in the vast
+majority of families. The father-office leads directly toward
+specialization and achievement in some one calling. To be a good
+father is, in ordinary family conditions, not so much to give constant
+personal attention to his children as to do something well which the
+world wants done and will pay for and by which he may maintain and
+improve the economic and social standing of his family. To "give
+hostages to fortune in wife and child" may, indeed often does, hamper
+a man's idealistic relation to his vocation and oblige him to work for
+money when he wants to work for fame or for higher usefulness, but it
+serves almost always to keep him steady to his job. For the average
+mother this is not the case. Where there is a family of children more
+than large enough to make good the parent's share in life's ongoing
+stream, or where physical, mental, or moral peculiarities demand
+special attention to one child or more, or where aged, delicate, or
+incompetent members of the family circle call for special
+consideration, or where the environment does not provide, or the
+income cannot pay for elaborate aids to domestic comfort from without,
+the average conscientious housemother must give the best of strength
+and the most of time in the service of the private family for many
+years of life. That is to say, getting a group of children up to adult
+independence and saving the community most of the intimate duties of
+care of the aged and of the weak, while it calls upon the man-head of
+the family for greater activity in his special line, calls upon the
+woman-head of the family for a general and personal service as a
+primary duty. This puts any vocational specialty she has chosen in a
+secondary place while the family obligation is most pressing. The
+result of this obvious fact is that the average woman does still have
+a double choice to make when marriage offers; a choice for or against
+the man, and a choice for or against her vocation. In proportion as
+women are highly educated or industrially trained they have been
+pressed toward some one calling for which they can be definitely
+prepared and in which they may hope to rise in personal achievement
+and in financial compensation. On the other hand, marriage and
+motherhood appeal to the deepest instincts of human nature; and if the
+man seems worth it a woman will generally risk vocational impediment
+and awkwardness of economic adjustment for the sake of a congenial
+mate and children of her own.
+
+=Should the Education of Girls Include Special Attention to Family
+Claims?=--These facts indicate that social prudence must at least ask
+the question, Should not the education of girls include some distinct
+recognition of special problems to be met, often in acute experience
+of contrary currents of personal desire and social pressure, in the
+lives of young women? As has been shown in other connection what we
+are witnessing now in domestic life is the passing of the servant
+caste, of the ordinary "hired girl" and of the unpaid family drudge;
+not the eclipse of the housemother or the waning of the homemaker's
+power or charm. In this household change and in the demand that goes
+with it upon any woman who would have or make a home, and with clear
+understanding of the new responsibilities which the new freedom of
+women place upon them, certain fundamental principles should be held
+firmly in mind as we deal with special problems of adjustment created
+by new social situations. First of all, let us admit, and never cease
+to emphasize the fact, that the social education of women demands from
+now on the most scrupulous regard for the training of every normal
+girl for self-support. This cannot be too much emphasized. This is the
+only sure foundation for socially helpful sex-relationship and for
+that democratization of the family without which social progress is
+now impossible. The social education of women in general demands,
+also, the cultivation of domestic tastes and of some measure of
+household technic, not as a concession to the past, but as a safeguard
+of the future, in such fashion that the call to personal service of
+the family life may recall familiar and pleasant educational
+activities. These educational activities should precede those which
+tend directly toward vocational preparation for self-support. This
+point, too, is vital. The age when almost all little girls like to do
+things which concern the family comfort is from the eighth to the
+fourteenth year, a period too young for proper vocational drill. Then,
+when they are most likely to be ordered out of the kitchen if there is
+a paid cook to give the order, and most likely to be thought "in the
+way" if trying to help in domestic process of any sort, is the period
+of all others when to "learn by doing" what they are interested in
+will give them a background capable of easy adjustment to the later
+demands of family life. The training of boys of the same ages has an
+analogue in farming and handy use of common tools; and in the "work,
+play, and study school" boys and girls learn much together which fit
+both for mutual aid in the private family. The new education of the
+grade schools, therefore, is coming to the rescue of the housemother's
+task, as the high school and college have come to the aid of those who
+would provide vocational careers for women. They may meet in helpful
+alliance just as soon as a few social principles, which can make a
+bridge between them, are outlined and accepted.
+
+=Adjustment of Family Service and Vocational Work.=--First, most women
+should allow for marriage and maternity first place for the years
+socially required. Second, women cannot afford to lose entirely out of
+their married lives vocational discipline, by the use of leisure time
+left them by new easing of household service, even in odd jobs of
+unpaid "social work," as is now so much the custom. The very
+multiplicity and variety of ancient crafts practised in the home make
+some one activity, held to rules of specialization, essential to the
+housemother's development. The chosen vocation retained as an
+avocation, during the housemother's active service, must not, however,
+be a chief dependence for either her own or the family support lest
+the family or herself suffer. It must be in the nature of a leasehold
+upon her chosen career to be retaken for full occupancy as soon as the
+children are out of hand and she has begun to feel the call of empty
+hours to the old familiar task. This is not an impractical plan, as
+many women are proving by experience. And as has been previously
+demonstrated, society in the past has wasted the work-power of women
+past the childbearing age in more ruthless and stupid prodigality than
+any other of its treasures. Third, as has been before indicated,
+married women with young children must learn to combine in "team
+work," as they have never yet done, and to make engagements by two's
+or three's for the work one unmarried woman may take alone. This is
+especially called for in the great social task of teaching, "woman's
+organic office in the world," as Emerson called it. The evils charged
+against a "feminized school," where they really exist, are those due
+not so much to the sex of the grade-teachers as to the celibate
+condition in the "permanent supply" and to the too rapidly changing
+personnel of those who marry. The same suggested team work would
+operate well in all the higher professions; and the success of
+"continuation schools" proves that half-time and third-time labor
+schedules are perfectly feasible in manual work. The fourth social
+principle to be accepted in the interest of women and the family is
+one little perceived at the present time: namely, that which marks the
+limitations of social usefulness in the specialization of labor
+itself.
+
+=Dangers of Specialization in Professional Work.=--We are beginning to
+see that this process may be carried so far that a shallow and a cheap
+person may so fill the exacting and narrow routine of a specialty of
+manual work or professional service as to check ambition and power to
+achieve a full and rich personality. Last of all, the social
+principle, by which the claims of personality and the demands of
+social solidarity (now so entangled in friction) may work smoothly to
+individual and social well-being, the principle yet to be clearly
+outlined and helpfully applied, should receive interpretation and
+guidance through the race-experience of women. For that service the
+social education of women must be lifted to a far higher plane of
+intellectual and ethical culture. Deeper than all the problems which
+the booming of the guns of this world war has forced upon the dullest
+social consciousness is the question, How may the individual
+conscience and personal ideal of the spiritual elite be harmonized
+with, not destroyed by, the levelling process of democracy? Saints
+and sages have always marked out the pathway of the future. How can
+they still dower a common life pressed insistently toward uniformity
+of action? May it not be that human beings of the mother-sex who have
+paid and still must pay a price, one by one, for each single life, and
+who have at the same time always been held and still must be held as
+supreme upbuilders of the social fabric, shall lead the race toward
+the solution of this most spiritual problem of democracy? It is not,
+however, solely to make women better fitted for a dual role in social
+order and social progress that we are socializing education: men also
+must be better fitted to the tasks of social serviceableness within as
+truly as without the family. No one has doubted the claim of society
+upon man to be a useful worker and a competent manager of affairs in
+the world. Until lately, however, few have seen that, as the
+"Declaration of Eights and Duties" set forth in 1795 by those who
+willed the freedom of France, "No one is a good citizen if he is not a
+good son, a good father, a good brother, a good friend, a good
+husband." It has been enough for a man to be able to achieve something
+of value; his personal character has not been, held of such great
+moment throughout the ages of the past.
+
+Now we are beginning to demand that men be good in the sense they have
+long demanded that women shall be, and that women shall be strong in
+what they do as well as in what they are. This new demand strikes at
+the roots of what has been called the "social evil," but which is the
+most unsocial of all the pathological conditions of modern society.
+
+=The New Training in Sex-education.=--The need to have the right sort
+of fathers as well as fit mothers requires a new training in lines of
+sex-education. One of the most perplexing of all educational problems
+is how to give the needed training in this line in the best and most
+effective way. In the admirable volume on _Sex-Education_ written by
+Professor Maurice A. Bigelow, of Teachers College, Columbia
+University, a list of eight reasons for sex-instruction is given which
+are here quoted by permission:
+
+  1. Many people, especially in youth, need hygienic knowledge
+       concerning sexual processes as they affect personal health.
+
+  2. There is an alarming amount of the dangerous social diseases
+       which are distributed chiefly by the sexual promiscuity or
+       immorality of men.
+
+  3. The uncontrolled sexual passions of men have led to enormous
+       development of organized and commercialized prostitution.
+
+  4. There are living to-day tens of thousands of unmarried mothers
+       and illegitimate children, the result of the common
+       irresponsibility of men and the ignorance of women.
+
+  5. There is need of more general following of a definite moral
+       standard regarding sex-relationships.
+
+  6. There is a prevailing unwholesome attitude of mind concerning
+       all sexual processes.
+
+  7. There is very general misunderstanding of sexual life as
+       related to healthy and happy marriage.
+
+  8. There is need of eugenic responsibility for sexual actions that
+       concern future generations.
+
+To the propositions thus clearly stated all thoughtful students of
+family needs in education will give assent. This is not the place for
+specific treatment of prostitution and its effect upon the home, nor
+is it the place for a detailed statement of methods of sex-education
+and of social hygiene now advocated and beginning to show encouraging
+results in use. The simple statement must be made that if, as Spencer
+has said, one test of education is its ability to make men good
+husbands and fathers, the element of sex-education must not be omitted
+from the educative process. How or where the necessary information and
+stimulus to truly social conduct may or should be given is matter for
+another statement.
