ADVENTURES IN SOCIAL WELFARE Division H V2 8 Section , l J G & / Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/adventuresinsociOOjohn Adventures In Social Welfare ■ d i { OO 1 Q0‘ k j k I / Adventures In Social Welfare '4. i fl! U XL Being Reminiscences of Th i n g s , Thoughts a n d Folks During Forty Years of Social Work By / ALEXANDER JOHNSON Published by the author at Fort Wayne, Indiana May, 1923 Press of Fort Wayne Printing Company Fort Wayne, Indiana. NOTICE This book is not copyrighted. If any one thinks my message, or any part of it, is worth repeating, he may reprint it with my hearty good will, all the heartier if he will mention the original and send me a copy. ALEXANDER JOHNSON Contents page Prologue: Social Work and Social Workers . 3 Part 1 : Adventures in Organized Charity Chapter 1, My Adventure with the Associated Charities of Cincinnati . 13 Chapter 2, Family Welfare Work in the Mid- West in the late nineteenth century 45 Chapter 3, My Adventure with the Charity Organization Society of Chicago ... 59 Part 2 : Adventures in Inspection and Supervision Chapter 1, Beginning the Adventures . 81 Chapter 2, The Board of State Charities and its methods . 87 Chapter 3, The First Annual Report . 97 Chapter 4, The Board and the Newspapers. . . . 101 Chapter 5, Adventures among the Insane . 105 Chapter 0, Adventures with Criminals . 115 Chapter 7, Adventures in State book-keeping. . 130 Chapter 8, The Asylums for the Poor . 137 Chapter 9, Dependent Children . 150 Chapter 10, An Adventure in Poor Relief . 156 Chapter 11, The State Conference and my suc¬ cessors . 164 Part 3 : Adventures Among the Feeble-Minded Chapter 1, Beginning the Adventures . 173 Chapter 2, Adventures in Education . 180 Chapter 3, Adventures in Amusement . 188 Chapter 4, Adventures with Helpers . 198 Chapter 5, Adventures with the Colony . 210 Chapter 6, Adventures in Construction . 222 Chapter 7, Adventures in Nutrition . 232 Chapter 8, An Adventure in Investigation . 238 Chapter 9, Adventures in Medicine . 246 Chapter 10, Adventures with Governors . 256 Chapter 11, The Adventure’s ending . 264 vii PAGE Part 4 : Adventures with the National Conference of Charities and Correction Chapter 1, The Conference and some of its methods . 269 Chapter 2, My early Conferences, 1884-1889 . . . 281 Chapter 3, Adventures as Secretary, 1st series, 1890-1893 . 295 Chapter 4, Conferences from 1893-1904 . 305 Chapter 5, Adventures as Secretary, 2nd series, 1905-1907 . 327 Chapter 6, Adventures as Secretary, 3rd series, 1908-1913 . 344 Part 5 : Adventures in Social Education Chapter 1, The School of Philanthropy in New York . 371 Chapter 2, The School of Civics and Philan¬ thropy in Chicago . 379 Chapter 3, Other Schools and Colleges . 384 Part 6 : Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda for the Feeble-Minded Chapter 1, The Task . 391 Chapter 2, The Execution . 396 Chapter 3, The Results . 413 Part 7 : Adventures with the Red Cross Chapter 1, In Camp with the Soldier Boys. . . . 421 Chapter 2, Adventures as Director of Super¬ vision . 435 Chapter 3, The Great Opportunity of Red Cross Home Service . 443 Index . 449 viii DEDICATION To the Social Workers of America, my companions and work- fellows, whose courage, cheerfulness, loyalty and warm, human friendliness have made my life among them a fortunate and happy one: I lovingly dedicate this record of forty years’ adventuring. ALEXANDER JOHNSON IX PROLOGUE SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL WORKERS PROLOGUE SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL WORKERS When I contrast the full and interesting life I have had during the past forty years with the dull, monotonous grind which prob¬ ably would have been mine had I early learned to make money and become absorbed in that narrowing occupation, I am devoutly grateful to the friends who persuaded me to adopt the most fascinating of professions. A man can have no better for¬ tune than that the labor by which he lives brings such satisfaction that if he did not need to work for wages he would gladly do it without. Such good fortune many a social worker shares with real artists, devoted physicians, true preachers, a few fine crafts¬ men, every great scientist and some other happy folk. Not that social work knows no pain, anxiety, disappointment, failure, defeat. He would be indeed a fortunate adventurer for whom all winds were favorable, who never misread his chart, whose ship cleared every rock and shoal. Social work, as Cabot says, is one of the dangerous occupations and its money rewards are small. But its real compensations are great; at any rate one old worker thinks so, and indeed is so sure of it that he wants to tell the fact to all who will read his true story. The wise old Greek said, “Call no man happy till he is dead”. Perhaps we may revise his wisdom a little and say “until he has retired”. When a man has given up active work, is six years past the psalmist’s ill-considered limit of threescore and ten, and is well content with his lot so far, he may reasonably hope for immunity from serious unhappiness during the brief span which will be his. The duty of putting my memories into print was first laid on me, about seven years ago, by my friend, Edwin D. Solenberger, who declared that I had a store of experience which should not be wasted. Other friends have repeated his demand. So I am writing partly to satisfy them ; partly to please myself by setting my memories in order before they become too dim, fighting over again some old battles, tasting in retrospect the sweets of victory 3 4 Prologue and the wholesome bitter of defeat ; partly also in the hope that I may interest and even instruct some of the present generation of social workers, to whom I feel as a grandfather; but most of all that I may bear testimony to the value and satisfactions of a worthy profession. Having decided to write, came the question of the form my book should take. About one great department of social progress in recent years I can say, as Aeneas said about events in Troy, “all of which I saw and part of which I was”. I hesitated a while between attempting a volume of essays, which would be imper¬ sonal, in little danger of apparent egotism; and a partial auto¬ biography, interspersed with reflections which might be near essays. Then I wanted to write for my work-fellows ; the social workers of America, among whom I count hundreds of the friends who have meant most in my life. So the personal note seemed not out of place, and I determined to tell my story as a series of adventures, setting down the thoughts which