PERSONALS

Wilfred S. Reynolds, executive secretary of the Cook County Board of Visitors during its first year has succeeded Prof. Henry W. Thurston and Dr. Hastings H. Hart as secretary and superintendent of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society. A graduate of Earlham College, Indiana, Mr. Reynolds was for six years superintendent of schools and assistant superintendent of the School for Delinquent Boys at Plainfield, Ind. Under Amos W. Butler, he was for four years in charge of the department of the Indiana Board of State Charities for the supervision of dependent and neglected children.

The Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society is devoted to home-finding and the supervision of children in foster homes, the aid and helpful oversight of dependent parents with children, and to the administration of the four institutions conducted by the society in different parts of the state of Illinois. A careful survey of Chicago and of the state at large will soon be undertaken by Mr. Reynolds and his staff to determine anew the specific demands for the society’s work and the scale upon which it can now be undertaken. Its expenditures last year, as reported by the subscriptions investigating committee of the Chicago Association of Commerce, were $62,616.

The death of Samuel Allan Lattimore, Ph.D., LL.D., emeritus professor of chemistry of the University of Rochester, at the age of eighty-five, marks the passing of a notable educator and social worker. Though born in the central West of southern ancestry, he spent most of his professional life in the East. He combined in character the courtesy of the South, the vigor of the West and the conservatism of the East. He was a real aristocrat, the kind that makes a true democrat. As a teacher, and even as a friend, he gave the impression one has in the Alps of distance without remoteness, of aloofness without coldness.

Dr. Lattimore’s reputation as a scientist was such that in the face of bitter political opposition, his report recommending the present source of Rochester’s water supply was accepted. This secured to the citizens an ideal water system. He was one of the organizers of the Western New York Institution for Deaf Mutes, of the Mechanics Institute and of the Reynolds Library, three of the most useful institutions of the city. For several years he was a member of the city Board of Health, of the Monroe County committee of mental hygiene of the State Charities Aid Association, and of the board of visitors for that organization to the state hospital for the insane. He was a pioneer advocate of cremation on the ground of its sanitary value, and his body was one of the first to be reduced to its elements in the crematory just completed by his city.

PROF. SAMUEL A. LATTIMORE

The scholar and the gentleman blended in him so perfectly that we think of him first as a citizen. The community is as much his debtor as the university. He had unusual opportunities to make large sums of money as an expert chemist, but never would lower his professional standards for commercial gain. One of his most conspicuous early services was a course of free public lectures on science given to large audiences of working men for several successive years in Buffalo, Cleveland and Rochester.

Professor Lattimore’s mind was keenly alert to the very end of his career and kept in touch with all of the movements for social welfare. Only a few days before his death he was deeply interested in the article in a recentSurveyby Samuel Fels on The Policeman. He suggested that it be reprinted inThe Common Goodand a copy be sent to every policeman in the city. His wish has been carried out.[3]He was a fine type of the new citizen-scholar, with a large and keen sense of the duty which scholarship owes to the community.

3. The Common Good of Civic and Social Rochester. March, 1913. p. 171.

Paul Moore Strayer.

Recently the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company elected Lee K. Frankel sixth vice-president. As assistant secretary and manager of the Industrial Department, Dr. Frankel has brought his knowledge of social work and conditions into the industrial insurance field.

At the summit of his usefulness Prince A. Morrow has been gathered to his fathers. Worn out by labor for a cause that possessed him mind, body and estate, he was cut down in the glory of what must almost be considered martyrdom. His zeal for his endeavor engulfed him, rendered him oblivious to all minor concerns. He was happy in death because it occurred when the tidal wave that he had started on its onward course was sweeping a mighty current throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Dr. Morrow was born December 19, 1846, and therefore had not reached the allotted threescore and ten years when death claimed him. He was of gentle birth, and his mental equipment and capacity entitled him to work as a peer among intellectual men. His honesty of purpose, strength of character, and mental courage rendered him a fit champion for the cause he finally espoused. At the age of eighteen, he won his academic degree at Princeton College, Ky. He took his professional degree from the Medical Department of the University of New York in 1874.

His activity in professional work soon brought him into prominence as a surgeon, lecturer, professor, and author. He was an indefatigable worker from the first, and a voluminous writer, contributing essays freely to medical periodicals, translating important works from the French; he stood out as an authority on dermatology and syphilology. Along these lines he gained distinction and emolument.

But this goal did not satisfy the cravings of his moral nature. He had in him the sturdy courage and the indomitable will of a reformer. In his late manhood he set about the herculean task of cleansing the moral atmosphere of the community. He opened the door of publicity and let in the light of knowledge upon the slimy and festering course of the venereal diseases in their ravaging march among the ignorant and innocent.

