Quite slowly but surely, the idea is dawning on the social horizonthat the persistence of conditions prejudicial to human prosperity is discreditable to a civilized community, and that economics if not ethics calls for their control.Alice Ravenhill.
Quite slowly but surely, the idea is dawning on the social horizonthat the persistence of conditions prejudicial to human prosperity is discreditable to a civilized community, and that economics if not ethics calls for their control.
Alice Ravenhill.
It is the new view that disease must be understood and overcome; that hospitals, dispensaries, surgical and medical treatment, nursing and preventive measures must be developed and dovetailed into a general social scheme for the elimination of preventable diseases and a very substantial reduction in the prevalence of such diseases as cannot as yet be classed as preventable.Edward Devine, Social Forces.
It is the new view that disease must be understood and overcome; that hospitals, dispensaries, surgical and medical treatment, nursing and preventive measures must be developed and dovetailed into a general social scheme for the elimination of preventable diseases and a very substantial reduction in the prevalence of such diseases as cannot as yet be classed as preventable.
Edward Devine, Social Forces.
Nature endows the vast majority of mankind with a birthright of normal physical efficiency. It is the duty of those who aspire to be known as social workers each to do his share in confirming his fellow beings in this possession.Dr. H. M. Eichholz, Inspector of Schools. Paper beforeConference of Women Workers, London, 1904.
Nature endows the vast majority of mankind with a birthright of normal physical efficiency. It is the duty of those who aspire to be known as social workers each to do his share in confirming his fellow beings in this possession.
Dr. H. M. Eichholz, Inspector of Schools. Paper beforeConference of Women Workers, London, 1904.
We know now that if we do the things we ought to do, we can prevent sickness. We have reached a point where it is recognized that it is the duty of the community or state to effectually protect itself against the ignorant, the selfish, the filthy, and the diseased. We believe now that we must have proper sewage disposal, pure water, decent tenements, clean streets, good-sized playgrounds, supervision of factories, protection of child labor, and pure food.Eugene H. Porter, Report, 1909, New York State Department of Health.
We know now that if we do the things we ought to do, we can prevent sickness. We have reached a point where it is recognized that it is the duty of the community or state to effectually protect itself against the ignorant, the selfish, the filthy, and the diseased. We believe now that we must have proper sewage disposal, pure water, decent tenements, clean streets, good-sized playgrounds, supervision of factories, protection of child labor, and pure food.
Eugene H. Porter, Report, 1909, New York State Department of Health.
Next after himself, man owes it to his neighbor to be well, and to avoid disease in order that he may impose no burden upon that neighbor.Dr. William T. Sedgwick, The Call to Public Health.
Next after himself, man owes it to his neighbor to be well, and to avoid disease in order that he may impose no burden upon that neighbor.
Dr. William T. Sedgwick, The Call to Public Health.
Thereal significance of biological evolution has not been grasped by the people in general. It is that man is a part of organic nature, subject to laws of development and growth, laws which he cannot break with impunity. It is his business to study the forces of Nature and to conquer his environment by submitting to the inevitable. Only then will man gain control of the conditions which affect his own well-being.
Sickness, we know, is the result of breaking some law of universal nature. What that law may be, investigators in scores of laboratories are endeavoring to determine. In most diseases they have been successful. Those remaining are being attacked on all sides, and it may be confidently predicted that a few years will see success assured.
Why, then, does sickness continue to be the greatest drain upon individual and nationalresources? Because man, through ignorance or unbelief, will not avail himself of this knowledge, or is behind the times in his method. Where wisdom means effort and discomfort, many feel it folly to be wise.
The individual may be wise as to his own needs, but powerless by himself to secure the satisfaction of them. Certain concessions to others’ needs are always made in family life. The community is only a larger family group, and social consciousness must in time take into account social welfare. Moreover, a neighbor may pollute the water supply, foul the air, and adulterate the food. This is the penalty paid for living in groups. Men band together, therefore, to protect a common water supply, to suppress smoke, dust, and foul gases which render the common air unfit to breathe. The State helps the group to protect itself from bad food as it does from destruction of property.
The development of fire protection is a good example of community effort. The isolated farmhouse may have buckets ofwater and blankets in an accessible place with which to put out an incipient fire. Then eight or ten families build close together. The danger of one becomes the danger of all, and a fire brigade is organized that may protect all. When hundreds of families crowd together in a small space the danger becomes so much the greater that a paid department with efficient apparatus is necessary. No one complains of the infraction of individual rights. Each one is glad to pay his share of the expense.
In securing protection from other dangers, the individual and the family unit are fast relying on community regulations. In fact, in many ways the individual, when he becomes one of a crowd, must go whither the crowd goes and at the same rate of progress.
Failure to recognize that by coming into the community he has forfeited his right to unrestrained individuality causes an irritation as unreasonable as harmful.
A certain control of sanitary conditions must be delegated to the community and its rules cheerfully followed. The legal aspectsof these rules will be considered in a later chapter. Here is to be considered only themental attitudewith which the members of the community should come together to agree upon a common defense against disease and dirt. The spirit of coöperation must prevail over a tendency to antagonism when certain individual rights seem to be involved.