they suggest as digressions by the way. Having made my plan, the next problem was where to begin. Should it be with the first inklings of what has become a dominant motive— the desire to make things better for the less fortunate of my kind — to be a small part of that human providence which seems to be the most certain we can invoke? Or should I wait until the period when an avocation became a vocation and I supported my family by the kind of work which had occupied a few hours of leisure? Some things that happened in my childhood had made lasting impressions. The very earliest incident I can dimly recall was of a group of boys and girls — as my childish memory multiplied them they seemed hundreds, tho I know they could only have been a dozen or two — clustering around the back door of our house in Ashton-under-Lyne, being fed with broth out of a steaming cauldron — enormous it seemed to my young recollection. Years afterward I learned from my mother that they were starving children of striking cotton-spinners and weavers and most of them lived in cottages Tvhich my father owned, on the back street behind our house. My father, a prosperous merchant tailor, was not supposed to know about the soup kettle, since his best cus¬ tomers were the employers of the strikers, and strikes were fierce Social Work and Workers 5 conflicts seventy-two years ago and everybody took sides in them. In the rioting near the end of the long strike, some gardens, which had been made out of a few acres of the reclaimed “Ashton Moss”, just outside the town, were raided and my father’s acre was the only one untouched; his rosebushes and gooseberry trees (Lan¬ cashire was famous for gooseberries) being spared. Another early social experience, the first in which I, a boy of fifteen, had part, was during the Lancashire “cotton famine”, which was a by-product of the war between the states. Our well-to-do London relatives, instead of contributing to the general relief fund, sent money to us for the people in Salford among whom we lived. Again my mother’s wonderfully economical cooking came in and she fed scores of children daily; and this time father did not have to pretend ignorance. I had a Sunday- school class and had the pleasure of buying “clogs” for ten little boys so they could attend on Sunday morning, as one could not barefoot. One incident of that period gave me my first knowledge, often reenforced since, of how “charity” is hated and feared by the decent poor. The working people of Lancashire were the sturdi¬ est, least subservient, most democratic of English folk. Peter Benson, an old weaver, was a deacon of the little Baptist chapel of which my father was a pillar (father always went where he thought he was needed instead of to a church wherein he might have found customers for his tailor shop). We were sure the Benson family must be near the breaking point and, knowing they would starve rather than apply to the relief fund, father took me with him when he went with the offer of a few shillings of my uncle’s money; he had little enough of his own by this time, for business was at a standstill in the cotton district. The sturdy old man refused the bitter bread of charity, declared they were all right, they had no need. All father’s eloquence seemed in vain until he said “Well, Peter, let’s tell the Lord about it”. Whereupon we all went down on our knees and in a few moments the whole household was in tears. Father prayed that we might be delivered from wicked pride, hardness of heart and stiffness of neck, be humble minded and willing both to give and receive the tokens of love from each other as well as from God. When “Amen” sounded, Peter, who was weeping like the rest, said, ti Prologue “John Johnson, thou art right, I am a proud and wicked man, I have lied to thee. We took our last penny from the savings bank five days agone and there’s not a crust in the house.” Another childish memory which has influenced my thinking thru life, was of being shown St. Peter’s square in Manchester, the scene of the “Peterloo Massacre”, which occurred the year before I was born; when the yeomanry cavalry rode down and sabred the Chartist “Blanketeers” who were gathering ; each with a blanket and two loaves of bread ; to march to London and pre¬ sent a petition to Parliament for their great Charter ; which with its “six points” — manhood suffrage ; vote by ballot ; equal electoral districts; paid members; no property qualifications (for mem¬ bers) ; and annual parliaments — seems now so mild and has nearly all become law long ago. About the same time my father told me of his earliest mem¬ ory, an event which happened in 1798, when he was three years old. How a “Church and King Mob” raided the house, hunting for my grandfather, who was supposed to be a “radical”, and when they could not find him took out his uncle, a feeble old man who sat in the chimney corner all day, and pumped on him ; and then dragged out my father’s sisters, girls of 17 and 20, and threw them on the “midden-stead” while he hid under the bed. These events and stories, the last two strangely suggesting things that have happened in the United States since April, 1917, were part of my preparation for social work as well as for American citizenship. But all these were long before I became a social worker. The appropriate date to begin with seemed to be that when I had my first connection with Associated Charities in Cincinnati. So my first adventures to recount are those with the so-called “scien¬ tific” organized charities of the eighteen-eighties. What a mere suggestion of today’s range of social work there was forty years ago in what we were trying to make people understand as “organized” charity! And the agents and secre¬ taries of the Associated Charities and Charity Organization Societies of those early days; how few their kinds of activities, how narrow the scope of their vision (altho dreams of great things did come to some of us) compared with the wide horizon, ever widening, of the profession in this twentieth century, with Social Work and Workers 7 its forty-two varieties of practitioners — as numbered by the American Association of Social Workers — each with its several sub-varieties ! Yet those agents and secretaries were the pioneers of the profession* and hundreds of recently recruited social work¬ ers who feel their present tasks to be radically different from what they call, perhaps with some disdain, “old-fashioned char¬ ity”, began only a few years ago in that narrower sphere. Even the Survey which with its monthly Graphic number is the most inclusive, most