+
+=Heroes Held Up for Admiration.=--One point, usually wholly ignored,
+must have some mention here, and that is the effect upon the minds of
+children and youth of types of social order that are taken for granted
+as proper and right in the setting of heroes and even of heroines
+commended to their example. We have taken our heroes from the past.
+That is natural. It requires an atmosphere of distance to render clear
+in outline the lives of the great and good. It may be that some
+prophets are held at just value by those with whom they live; it is
+almost never that great prophets are seen at their full stature, by
+the common apprehension, in the time of which they are a part. This
+makes us offer as stimulant to the ethical imagination, and sometimes
+as definite incitements to imitation, men and women whose social
+surroundings were quite other than those we are now striving to
+secure. How seldom is the teacher able to make the distinctions in
+social judgment required for full understanding of the character
+without spoiling the personal influence of the hero extolled. This is
+particularly true in the use of much Biblical material in Sunday
+School and in the unexplained classic references to the great and
+good. One wonders what children are thinking about, children who read
+in the daily papers long and spectacular accounts of trials for bigamy
+or adultery, when the worthies of the Old Testament are spoken of and
+their two or several wives taken as a matter of course in the lesson!
+One wonders what is the meaning of justness or kindness to the
+"servant" conveyed to the child in commandments which link together a
+man's ox and his ass, his laborer and his wife! The fact is that
+education has a narrow and perilous path to travel in moral lessons of
+every sort, a path between a dull and critical analysis of differences
+in moral standards and moral practice in the ages from which we have
+come and a wholesale commendation of people who would be haled before
+our modern courts for disobedience to laws were they to reappear upon
+our streets. The need for stimulation of the ethical imagination is so
+great, however, that we must dare this perilous path and master its
+difficulties. Perhaps no one has been able to do this more effectively
+than Mr. Gould, of the Moral Education Committee of England, who has
+used the story method with consummate tact in building up from the
+lower motive and the more ancient condition a series of pictures of
+human greatness, which end always on some summit of personal devotion
+in universal conditions to universal laws of right.[18] His method
+leaves the pupil in a glow of admiration of excellence without dulling
+his perception of realities of every-day life in his own time and
+place.
+
+However difficult, we must try by some method to make youth realize
+what is excellent in those who have lived far enough in the past to
+inspire reverence and yet keep some connection between those heroes
+and sages of the older times and the march of human life upward and
+onward. Especially is this the case in all treatment of the family
+relation. We need not banish Chaucer's "Griselda" from the collections
+of poems worthy to live and to be read, but at least we should insert
+some companion pieces which show wifely fidelity in a more modern
+form. We may well ask the child's admiration of the craftsman's
+passion for achievement in "Palissey the Potter," but there might be
+ethical significance in pointing out that nowadays we sometimes
+question the right of a man to sacrifice to his art not only himself
+but his wife, his children, and all related to him. The fact is that
+although we cannot make use of any cumbersome scheme of historic
+outlines of social progress nor of any learned history of matrimonial
+institutions, we must somehow learn to permeate our teaching of
+history and of literature and our exaltation of examples of human
+greatness of character with the spirit of those who believe that
+humanity is learning, and can know how to manage social affairs better
+and better as the years of life-experience go on.[19]
+
+=Moral Training at the Heart of Education.=--The right and helpful
+relation of the school to the family, then, is one that must first of
+all place moral character, the power to live a good and useful life in
+all social relations, at the centre. And it is one also that takes
+account particularly of the development of the family order and of
+what we must save and of what we may throw away in that order, if we
+would have a stable inner circle of human rights and duties as a
+pattern for all relationship in the industrial order and in the state.
+
+=Drill to Avert Economic Tragedies.=--In view also of the danger of
+economic tragedies that affect the family,--dangers of unemployment of
+the father by reason of bad times beyond his control, of his
+disablement by industrial accident, of his too-early impairment of
+strength by reason of industrial misuse of his powers in ways he can
+not prevent,--it may be that education for every boy should include,
+while he is still under the legal wage-earning age, efficient drill in
+the simpler arts of agriculture. He who can get from the land the raw
+material for family comfort is alone, it would seem, able to meet all
+industrial catastrophes without alarm. In this country, at least, such
+a man, whatever his failure or misfortune in professional, in
+clerical, or in manual labor, may make good his father-office in basic
+essentials of family support. All that has been said about the need of
+mixing vocational training with preparation for home-making in the
+case of girls may be said with almost as much, force about the need of
+giving the average man an economic refuge in case of vocational
+disaster in the ability to work the land to meet essential family
+need. This is beginning to be understood as never before. The newest
+education of all, as has been said, is intent upon providing for girls
+and boys alike this training for economic safety in some expert use of
+land for self-support as well as for retranslation of older work
+interests. In these "schools of tomorrow" the boys as well as the
+girls, while still very young, are being trained to cook and to do
+necessary things for household comfort. This is not subversive of
+inherited divisions of labor in the home. This teaching only adds to
+the economic security of both sexes and may make the men of the future
+able to exist comfortably without so much personal service from their
+womenfolk, and, above all, may make the home a more perfectly
+cooeperative centre of our social order.
+
+=A Graduated Scale of Virtues.=--In the French _Categories_ of "Moral
+and Civil Instructions," first outlined in 1882 and perfected and
+applied in 1900, the children of the Public Schools of that country
+have their attention called first to the duties related to "Home and
+Family," going on from that topic to "Companionship, The School,
+Social Life, Animal Life, Self-respect, Work, Leisure and Pleasure,
+Nature, Art, Citizenship and Nationality," and ending with a study of
+the "Past and Future." The latter topic indicates an intent to give in
+some fashion the idea of human progress and something of its
+outstanding points of interest and value. Other moral codes aim at
+some sublimation of history and literature as a finish to courses in
+ethical instruction. It is for the student of social progress to
+insist that such study of the past, linked to the study of the present
+and to some hopeful outline of the future, be not used merely as a
+capstone but shall be woven in, as warp and woof of all education, as
+it touches every side of life.
+
+=Types of Education.=--Dr. Lester Ward, in his _Dynamic Sociology_,
+lists the various types of education we must cherish and realize in
+the common life as follows:
+
+  "The Education of Experience;
+  The Education of Discipline;
+  The Education of Culture;
+  The Education of Research;
+  The Education of Information."
+
+To this list, with which most educators would be in agreement, the
+believers in the "New Education" might add the Education of
+Development of Personality.
+
+Experience, discipline, culture, research, and information are,
+however, the great means by which the personality absorbs the social
+inheritance and thus finds its own place in the social whole. The
+early initiation by the family to all these means of personal
+development is not yet exhausted either in function or in social
+usefulness. The family still begins the socializing process.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL
+
+  1. In child-training, should the general aim be to give as much
+     as possible of that training in the home or as much as
+     possible in the school? or what is a wise and efficient
+     balance between family and society influence in education?
+
+  2. Given a necessity in character-development for drill in
+     obedience, stimulus toward self-development, capacity for
+     self-control and for helpful association with others in the
+     interest of the commonweal, what part, if any, can the home
+     play which the school cannot?
+
+  3. What is the duty of citizens in respect to tax-supported and
+     compulsory education and how can that duty be effectively done
+     in city and country life?
+
+  4. How can educational systems be made to work for the better
+     cooerdination of family life among the newly arrived immigrants?
+
+  5. Outline, in general suggestion, an educational program for boys
+     and for girls which would be likely to directly aid the family
+     in attaining stability and success among all classes, having
+     regard to aim, subject-matter, methods of character-development
+     and form of social provision and control in the school.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[17] See _Democracy and Education_, by John Dewey: "Because of death of
+individuals, life has to perpetuate itself by transmission, by
+communication; must be social in character."
+
+[18] See _The Children's Book of Moral Lessons_, published by Watts and
+Co., London.
+
+[19] See _Principles of Sociology with Educational Applications_, by
+Frederick R. Clow, a valuable and suggestive book for the general
+reader.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE
+
+  "I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose
+  to power and under what institutions and through what manner of
+  life we became great. We are called a democracy, for the
+  administration is in the hands of the many, not the few; but while
+  the law secures equal justice to all, the claim of excellence is
+  always recognized. When a citizen is in any way distinguished he
+  is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege
+  but as a reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may
+  benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his position.
+
+  "We are unrestrained in private intercourse, while a spirit of
+  reverence pervades our public acts. We are prevented from doing
+  wrong by respect for authority and for the laws, having an
+  especial regard for those ordained for the protection of the
+  injured, as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the
+  transgressor the reprobation of general sentiment.
+
+  "We are lovers of the beautiful, though simple in our tastes, and
+  we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. An Athenian
+  citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his
+  own household, and even those engaged in business have a fair idea
+  of politics.
+
+  "The great impediment to right action is, in our opinion, not
+  discussion, but the want of that knowledge which may be gained by
+  discussion.
+
+  "We do good to our neighbors not upon a calculation of interest
+  but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless
+  spirit."
+                    From the oration of Pericles, 450 B.C.,
+                          as reported by Thucydides.
+
+  "Statesmen work in the dark until the idea of right towers above
+  expediency or wealth. The Spirit of Society, not any outward
+  institution, is the mighty power by which the hard lot of man is
+  to be ameliorated.
+
+  "Every line of history inspires a confidence that things mend.
+  This is the moral of all we learn; it warrants Hope, the prolific
+  mother of all reforms. Our part is plainly not to block
+  improvement or to sit until we are stone but to watch the uprise
+  of progressive mornings and to conspire with the new work of new
+  days."--EMERSON.
+
+  "Nations are the citizens of humanity as individuals are the
+  citizens of the nation. As any individual should strive to promote
+  the power and prosperity of his nation through the exercise of his
+  special function, so should every nation in performing its special
+  mission perform its part in promoting the prosperity and
+  progressive advance of humanity."--MAZZINI.
+
+    "Our country hath a gospel of her own
+    To preach and practise before all the world,--
+    The freedom and divinity of man,
+    The glorious claims of human brotherhood."
