BOOKS

MODERN PHILANTHROPY

ByWilliam H. Allen. Dodd, Mead & Co. 437 pp. Price $1.50; by mail ofThe Survey$1.64.

During 1910 and 1911, the years immediately succeeding the death of her husband, Mrs. E. H. Harriman received many thousands of appeals from as many individuals, charities, churches or other enterprises, most of whom either felt that they had some claim upon her generosity or hoped that their individual desires or necessities were particularly worthy of support. These appeals, to the number of 6,000, Mrs. Harriman turned over to the New York Bureau of Municipal Research for analysis and study. They came from all corners of the globe. The plans and remedies proposed ranged from a sage’s advice to a cheap cure-all emanating from a freakish brain.

Using the results of this study as a text, the author has written this volume, a part of which is a discourse on the relation of philanthropy to the functions of government. Another part is more like a manual on will making and successful appealing for private funds. The final section is an argument in favor of a national clearing house for appeals and charitable causes.

The details with which the analysis and classification of the 6,000 appeals is presented are so elaborate that they become tiresome and confusing. Besides, many of them are so exceptional that while they might be texts for discussions in social ethics, few general conclusions of value can be reached from them.

The discussion of will making has greater value for our various communities, and is receiving increasing attention among lawyers, social workers and civic reformers. The author proposes that lawyers recognize this value and equip themselves as experts or consultants for those who in increasing number wish to leave of their resources a contribution toward the betterment of social and civic conditions. He calls attention to the fact that the terms of a will are generally an expression of a previous generation’s interest and that it is altogether too commonly true at the present time that the will maker’s thought is not kept abreast with the development of the community and the needs of the times. For instance, the important work in scientific research of the present day is not provided for to any large extent by bequests but is largely financed by gifts from the living.

The continuous education of prospective givers is urged so that their bequests may express a vital interest of the donor’s present instead of his past. The tendency of men to make their wills in middle life will, however, always prove to be an obstacle to this desired result, and hence the terms of a will must be made as general as a careful description of the donor’s interest allows it to be, rather than so restricted that its usefulness will soon be so lessened that the state must set a limit to the life of the bequest.

The list of nation-wide needs that the book presents is certainly a formidable one. Many of them require a paragraph while others ought to have a whole chapter if not a whole volume to elucidate them and show their value to the skeptical reader or legislator. In the shape in which they are presented they bewilder all except the expert social scientist or social reformer. That the needs have diverse values is easily seen by examining two in the list of 4 per cent to 6 per cent investments, combining public service and private profits. Here we find the enigmatic suggestion that we discover the “application of the Child’s Restaurant idea to boarding houses” placed side by side with the need of a “model factory system that would net capital 4 per cent or 5 per cent and let the earnings above that limit go to make high wages, shorter hours and lower prices.” Many utopias are contained in these lists. The enumeration is impressive and suggestive but not convincing.

The author’s tendency to question every social fact, every community habit and every form of benevolence is found throughout the volume. This undoubtedly arouses thought. It is nowhere better exemplified than in the following statement: “It is doubtful whether the philosophy of giving formulated by Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller rings truer than does that of begging letters. After all, philosophy is not much more than straight seeing, and a person in trouble, needing help, can see almost as much and as far as a person wanting to get rid of money. Neither a multi-millionaire nor a professor of ethics could surpass the good wife whose husband is harassed to pay $200 debts.” These half truths challenge one to find the whole truth, but they do not much enlighten him who is seeking to find a safe social policy.

Mr. Allen’s mind is fertile. He has the unusual gift of throwing out sheaves of questions for arousing one’s interest, and for this purpose the volume in question is particularly noteworthy.

C. C. Carstens.

ByMary A. LaselleandKatherine Wiley. Introduction by Meyer Bloomfield. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 139 pp. Price $.85; by mail ofThe Survey$.92.

This little volume is designed to be of service in assisting wage-earning girls to a wise and intelligent choice of a vocation and may be used as a reference or text book in the elementary grades, as well as furnish “advisory material” for those girls who continue in school after fourteen years of age.