Numbers of families living close together are served by the same grocer or market man. These families may agree upon their requirements as to quality and cleanliness and publish their rules. If they do not take interest enough to protect themselves, the community must make rules for them. If the local officials are not vigilant enough, the State may step in and compel the observance of sanitary regulations.
The average citizen learns of the existence of a health regulation when he is warned that he has broken it, or perhaps is fined. His first attitude is rebellion at the invasion of his personal liberty. The housewife usually takes the ground that the rule is absurd or unnecessary.
When, in the interest of the community, any law is to be enforced, how are the people to be led from this rebellious state of mind? Perhaps first through authority. In America we have learned to use the phrase, “Big Stick.” Authority is exactly that; it is coercion from without. It has partial result in good; the law may be fulfilled because the individual knows he must obey when within the jurisdiction of that law; but if the result is simply obedience to authority and not to the underlying principle, it will not be a force in his life or be continued if by chance he can escape it. He will be a “tramp” in his methods of obedience. This method can never be constructive; its value lies in the possibility that by continuous usage or repetition the procedure may become a habit, and from habit will come reason and intelligence.
But the more direct and efficient way to help the individual to realize his relation to communal right living is through education. The former method—blind obedience—will foster the spirit of antagonism and call the State’s protection “interference,” thusweakening the efficiency of the State and of the individual, for the State is the multiplication of its citizens; but through the latter method the individual will carry out the law with intelligence and interest. This will be constructive and it will be permanent, for again, if the State is the sum of its citizens, the efficiency of the State is the sum of the efficiency of the citizens.
Their interests are now identical, the man has become equal master with the State; they are co-partners. His motive for right living is greater than the letter of the law, for he is the living law, the protest against wrong and the fulfillment of the right.
The next generation must be born with healthy bodies, must be nurtured in healthy physical and moral environments, and must be filled with ambition to give birth to a still healthier, still nobler generation. But, as has been said, “whatever improvements may sometime be achieved, the benefits of their influence can be enjoyed only by future, perhaps distantly future generations.We of the present have to take our heredity as we find it. We cannot follow the advice of a humorous philosopher to begin life by selecting our grandparents; but through hygiene (sanitary science) we can make the most of our endowment.”[6]
There is a force in the development of public opinion somewhere between individual action and national compulsion which may be termed “semi-public” action. It is in a measure the same sort of influence that in a later chapter is termed “stimulative education.” For instance, a hospital for the treatment of some special ailment is needed. Private enterprise furnishes the capital, proves the success of the treatment, and then the community comes forward and supports the institution. Such helps are accepted freely and are not considered undemocratic.
The less spectacular but more effective office of prevention of the need for charity, in the maintenance of cleanness in the markets, streets, and shops, yes, even in the homes of the people, has been neglected. Through lack of belief, and especiallythrough inattention to causes so common as to escape notice, many details of great hygienic importance have been overlooked.
Some daring ones in commercial ventures are showing the possibilities of a standard in cleanness, and model establishments, dairies, bakeries, and restaurants should receive the hearty support of a community. If they do not receive this support, it is more than discouraging to the promoters, forit costs to be clean, a lesson the community must learn. The saving of money and the consequent loss of life through disease, or the spending of money and the saving of life through prevention, are the alternatives.
Undoubtedly the old view of charity as tenderly caring for the sick—because there must always be a certain amount of sickness in the world—has held men back from attempting to make a world without sickness. The charity worker of the past had no hope of really making things better permanently.
The new view, based upon scientific investigation, is that it is not charity thatis needed to support invalids who once stricken must fade away, but preventive action to give the patient hope and fresh air. Most important of all, the experience already gained shows how far from the truth was the old fatalistic notion of the necessary continuance of disease.
While the support of many agencies—dispensaries, clinics, hospitals, sanatoria, etc.—must for a time depend upon private philanthropy, the expense is in the nature of an investment to bring in a high rate of interest in the future welfare of the race. As soon as the belief in the efficiency of these agents reaches the taxpayer he will willingly furnish the funds for public agencies.
Today the child in the school is examined; then, if need be, is given special consideration at the dispensary, then sent to school, where, with fresh air, pure food, and hygienic surroundings, he will so strengthen himself as to combat the ravages of disease.
The Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, New YorkCity, not only sends bread to fill the hungry stomach, but now sends a wise and sympathetic worker to help women to understand food and money values, which means a permanent help. And it no longer simply says to the tired, worried woman who has had no education-stimulus along the line of cleanness, “Be clean,” but sends in women to make the house an example, an exhibit of clean conditions, if you will. Example is stronger than precept.
In the rapid growth of cities, so often beyond anticipation, preparation for development or plans for extension have seldom been laid. Much suffering has been wrought to the families of men in our crowded cities, for there is no greater evil than the congestion of streets and buildings.
Many students of social conditions of today believe that the most serious menace is the situation best described as housing—the site, the crowding, the bad building, poor water supply and drainage, lack of light and air and cleanliness. All believe that it is economically a loss to the city in general, however profitable to a very few.To rent such buildings is a far greater crime than cruelty to animals or even the beating of women and children.