+                    --LOWELL.
+
+
+=The Socialization of the Modern State.=--In a previous book before
+mentioned[20] and in many special articles published elsewhere, the
+idea has been stressed that society is now witnessing a remarkable
+coalescence of two ethical movements which are of special significance
+in the new political equality of men and women. These two movements
+are, first, the call for the application to women of the principles
+embodied in our national Bill of Rights; and, second, the introduction
+of what is called social welfare work into governmental provisions and
+administration. The first marked the reaction of women, belated but
+strong, and at last successful in realization of purpose, to the
+eighteenth Century demand for the recognition of human rights
+regardless of color, sex, or previous condition of servitude. The
+second was a reaction of social sympathy and a growing sense of social
+responsibility for the better development of the common life. These
+two movements so worked together that as women marched toward the
+citadel of political power and responsibility, political action became
+more and more permeated by forms of social interest in which women
+were already alert, and by forms of social activity in which women
+were already proficient. This is particularly noticeable in the United
+States. For example, in our country we have changed the common point
+of view and the general governmental approach to individual and
+private life in the following important particulars:
+
+  1. Health--public and private, in matters of prevention of
+     disease and in care of the sick and the convalescent.
+
+  2. Education--in respect to all ages and to all peculiar needs of
+     special training.
+
+  3. Philanthropy, or the social care of the dependent, the
+     poverty-bound, the defective, and the juvenile delinquent.
+
+  4. Penology, or the laws and their administration which deal with
+     crime and criminals and with both the victims of and the
+     panderers to vice.
+
+  5. Recreation and all manner of publicly provided opportunity for
+     helpful use of leisure time.
+
+  6. Conservation of natural resources in the interest of common
+     wealth.
+
+  7. Checks upon economic exploitation by the greedy and strong of
+     the young, the weak, and the ignorant.
+
+  8. Checks upon those commercialized forms of recreation which tend
+     to despoil childhood and youth of innocence and refinement.
+
+  9. Official standardizing of ways of living found to be conducive
+     to physical, mental, and moral well-being, and social aids
+     toward vocational training and guidance.
+
+  10. The union of Federal with State and Local efforts for the
+     general welfare.
+
+=The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political
+Change.=--In every one of these new forms of approach to individual
+life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or
+special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a
+large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body
+politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power
+already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had
+helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and
+came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized
+access of control over their administration. When government was
+merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there
+might be to many minds an incongruity in women assuming voter's
+privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving
+and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could
+be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.
+
+=Health a Social Enterprise.=--To briefly rehearse this list of
+political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We
+have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the
+better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens.
+This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and
+medical service, the nurse's vocation, and the lay volunteer support
+of all these, the outstanding features of our community life.
+Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence
+for the people's sins. So they are in essence and in modern
+translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws;
+experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them.
+Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power,
+have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to
+furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in
+childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and
+care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and
+pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society
+is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once
+considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now
+listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under
+Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and
+undernourishment, is on its way to be proceeded against as a record of
+social neglect. All waste of life's vigor and happiness which is
+indicated by lower levels of health and strength in any class or age
+than can be secured by the more favored is from now on recorded as
+social failure and social fault. Hence, the state and all manner of
+private agencies are at work to make physical standards higher and
+physical conditions better for all. When we remember that the pioneer
+worker in organization of Boards of Public Health and the founder of
+the American Public Health Association, Dr. Stephen Smith, has just
+passed away after reaching the hundred year mark of life's usefulness,
+we can readily see how rapid has been the growth in scientific
+attention to health and social agencies for its advance.
+
+=General and Vocational Training for All.=--In education we have not
+accomplished all that the leaders in that field outlined for us two
+generations ago, but there is a movement all along the line to make it
+possible for every person to have at least a fair start toward
+education in the compulsory free school; and for adults, younger or
+older, to make up for early deficiencies by constantly increasing
+later opportunities of special and of general training in the things
+every citizen should know. Allusion to new specialties of varied
+educational facilities has before been made.
+
+No one can doubt that as teachers and helpers to teachers, as members
+of educational societies, and as acting on official boards by
+appointment, women have been long serving in the ranks and needed the
+ballot only to make their function more inclusive and more commanding
+in directive power. When we remember that it is only since 1837, when
+Horace Mann published the first Report of a State Board of Education
+and began his great work for the Common School of his country, that we
+have had even a distinct social goal in this great field of endeavor
+we cannot be pessimistic about future accomplishment. When that
+educational leader declared in response to those who remonstrated with
+him for turning aside from the usual and, for him, brilliant
+opportunities of the law, "The next generation is to be my client," he
+started a new profession, and the present effort in education is but
+the widening of that social furrow. When we recall that Mary Lyon, in
+opening Mt. Holyoke Seminary for Girls in that same year of 1837,
+offered the first opportunity to girls of limited means of what could
+be called higher education, we can better realize how rapid has been
+the movement to fit women for educational service. We, at least, now
+have a clearer aim in education and are at liberty to use fit men and
+fit women alike for its realization. The one great contribution of
+later times is the determination to share with all the opportunities
+once held sacred to a select few.
+
+=Women's Work in Philanthropy.=--In philanthropy there has been so
+great a transformation both in ideal and in method that it amounts to
+a change in the centre of gravity. Charity once had for its aim the
+easing of unbearable misery, the giving of alms to relieve the
+starving, and personal aid of all sorts to those who were not expected
+to be lifted out of the category of the poor, those who must be always
+helped, but should be helped in a spirit of kindness. Now we have the
+command for permanent care for the helpless where they will not
+handicap the normal. We have the varied agencies for preventing
+delinquency in youth and many a new type of moral rehabilitation for
+all who have stepped but a short distance out of the ordered path of
+life. We have the ideal of every defective child in permanent
+custodial homes, every insane person cared for with humanity and
+trained intelligence, every dependent child readjusted to family life
+by adoption or trained happily and usefully in residential school,
+every aged person protected from want and misery in public or private
+homes, every widowed mother helped to take care of her own children,
+and every sick person aided by hospital and clinic and visiting nurse
+and convalescent home in readjustment to normal activity. Finally, we
+have boldly replaced the motto, "Relieve Poverty," by the new slogan,
+"Abolish Poverty," and we are impatient with ourselves and with social
+arrangements if any considerable number of our fellow-beings are
+obliged without fault of theirs to receive material relief. In all
+this, what a part has been played by women! Dorothea Dix
+revolutionized the care of the insane in the United States. Louisa Lee
+Schuyler organized and for fifty years energized and directed the work
+of the New York State Charities Aid Association which made over into
+humane and intelligent social care-taking the inherited institutions
+of a more ignorant and indifferent time. The first woman to serve on
+the State Board of Charities in New York, Josephine Shaw Lowell, whose
+motherhood in the family and the state knew no bounds and whose
+statesmanship comprehended every social relation, is not the last to
+so serve. "The lady with the lamp," Florence Nightingale, who
+pioneered in trained nursing has had many a follower in this as in
+other countries. The annals of all charitable agencies show that at
+every step, whether recognized as responsible members of the body
+politic or not, women have done the work in large and efficient
+measure when the state took over a new job of life-saving and of
+life-nourishment.
+
+In the realm of penology we have moved far from the old private prison
+into which the noble could cast his enemy and no one question his
+acts. We have moved far from the early prison which was easily
+neglected in all sanitary as in all moral conditions, since it was
+then only a stopping place, often for a short time only, on the way
+from court condemnation to hanging or mutilation, flogging or exile.
+When the prison became a place for longer sojourn, and sentence to it
+became in itself a legal punishment, humane men and women began to
+feel the importance of knowing what went on in the places set aside
+for offenders against the law, and Howard and others set the tendency
+toward a more humane and reasonable treatment of criminals. We now are
+at work finding out who are real criminals and who are accidentally
+caught in the meshes of hurtful circumstances, who among the offenders
+against the law are mentally responsible, and who are but children of
+adult bodily size, and what to do for and with the intentional enemy
+of social order. We have not yet learned to apply the ideals we have
+gained in wise and effective treatment of the small minority of men,
+and far smaller minority of women, who cannot or will not walk the
+safe and well-outlined road of the law-abiding, but we have some
+concepts that promise to guide us in this particular and the new
+Penology is born. Men and women alike are working out details of
+direction and shouldering the heavy social work demanded. The thing
+that is most conspicuous in Penology is the new attitude of courts of
+law, of judges and even of juries. This is an attitude of humane
+inquiry into causes of moral breakdown, and humane dealing with
+criminals as of right entitled to a fair chance. Surely this is a
+fatherly attitude taking the place of old punitive ideas.
+
+=Culture Aids to the Common Life.=--When we come to the new work of
+making the streets safer for the spirit of youth, and the life of all
+more protected and happy by recreative measures standardized for
+personal uplift, we are distinctly in the area of parental functions
+of the modern state. It takes fatherly men and motherly women to run
+the public playground, and to make the parks, the museums, the
+settlement clubs and classes, and the children's rooms in public
+libraries what we now will that they shall be,--the centres of eager
+interest and the nursery of character development. The mention of the
+free public library suggests what is probably the most potent of all
+the higher social influences in our American life. In the large city
+and in the small town alike, and even in remote rural districts served
+by the Loan Libraries, the opportunity to find what will feed the mind
+and lead toward the delight of the printed page is one that has meant
+more to more people who were aspiring and able to become leaders in
+any sphere of life than has any other opportunity; perhaps than even
+the public school after the main essentials of early grade teaching
+have been gained.
+
+To sit in a public library and watch the eager interest of each
+newcomer, to see the patience, the understanding, the sympathetic
+attitude and the earnest effort to be of utmost service which the
+librarian almost invariably shows, and to see the absorbed attention
+of the readers in what they have been assisted in selecting, is to
+bless the generosity and public spirit of every one who has made the
+public library so common a blessing. Not all books are equally
+helpful, not all give equal pleasure, it is true, but when one gets a
+book with a message in it for him, what a joy!