useful and most attractive social publi¬ cation today; altho it had a sub-title of “ Journal of Practical Sociology”; began only thirty-two years ago as “The Charities Review” ; and absorbed The International Record of Charities and Correction; Jewish Charities and others of similar ilk. So tho what we called organized charity is now only a small part of social work, it is a part and I need not apologize if I begin my story of social adventures with those I had with the Associated Charities of Cincinnati and the Charity Organization Society of Chicago. Think what it meant to be a beginner in social work without all that the Schools for Social Workers now teach; all that Warner, Devine, Gillin, Mary Richmond and so many others more have written for us. Perhaps I as one of the untrained beginners may contribute a few suggestions about the early years of organ¬ ized charity which may be of use when some great philosopher shall write “The History of Social Endeavor”. If as a philosopher should be he is also a poetf he may find or invent the wished for word for our profession to replace the present name, which many people find unsatisfactory. One of the charms of the profession of social work is its versa¬ tility. No matter where you begin if you begin aright the whole field is open. As with Napoleon’s conscripts the marshal’s baton is in every knapsack. President Eliot says the educated man is one who knows everything about something and something about everything. So with the social worker; he must know his own ♦For a clear and cogent statement of our place as social workers in society today, see Devine’s “Efficiency and Relief”, which was his inaugural lecture as Professor of Social Economy at Columbia, or still better his “Social Work”, McMillan’s 1922. tThe poet of old was the word maker. He was “Word-Smith” as well as “Song-Smith”. 8 Prologue job thoroly and have a general idea of all the rest. I would like had I time and knowledge to tell of the many who began at the foot as assistant agent of a charities district or something as humble and are now doing big things even leading great social causes. The Art of social work began before the dawn of history. It was well developed before the Pentateuch was written. The agent of a League for Social Welfare or the director of a Legal Aid Society, may be well content if he can honestly rank himself with the patriarch Job.* He who wrote down the old legend of Jonah was a precursor of the agent of the Humane Society of today, when he had compassion not only on the children of Nineveh but also on the cattle in the doomed city.f But the Science of social work without which it can hardly be counted a profession is recent. The first hint that we had at the National Conference of Charities and Correction that such a sci¬ ence could be recognized by a University, was in 1893. Warner’s first edition of “American Charities,” among the earliest books to treat the subject scientifically, was new then. Henderson was led into applied sociology and to writing “Dependents, Defectives, and Delinquents” and his other books; thru his experiences in organizing Associated Charities in Terre Haute and Detroit. Warner, Devine, Miss Richmond and others whose writings enrich the literature of social work began as secretaries of Charity Organization Societies. The term “social worker” was chiefly used at first to mean an agent of the organized charities; but the term soon took on a wider meaning. I felt myself just as much a social worker when I was inspecting prisons, hospitals, jails and poorhouses for a Board of State Charities, or conducting a school for feeble¬ minded; as when I was secretary of an Associated Charities or of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. My adventures in social welfare occurred during seven years spent in organized charity ; four with a Board of State Charities ; ten while living among the feeble-minded ; nine as paid secretary of the National Conference ; five in lecturing all over the country on behalf of the feeble-minded; and four with the Bed Cross. ♦Job XXIX. 12-17. t Jonah IX. 11. Social Work and Workers 9 During twenty-two of these years I was also directing or lectur¬ ing at schools of social work and enjoying many opportunities of forwarding social education at summer schools and colleges. My book will be arranged chiefly by kinds of work rather than by periods of time. It begins with Associated Charities and will fittingly end with the home service of the Red Cross which as I see it is a development of the same idea of organized social work. Because I want my experiences to be really of value to those for whom I write — to whom my book is dedicated — I shall tell them frankly of much gratifying success; making friends for myself and my work ; doing things and getting things done. But I shall tell them also as frankly (or almost as frankly), of dis¬ appointing failures; some caused by error about facts or of opinion ; some by other people’s derelictions ; some by over-ambi¬ tion or undue haste or by circumstances quite beyond my control and which could not have been foreseen ; and some because I let temptation, bad advice, seeming expediency, even cowardice, warp my judgment about what was best and worst. I write out of long and sometimes painful experience when I counsel social workers to obey Emerson, and “always do what you are afraid to do”. I have always been glad when I have faced “life’s ragged and dangerous front” and done the evidently right thing altho disaster threatened; I have never “taken coun¬ sel with my fears” without regret following fast. To live is a serious and strenuous business. Now anyone can be strenuous and morose. Courage, energy, persistence are not enough. The social worker must do his task — with whatever intense application — cheerfully even gaily. “The world has such need of joy.” I early took as a height of living to which I tried to attain the motto “strenuous and gay”. I offer it to my com¬ rades as a counsel of perfection to which if they attain they shall do well. . . . . ’ . , PART ONE ADVENTURES IN ORGANIZED CHARITY V Chapter One MY ADVENTURE WITH THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES OE CINCINNATI « * My first contact with organized social work and the beginning of my adventure with the Associated Charities of Cincinnati was as a volunteer. The chief advocate and promoter of the new society was the Rev. Charles W. Wendte, an eloquent and public spirited Unitarian minister whom I like to claim with loving reverence as my spiritual father, both in the religion of thought and