The chief value of this book has been pointed out by Mr. Bloomfield; namely, that it is writtenby teachers who perhaps thus unconsciously express the prevailing discontent of the teacher alert to modern demands on education, and the reaching out of the hitherto secluded educator into the realities with which the child, unequipped, constantly struggles.

The material is attractively arranged, presented in a breezy, readable form, tinged with the spirit of sentiment, calculated to excite and hold the interest of the girl reader. It cannot fail to make the careless, irresponsible girl more thoughtful to untangle many perplexities for the troubled girl and to arouse ambition for personal efficiency in all girls who read it. The emphasis for gaining success is laid almost entirely upon personal efficiency. While the necessity cannot be made too clear to the girl—who is inclined to look upon her wage-earning life less as a profession than the boy—the book is disappointing in its almost total lack of recognition of the many failures in industry to meet the reasonable claims of efficiency. The absence of such information is prone to tempt the girl into industry sooner than there is financial need for her service, and does not protect her incentive or optimism, which protection is hoped for by the concealment of these facts. It is this feature which is too often damaging to the beneficial effect of many vocational bulletins published without an intimate and accurate knowledge of the trades discussed.

This setting forth of disadvantages as well as advantages has been most excellently done in another recent Boston publication, Survey of Occupations Open to the Girl of Fourteen to Sixteen Years, by Harriet Hazen Dodge. This pamphlet presents both sides of the question in a most helpful, concise and scientific form. The knowledge of the “disadvantages” is needful to the educator with whom will lie the decision as to the kind of trade or industry with which education can assist and co-operate in moulding the life of the child.

Vocations for Girls will be of assistance to the elementary teacher in providing an opportunity for intelligent contact with the girl worker, and suggestive material for further investigation as to the educative motive in trades and the benefit of the “occupative motive” in the girl pupil.

Little or no new information is given the sociological worker concerning specific lines of work for girls, or concerning her education for wage earning and home making.

The note of unquestioned recognition of the permanency of the girl’s wage-earning life which pervades every page of the book, is most welcome and all too urgently needed—both by girl and employer. But above all else, let me repeat that the book deserves a pioneer place in vocational literature, as one of the outward proofs of that which has long been felt,—that the destiny of the wage-earning child can be safely trusted to the keen interest, stimulating sympathy and sound judgment of his or her main dependence—the most potent of our social forces—the public school teacher.

Mary Edith Campbell.

ByHerbert Eugene Walter. 272 pp. Price $1.50; by mail ofThe Survey$1.65.

Everyone interested in the modern problems of eugenics and the care of defectives will find much of value in this book. The author says: “An attempt has been made to summarize for the intelligent but uninitiated reader some of the more recent phases of the questions of heredity which are at present agitating the biological world.”

The book is an excellent statement of the present most generally accepted theory of heredity, with only as much reference to other theories as will enable the reader to see how modern theories have grown out of the old ones.

Much of the book is extremely interesting to anyone with the least beginning of a scientific mind. The incidents with regard to the various experiments by biologists are illuminating.

The author is fair and guarded in his statements on questions which are in dispute. Although there can be no doubt as to his own beliefs in such matters, for example, as the inheritance of acquired characters, yet he gives both sides of the question fairly. Some of the instances of experiments read like a romance. The story of Lamarck’s Evening Primrose as studied by De Vries is fascinating.

Of course, to the socially minded person, the most interesting part of the book is that which deals with its application to man, and the chapter on human conservation which takes up such topics as how mankind may be improved, control of immigration, discriminating marriage laws, educated sentiment, segregation of defectives, etc., is compelling and well worth study.

The text is illustrated by a large number of diagrams some of which, although simple to the student of biology, will require considerable study by the ordinary reader. On the whole, the book is a valuable contribution to our literature on heredity and will be of great service to those who, while unable to study eugenics exhaustively, still feel that they must know the general theories on the subject.

Alexander Johnson.

ByDr. F. W. Foerster. Frederick A. Stokes Co. 225 pp. Price $1.35: by mail ofThe Survey$1.44.