+
+One often thinks of the lovely song of Emily Dickinson when sitting
+thus in a public library:
+
+    "He ate and drank the precious words,
+    His spirit grew robust;
+    He knew no more that he was poor
+    Or that his frame was dust.
+    He danced along the dingy ways
+    And this bequest of wings
+    Was but a book. What liberty
+    A loosened spirit brings!"
+
+=Many Languages in One Country.=--In this connection must be noted the
+effort of many to limit this "bequest" to the language of the country.
+In another connection we have noted the difficulty that inheres in
+having many differing tongues in one community, the difficulty of
+reaching a common ideal and method of living when language is a barrier
+and not an aid to companionship. This barrier of language to the
+foreign-born is often cited as a reason why the immigrant is
+handicapped. It is also a reason why social efforts and religious
+influences often fail of success and why so many native-born Americans
+fail to understand the newer Americans. If, as many prophesy, the
+English language becomes the standard tongue for business and diplomacy
+and literature, all the best products of every nation being made
+available by translation, at least, for those speaking English, it can
+become that ruling tongue only by slow degrees. Meanwhile, the chasm
+between citizens of a common country made by differing languages may be
+bridged by far greater effort on the part of older Americans gifted in
+the use of foreign tongues. We see women by the hundreds flocking to
+Europe and the East to "get local color" and perfect themselves in
+foreign languages, who might find at their own doors, among those
+illiterate in English, but with a wealth of knowledge of their own
+native literature and speech, men and women who would be able, if
+rightly approached, to exchange national values both in literature and
+history to mutual advantage. The need of adult education on the part of
+the foreign-born is not always a need to be met by condescending from
+above to those of low intellectual estate. It is often a mere
+requirement to master another form of speech by those, already
+linguists, or at least in possession of a broader use of language than
+is the average citizen of the United States. The ways of social helping
+in this line are many and of the highest political importance. The
+variety of languages spoken in the United States, however, is not so
+serious an obstacle to the intercommunication of our population for
+political information and in organization for common ends of the public
+good as is the shameful condition of illiteracy among the electorate.
+The foreign-language publications in the United States numbered, in
+1914, 1404, of which 160 were dailies, with total circulation per issue
+of 2,598,827, and 868 weeklies with a total circulation per issue of
+4,239,426, and other publications to the number of 376 with a total
+circulation per issue of 3,609,735. These foreign-language journals are
+not all or many of them devoted to "stirring up strife" and do not
+prevent absorption of the foreign-born in the body politic. They are,
+on the contrary, necessary means of making those who speak foreign
+tongues acquainted with facts and conditions which newcomers need to
+know and understand. During the Great War our government used these
+foreign-language publications to spread broadcast appeals for
+financial and personal support. The excellent "Foreign Language
+Information Service," still existing and having Federal backing, has in
+hand the introduction into the principal foreign-language publications
+of information and appeal calculated to make good American citizens.
+The demand that has been made in moments of excitement for the
+abolition of the foreign-language press is therefore as stupid as it is
+unfriendly. Only by the use of his native tongue can a man who does not
+yet understand English be made to feel and act as a genuine part of the
+citizenship of his adopted country. It is for those who cherish real
+Americanism to try to get into these publications, which are the
+strategic point of contact between older and newer Americans, all that
+is deemed vital to the welfare of our common country. Through a wise
+use of this material in every free public library and in the multiplied
+Loan Libraries in remote districts, the newcomers in our country who
+read intelligently their own language and are eager to learn, may gain
+all that a good citizen needs to know. And if in parallel columns the
+English with the foreign language should be used to convey the same
+thought, the progress will be doubly fast in true Americanization.
+
+=Personal Conservation.=--In the conservation of natural resources for
+the benefit of all the people we have been slow to understand either
+our social danger, or our social opportunity, but our Federal
+Government is setting us notable lessons and local communities are
+trying to learn and follow them, and Women's Clubs all over the
+country are staying up the hands of officials and trying to help save
+the people's inheritance for the people's wealth; surely a fatherly
+and a motherly office if any state function can be. When we enter the
+area of protection of the young and weak and ignorant against the
+exploitation of vice and greed and selfishness, we are in the very
+centre of that parental care which the modern state now seeks to give
+to its citizens. When the Great War turned into training camps the
+flower of our youth, these agencies for moral protection and social
+watch-care which had been so largely developed as volunteer and
+private social work, became the resource of a government bent on
+keeping men "fit to fight," and on preserving young women in the
+vicinity of the camps both from giving and receiving harmful
+influences. Since then, more than ever, such agencies for moral
+protection have become official in civic life and have the endorsement
+and the aid of government. It is one new feature of all modern
+protective work that women are employed as members of the police, as
+matrons in public places supported by tax, and indeed in places of
+commercial recreation, as judges of special courts where parole and
+methods of suspended sentence are used, and in all places where boys
+and girls are exposed to danger and to temptation. Thus the home
+influence is spreading out toward the work-place and the
+play-centre--truly a retranslation of family service in terms of the
+public life.
+
+=The Children's Bureau.=--Our government at Washington used to be
+limited in its function to those political services which no state
+organization could accomplish by itself, but now the Federal
+departments are busily at work setting standards, if only through
+authentic information and suggestion, which aim to raise the average
+life in all directions, economic and social. The Children's Bureau is
+preeminently a standardizing body, although with no power to issue or
+enforce decrees. The Bureaus which have to do with foods and animal
+life and farm management are setting higher and higher levels of
+attainment for the common people in their home life and in their
+vocational work. There is a strong movement to enlarge the educational
+influence at the very heart of our national government with a Cabinet
+Head to set a high standard of attainment in both the art, the
+science, and the administration of education as well as to aid in
+equalizing educational opportunity. Moreover, there is a strong
+tendency, seen most recently and vividly in the provisions of the
+Maternity Aid Bill, for all social efforts to ask and to be granted
+Federal financial aid on the fifty-fifty plan. There is not a
+consensus of opinion among the thoughtful as to the wisdom of thus
+placing upon the general government the burden of social schemes upon
+which a minority of the people, be that minority large or small, are
+alone agreed. The force of persuasion may secure national legislation
+in advance of that which many local communities already have or are
+seeking to secure. The increase of national power through the work of
+national officials is not deemed politically sound by some persons who
+favor specific action by the states alone in such matters as maternity
+aid. The tendency is, however, a proof of two things, one that we are
+as a people becoming a nation; that is more a centralized and united
+governmental force--and the other that more and more people are trying
+in every way to secure a more uniform as well as a higher standard of
+living for all our citizens.
+
+=A Women's Lobby at the National Capitol.=--It is said that the most
+powerful lobby in Washington is "the Public Welfare Lobby backed by
+seven million organized American women." This lobby is composed of
+representatives of the following organizations of women with number of
+members estimated as indicated:
+
+    National League of Women Voters                     2,000,000
+    General Federation of Women's Clubs                 2,000,000
+    Women's Christian Temperance Union                    500,000
+    National Congress of Mothers and
+      Parent-Teacher Associations                         310,000
+    National Women's Trade Union League                   600,000
+    Daughters of the American Revolution                  200,000
+    American Home Economics Association                     1,800
+    National Consumers' League                  (No number given)
+    American Association of University Women               16,000
+    National Council of Jewish Women                       50,000
+    Girls' Friendly Society                                52,000
+    Young Women's Christian Association                   560,000
+    National Federation of Business and
+      Professional Women                                   40,000
+    Women's League for Peace and Freedom                    2,500
+
+This represents a formidable influence upon public affairs, one that
+may do some harm along with much good, unless it goes to school to
+social facts and balances its social sympathy (already shown in such
+alert attention to the needs of the weaker and younger portion of the
+nation) with sober and sane understanding of the difficulty of getting
+progress in any line unless a majority of the people are unitedly in
+favor of it and willing to sacrifice something in order to secure it.
+
+There are signs already that among the leaders of women in the new
+organization of Women Voters there is a feeling that the pendulum may
+swing too far toward philanthropic measures, for some of which the
+general public is as yet unprepared. The call is already made for
+more concentration upon the better enforcement of existing laws,
+rather than upon constant demand for new legislation in the interest
+of social welfare.
+
+=Women's Interest in Public Life a Social Asset.=--The fact, however,
+that so many women are actively engaged not only in watching
+legislation and in learning the character and ability of political
+leaders in the national Congress, but also in trying to raise the
+average life of the people of the country by and through better laws
+and more efficient enforcement, is cause for great encouragement. It
+shows that women came into their kingdom of political power just as
+the state was ready to take on the functions no longer fully expressed
+within the family circle. If we must be shocked by learning that a
+baby a day is being given away in New York City through advertisements
+in the daily papers, and with a haste and carelessness that proves
+lack of responsibility in parents and guardians, we may be relieved of
+fear that love of children is dying out when we see what are the
+things that millions of women are now banded together to secure for
+the betterment of all child-life. Largely owing to such efforts, fewer
+babies die during the first year of life now in any listed one hundred
+thousand, than ever before in our American history. If we find that
+many people are living without the comforts they need and in
+conditions inimical to health and morality, we can at least take
+comfort in the fact that fewer go to the "poorhouse" than used to be
+found there when all sorts of dependents were sent to that one
+institution. With the state's new discrimination and graded assorting
+of young and old and sick and well and sane and insane and normal and
+subnormal, the state care is on lines at once more humane to the
+individual and more helpful to social organization.
+
+The state is indeed turning father and mother in its newer agencies
+for social conservation and social aid to the distressed and
+miserable. And as the state thus does the work that once was attempted
+and poorly done by the collective family, it must more and more call
+to its service the men and women of parental quality and of fit and
+devoted expression of the protective and the nurturing elements of
+human nature.