But groups of people the wide world over are keenly awake to this state of affairs, and though the problem is tremendous they are trying in numerous ways to solve it.
In some cities there are at present organizations urging “city planning,” while in several foreign cities the municipality has already made regulations. In some cities there are municipal model tenements, but this is still a project of too small proportions to affect the community.
Perhaps no modern movement that comprehends both the city planning and the housing of the working people is more ideal than the “Garden Cities” movement in England and the other countries following it.
If there is any spot on which the hand of the law should be laid, it is the congested districts in cities and mill villages. The evil has grown to such magnitude that the first steps will mean some drastic measures.
The author has elsewhere called it theCapitalists’ Opportunity. Instead of investing in an uncertain gold mine in some distant land, let the millions, for no less sum will suffice, be invested in a plot of land, whether an open field or a slum district depends on local conditions, and thereon cause to be erected habitations decently comfortable, wholly sanitary, and place over each group an inspector as both agent and teacher who shall be a friend to the tenants, and to whose office they may come freely with their needs. This plan has been in part carried out in the Model Tenements in New York, but variations and improvements are needed. There should be more light and air, more grass and trees, even if the buildings are fifteen-story towers.
The old story has been so often reiterated, “But the tenants will not use the devices,” that the capitalist has become callous to this appeal. The missing link in the chain has been the instruction to go with the construction.
All department stores, all venders of new mechanical appliances, have come to recognize the value of demonstration, orinstruction, in the use of articles as an aid to purchase. The advocate of better dwellings must take a leaf from the commercial book andshow how. It is in this that philanthropy has been weak in the past. It has assumed a power to see, where there was only a fear of handling the strange objects.
There is a virgin field for the capitalist who wishes to use some millions for the prosperity of the country to build a short trolley line to a district of sanitary houses with gardens, playgrounds, entertainment halls, etc.; such a village to contain, not long blocks, but both separate houses and tenements from two rooms up, possibly several stories high, where the elders may have light and air without the confusion of the street. Dust and noise will be eliminated. There should be a central bakery and laundry, and, most important of all, an office where both men and women skilled in sanitary and economic practical affairs may be found ready to go to any home and advise on any subject. There has never yet been such an enterprise with all the elementsworked out. Several, however, have shown the way, the Morris houses in Brooklyn, for example.
It is easier to take a city block and construct fireproof, high buildings than to solve transportation problems. We are losing our fear of the high buildings as we see the great value of light and air. There is chance for work in this direction, for in spite of rapid transit some must live in the center of things.
Let a philanthropist or two, instead of building hospitals, set some bright young architects and sanitarians to devising such suitable housing conditions for city and suburbs as will obviate the necessity for hospitals. Any lover of his kind, any one who longs for fame, could find both it and the blessing of the homeless by this means, and in the end get a fair return for his investment.
The Federal Department of Labor[7]has studied workingmen’s houses, butliving in the househas not been worked up. The housewife has no station to which shemay carry her trials, like the experiment stations which have been provided for the farmer. Here is another opportunity for the capitalist to hasten the time when the State will supply these. The way will very soon be laid out and the first steps taken.
For the immediate present some standard of healthful housing is needed, and now that a similar type of house and of apartment house is being built in all cities and towns from one ocean to the other, and from Texas to Maine, such a standard is compatible with conditions.
A score card for houses to rent would save much wrangling. The agent shows the card with this house’s rating, and the tenant learns that some of his wishes are incompatible with the standard, and some would mean a much higher rent than he is willing to pay. Professor J. R. Commons, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, has devised a score card to serve the house hunter and householder as a standard of comparison. This should serve the house builder as well, indicating what the demand will be forty or fifty years hence.
At present the rating stands somewhat as follows:
The final score card may vary somewhat.
For rent collectors there is also a score card.
A score card movement might be started as a hobby, and in the end lead public opinion to judicial choice and action. No such movement, however, is possible without leaders, and leaders of the right type.
The lesson for the community to be drawn from a study of crowd psychology is that of leadership and loyal coöperation. The common man is likely to be possessed of one idea at a time. If such an one becomes a leader, there is danger that equally vital factors will be overlooked. Safety is found in a combination of leaders to make an all-round improvement.
Each individual is too busy in his own affairs to look after his own, much less his neighbor’s, health and comfort, hence community life, with its advantages, brings its own dangers. Children in school in contact with other children; crowds in trains, in elevators, stores, in lecture halls, contract habits as well as diseases. The need for large quantities of supplies at one point brings long-distance transportation and cold storage difficulties. The man who caters to public need does not look far ahead to consequences, and if unrestrained may prove more of a menace than a convenience.
The safe and reasonable way is to delegate to certain persons the making and enforcement of regulations corresponding tothe needs of the times, and then to obey them, even at some personal inconvenience.
Each community should put into the hands of its health officers the carrying out of the rules it has agreed to as aninsuranceagainst outbreaks of disease. Does a man let his fire insurance policy lapse because the year has passed without a fire? Even if the regulation seems superfluous to the particular individual or family, let it be remembered that there are inflammable spots in every community. Eternal vigilance is the price of safety in sanitary as well as in military affairs. As in the army, the community must delegate scout duty to certain chosen individuals and rely on their report for safety.