emotion and in that of action which is social service. Mr. Wendte was organizing the Society by districts and as I lived on the fringe of the wealthy residence section of Mt. Auburn, he induced me to join when he organized that territory as the second district in 1882. It was called the second district altho it was really the sixth to be formed, the first having been begun two years earlier. Mr. Wendte stressed the duty on me because I had more leisure than most of the business men whom he was able to influence. I was employed at the time in the manufacturing department of a Jewish clothing house which remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy so that I had Saturday as well as Sunday free from work. He further believed that because I was a working man I was specially qualified to be a friendly visitor. I felt myself rather out of place among the wealthy residents of Mount Auburn, especially when at the very first meeting I was elected on the board of directors. However tho I had less monev to give than my fellow directors I could and would give more time, so I was able to hold up my end and was never or hardly ever made to feel my poverty. Partly because of the way in which the society was organ¬ ized; its strength at first being with the districts, each of which was autonomous in its own territory; instead of with the central 13 14 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati body which should control the whole ; and partly because the plan itself was faulty; it was nearly five years before the society deserved its name. The associated work was not really begun until a disaster had left as an aftermath, a fund which made the central board able to function. In fact until it was thoroly re-organized many years later, it was rather a group of district relief agencies than an association of the charities of the city. The City in the Eighties Most of the cities in the Middle- West try to pattern them¬ selves after New York. Cincinnati had a well marked indi¬ viduality of its own and for a long time did not try to copy any other city. It began as a river town and in 1877 when I moved there, it had still a few of the picturesque elements of the days of the river traffic. There was and still is the “levee”, with its memories of roistering deck-hands and engineers. The river front was marked by tall houses once the chief places of business; among them the old hotels now mostly sunk to a low estate. What had been the finest hotel in town was a mission house the Union Bethel. Some formerly big warehouses were tenements called by such names as “Rat Row” and “Sausage Row”. Old citizens used to tell of the glories of early days; when the levee would be crowded with teams and boatmen ; when the river¬ front stores and saloons were each a small gold mine; when steamboats tied up as close together as was safe would line a mile or more of the river bank. When I went to live there the glory was gone from the levee. A few boats still plied the Ohio, mostly carrying passengers who preferred the sldw river trip, with its coolness and freedom from dust, to the dusty, dirty, hurrying railroad. But the picturesque “coal-tows”; eight scows to a tow, three abreast with a stern- wheel steamboat the center of the rear trio, were nearly all that remained of the ancient days. These still came down “King Coal’s Highway”, as the water would rise to carry them, from the Allegheney and Youghiogheny down the Ohio and on to the Mis¬ sissippi, bearing fuel to the hundreds of cities and villages all the way to New Orleans, coming back empty, slowly pushing . up-stream, The City in the Eighties 15 One night from a farm house on the river bank twenty miles above the city we watched a fleet of tows, some dozens of them, carrying many thousand tons of coal, waiting above a sand-bar for water. They had started with a freshet and had run ahead of its crest until they were stopped by the bar. We saw the men with their flaring torches and fires, heard their shouts and songs ; the river was covered with them. It was a picturesque sight; we watched them listening until midnight. In the morning all was quiet the freshet had caught up with its burden and carried them over the bar and they were miles down stream towards their various destined ports. When freight was all by river a large industry of teaming developed. Four and six mule teams used to be common. The heavy boxes and barrels were hauled up the levee from the boats with great labor. When the railroads came in by way of the valleys of Millcreek to the West and the Little Miami to the East the freight depots were deliberately kept a mile or two apart so that the teamsters should have employment; a curious bit of protectionism. Before the days of the railroads the city had become a whole¬ sale supply center for southern Ohio, Kentucky and much of Indiana; competing with Louisville and Evansville. Its early customers had been hunters and trappers, but the territory opened up quickly many farmers settled on the rich virgin soil of the three states. In the seventies commercial pursuits were still the main activity, but manufacturing of many kinds was coming in rapidly and the character of the people was changing with it. During slavery days there were important stations of the Underground Railway along the river. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written in a house on Walnut Hills. Its authoress could sit on her back porch and see slaves at work in fields across the river in Kentucky. The incident on which the story of Eliza crossing the river on the floating ice was based, happened in Clermont county twenty miles up the river, the district where we began our fresh air work in 1884. Mr. Donaldson, father of the friend who helped me begin that work, had kept a station of the railway on his farm on the river bank and had helped scores of runaway slaves to freedom. But before the Civil War public sentiment among the mass of the people was rather pro-slavery. Wendell 16 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati Phillips was driven from the platform by an anti-abolition mob and narrowly escaped personal violence, while W. F. Yancey, with his treasonable lectures, was heard without disturbance. During the war while it was uncertain how Kentucky would side, there was tremendous excitement. The city would have been a rich prize to a Confederate army. Many regiments of militia and homeguards were recruited ; enormous “ Columbia d s' ’ were planted on the hilltops commanding the river crossings. For a while the city was as much like an army camp as