+
+=Social Service in Peace.=--The state has always called for
+sacrificial service from its members. It has called most of all for
+such sacrificial service when danger seemed to threaten the national
+existence, or enemies of the government lifted treasonable intent
+against the peace and order to which the majority of citizens were
+devoted. Now we are called upon, if only we can realize the new claims
+upon the higher patriotism, to make the country we love what all
+countries should be, a home of freedom, of mutual helpfulness, of
+economic well-being and of incorrupt and progressive political order.
+It has been said and truly, "The ideas of great men are apprehended
+slowly, and a free and rational society must in part exist before the
+dream of such a society can be interpreted." We have a dream of a
+free, a noble, a competent, a happy people in our America. We must be
+careful at every point lest by carelessness of political forms or lack
+of understanding of what those forms should be, we hinder the
+development of that free and rational society in which the noblest
+thoughts and highest ideals of the best and finest of our leaders can
+alone find root and grow.
+
+=Problems Voters Must Solve.=--Three special problems are before the
+voters of our country, problems commanding in importance and not easy
+of solution. They are, first, the problem which inheres in our union
+of States, with their wide divergence of climate, soil, industries,
+population, standards of action and ideals of national and local
+action. The problem is this: what shall we decide is the measure of
+wise and useful division between the laws and conditions we shall make
+national in extent of social control and in practical functioning of
+political administration, and those of smaller autonomous units? What
+shall belong to the Federal Government and make field for its
+activity? What shall belong to the various States and make up their
+separate systems of law and administration? And what shall be left to
+each locality, or each county of each State, for its own political
+activity? These are not easy questions to answer, and the constant
+movement toward centralization of power, not only of standardization
+but of control in the National Government (a movement which received
+such an immense impetus during the war), is likely to make this a
+movable problem of differing answers as our nation grows older. The
+division of States may give a geographical symbol of deep inherent
+differences of background of culture and even of race, or that
+division may mean only a superficial mark of geographic outline
+between two sets of communities alike in all their inheritance and
+tendency. In any case, how much weight shall still be attached to
+"States Rights," and how much shall we press for a uniform life
+throughout all the land? What shall be the special duties of each
+local community toward its common needs of education, of recreation,
+of moral protection, and social order? How much in any given place
+shall the tendency of neighbors to be unwilling to testify against
+each other when wrong-doing is practised, and unable to withstand any
+evil influence when near the centre of its working, lead us to unite
+in demanding a larger unit for the Juvenile Court or the enforcement
+of laws against commercialized vice or any other social concern where
+justice demands a free hand and no favor to any group? These are
+questions with which some of our volunteer agencies of social work
+have wrestled. The answers that wise and good people have made to them
+should have weight in any decision we may make as to the right and
+effective divisions of law and its enforcement in our American system.
+This problem of division of authority has within it a puzzling
+counter-interpretation of our original Constitution and of our history
+up to date. The doctrine of "States Rights," it is said, received its
+death blow in the Civil War, but the equal political and civil rights
+of the negro, which that war was supposed to establish as a national
+concern, vary with the varying attitudes of people of the different
+states toward the enforcement of the Constitutional Amendments which
+were intended to secure those rights. The Southern States, it is said,
+still stand for the dignity and autonomy of each Commonwealth in
+matters of restriction upon labor and of provision for tax-supported
+education, but the inner stronghold of the Federal Prohibition
+Amendment is the section of the country south of Mason and Dixon's
+line. The new States, again it is said, are more tenacious of national
+centralization of government because more evidently drawing their
+powers from the federal centre, but in the valley of the Mississippi
+from north to south,--that section which promises to have the
+determination of the course of American history in its hands for the
+next hundred years,--there are signs that the state autonomy and the
+state jealousy of invasion of local authority in the interest of
+national conformity to federal law are not by any means unknown.
+There should be some more carefully outlined and more commonly
+understood principles of judgment to lead us to decisions, when a
+thing we believe it good to do or a law we desire to set in place and
+in operation call upon us for support, as to the best way of using
+that support. Whether to try for a federal amendment or a national
+statute, whether to work wholly within each State, or whether it is
+matter which so depends upon local sentiment and local cooeperation
+that each smallest community centre must work out its own salvation,
+or secure its own advance in independent work,--this is the problem.
+
+=Comparison Between National and Local Effort.=--One reason why some
+elements of social progress lag behind others which are not more
+firmly believed in is that confusion of effort has followed the
+contrary forms of attack upon the national, the state, or the local
+governments for the furtherance of the object in which all parties
+believe. Instances are not needed in this connection for every person
+who has worked or who desires to work for social betterment finds this
+question at the gateway of organized effort. Shall one turn to the
+centralizing tendency in political life of our country for support of
+a given measure, or shall one make a breakwater in that tendency and
+concentrate attention upon the smaller political units?
+
+=Preferential Voting.=--The second problem of political science and
+art which presses upon the attention of our electorate is one which is
+bound up in methods of selection and election of our legislators and
+executives. The ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we
+vote?"--rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a
+chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged
+corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an
+advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest
+office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to
+keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into
+office. The primary, however, we see, is a very expensive method and
+open to many dangers, and progressive students of political methods
+are not satisfied with it. Why can we not move, and strongly, for
+preferential voting? For some plan by which it shall be the public
+purse only which secures the necessary printing and circularizing for
+required information, and no personal differences in wealth shall have
+any weight in the listing of names on the ballot? To have a law by
+which any legally named number of voters (a sufficient number to keep
+out lonely cranks, but not a sufficient number to suppress
+considerable minorities) should indicate by petition desire for a
+chance to vote for a specific representative of their political
+ideals? The legal requirement that such persons so named should have a
+place on the official ballot and that all voting citizens should be
+able to indicate their graded preference for all candidates thus
+officially listed, would give the people of a democracy a chance to
+really choose the kind of legislators they want and the kind of
+executives they think they need. In the present situation the
+independent mind and conscientious purpose often has a choice only
+between "necessary evils" or the refuge of the political "woods."
+
+=Proportional Representation.=--The adoption of some form of
+preferential voting can alone give the voters a chance for
+proportional representation of their ideals and aims in legislative
+bodies. We are seeing that the limits of useful partisanship in
+politics are narrower than was once thought. No sane and sensible
+person really believes that all of goodness and of wisdom is contained
+in his party and that its success is a valid reason for "turning out
+the rascals" of the other party. No sane and sensible person believes
+that there is such a thing as "Democratic" economy, or "Republican"
+justice, or "Socialistic" efficiency, or "Labor Party" good
+government. There are only economy, efficiency, justice, and good
+government. Each party may have a different ideal of the best method
+of attaining these political necessities, and, therefore, since truth
+is not gained by dogmatic assumptions of any one set of persons but by
+approach to problems of mind and character from different angles of
+experience and of study, each party should have its representatives in
+the legislative bodies of nation, state, and community. And every new
+idea of political reform and social progress that by dint of hard work
+among the intellectual and moral elite has gained a substantial
+following in public opinion of even a relatively small minority, has,
+in justice, and in demand for constant advance in human affairs, a
+right to a place in the high debate of political leadership. It is,
+therefore, for those who believe in the worth and use of freedom and
+of mutual tolerance and respect, in political discussion and action,
+to work for some method of selection of political representatives of
+the people which will make our legislative bodies more truly official
+sections of the thought and moral ideal of the whole life of the body
+politic. This is, perhaps, the greatest of the political calls for
+increased wisdom and practical sense in our country.
+
+The third problem which presses for attention, study and possible
+solution upon the voters of the United States, and one in which the
+new voters, the women, are peculiarly concerned and in a position of
+past experience and of present activity to add much weight and value
+to the debate it occasions, is this:
+
+=What Shall Public and What Shall Private Social Service
+Attempt?=--How far and by what ways shall the varied philanthropic and
+educational activities which are named in mass "social work," and
+which have been developed and are now so largely operated by private
+and volunteer agencies and organizations, be made a part of the
+official service of the father and the mother state? In this social
+work, so far, the few have set a pattern of aid to individuals, which
+public agencies have tended to take over without much serious study of
+whether in any particular case the transfer was necessary or wise.
+This change has often been made, also, without determining whether or
+not further supervisory work by the private citizen was needed to keep
+the social enterprise true to its original and tested principles of
+action. The time has come when in all such changes from private and
+volunteer work of a few to the demand for support and the dependence
+upon guidance of the many, through public officials, we should have
+some clear guiding principle. What that principle may be it is not the
+purpose here to discuss, but the state that is now doing so much that
+only families were formerly expected to do, and is attempting to do so
+much that only trained and devoted service of experts chosen by
+acknowledged leaders in social service has previously tried to
+accomplish, must be tutored and must be supervised by a more
+intelligent electorate if it is to do its more ambitious tasks well.
+No private agency should allow its finest fruits of longest study and
+effort to be absorbed by official provision and control, unless it can
+gain assurance that those fruits will be secure in the transfer.
+
+This all indicates that women voters who have, happily, no past
+bondage to partisanship to overcome, who entered upon their political
+power with no pledges to any one party to hamper their free action,
+and who, being indebted to progressive party leaders in every one of
+the political divisions, have friends in every one, may and should do
+much to help progressive and independent men voters to solve the
+deeper problems of our political situation with clarity of judgment
+and true patriotic devotion.[21]
+
+=Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen.=--We have the most mixed
+of populations. We have the greatest variety of inherited national and
+racial backgrounds in the electorate. We have the widest stretches of
+country, and therefore the most difficult adjustments to any
+centralized system of government. We have the most mobile common life,
+our people moving from State to State, and from one sectional interest
+to another with bewildering frequency. We have as yet no universal
+schooling even in the rudiments of reading and writing of the English
+language to serve as common basis for common knowledge. We have a lack
+of ethical unity in many basic problems of the family, the industrial
+order, the type of tax-supported schooling, and the ideals of
+patriotism. These conditions seem to make it more difficult to become
+a first-class American citizen than to achieve political competency in
+any other government on earth. Even with the confusion in countries
+abroad, even in the European tangles of feuds and suspicions and the
+horrible weight of starvation and physical weakness of the Old World,
+we may yet, if serious in our judgment of American life, soberly
+acknowledge the greatest difficulties of all political adjustment
+which lie within our own political life. Such acknowledgment is not to
+any true American of the older stock and the more noble patriotism a
+confession of discouragement or an apology for social failures in our
+common life. It is rather, for all nobler and wiser citizens, a
+stimulant to constant vigilance in defence of inherited liberties and
+a call to deeper consecration and more devoted service in our
+political relationship. Finally, the father and the mother state does
+not try or want to live to itself alone. We have learned that
+selfishness in the private family leads to social ills and weakness
+which society in general, which surrounds all private families, must
+correct and amend. Are we not learning in the awful light of the
+recent world conflagration that selfishness in nations leads to social
+ills and weakness which can be corrected only by world organization
+for world well-being?