This led to a broadening of the lines of his endeavor and the inclusion of the sex problem in his crusade. More and more he recognized the necessity of imparting correct information upon sex matters to the budding curiosity of youth and of giving honest food to clean young minds, rather than the distorted nourishment they had been wont to receive. His studies, his writings, his teachings, and his special line of practice and hospital work, all had served to fit him peculiarly for his chosen task. The final outcome of it all was the crowning glory of his life, the formation of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, of which he was the life and the soul and which above all else is worthy of record among his achievements.

After months of thought and much counsel and consultation among his friends, who furnished him scant support and at best only lukewarm approval, he finally called a meeting on February 8, 1905, at the New York Academy of Medicine. A handful of men, twenty-five in all—timid, half-hearted associates—gathered around him to discuss the propriety of organizing a society for “the study and prevention of the spread of diseases which have their origin in the social evil.”

A movement of this nature was already under way abroad, notably in France, Belgium, and Germany, but England was nearly silent on the subject and not a ripple of the current had started on this side of the Atlantic. The medical profession of New York was indifferent, if not passively hostile, to the new movement, while the country at large was apathetic. But Dr. Morrow struggled in season and out of season against indifference, opposition, and ridicule. From this small beginning he pushed ahead, until death snatched his tired body from the arena. Yet his accomplishment lives and is his monument—and practically his alone—for he was its life and its spirit.

Today the society in numbers approaches 2,000 and embraces in its membership individuals in every quarter of the globe—Canada, England, Scotland, Mexico, Asia, Africa, New Zealand. Largely from the seed sown by the pioneer society, there have sprung up in the United States over twenty kindred bodies, most of which were helped in organization by the literature of the New York society and the kindly counsel and encouragement of Dr. Morrow. The laity even more than the profession, and notably women, have put their shoulders to the wheel and assisted. The press is no longer timidly hostile, but opens its columns and lends its editorials to spreading the idea which is now slowly sweeping over the land.

Dr. Morrow has been recognized as the general at the head of the advancing army, a recognition which may be epitomized by quoting the words of a resolution passed by the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography at Washington, September 27, 1912:

Be it resolved: That the participants of this section on sex hygiene of the Fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, consider it a privilege to make public record of their sense of obligation to Dr. Morrow for his courageous and unflinching attitude in the fact of difficulties that would have discomfited an ordinary man, and of admiration for the achievement that has culminated in the prominent position that education in sex hygiene has commanded in the deliberation of this congress.

“Be it also resolved: That the delegates here assembled join with rare pleasure in the attempt, inadequate though it be, to express to Dr. Morrow the gratitude not only of the American people, but of the world of nations.”

Dr. Morrow’s gracious manner and courtly dignity, the balanced charm of his cultured and deliberate diction, a combination that quite justifies the seeming pretension of his praenomen—these things, and many others, will long be remembered by those who have the honor to believe that they may be classed among the number of his friends.

E. L. Keyes.

Prof. Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago was again elected alderman of his ward on April 1. The circumstances of the victory give it unusual significance. All Chicago watched the struggle so closely as almost to forget the aldermanic battles in other wards. The way in which he took up the cudgels shows again Professor Merriam’s high degree of civic courage. For scarcely a man who had served with distinction as an alderman and then as the leader in a mayoralty campaign that attracted the nation’s attention, would have entered an aldermanic fight again with the odds against him. His ward, the boundaries of which were recently changed, no longer includes the university as it did when he was previously elected alderman. It now stretches far to the south, and takes in some industrial sections. Professor Merriam not only had an able opponent but, in making non-partisanship a main issue, he decided to run solely as an independent candidate nominated by petition.

His opponents all ran on party tickets. There was even a candidate under the Progressive Party designation despite Professor Merriam’s prominent identification with that party during the last presidential campaign. The progressives in Chicago tried hard to arrange an agreement between all the parties to abandon party names and leave the field throughout the city clear for nominations solely by petition. When this failed they nominated their own candidates. The candidacy of a “progressive” against Professor Merriam is said by some to have been part of a scheme to beat him.

Professor Merriam has aggressively worked for public rights and welfare and the newer methods of bringing the control of government back to the people. His election is a triumph for this type of public service as distinguished from the “business administration” type which his chief opponent personified.

G. R. T.

KarlDESchweinitz, for nearly two years secretary of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, will shortly become head of the Bureau of Advice and Information of the New York Charity Organization Society. This bureau undertakes to investigate, at request, agencies and institutions accepting donations from private individuals.

Mr. de Schweinitz brings to his new task experience in investigation, publicity and social work. He has been a reporter on both the PhiladelphiaPublic LedgerandPress, and has served in the circulation department of the Curtis Publishing Company. For a year he engaged in publicity work at the University of Pennsylvania.

Olive Crosby has been appointed office secretary of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Miss Crosby was formerly secretary of the New York Diet Kitchen Association, and earlier, head of the investigating department of the New York Charity Organization Society.

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