This is a translation of a work entitledSexualethik und Sexualpadagogikby Dr. F. W. Foerster of Zürich, Switzerland. The translator supplies a brief statement of Foerster’s personal development and his final adoption of a positive ethical and religious philosophy akin to the new idealism of Prof. Rudolph Eucken. The book devotes considerable space to the theories of Ellen Key, Freud and Forel. On its positive side it advocates undeviating adherence to the traditional point of view in matters of sex and marriage. A somewhat pedantic touch results from the translator’s use of “ethic” in preference to the more familiar “ethics” as an equivalent for the GermanEthik.

Katharine Anthony.

BEDROCK

ByAnnie L. Diggs. The Social Center Publishing Co., Detroit. 70 pp. Price $.25; by mail ofThe Survey$.30.

Although, like Hayne’s famous speech on Foote’s resolution, this book shoots a passing reference at almost every topic of public affairs, it is in essence an argument for establishing an employment bureau in connection with every educational institution in the United States. The reasoning of the treatise, like its rhetoric, is thoroughly ill-digested. While the author has imagination enough to see the perfect beauty of a social adjustment which would provide a suitable occupation for every educated person, and an educated person for every occupation, she apparently relies on the sentimentality and good-heartedness of mankind to bring this about.

Her program for starting an employment bureau is to get a handful of men and women into a parlor and start one. The task of launching raw youngsters on their life-work is to be done at first by volunteers “whose imaginations are quickened by a longing to serve humanity.” The author is evidently unacquainted with the history of vocational guidance in Boston, which has emphasized above all else the need of full and scientific information about industry and individual aptitudes before placement is sparingly attempted. She says not a word about the age at which children are to be steered into jobs, and is apparently unfamiliar with recent investigations in New York, Cincinnati and Philadelphia, which have made it alarmingly probable that there are no positions in cities into which it is wise or safe to place children. She seems to accept as good, without discrimination, any and all attempts at vocational training, at the same time not realizing that such training should precede organized placement.

In a word, the book embodies nearly all of the fallacies and half-truths which make so difficult the progress of wise educational readjustment in this country at the present time. Mrs. Diggs describes herself as the chairman of the Department of Employment Bureaus of the National Social Center Association. It is to be hoped that if that organization ever addresses itself to active propaganda, it will not adopt Mrs. Diggs’ views on finding work for children.

Winthrop D. Lane.

ByRev. R. J. Patterson, LL.B. Geo. H. Doran Co. 192 pp. Price $1.00; by mail ofThe Survey$1.07.

The author, a Presbyterian minister, in the north of Ireland, catches enthusiasm from a Catholic priest, and a temperance movement of great significance results, enrolling 130,000 men in a year’s time, chiefly by the work of ex-drinkers for their former “pals.” The book is a glowingly Irish account of what has been a unique illustration of the power of sheer brotherhood, applied after the method of the Gospels and in the unconventional spirit of the Good Samaritan. The material given here is to be classed for significance in interpreting religious experience with two recent publications—Varieties of Religious Experience and Twice-Born Men.

Perhaps the core of the book is the conclusion phrased in words previously and independently used by Professor Horne: “Sometimes conviction leads to action.... Sometimes action leads to conviction.” The experience of the mystic seems incalculable; the religion of the Gospels and of this book reveal a constant, lawful and infinite power, a source of true miracle, latent until men take its challenge and by a brotherly act of will allow it to work its wonders through them. “All our attempts to save a man,” says Mr. Patterson, “should be made at the point where he understands.... [Jesus] began at the blind man’s eyes, at the lame man’s feet, at the deaf man’s ears, at the dumb man’s tongue.” This movement has given also another proof of the pressing necessity of social centers for men, equally attractive and unconventional as the saloon, and the author has interesting things to say about “Temperance saloons,” public opinion, and legislation.

J. F. Bushnell.

ByCaroline L. Hunt. Whitcomb & Barrows. Boston. 328 pp. Price $1.50; by mail ofThe Survey$1.66.