+
+=Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations.=--That America we love
+and would serve with a higher patriotism and a wiser political method
+is a part of the great family of nations, and if it has learned any
+lessons of fatherly and motherly function of state care and
+development of the individual life, it has learned those lessons not
+for isolated national culture, but as a part of the universal
+schooling in the gospel of human brotherhood.
+
+Rightly to understand and rightly to apply that teaching of
+race-experience in all the complicated life of international
+relationship is more truly to serve the best interests of every
+smallest community within our own nation. As Immanuel Kant declared so
+long ago, "The constantly progressive operation of the good principle
+works toward erecting in the human race, as a community under moral
+laws, a kingdom which shall maintain the victory over evil and secure
+under its domination an eternal peace."
+
+It has been urged that patriotism is the piety of the school, and
+brotherhood is the gospel of the church, and justice is the righteous
+law of industry, and mutual reverence and mutual affection are the
+heart of the family life. If this be true, then patriotism itself is
+the working-out in ever-widening circles of that ideal of cooeperation
+for the common good, which shall at last make every Father and Mother
+State a worthy member of the Family of Nations.
+
+=Vows of Civic Consecration.=--The Athenian youth took a solemn pledge
+when he arrived at the age when his relation to the City became
+consciously one of loyal service. This vow may be translated as
+follows: "We will never bring disgrace to this our City by any act of
+dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our comrades. We will fight
+for the ideals and sacred things of the City both alone and with many.
+We will revere and obey the City laws and do our best to incite a like
+respect and reverence in others. We will strive unceasingly to quicken
+in all the sense of civic duty, that thus in all ways we may transmit
+this City, greater, better and more beautiful to all who shall come
+after us." Should not some such solemn act of consecration mark the
+advent of each youth into the actual citizenship of his town and his
+country? A modern writer, Thomas L. Hinckley, has summed up a
+"Municipal Creed" as the utterance of the "Spirit of the Modern City,"
+as follows:
+
+  "I believe in myself--in my mission as defender of the liberties
+  of the people and guardian of the light of civic idealism.
+
+  I believe in my people--in the sincerity of their hearts and the
+  sanity of their minds--in their ability to rule themselves and to
+  meet civic emergencies--in their ultimate triumph over the forces
+  of injustice, oppression, exploitation and iniquity.
+
+  I believe that good food, pure water, clean milk, abundant light
+  and fresh air, cheap transportation, equitable rents, decent
+  living conditions and protection from fire, from thieves and
+  cut-throats and from unscrupulous exploiters of human life and
+  happiness, are the birth-right of every citizen within my gates;
+  and that insofar as I fail to provide these things, even to the
+  least of my people, in just this degree is my fair name tarnished
+  and my mission unfulfilled.
+
+  I believe in planning for the future, for the centuries which are
+  to come and for the many thousands of men, women and children who
+  will reside within my gates and who will suffer in body, in mind
+  and in worldly goods unless proper provision is made for their
+  coming.
+
+  I believe in good government and in the ability of every city to
+  get good government; and I believe that among the greatest
+  hindrances to good government are obsolete laws--which create
+  injustice; out-grown customs--which are unsocial; and antiquated
+  methods--which increase the cost of government and destroy its
+  efficiency.
+
+  I believe that graft, favoritism, waste or inefficiency in the
+  conduct of my affairs is a crime against my fair name; and I
+  demand of my people that they wage unceasing war against these
+  municipal diseases, wherever they are found and whomsoever they
+  happen to touch.
+
+  I believe that those of my people who, by virtue of their
+  strength, cleverness or thrift, or by virtue of other
+  circumstances, are enabled to lead cleaner lives, perform more
+  agreeable work or think more beautiful thoughts than those less
+  fortunate, should make recompense to me, in public service, for
+  the advantages which I make it possible for them to enjoy.
+
+  I believe that my people should educate their children in the
+  belief that the service of their city is an honorable calling and
+  a civic duty, and that it offers just as many opportunities for
+  the display of skill, the exercise of judgment or the development
+  of initiative as do the counting houses and markets of the
+  commercial world.
+
+  Finally, I believe in the Modern City as a place to live in, to
+  work in, and to dream dreams in--as a giant workshop where is
+  being fabricated the stuff of which the nation is made--as a
+  glorious enterprise upon whose achievements rests, in large
+  measure, the future of the race."[22]
+
+We may think that these utterances stress too much the city life and
+fail to visualize the wide stretches of rural communities and the
+small towns where a few people only make the atmosphere and administer
+the laws. The spirit, however, must be the same, whether one dwells
+with the crowd or on some lonely farm. The spirit of that genuine
+patriotism which is not satisfied to have one's country less noble and
+less unselfish than its own ideal of what a country should be.
+
+=The Children's Code of Morals.=--It is in the spirit of such a
+patriotism that _The Children's Code of Morals_ has been prepared by
+William J. Hutchins, and is sent broadcast by the "National Institute
+for Moral Instruction," In this code, boys and girls are enjoined and
+pledge themselves to be good Americans by obeying the following laws:
+"The Law of Health; The Law of Self-control; The Law of Self-reliance;
+The Law of Reliability; The Law of Clean Play; The Law of Duty; The
+Law of Good Workmanship; The Law of Friendly Cooeperation in Good
+Team-work; The Law of Kindness; The Law of Loyalty."
+
+Though children and youth may learn these laws by heart and understand
+and agree to the fine statements by which they are expounded and make
+through them a detailed promise to obey the laws of "right living" by
+which alone the citizenship of our country may serve its best
+interests--that in itself could not make all citizens what they should
+be. It is, however, a lesson of the past that youth needs some outward
+and visible sign of its "coming of age." Now, as in the past, youth
+needs some form of consecration to high ideals. It needs some ceremony
+that shall fix the lessons of patriotism, of social responsibility and
+of community service, and stir to noble purpose. The education that
+begins in the home is not finished by any college graduation or even
+by vocational training for a useful career. Its great "Commencement"
+is that which ushers the young man, and now also the young woman, into
+conscious and responsible relationship to the body politic. This
+Commencement should have its solemn and beautiful ritual and should be
+made the great event of all young life.
+
+
+QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE
+
+  1. What changes in legislation and in law enforcement is the
+     entrance of women into the electorate likely to effect?
+
+  2. Should the State be more and more charged with responsibility
+     for care of the weak, the defective, the delinquent, dependent,
+     and sick, the out-of-work, the aged, and those heavily burdened
+     by parentage of young children, and if so, how can society
+     escape a tendency to remove from individuals and from the
+     family that sense of personal responsibility upon which the
+     best things in our inherited social order have been built?
+
+  3. Should women voters particularly address themselves to
+     increasing public welfare provisions or should they try to
+     solve difficult problems of adjustment between public and
+     private effort for the common good? If both, how can they
+     adjust effort to party politics on the one side, and to
+     independent use of the power of the vote on the other side?
+
+  4. When volunteer organizations of charity, correction, and
+     education transfer their work to official boards and legal
+     provisions, that work, experience shows, sometimes is lowered
+     in standards and loses in efficiency. How can voting women
+     prevent this? How can a new class of voters, hitherto specially
+     interested in getting things desired done by others, best help
+     others to do things through their own political action?
+
+  5. The army intelligence tests showed that our white drafted army
+     contained 12 per cent. superior men, 66 per cent. average men,
+     and 22 per cent. inferior men. This statement, made by Cornelia
+     J. Cannon in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1922, leads
+     the author of the article to the conclusion that "our political
+     experiments, such as representation, recall, direct election of
+     senators, etc., are endangered by the presence of so many
+     irresponsible and unintelligent voters." Is there a remedy for
+     this, other than waiting for the slow process of education? If
+     so, what is it?
+
+  6. _The Neighborhood: A Study of Social Life in the City of
+     Columbus, Ohio_, by R.D. McKenzie, of the University of
+     Washington, gives a good example of what such a study of one's
+     own locality should be. Is it not the duty of those having the
+     leisure and the ability to inaugurate such a study in the
+     locality in which their political relation is most immediate?
+     If so, how can a Women's Club, or a League of Women Voters,
+     start such a study?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[20] _Woman's Share in Social Culture._
+
+[21] See _A Course in Citizenship_, by Ella Lyman Cabot, and others.
+
+[22] Printed in _The Survey_ of October 31, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+BOOKS AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE AND CHAPTER I                             Page 5, 19
+
+  Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis.
+  The Evolution of Marriage, by Le Tourneau.
+  Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, by Otis T. Mason.
+  The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thompson.
+  The History of Matrimonial Institutions, by George Elliott
+    Howard, University of Chicago Press.
+  Sex and Society, by W.I. Thomas.
+  Descriptive and Historical Sociology, by Franklin H.
+    Giddings.
+  The Family as a Social and Educational Institution, by
+    Willystine Goodsell.
+  Social History of the American Family, by Arthur W.
+    Calhoun.
+  Sociology and Modern Social Problems, by Charles A.