it used to be in the old Indian fighting days. But by 1880, altho the war was over less than fifteen years; the animosities of the fifties and sixties were only lingering memories. There were many veterans of the Northern army and Cincinnati tho on the line was distinctly a Northern city in sentiment as in geographical location ; politically it was doubtful in a state strongly republican. Early Cincinnati history is full of romantic and thrilling episodes. Nowhere else in the winning of the West were there more reckless, daring exploits and some tinge of the adventur¬ ousness and lawlessness of the fighting pioneers lingered ; as was shown in 1885, when a mob stormed and set fire to the courthouse in an attempt to lynch some notorious criminals whose trial had been a travesty of justice. The town was begun on the bottom lands, varying in width from a hundred yards to half a mile, on the north bank of the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Licking river; and gradually spread up and down the stream. Then it grew out over a second level of varying width and along the Millcreek valley. It was long before people found that the hill-tops were good places to live. But first a few wealthy people, and then when the inclined railways were invented and a nickel street car ride would take one to the top and later three or four miles into the country; the middle and working class began to go there also. Before people went to the hill-tops there were several well marked residence sections on the lowlands; and some of them remained after Mt. Auburn, Price’s Hill and Walnut Hills became popular. Here the wealthy and the middle and working classes lived near together, and this fact had some influence on the development of social work. In 1882 a few of the oldest and The City in the Eighties 17 wealthiest families, the Longworths, Andersons, McDonalds and others still lived down town. But by the middle of the eighteen- eighties most of the well-to-do lived on the hills and the city was dividing itself into sections, inhabited by people who felt them¬ selves different from those of other districts. At the centre of the city the second level spread back for a mile and a half towards the hills and westward some miles into the Millcreek Valley. The old Miami and Erie canal, once an important artery of trade which is now a boulevard with a sub¬ way, was a boundary line between the business section and a large and densely populated German district, mostly tenement houses, often called “Over the Bhine”. Here were a few fac¬ tories, the upper part of Main Street with a few good stores mostly patronized by the Germans, and the great breweries where they brewed the best beer made in the world outside its native Bohemia.* The thrifty, industrious, saving and yet pleasure-loving Ger¬ mans, of the working and middle classes gave a distinct character to the population. Tho pleasure-loving they were temperate. They knew how to spend a pleasant evening in their “bier halles”, with their “pinochle” ; or listening to music by Mozart, Beethoven or Wagner played by a good orchestra; often their wives and sometimes their children with them; sipping their three or four steins of good beer during a whole evening; in the middle of the evening taking a lunch of “schweitzer kase” or “wienerwurst” and “schwarzbrod”, a drunken man never or rarely seen among them. The temperate Germans were very critical of the American saloons; so different from their beer halls where everybody had a chair; and of the American drinkers who gulped down a glass of beer at two swallows or stood at a bar their feet on the rail and their elbows on the counter treating and being treated to several glasses of whiskey in a few minutes. They drank their beer slowly sitting down to it and every man paid his own shot. “Dutch treat” had its origin there. ♦When Emil Munsterberg, the head of Berlin’s Charities, was studying our benevolences and social institutions in 1905, he told me that he had drunk American made lager in every part of the country, in fine hotels and common saloons, and that he found it above the average in quality of the ordinary beer found at similar places in Germany. The quality of the beer we drank inspired him with some hope for the future of the United States. 18 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati It was German influence that made Cincinnati a center of music. The audiences which thronged the big music hall that Reuben Springer gave to the city ; to hear fine concerts of classical music or to enjoy the occasional seasons of grand opera were largely German. The great College of Music had German pro¬ fessors and instructors, Theodore Thomas for long at their head. The German theatre was always crowded; German newspapers had a large circulation. One of the larger industries of Cincinnati was the manufac¬ turing of clothing. The leading firms were Jewish but the cut¬ ters and tailors were mostly German. The German churches, Lutheran and Catholic, had large congregations on Sunday morn¬ ing ; but Sunday afternoon was a time of recreation. There were numerous “sommer gartens” and amusement places on the out¬ skirts. On one of the hills was the “Schutzen Platz”, a German rifle club, with an amusement park around it which was very popular. The Germans usually married early in life and had large families. They looked askance at the “puritans” as they called the higher-class, church-going Americans; partly because they were supposed to object to innocent amusements, especially beer¬ drinking, and partly because they practiced birth-control in a way that seemed wicked from the German point of view ; at any rate they had small families. When I was working side by side with German workmen I heard their opinions on these and many other social and religious subjects, expressed very freely. A few of the better educated of the workmen (the standard of education was not high) were free-thinkers and usually socialists. But most of them were simple honest workers, somewhat superstitious, not very liberal in thought or with money, rather selfish, saving their wages yet having a good time, many buying a little home, many of them hoping for a little place in the country for their old age ; mostly loyal American citizens tho they always used the hyphen. The politicians always had them in mind. There must always be a good share of German names on the ticket, the “German vote” must be studied. Their instincts were naturally towards the democracy and against republicanism, which they associated with the “puritanism” they so condemned; but there