FOOTNOTES:[6]Report on National Vitality, p. 55.[7]Bulletin No. 54.
[6]Report on National Vitality, p. 55.
[6]Report on National Vitality, p. 55.
[7]Bulletin No. 54.
[7]Bulletin No. 54.
Interchangeableness of these two forms of progressive effort. First one, then the other ahead.
Preventive medicine is the watchword of the hour, and enlistment inthe cause can come only through education....He who understands the dangers is thrice armed, and is trained and entitled to enlist in the home guard to protect the health of his household and neighbors.Dr. M. H. Rosenau, Harvard Medical School.
Preventive medicine is the watchword of the hour, and enlistment inthe cause can come only through education....
He who understands the dangers is thrice armed, and is trained and entitled to enlist in the home guard to protect the health of his household and neighbors.
Dr. M. H. Rosenau, Harvard Medical School.
The next generation of parents is being made strong or weak in home and school today by an environment furnished by parents and teachers. These latter cannot be too well instructed in physiology, hygiene, and biology.Prof. John Tyler, The Responsibility of the MedicalProfession for Public Education in Hygiene.
The next generation of parents is being made strong or weak in home and school today by an environment furnished by parents and teachers. These latter cannot be too well instructed in physiology, hygiene, and biology.
Prof. John Tyler, The Responsibility of the MedicalProfession for Public Education in Hygiene.
The new view is a social view, which seeks in all movements, whether of research or of remedial action, for the common welfare.Edward Devine, Social Forces.
The new view is a social view, which seeks in all movements, whether of research or of remedial action, for the common welfare.
Edward Devine, Social Forces.
Democracy means that the best of all life is for all, and that if there are many incapable of entering into it, then they must be helped to become capable.Ralph Barton Perry, The Moral Economy.
Democracy means that the best of all life is for all, and that if there are many incapable of entering into it, then they must be helped to become capable.
Ralph Barton Perry, The Moral Economy.
If the child is not only in theory but in practice recognized as the main interest in society, the family and society will more and more assist the mother in his nurture.W. I. Thomas, Women and Their Occupations.
If the child is not only in theory but in practice recognized as the main interest in society, the family and society will more and more assist the mother in his nurture.
W. I. Thomas, Women and Their Occupations.
Health administration cannot rise far above the hygienic standards of those who provide the means for administering sanitary law. The tax-paying public must believe in the economy, utility, and necessity of efficient health administration.Wm. H. Allen, Civics and Health.
Health administration cannot rise far above the hygienic standards of those who provide the means for administering sanitary law. The tax-paying public must believe in the economy, utility, and necessity of efficient health administration.
Wm. H. Allen, Civics and Health.
The connection between poverty and ill health is so direct, so immediate, and so important that the moment any individual or society turns its attention to the causes of poverty, that moment it finds itself in the thick of the public health movement.Homer Folks, Journal Public Hygiene, November, 1909.
The connection between poverty and ill health is so direct, so immediate, and so important that the moment any individual or society turns its attention to the causes of poverty, that moment it finds itself in the thick of the public health movement.
Homer Folks, Journal Public Hygiene, November, 1909.
Progressis a series of zigzags: now the individual goes ahead of the community; now the community outstrips the individual.
The community cannot rise much above the level of the individual home, and the home rises only by the pull of the community regulations, or by the initiative of a few especially farsighted individuals.
The steps need to be carefully measured, for if the family begins to rely on the State for the backbone it should have, it will not stay up, and its fall will be lower than the stage it rose from. “When man reverts, he goes not to Nature, but to death.”
The example set by the city in maintaining clean streets and well-kept parks reacts upon the home yards. The insistence by the police on city regulations as to alleys and garbage educates the family as to the general attention to be paid to such things.
The city authorities, on the other hand, are prodded to their work by well-informed individuals who see the great gain to the community from certain measures.
The centers of movement, civic and quasi-religious or philanthropic, are usually the outgrowth of individual effort. The great movements for betterment—water supply, street cleaning, tenement laws, etc.—are carried out by community agreement with a common tax outlay.
The clean city means streets of clean houses. The clean house in the midst of a dirty city may be the match to start a fire of cleansing.
Probably medical inspection in the public school is as good an example as may be given of helpfulness to the community. No quicker means of influencing both home and community life may be found, for in five years it might revolutionize the whole.
School buildings should be so constructed and so managed that they cannot themselves either produce or aggravate physical defects. Departments of school hygiene should be organized, not only inevery city, but for every rural school under county and state superintendents of instruction. The general question of physical welfare of children involves too many considerations to be satisfactorily treated by school physician and school nurse alone, or by busy teachers and principals.