+    Ellwood.
+  The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, by Arthur
+    J. Todd.
+  Woman and Labor, by Olive Schreiner.
+  The Family, by Elsie Clews Parsons.
+  The Family, by Helen Bosanquet.
+  Women and Economics, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
+  Love and Marriage, by Ellen Key.
+  The Family in Its Sociological Aspects, by J.Q. Dealey.
+  The New Basis of Civilization, by Simon Patten.
+  Social Control and Social Psychology, by Edward A. Ross.
+  Children Born Out of Wedlock, by George B. Mangold,
+    University of Missouri.
+  The Federal Children's Bureau, Publications 42 and 77.
+  Report of the Committee on Status and Protection of
+    Illegitimate Children of the National Conference of
+    Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1921.
+  Normal Life, Chapter V, The Home, by Edward T. Devine.
+  Taboo and Genetics, by Knight, Peters, and Blanchard.
+  A Social Theory of Religious Education, Part IV, Chapter,
+    The Family, by George Albert Coe.
+
+CHAPTER II                                                     Page 46
+
+  Conveniences for the Farm-home, Farmers' Bulletin No.
+    270.
+  The Farm Kitchen as a Workshop, Farmers' Bulletin No. 607.
+  The Business of the Household, by C.W. Taber.
+
+CHAPTER III                                                    Page 69
+
+  Agamemnon, The Choephori and The Furies, The Tragedies of
+    Aeschylus.
+  Native Tribes of Southeast Australia, Chapter on The
+    Education of the Australian Boy, by A.W. Howitt.
+  The Patriarchal Family, by Sir Henry Maine.
+  Pure Sociology, Chapter XIV, The Androcentric Theory, by
+    Dr. Lester F. Ward.
+  Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, by Mary
+    Hinman Abel.
+
+CHAPTER IV                                                     Page 90
+
+  Danish Care for the Aged, by Edith Sellers.
+  The State and Pensions for Old Age, by J.A. Spender.
+  Report of Bureau of Census, Department of Commerce.
+  Old-age Support of Women Teachers, by Lucille Eaves,
+    Department of Research of Educational and Industrial
+    Union of Boston, Mass.
+  The Trade Union and the Old Man, by John O'Grady,
+    _American Journal of Sociology_, November, 1917.
+
+CHAPTER V                                                     Page 116
+
+  Deuteronomy, The Bible.
+  Tembarom, F.H. Burnett.
+
+CHAPTER VI                                                    Page 124
+
+  Early Massachusetts Laws, quoted by Howard in Matrimonial
+    Institutions.
+
+CHAPTER VII                                                   Page 141
+
+  Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, by M.H.
+    Abel.
+
+CHAPTER VIII                                                  Page 164
+
+  A Uniform Joint Guardianship Law, Conference of
+    Commissioners for Uniform State Laws.
+  The Sheppard-Towner Act for Maternity Benefits, U.S.
+    Children's Bureau.
+  Infant Mortality Rates, U.S. Children's Bureau.
+  Extra Family Wage, _The Survey_, November 12. 1921.
+  National Endowment of Motherhood, English Authors.
+  Reports of the National Child Labor Committee.
+  Report of Division of Child Hygiene, New York City, Dr.
+    Josephine Baker.
+  The Soul of Black Folks, by Doctor Dubois.
+  Chicago Study of 1,500 Families, Dr. Alice Hamilton.
+  Summary of Child Welfare Demands, by Julia C. Lathrop, in
+    _The Child_, August, 1920.
+
+CHAPTER IX                                                    Page 189
+
+  The Hygiene of Mind, by Dr. T.S. Clouston.
+  The Social Cost of Unguided Ability, by Professor Woods.
+  Hereditary Improvement, by Francis Galton.
+  Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics, by Dr. Lester F. Ward,
+    _American Journal of Sociology_.
+  Hereditary Genius, by Francis Galton.
+  Euthenics, A Plea for Better Living Conditions as a First
+    Step Toward Higher Human Efficiency, by Ellen H.
+    Richards.
+  The New Party, by Andrew Reid.
+  Charting Parents, by Caroline Hedger, Elizabeth McCormick
+    Memorial Fund Publications.
+  Observation Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in
+    the Elementary Schools, by Julia A. Badenes.
+  Universal Training for American Citizenship, by William H.
+    Allen.
+  Books for Parents Listed by Federation for Child Study, 2
+    West Sixty-fourth Street, New York.
+  Social Organization, Chapter on Democracy and Distinction,
+    by C.H. Cooley.
+
+CHAPTER X                                                     Page 205
+
+  Mental Diseases in Twelve States, by Horatio M. Pollock
+    and Edith M. Forbush, _Mental Hygiene_, April, 1921.
+  The Kallikak Family, Dr. F.H. Goddard.
+  Treatise on Idiocy, by Dr. Edward Seguin.
+  Proceedings and Addresses of Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth
+    Sessions of American Association for Study of the
+    Feeble-minded.
+  Experiments to Determine Possibilities of Subnormal Girls
+    in Factory Work, by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, _Mental
+    Hygiene_, April, 1921.
+  Vocational Probation for Subnormal Youth, by Arnold
+    Gesell, _Mental Hygiene_, April, 1921.
+  Report of Mental Examination of 839 Women and Girls, by
+    Anne T. Bingham, New York Probation and Protective
+    Association.
+  Colony and Extra-institutional Care of the Feeble-minded,
+    by Charles Bernstein, _Mental Hygiene_, January, 1920.
+  Human Nature and the Social Order, Chapter on Personal
+    Degeneracy, by C.H. Cooley.
+  Psychology, by William James.
+  Brain and Personality, by F.E. Thompson.
+
+CHAPTER XI                                                    Page 219
+
+  Concerning Prisoners, by Bernard Glueck, _Mental Hygiene_,
+    April, 1918.
+  Report on the Draft Examinations, by H.W. Lanier.
+  Out-of-school Activities, _The Survey_.
+  Moral Equivalents for War, by William James.
+  The Socially Inadequate, by Harry H. Laughlin.
+
+CHAPTER XII                                                   Page 233
+
+  Sociology and Modern Problems, by C.A. Ellwood.
+  The Divorce Problem, by W.F. Willcox.
+  Problems of Marriage and Divorce in Woman's Share in
+    Social Culture, by Anna Garlin Spencer.
+  Marriage and Social Control, by Anna Garlin Spencer, in
+    _Harvard Theological Review_, July, 1914.
+
+CHAPTER XIII                                                  Page 246
+
+  History of Factory Legislation, by Hutchins and Harrison.
+  Census Estimates of Women Wage-earners.
+  Code for Women in Industry, by Department of Labor,
+    Division of Women in Industry.
+  Democracy in the Household, by Lucy Salmon, in _American
+    Journal of Sociology_, January, 1912.
+
+CHAPTER XIV                                                   Page 269
+
+  Ethical Culture School and Pioneer Manual Training School,
+    New York, Reports.
+  Democracy and Education, by John Dewey.
+  The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, by Arthur
+    R. Todd.
+  Sex-Education, by Maurice A. Bigelow.
+  Moral Education Lessons, by F.A. Gould.
+  Categories of Moral and Civic Instruction, French School
+    Book.
+  Principles of Sociology with Educational Applications, by
+    Frederick C. Clow.
+  Dynamic Sociology, Chapter on Types of Education, by
+    Lester F. Ward.
+  A Social Theory of Religious Education, Chapter on The
+  Learning Process Considered as the Achieving of Character,
+    by George Albert Coe.
+
+CHAPTER XV                                                    Page 290
+
+  First Report of Massachusetts State Board of Education, by
+    Horace Mann.
+  Songs, by Emily Dickinson, The Book.
+  Publications of the Foreign Language Information Service.
+  Publications of the Children's Bureau.
+  List of Representatives of Women's Organizations in the
+    Public Welfare Lobby at Washington.
+  Publications of the Societies to Further Preferential
+    Voting and Proportional Representation.
+  A Course in Citizenship, by Ella Lyman Cabot, and others.
+  The Pledge of the Athenian Youth.
+  A Municipal Creed, by T.L. Hinckley, in _The Survey_,
+    October 31, 1914.
+  The Children's Moral Code of American Citizenship, by W.
+    J. Hutchins, National Institute for Moral Instruction.
+  Army Intelligence Tests, by Cornelia J. Cannon, in
+    _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1922.
+  The Neighborhood, by R.D. McKenzie.
+
+
+ADDITIONAL REFERENCES UNDER CHAPTER HEADS
+
+Chapter First, The Family:
+
+  The Ethics of the Family, James S. Tufts, Ph.D.,
+    _International Journal of Ethics_, Chicago, Illinois.
+  College Women and Race Suicide, by William M. Sadler,
+    M.D., in _Ladies' Home Journal_ of April, 1922.
+  Applied Eugenics, by Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill
+    Johnson.
+  Program of a School for Homemakers, by L.D. Harvey, of
+    Stout Institute, Menominee, Wisconsin (a pioneer
+    movement for special training of women in higher
+    institutions of learning), published by Bureau of
+    Education, Washington, D.C., in 1911.
+  The Sex-Factor in Human Life, by T.W. Gallaway, Ph.D.,
+    American Social Hygiene Association, New York City.
+  Can the State Solve the Marriage Problem? by Gordon
+    Reeves, in _Physical Culture Magazine_ of May, 1918,
+    summing up 400 answers to 60 questions concerning
+    government financial aid to mothers.
+  Mothers' Pensions, For and Against, in _The Independent_
+    of November 9, 1914. A brief summary with bibliography.
+
+Chapter Second, The Mother:
+
+  On the side of Birth Release, address by Louis J. Dublin,
+    Ph.D., Statistician of Metropolitan Life Insurance
+    Company, at Sixth Annual Meeting of American Social
+    Hygiene Association, October, 1919. Library American
+    Social Hygiene Association, 370 Seventh Avenue, New York
+    City.