had been many The City in the Eighties 19 German soldiers among the Northern troops who would meet and talk over the time when they “fought mit Sigel” and Carl Schurz; and they were sometimes induced to “vote the way they shot” ; against the “Solid South”. Fortunately they divided between the parties; but when any project endangered their “personal liberty” ; especially when any temperance or Sabbatarian legislation was proposed; except for a very small contingent of “Protestant Reformed” church members ; they voted as one man. And those of the working class among them remained German, in tastes, habits and lan¬ guage. Sometimes tho rarely one might even find a native-born adult of German stock who could speak no language but that of his fathers. Among the lower-class Germans there was a tendency to regard their children as income producers and child labor was common. A poor man with a large family looked forward to the day when he might give up work and have his children support him. An applicant for relief who had recently buried a child, in reciting his misfortune mourned that he had nurtured his boy up to the age when he should have begun to work for him “and then he went and died on me”. But there was not much charity asked for or expected among the German poor. Long after the Associated Charities began it was noticeable that in proportion to ponulation German applicants were the fewest. There were in my day very few Italians, Slavs or Greeks in the city the great influx of people from Southern and Eastern Europe had not begun. There were many of Irish birth and the usual sprinkling of Scotch and English ; but the National Socie¬ ties, English, Irish, Scotch, Scandinavian, Bohemian, Polish and others, which even then were numerous in Chicago, Cleveland and some other large Mid-Western cities and play so important a part in social and often political life, were non-existent or at least inconspicuous. The German element was so strong that it unite overshadowed any other group of immigrant people. Next to the Germans in number among the foreign born were the Trish. There were many Catholic churches the Cathedral chief among them and the diocese was strong and wealthy. Arch¬ bishop Elder was a broad-minded and public-spirited ecclesiastic 20 The Associated Charities op Cincinnati and he encouraged his clergy to co-operate with the Associated Charities. There was a strong infusion of Negroes, enough to make it necessary to have white and colored schools something which coming from Chicago, I had not seen before and at first resented; altho I soon was convinced that it is better to separate colored children from the white. In my early days in Cincinnati most of the middle aged and elderly Negroes had been slaves and the humility which was and still is in the South, the Negro’s chief virtue in the white man’s estimation was still evident. The main body of the population was of the usual American stock from New England and New York found in the Middle West. Kentucky was just across the river and a good many working people lived in Covington and Newport; still there was no notable infusion of Southerners; altho among the applicants to the Associated Charities there were many Southern-born of the class called in the South "poor whites”. In fact these and the floating river-people ; living in "shanty boats”, slowly drifting down stream from the head waters to the Mississippi, living by fishing, stealing and begging, only occasionally doing a few days work at harvesting in summer, tieing up in some good river¬ side city like Cincinnati, Evansville or Louisville for the winter ; gave the Associated Charities many of its clients. There were many people of culture and refinement and a good deal of inherited wealth, altho most of the large fortunes had been made by their possessors. The Jewish element was strong and there were many wealthy and cultured people among them who were notable for liberality of money as of thought. Every subscription list for charity or other social purpose had many Jewish names; their own chari¬ ties were numerous and liberally supported. For the Mid-West Cincinnati was a comparatively old city. The people were proud of their title of "The Queen City”. They were enterprising enough to tax themselves $20,000,000.00 to build a great railway to open up territory in the South; and the Queen and Crescent Route was popular. The public parks were among the finest of the country. Fifty gentlemen dined together one day and gave $1,000.00 each to build an Art Museum in one of them. There were many liberal individual givers. Beginning the Organization 21 When great floods came and money poured in for relief from all over the country ; the relief committee used every penny that came from outside the city beyond its limits; and defrayed the relief of their own citizens exclusively from local funds. It seemed a city where the best of social work ought to be easy to organize and support. Beginning the Organization A group of cultured people who came mostly from New Eng¬ land attended the Unitarian church and were Mr. Wendte’s chief supporters in his efforts to organize the charities. As is often the case in cities when Associated Charities begins, the Episco¬ palians and the Unitarians in proportion to their number were the most prominent of the church-going people among its mem¬ bers; membership in such societies is usually composed of people who go to church. In those days the three most striking examples of charity organization were those of Boston, Buffalo and Philadelphia. Mr. Wendte borrowed the name from Boston and the plan of organization from Philadelphia. But he measured the city along¬ side Buffalo and hoped to emulate the work of the C. O. S. of that city. Tho he believed in and emphasized the higher doc¬ trines of family welfare work, he had learned the remarkable economic lesson of the early development of the Buffalo Charity Organization Society and thought that a similar marvelous show¬ ing of the saving of wasted, and worse than wasted, almsgiving- money might be made in Cincinnati. He argued that if Buffalo with a population of 200,000 could save $ 125, 000. 