Bryn Mawr College, Class of 1907. 137 pp.

“The large, outgiving life” is a graphic phrase used by the biographer of Ellen H. Richards in introducing the story of her sixty-eight well-spent years. Mrs. Richards was a woman in whose nature the quality of acquisitiveness seems almost to have been omitted. She gave boundlessly of herself to individuals and to the common welfare. Her thoughtfulness for friends and associates and her notable public services were intrinsic forms of self-expression. Apparently, she was incapable of a perfunctory act. Her letters to friends, the gift for the coming baby, the “treat” for the girl student away from home for the first time, the pot of flowers sent to a new neighbor, her letters to “correspondence” students, her analysis of the water supply of the state of Massachusetts, her leadership in the home economics movement—all these things, from the least to the most important, were but the sincere expressions of her outpouring spirit.

Her impulse for service was re-enforced by a remarkable talent for administration. It was this which made possible the extraordinary generosity of her life. It was scientifically managed from the start. At the height of her career, as Miss Hunt remarks, Mrs. Richards was doing the work of ten people. Even as a little girl, Ellen Swallow had shown her capacity to carry on a triple career by helping her mother at home and her father in the “general store,” besides doing the lessons proper for a little girl. Later she combined teaching with housekeeping and storekeeping and helped to earn the money with which she went to college. During the greater part of her two years at Vassar, she supported herself by tutoring. From this time on, as student in the Boston Institute of Technology and subsequently as instructor, Mrs. Richards wassteadily increasing the range of her energies and activities. The history of her life is the history of the inauguration of many social and scientific movements.

As a leader, she united to a marked degree the qualities of pioneer and conservator. To have been the first woman to enter the Institute of Technology and to have opened the way for other women was for her a life-long satisfaction. She was never weary in fighting the battle for the higher education of women. But she had also a strong instinct for sustaining the victory so hardly won. This is illustrated by a reproachful letter which she wrote to a woman friend, a college professor, who had fainted. “Take beef three times a day for a fortnight to tone yourself up,” she wrote, “and don’t do it again. It is fully as important to keep in physical condition as to have a mental grasp. Nowadays the last card they can trump up against us is that we are not physically equal to what we try to do. The more prominent we are the more closely they watch us. Just now, too, when so much is in the air against woman’s education.”

The volume is issued as a memorial and was prepared with the co-operation of Professor Richards and a committee of Mrs. Richards’ friends representing her various interests.

At the age of twenty-five, Ellen Swallow was just pulling herself free from the narrow life of a New England village and starting off to Vassar College. At the same age, Carola Woerishoffer, thanks to a more favorable environment and a more enlightened generation, had finished her college course and entered upon a well-established career of social service. When her gallant and useful life came to a tragical end in an automobile accident at this same age, she had already accomplished much that was worth recording.

A picture of her life and personality is given in a small memorial volume, which consists chiefly of a series of addresses made by personal friends at a meeting held in Greenwich House shortly after her death. In the descriptions of her friends, the girl’s devotion to athletics, her spirit of comradeship, her strong-willed nature, her democratic instincts, her German fondness for thoroughness and hatred of dilettantism, and her sense of social responsibility as the possessor of wealth are the qualities which are made to stand out as most representative of her.

The spirit in which her social work was done was thus described by one of the speakers: “She and another young woman, Elizabeth Butler, who also did immeasurably hard things and who also left us forever this summer—they undertook so simply the things that to us of my generation seemed a moral adventure, a wonderful undertaking,—these young women took them in such a matter-of-fact way. It did not seem to Carola an adventure to go into laundries any more than it did to Elizabeth Butler to go into the depths of blackest Pittsburgh. The things were there, and we had to know about them, and it was all matter-of-fact, just as it would have been for an able-bodied man to go and look at things and come back and tell the world what it bitterly needs to know about them. It was all matter-of-fact for them, and I believe they are forerunners of new generations of women who will insist in their youth on knowing life as it is, on facing the world clear-eyed and changing these things which we of my generation, in our youth, shirked and preferred not to know.”

Katharine Anthony.

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