“New York City will spend in 1910 $6,500 for making over twenty rooms in regular buildings, a first step in an entirely new plan of ventilation, which will eventually give outdoor air to all children, sick or well.”[8]
Speaking generally, America is one of the last of the civilized nations to deal with the subject of the medical inspection of school children upon a comprehensive and national scheme. But once aroused to the needs, it is safe to say that the nation will speedily educate parents to correct such home conditions as reduce the child’s ability to profit from schooling, and to persuade governments to see that safe homes are provided. It will be easy to convince the taxpayer that it is cheaper to provide such carethan to neglect the future parent and citizen, for it is easy to prove that medical inspection in our schools returns large dividends on small investments. Dr. Luther Gulick says that it seems probable, though only a guess, that the total annual expenditure for medical inspection of schools in the United States at the present time is perhaps $500,000. The money saved by enabling thousands of children to do one year’s work in one year, instead of in two or three years, would greatly exceed the total expense of examining all children in all boroughs.[9]
The health of all our school children should be conserved by a system of competent medical inspection which should secure the correction of defects of eyes, ears, teeth, as well as defects due to infection or malnutrition.
The statistics of medical inspection in public schools tell a pitiful tale wherever it has been tried: thirty or forty per cent of the children are found with defective or diseased eyes, ten to twenty per cent with distorted spines, fifteen per cent with throatand nose troubles, all of which directly affect their intellectual proficiency.
When these deficiencies are discovered and reported to the parents, such is the apathy of disbelief that seventy-five per cent of the cases usually go unattended; therefore the school nurse, who follows the case home and explains the needs and sets forth the penalties, has become a necessity.
The parent who permits his child to go to school physically unfitted to profit from school opportunity is not only injuring his own child, but is injuring his neighbor’s child, and is taxing that neighbor without the latter’s consent.
It would seem as if such parents had forfeited their right to the sole care of the children, and that government would be obliged, for its own protection, to step in and do the work while it is needed. The author has termed thistemporary paternalism. The providing of penny lunches during the morning recess, the service of the school nurse and the home visitor to teach those parents who are willing to learn all these schemes for the saving of the child,may be carried out in a spirit of helpfulness with a support which may be withdrawn when no longer needed.
Although all America has not become aroused to the undoubted fact of tendencies toward physical deterioration, it is on the verge of an awakening. The public school is the natural medium for the spread of better ideals, and if the teachers of cooking and of hygiene would coöperate and use all the material which sanitary science is heaping on the table before them, we should soon see a betterment of the physical status. Combined with medical inspection and sanitary construction of schoolhouses, this would raise the general health of the community thirty or forty per cent in five years and fifty to seventy per cent in ten years.
There has been in some quarters much objection to public effort towards remedying evils which would not have existed if each family had lived up to its duties. The community is a larger family, with greater resources, and can employ investigators to find the means for greater security. That individual is very foolish who does not recognizethis interaction between community and individual, and who objects to taking the benefits of the larger knowledge.
To take one of the latest examples of social problems: In every thousand children in the public schools of any city, probably of the town also, there are perhaps fifty who are ill-nourished (not necessarily underfed), ill-clothed, unwashed, and deprived of good air for sleeping. What is the duty of the public? This is one of the burning questions of the moment. Send missionary teachers to the homes, some say, but that is costly; the selection of the suitable missionary is difficult, and the result may be slight. Others say, give one good luncheon at the school, for which the children pay in part or in whole, and make that an education which, by the aid of the school nurse, will in time affect a change in habit. In short, the problem is this: Shall the children suffer in childhood and become a burden on society in adult years, or shall society protect itself from future expense by community care now? “Becausefindingdiseases and defects does not protect children unlessdiscovery is followed bytreatment, fifty-eight cities take children to dispensaries or instruct at schoolhouses; fifty-eight send nurses from house to house to instruct parents and to persuade them to have their families cared for; 101 send out cards of instruction to parents either by mail or the children; while 157 cities have arranged special coöperation with dispensaries, hospitals, and relief societies for giving the children the shoes or clothing or medical and dental care which is found necessary.”[10]
Nearly all preventive measures adopted by society and ranked as paternalism by timid philanthropists are or may be educative and temporary at the same time. They may be dropped as soon as the end is gained. The attention of parents must be called to neglected duties. Compulsory attention to such duties as affect the wards of society, the children, may be needed for a time. Just as the wise father, taking the child for a walk, allows him to run free as soon as his strength and courage permit, so the paternalism of society is relaxed as soonas itsprotégéesshow themselves both able and willing to do the right thing without its aid or command.
Compulsory school attendance places responsibility for certain care, vaccination, decent clothing, good food, decent shelter. The thousand and one ways in which society is now protecting itself are all educating the newcomers to American ideals. They are all intended to make efficient, self-sustaining citizens who do not feel the pull of the law or the bond of outside care. It is the last conflict between the ideals of individualism and those of the community need, subordinating the individual preference. Much wisdom and forbearance will be needed to secure this community ideal, but in that way evidently lies progress. It behooves the leaders of social effort to make all their work educational, and thus remove the necessity for a repetition in the future.