+  Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes, by C.
+    Gasqueine Hartley.
+  La Question Sexuelle et la Femme, by Doctour Toulouse.
+    Bibliotheque-Charpentier.
+  The Logical Basis of Woman Suffrage, by A.G. Spencer, in
+    _Annals of American Academy of Political and Social
+    Science_, February, 1910.
+  Equal Pay and the Family: A Proposal for the National
+    Endowment of Motherhood, published by Headley Bros.,
+    London, England.
+
+Chapter Third, The Father:
+
+  What Makes a Man a Husband? by Havelock Ellis, in
+    _Pictorial Review_ of September, 1919.
+
+Chapter Fourth, The Grandparents:
+
+  Old Age Dependency in the United States, by L.W. Squier.
+
+Chapter Eighth, The Children of the Family:
+
+  Program of Nutrition Clinics for Delicate Children, 44
+    Dwight Street, Boston, Mass.
+  Text of Bill H.R. 15400, to Create a Department of
+    Education in the Federal Government with a Cabinet Head.
+
+Chapter Twelfth, The Broken Family:
+
+  Resolution for Uniform Divorce Legislation Introduced in
+    Senate by Wesley Jones, of Washington, with Hearings
+    before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Judiciary,
+    Senate Proceedings, Washington, D.C.
+  The Broken Family, Jane Colcord, Russell Sage Foundation.
+
+Chapter Thirteenth, The Family and the Workers:
+
+  The Labor Contract from Individual to Collective
+    Bargaining, by Margaret Anna Schaffner, Ph.D., _Bulletin
+    of University of Wisconsin_, No. 182.
+  Women and Economic Revolution, by Theresa Schmid McMahon,
+    Ph.D., _Bulletin of University of Wisconsin_, No. 498.
+  The Industrial Training of Women, by Florence Marshall, in
+    _Annals of American Academy of Political and Social
+    Science_.
+  Report of Committee on Elimination of Waste in Industry of
+    the American Engineers' Council, appointed by Herbert
+    Hoover, in Publications of the Society of Mechanical
+    Engineers, 29 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York City.
+  Women in Industry in War-Time, by Frederick Warren
+    Junkins, a bibliography in _Bulletin of the Sage
+    Foundation Library_, 130 East Twenty-second Street, New
+    York City.
+
+Chapter Fourteenth, The Family and the School:
+
+  A National Program of Education, by Hugh S. Magill, Field
+    Secretary of the National Education Association, Address
+    at Commission on Reconstruction, Headquarters N.E.A.,
+    1201 Sixteenth Street, Washington, D.C.
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CURRENT PUBLICATIONS, WITH SUGGESTIONS
+
+In pursuance of the practical aim of this book, an up-to-date study of
+current social problems is urged and the use of reports and literature
+issued by National and State organizations is recommended.
+
+In addition, therefore, to the list of books and articles cited or
+referred to in the text, the following special sources of information
+concerning current activities and the discussion of immediate social
+problems are given as aids to class study or to individual reading:
+
+   1. The Reports and Bulletins issued by the Federal Departments;
+      especially the Children's Bureau, Bureau of Education,
+      Vocational Education Board, Department of Agriculture,
+      Washington, D.C.
+
+   2. Reports from State Departments in the fields of Labor,
+      Education, Charity, Correction, Employment Agencies, and
+      Health.
+
+   3. Reports of the National Conference of Social Work (formerly
+      called the National Conference of Charities and Correction),
+      Office, 315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, Illinois. These Reports
+      constitute the best record of social movements we possess.
+      Since 1873 the attempt has been made each year to take account
+      of social stock and show what is being done for all classes
+      needing help toward better living. Alexander Johnson prepared
+      a Topical Index which serves to guide the student through the
+      earlier volumes, and there are now arrangements for securing
+      separate papers on particular subjects.
+
+   4. The Russell Sage Foundation, office, 130 East Twenty-second
+      Street, New York City, aims at the improvement of living
+      conditions and issues valuable publications which are
+      generously distributed. Enquiries are answered in a helpful
+      manner.
+
+   5. The American Social Hygiene Association, Office, 370 Seventh
+      Avenue, New York City, offers aid to all who seek to check
+      vice, sustain family life, and lessen diseases related to
+      prostitution. It publishes both a Quarterly and a Bulletin and
+      shares in a special library open to students.
+
+   6. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene at the same Office
+      Headquarters, publishes a valuable Quarterly and is a source
+      of information respecting the treatment and prevention of
+      mental diseases.
+
+   7. The American Association for Organizing Family Social Work,
+      Mrs. John M. Glenn, Chairman, with Office at 130 East
+      Twenty-second Street, is able to advise in relief work and
+      organized efforts toward family rehabilitation.
+
+   8. The Child Welfare League of America, C.C. Carstens, Director,
+      at the same Headquarters, 130 East Twenty-second Street, New
+      York City, can be consulted as to standards of child-care and
+      the status of child-helping in various parts of the country.
+
+   9. The National Child Labor Committee, Owen Lovejoy, Secretary,
+      with Office at 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City,
+      furnishes information and practical aid in any part of the
+      United States and publishes valuable pamphlets showing
+      child-labor conditions.
+
+  10. The Community Service Agency, headed by Joseph Lee, with
+      Office at 315 Fourth Avenue, New York City, will help local
+      communities anywhere in organizing for better use of leisure
+      time.
+
+  11. The Consumer's League, Mrs. Florence Kelley, General
+      Secretary, with Office at 44 East Twenty-third Street, New
+      York City, promotes legislation for enlightened standards for
+      women and minors in industry and publishes important material
+      for students and workers.
+
+  12. The American Home Economics Association, which publishes the
+      _Journal of Home Economics_ at 1211 Cathedral Street,
+      Baltimore, Maryland, is an organization devoted to
+      standardizing the housemother's task and helping toward
+      efficient home-making.
+
+  13. The National Woman's Trade Union League, with Office at 311
+      South Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, publishes a
+      journal and other material of special interest to women
+      wage-earners.
+
+  14. The National Health Council, with Office at 370 Seventh
+      Avenue, New York City, and at 411 Eighteenth Street,
+      Washington, D.C., issues valuable publications.
+
+  15. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
+      People, with Office at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and the
+      National Urban League for Social Service among negroes aim at
+      helping in problems of race adjustment.
+
+  16. The General Federation of Women's Clubs, with headquarters in
+      Washington, D.C., at 1734 N. Street, N.W., has centres of
+      influence throughout the country and furnishes the personnel
+      of many leaders in local social enterprises.
+
+  17. The National Council of Women of the United States, member of
+      the International Council of Women of the World, has
+      headquarters at the home of its President, Mrs. Philip North
+      Moore, Lafayette Avenue, St. Louis, Mo., and includes in its
+      membership all the leading bodies of organized women in the
+      country. At its Biennial gatherings reports of work are
+      presented from all these Associations and afterward published.
+
+  18. The National League of Women Voters, the child of the National
+      American Woman Suffrage Association, has its headquarters at
+      532 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., with Mrs. Maud
+      Wood Park as President, and energizes and directs a large
+      force of women in numerous local Leagues in non-partisan work
+      for better government.
+
+  19. The Woman's Party, with Headquarters also in the National
+      Capital, aims to secure a Federal Amendment which will wipe
+      out all sex-discriminations. It publishes much interesting
+      material.
+
+  20. Among the most valuable publications for constant reading for
+      those who would keep in touch with important social movements
+      in all fields is _The Survey_, published at 112 East
+      Nineteenth Street, New York City, Paul U. Kellogg, Editor.
+
+  21. The _American Journal of Sociology_, published by University
+      of Chicago Press, and the _Journal of Applied Sociology_,
+      published by the University of California, give more extended
+      treatment of the principles underlying social service.
+
+  22. The Council of Jewish Women, the National Catholic Welfare
+      Council, the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian
+      Associations, and the Federal Council of the Churches of
+      Christ, together with the Federation of Religious Liberals,
+      The Laymen's League, and Women's Alliance of the Unitarian
+      body, and other church organizations, have departments or
+      committees engaged specifically in work for the stability of
+      the family and the betterment of the home, as well as for the
+      ennobling of the common life and for the organization of the
+      world for permanent peace.
+
+  23. The Educational interests of the country are served by many
+      agencies and organizations, chief among them the U.S. Bureau
+      of Education, the Federal Board of Vocational Education at
+      Washington, D.C., which publish invaluable material, and the
+      National Education Association, with office at 1201 Sixteenth
+      Street, Washington, D.C., membership in which keeps one in
+      touch with progressive movements.
+
+  The vital thing for one who would prepare for practical service in
+      any line of social work is to study people and conditions in
+      one's own locality and then compare what is done or attempted
+      in that locality with what is considered by those best fitted
+      to judge to be the best and most efficient standards for
+      service of the kind considered.
+
+  The vital thing for those who would help in the educational field
+      is to know their local schools, their teachers, buildings,
+      equipment, management, and financial support, and then to
+      secure all possible national, state, and local aid in making
+      those schools the best they can be.
+
+  24. If the newest movements in education are chosen for study,
+      read The New Education, by L. Haden Guest, and other articles
+      in _The New Era_, published by Hodder and Co., London,
+      England. Also Nursery School Experiment, by Bureau of
+      Educational Experiments, 144 West Thirteenth Street, New York
+      City.
+
+  For comparison with these, read Talks to Teachers, by William
+      James, and also pamphlets of Home Education Series, by
+      Charlotte Mason, published by Parents' National Education
+      Union, 26 Victoria Street, London, England.
+
+  25. For economic reform especially helpful to family life, study
+      the publications of the Cooeperative League of America, Doctor
+      and Mrs. Warbasse, Directors, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
+
+  26. For political reform, study the publications of Proportional
+      Representation League, 1417 Locust Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 313: inagurate replaced with for inaugurate          |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Family and it's Members, by Anna Garlin Spencer
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