00 in the first year of C. O. S. ; then Cincinnati with 300,000 could save fiftv per-cent more. His Buffalo statistics may have been accurate but his estimate for Cincinnati was woefully incorrect. The city had a very different population and different social conditions and history. One large part of the saving in Buffalo was in the amount of outdoor relief distributed by the official whose usual picturesque name in that city was “The Poormaster”. But the whole outdoor relief in Cincinnati had rarely exceeded $15,000 per annum, whereas in Buffalo it had been five times as much. In Cincinnati there were few of the private charitable societies with which 22 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati Buffalo was richly endowed and inevitably as there was less official charity , either public or private, there was less private almsgiving * There could be no such demonstration of the saving of waste as had been made in Buffalo because there was not the waste to save. From the undue insistence on the money-saving possibilities of organization, there came some results which hampered the Associated Charities thru many years of its history, f A few of its warmest first supporters were chiefly attracted by the promise of economy. The love of money is the root of all evil and the wealthy man who joins a social agency in the hope that the drain on his pocketbook will be lessened is poor timber out of which to make either a subscriber or a director. The plan of organization of the new society followed the pat¬ tern set by the Philadelphia C. O. S. which was perhaps the least effective method among those of the time. At the head was a central board of elected members with others delegated by social agencies whose co-operation was desired, and some ex-officio members. The board was to choose the officers and executive committee. The city was divided into twelve districts each of two wards; each with its directors, agent and office; to do the actual work and to collect funds in its own territory. The execu¬ tive was to collect, for administration only, “at large”, but as all the “at large” was within a district which had its own collectors this was difficult. Some of the districts had many poor and few rich; in some the conditions were reversed; some of them were distinctly middle class with few of either. The executive com¬ mittee was to direct the districts; and had it been strong and the general secretary a genius the plan might have worked. But neither was true. The executive committee did not even have money to employ a full time secretary until it got a windfall after the society had been going for four years. Of course on such a plan there was not one but thirteen socie¬ ties in the same city, each entitled to the same name and each *See page 52. tOveremphasis on expected financial economy has had similar results in other fields. The work of child-placing is a conspicuous instance. It was not until the National Children’s Home Society came out boldly and declared that the home-finding plan was not a method to save money, but to save children, that its work was put on its sound foundation. Beginning the Organization 23 doing such work as it chose or as the funds it could collect allowed; some fairly good, some wretchedly bad. Some of the offices were open two hours daily, some two hours of three days each week. Agents’ salaries were pitifully inadequate; from $12.00 to $30.00 per month. One of the agents was a physician and assistant health officer; he gave two hours daily for $25.00 per month; another was a young lawyer who did the same; the other agents were women giving one-half to full time service. In the central office a pile of case records accumulated to which nobody paid any attention ; not even the general secretary after be had filed them; he was a young lawyer who sat in the office from 8 to 10 a. m. daily. In those days fifteen years before the first School of Phil¬ anthropy, trained service outside one or two large cities was unknown; except as the Boston A. C. did occasionally let an assistant agent slip away; but these were few and none of them came so far West as Ohio. Under such conditions it was possible perhaps to do some fairly good relief work. But the fine-spun theories of co-operation and preventive and constructive social work, which had never been more than talking points for promo¬ tion, were quickly forgotten and decadence set in from the first days. The society was like Rosalind’s medlar in As You Like It, “rotten before it’s half ripe”. It is not any wonder that in Cincinnati the name “Associated Charities”, in spite of much talk and many pamphlets, almost from its inception meant little but a rather crude almsgiving agency; nor that excellent societies like that of Boston should bewail the fact that people stole their nice name and misused it so sadly. Nor is it remarkable when we think how often similar things have happened that the name “Associated Charities” is now rarely chosen by a new organization for family welfare work; nor that the Boston A. C. should give up the old name as too badly spoiled for its use. The name of a society soon means to the general public and to its own agents, not what it professed or intended to do but what it does. The name “Charity Organization Society” once meant a co-operative organization of the benevolent agencies public and private of a city, for the common good, and the pre¬ vention of pauperism by relieving distress and discovering and 24 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati removing its causes. Associated Charities” meant the same with an added stress on the work of volunteers in the promotion of neighborliness, and especially to give each family in trouble a wise and helpful friend. Now, in some places; there are many brilliant exceptions; both names mean a society to give relief with or without care and adequacy. A social worker whose expe¬ rience had been in the smaller towns, speaking of the niggardly and careless giving of relief by a certain Red Cross chapter said as the utmost expression of scorn, “it’s just a nasty little Asso¬ ciated Charities over again”. The New “Leagues for Social Service”, etc., which are springing up all over the country mean almost what C. O. S. and A. C. once professed. Most of them recognize relief as one of their functions.