Just as the parent in the home establishes habits while the child’s mind is plastic, so the community standsin loco parentisto the future citizen, and surrounds him with safeguards while needed. Knowledgeis needed, scientific investigation is fundamental, expert wisdom is indispensable, costly though it is, being the product of long research and rare brain power. This is at the service of the nation for the good of all the people, and it is the surer the wider the range of experience. For this reason chiefly, greater actual knowledge and more complete harmonizing of conflicting interests is necessary. Certain sanitary measures are carried out by the Federal government as an education to communities, just as communities educate individuals. Federal effort may be unwisely put forth in certain cases, investigations of little consequence may be undertaken, but on the whole a democracy must learn to manage its affairs by making mistakes. The principle should not be discarded as a result of the first mistake.
The immediate concern of this chapter is with the leaders of community movements, the educated, sympathetic, farsighted sociologists, sanitarians, and economists, whose concern is for the advancement of mankind. These leaders must havecourage and belief in the value of their work, for no half-hearted means will carry the community forward. Still more, they must have knowledge, a sure ground to stand upon. To acquire this means both time and opportunity. To go into betterment work without it is to set back the wheels of progress, not to advance them.
FOOTNOTES:[8]Bureau of Municipal Research.[9]Quoted in Report on National Vitality, p. 123.[10]Bulletin, Bureau of Municipal Research.
[8]Bureau of Municipal Research.
[8]Bureau of Municipal Research.
[9]Quoted in Report on National Vitality, p. 123.
[9]Quoted in Report on National Vitality, p. 123.
[10]Bulletin, Bureau of Municipal Research.
[10]Bulletin, Bureau of Municipal Research.
The child to be “raised” as he should be. Restraint for his good. Teaching good habits the chief duty of the family.
Our success or failure with the unending stream of babies (one everyeight seconds) is the measure of our civilization: every institution stands or falls by its contribution to that result, by the improvement of the children born or by the improvement of the quality of births attained under its influence.H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making.
Our success or failure with the unending stream of babies (one everyeight seconds) is the measure of our civilization: every institution stands or falls by its contribution to that result, by the improvement of the children born or by the improvement of the quality of births attained under its influence.
H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making.
Children are the most hopeful element of our population, and we should concentrate our efforts on them.Dr. W. F. Porter, Harvard Medical School Lectures.
Children are the most hopeful element of our population, and we should concentrate our efforts on them.
Dr. W. F. Porter, Harvard Medical School Lectures.
We want the mothers to be the health officers of the home.Charles W. Hewitt.
We want the mothers to be the health officers of the home.
Charles W. Hewitt.
When human beings and families rationally subordinate their own interests as perfectly to the welfare of future generations as do animals under the control of instinct, the world will have a more enduring type of family life than exists at present. This can only be accomplished by the development of controlling ideals which are supported not only by reason and intelligence but by ethical impulse and religious motive.The home should be considered the place where are to be developed and conveyed the precious qualities which are so vital to the continuity of the race and the progress of human society and civilization.Those factors which are of a more material or physical nature, such as shelter, food, dress, and personal health, are to be estimated in their relation to mind, character, and effective conduct.In the confusion of relative values human health as one of the essential means to many worthy ends is usually neglected. Man is the most highly developed of all species of animals. He is, to some degree at least, civilized, and yet human beings are of all animals the sickliest, and this in spite of the fact that human health is more important to man and to the world than the health of any other creature. And by health I do not mean simply existence, freedom from pain, or absence of disease, but rather organic power and efficiency, the maximum vital ability possible to the individual for the doing of all that seems most worth while in life.Dr. Thomas D. Wood, Lake Placid Conference, 1902.
When human beings and families rationally subordinate their own interests as perfectly to the welfare of future generations as do animals under the control of instinct, the world will have a more enduring type of family life than exists at present. This can only be accomplished by the development of controlling ideals which are supported not only by reason and intelligence but by ethical impulse and religious motive.
The home should be considered the place where are to be developed and conveyed the precious qualities which are so vital to the continuity of the race and the progress of human society and civilization.
Those factors which are of a more material or physical nature, such as shelter, food, dress, and personal health, are to be estimated in their relation to mind, character, and effective conduct.
In the confusion of relative values human health as one of the essential means to many worthy ends is usually neglected. Man is the most highly developed of all species of animals. He is, to some degree at least, civilized, and yet human beings are of all animals the sickliest, and this in spite of the fact that human health is more important to man and to the world than the health of any other creature. And by health I do not mean simply existence, freedom from pain, or absence of disease, but rather organic power and efficiency, the maximum vital ability possible to the individual for the doing of all that seems most worth while in life.
Dr. Thomas D. Wood, Lake Placid Conference, 1902.
Theideal of “home” is protection from dangers fromwithin—bad habits, bad food, bad air, dirt and abuse,—shelter, in fact, from all stunting agencies, just as the gardener protects his tender plants until they become strong enough to stand by themselves. The child’s home environment is certainly a potent factor in his future efficiency.
But more than physical protection is that education in all that goes to make up profitable living, acquired by following the mother or nurse in her daily round and in having legitimate questions answered. Imitation is the first step in good habits, as in learning to walk or to read. That which is set before the child should be worthy its imitation, and be of value when fixed as a habit. Habits of health, correct position, deep breathing, clean ways, distaste for dirt in one’s person or in one’s vicinity, likingfor fresh air, for simple food, good habits of exercise, of reading, and the thousand and one trifles that go to make up the efficient worker in adult years, all belong to the well-ordered home, where, as one author puts it, the child is the business of the day.
But the State cannot risk its property too far.
When mothers become so careless or ignorant that half their children fail to reach their first birthday, and of those that live to be three years old a majority are defrauded of their birthright of health, some agency must step in.
If the State is to have good citizens it must provide for the teaching of the essentials to a generation that will become the wiser mothers and fathers of the next. Therefore, even if we regard this as only a temporary expedient, we must begin to teach the children in our schools, and begin at once, that which we see they are no longer learning in the home. “The achievement at Huddersfield, England, is especially noteworthy. The average annualnumber of deaths of infants for ten years had been 310. By a systematic education of mothers the number was in 1907 reduced to 212. The cost of saving these ninety-eight lives was about $2,000.”[11]
One university has established a course in the care of children, much to the amusement of the press. The United States Commissioner of Education has, however, been a responsible mover in the idea.
But real progress by means of family education means the stable family and the permanent dwelling. Where is the family in the permanent dwelling today? Among any class, except the agricultural, where is the stable family?
Since industry has taken woman’s work from her, and she has to follow it out into the world, the means of education for the child has gone from the home. Its atmosphere is artificial, if the attempt is made.
To work exclusively on the family, for the sake of the child, is a very slow process. As in all American life, the quicker method appeals most strongly. The school is todaythe quickest means of reaching both child and home; the present home through the child, and the future homes through the children when they grow up.
And time presses! A whole generation has been lost because the machine ran wild without guidance, and all attempt at improvement was met by futile resistance.
It is very difficult to present the socionomist’s view of the child in the home so that it may appeal to the two extremes of opinion. There are those who still apply mediæval rules to twentieth century living; those who believe, honestly, that the ideal life was found in the days when the mother was the manufacturer in her own home and the children were her helpers in all the varied processes. “There was never any artificial teaching devised so good for children as the daily helping in the household tasks.” The inference is made that therefore the same restriction for the mother and the children leads to an ideal life today. Such persons fail to realize that the twentieth century is practically a new world. The old rules which related to material thingshardly hold more closely than they would on the planet Mars. The fundamental moral principles of reverence, obedience, love, and unselfish sacrifice must be worked in on a new background.
To keep the eighteenth century habit, so carefully taught the girl, of courtesying as she stepped aside to allow the rider or the ox cart to pass, in these days of the swift automobile, which would be out of sight before the knee could bend, is no more ridiculous than to expect the average young mother to follow the methods of her grandmother. Her mother’s ways are now pronounced all wrong, not necessarily because they were wrong then, but because conditions have changed, knowledge has been gained, and it is clearly a waste of human life, of money, of physical and mental power for people to be sick and die because the caretaker does not use the knowledge in circulation.
If the young mother can learn how better to fulfill her duties by going out of the house to lectures or classes, why not?
Tracts are not always successful as anincentive to conduct. It is obviously impossible to pass a blue law compelling parents to conform to—what ideal? The school is fast taking the place of the home, not because it wishes to do so, but because the home does not fulfill its function, and so far has not been made to, and the lack must be supplied. The personal point of view, inculcated now by modern conditions of strife for money, just as surely as it must have been by barbarian struggle in pre-civilized days, must be supplanted by the broad view of majority welfare. The extreme of the personal point of view, expressed in such phrases as “The world owes me a living;” “My child is mine to treat as I please;” “It is nobody’s business how I spend my money;” “I have a right to all the pleasure I can get out of life,” is well shown in Mr. H. G. Wells’s analogy[12]: “A cat’s standpoint is probably strictly individualistic. She sees the whole universe as a scheme of more or less useful, pleasurable, and interesting things concentrated upon her sensitive and interesting personality.With a sinuous determination she evades disagreeables and pursues delights. Life is to her quite clearly and simply a succession of pleasures, sensations, and interests, among which interests there happen to be—kittens.”
This unsuspicious ignorance of the real nature of life is by no means confined to animals and savages; it would seem to be the common view of many young people today. At least they take as little care of the homes to which they bring children, and they follow the cat’s example in boxing the children’s ears and turning them out to fend for themselves.
The last generation seemed to become disciples of Schopenhauer in his passionate rebellion against the fate that deferred all the pleasure of the present to the needs of the future generation. Evolution has revealed the necessity for this subordination of the individual lot to the destiny of the race, if progress is to be made. The man who asserts himself as free from race trammels is snuffed out as a factor—a blighted blossom fallen to earth and trodden underfoot. To the student of biological evolution, the individual is as a mere pin point on the chart of community advance, for surely society grows according to evolutionary law. “As certainly as Nature gives the poor child its chance of a good life, so certainly do the circumstances of slum environment rob it forthwith of its birthright—it is not uncommon to find more than half the children of three years of age hanging on to life with marks of disease and undergrowth firmly implanted on their tender frames. Yet, practically, none of this is inherited in the true sense; it is the victory of evil human devices in their endeavor to cheat Nature of her own. If ever there was a mission in the world worthy of the most strenuous service, it is to wrest back this victory, be it out of pity for suffering children or for the very welfare and existence of the nation.
“The schools have made their beginning; thehomeshave not yet started; they wait the impulse from without. It is for voluntary, intelligent opinion to get to work on the home, and never to relax until a raceof parents has arisen which knows no other duty to the state than to rear with heart and brain the children which have been given to them. Then we shall hear no more about physical degeneracy.”[13]
Hope for the future is to be found in the conclusions of the immigration commission, that in one generation certain marked changes in stature and in head measurements have taken place in the children of immigrants of various nationalities, such changes as have hitherto been considered as the result of centuries. The commissioners credit the better environment and larger opportunities with these indications of increasing intellectuality and mental force.
Most human efficiency is the result of habits rather than of innate ability. These habits of mind, as well as of body, are developed by the home life at an early age. The home is responsible for the upbringing of healthy, intelligent children. Here is the place for fostering the valuable and suppressing the harmful traits. The school cannever take the place of the home in this. With the large classes of the public schools, the teacher should not be asked to undertake this individual work. Moreover, correcting a child for personal habits can hardly be effective before fifty or sixty pairs of critical eyes.
The office of the home must be to teach habits of right living and daily action, and a joy and pride in life as well as responsibility for life. It is not fair that the parents should sit back and shift to the school the whole responsibility for the future citizen.
The little modifications can best be made in the home, permanent foundations can be laid and braced with habits so good and strong that nothing can shake them. Most powers are the result of habits. Let the furrows be plowed deeply enough while the brain cells are plastic, then human energies will result in efficiency and the line of least resistance will be the right line. Everything, therefore, which influences the child must be the best known to science. The houses of the land must be regulated by the scientific laws of right living. To thewoman, the home worker, we say: “You must have the will power, for the sake of your child, to bring to his service all that has been discovered for the promotion of human efficiency, so that he may have the habit, thetechnique.”
To pay a tax today for the benefit of one’s children is a principle of insurance, of benefit association. This feeling of obligation means present sacrifice of ease and inclination, and it has been increasingly shirked, so that it is not surprising that a tax to insure one against future loss by disease is an unwelcome proposition.
The whole question of the child in the home is one of ethics, as the writers on social conditions have been trying to convince the world. If the swarms of dwellers in the busy hives of industry have no sense of their humanity, if they do not use the human power of looking ahead, that power which differentiates man from animals, what better are they than animals?
No one can be sorry that there are no children in thousands of homes one knows. It is better that children should not havebeen born than to come into an inheritance of suffering and mental and moral dwarfing. Social uplift will not be possible while parents take the view of cats, or even of a well-to-do mother who said, “I did not have my baby to discipline her; I had her to play with.”
No state can thrive while its citizens waste their resources of health, bodily energy, time, and brain power, any more than a nation may prosper which wastes its natural resources.
America today is wasting its human possibilities even more prodigally than its material wealth. The latter deficiency is being brought to a halt. Shall the human side receive less attention? A sharply divided line between home and school is no longer clearly drawn. Parents’ associations are being formed and are coöperating with the school-teacher. To what end? To the better moral and intellectual atmosphere of the home. Physical education has had its vogue, but too much as an endeavor apart, not as a necessary element in the whole.
The pedagogical world is now becoming convinced that physical defects are more often than not the basis of mental incompetence, and this leads logically to the teaching of the laws of right living in a practical way, not merely as lessons from books, but as daily practice. This practice must eventually go into the home, where the most of the child’s hours are spent. It is as useless to expect good health from unsanitary houses as good English from two hours’ school training diluted by twelve hours of slovenly language. Hence the imperative need of such teaching and example as can be put into practice; and since immediate house to house renovation and change of view are impossible, the school must provide for teaching how to live wisely and sanely, as well as for clear thinking and æsthetic appreciation. Practical hygiene, food, cleanliness, sanitation, all must eventually be exemplified by the schoolhouse and taught as a part of a general education to all pupils, boys and girls.
If this sounds like socialism, let us not be afraid, but educate for five or ten yearsall children, so that homes may be better managed, and then it is to be hoped there will be no need for such school training. To live economically in the broad sense of wise use of time, money, and bodily strength is the great need of the twentieth century. This is practical economics. This is something which cannot today, except in rare instances, be learned at home, for conditions change so rapidly that grown people may not keep up with them. Mothers’ ways are superseded before the children are grown.
The school, if it is maintained as a progressive institution and a defense against predatory ideas, is the people’s safeguard from being crushed by the irresistible car of progress. I repeat, standards may be set by the school which will reach and influence the community in a few months. Such standards should be a means of safeguarding the people, and this leads to the most important service which a teacher of domestic economy can render to the people in giving them a sense of control over their environment, than which nothing is so conducive to stability of ideas.
To feel one’s self in command of a situation robs it of its terror. A great danger in America today is the loss of this feeling of self-confidence with which the pioneer was abundantly furnished. A certain helpless dependence is creeping over the land because of the peculiar development of resources, which must be replaced by a sense of power over one’s environment.