* Will they follow the downward path of their immediate predecessors ; as those did of their more remote forerunners, the A. I. C. P.’s, Provident Asso¬ ciations, Relief Unions? If they escape that fate it will be because as many of their predecessors did not, they recognize and live up to the truth that relief is a means not an end; and still more because they shall undertake attractive and positive work in other forms of social benefit ; forms which shall be so concrete and so easily understood by the public that instead of being over¬ shadowed by relief they shall quite overshadow it to the public eye. Will the beautiful and luminous term “home service” which the Red Cross made popular in 1917 and 1918, go down in a similar degradation? Alas! the Salvation Army has already adopted it for its family relief work, the army which cannot co-operate in welfare work with the Red Cross because, so said one of its captains in a southern city,f “we do not believe in investigation and you do”. In February 1883, came a great flood in the Ohio valley and the sympathy of the nation flowed to the city of Cincinnati. A Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council undertook relief work and the Associated Charities districts helped. Many people who were interested in organized charity all over the country instead of giving to the general relief fund *See note on page 50. tBaton Rouge, La. The Great Flood Relief 25 sent money to the A. C. and when the distress was over a snm of about |1800.00 was left in its treasury. For the first time since the society began the executive com¬ mittee found itself able to employ a full-time general secretary. I was still in the manufacturing department of the clothing busi¬ ness and spending some leisure hours as a friendly visitor of the Associated Charities, altho I was no longer with a “five-day house” as I had been when I began as a volunteer two years earlier. I was chosen partly because of my work with the society, partly because I had some fluency of speech, and partly because it was thought I could afford to work for the small salary which was all the committee dared offer. I was also supposed to be fairly trustworthy and reasonably intelligent. I began at once to visit and try to inspire the districts and to make over the central registration. The districts were small and families were frequently moving across the lines appearing to their new district office as new cases. The records had been so carelessly made and so poorly kept that it was often impossible to identify a family by its card. As the register approached com¬ pletion it was found that many families had received similar casual treatment from three, four or five districts successivelv, with no knowledge of what had been done before; so that not even the districts of the same society were co-operating. As the districts had so far been without control they resented even positive advice especially from a new official. Few of the agents had the faintest conception of what co-operation means. The volunteer committees with one or two exceptions were like the agents. We had no president and the three vice-presidents were dignified, cultured gentlemen from whom no aggressive action could be hoped. The degree of tact needed by any one who was to engineer the society to success seemed more than human. I began after a few weeks to wonder whether I was not one of those who “rush in where angels fear to tread”. The Great Flood Relief But as the aftermath of one disaster had given the committee the means to pay a secretary so that of a second made the cen¬ tral work possible. I began work on January 1, 1884, and before the end of the month the river began to rise. By the first of 26 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati February the danger point was reached. On February 2d, I called on the chairman of the relief committee of 1883, and others and told them that the coming flood would be worse than that of the previous year. I based my statement on the fact that the tributaries on both sides of the Ohio were swelling; in ’83 the flood came from only one side of the great basin. I was laughed at because the rise of ’83 had been the greatest in fifty years; yet when the highest point was reached in ’84, it exceeded that of ’83 by more than six feet. By the 6th of February it was impossible to ignore the dis¬ aster and the Chamber of Commerce summoned the City Council to a meeting to take measures for relief. While that meeting was in session the district chairmen of the A. C. met with the executive committee in the central office. It was a critical moment in the history of the society and in the life of its new and untried secretary. The experience of the previous year had proved that decentralized work would not do, that the districts must be controlled if great waste was to be averted. I urged the committee to face the situation boldly and to offer to the relief committee to do the work if they would furnish the funds. The committee dreaded the responsibility but at last yielded to my urgency and with much trepidation made the offer. Fortunately for them and still more for me it was not accepted as made but with modifications. The flood committee agreed to establish headquarters which should be strictly a wholesale depot ; from which it would furnish to the A. C. ; dealing exclu¬ sively with the central executive committee; such supplies of bread, cooked meat, coffee, sugar, beans, rice, potatoes, salt, flour, blankets, and mattresses, as it should requisition and to pay bills approved by the A. C. for fuel and medicine. The A. C. agreed to make adequate investigation before any but a minimum of the relief alleged to be needed was given and to avoid duplication. When the flood committee issued its report it said that this arrangement had saved them more than $25,000.00 as compared with the work of the previous year; and it also gave special com¬ mendation to the work of the secretary. The water drove more than 20,000 people from their homes and cut off 30,000 more from their places of work. All the factories, B. R. shops, depots, gas-works and similar industries The Great Flood Relief 27 were inundated. The city went back to coal oil for its lighting. Many of the refugees were housed with friends in districts above the flood level. Many were lodged in school-houses, halls, and churches. Some took refuge in the upper stories of factories where they could be reached only by boat. The city council voted a credit to the relief fund of $25,000.00, of which about $7,500.00 was used towards the end of the work. The disaster was a spectacular one and money flowed in from all over the country. All the relief within the city was defrayed by contributions of citizens. All money that came from outside was used beyond the city limits, up and down the river for twenty miles and more. This was done by a fleet of boats under a volunteer commodore which were also busy for the people marooned in high buildings in flooded territory. The Red Cross was also at work on the river; this was my first contact with the society in whose service thirty-eight years later, I ended my adventures as an official in social welfare. For the first time since the society began, the districts became subject to the control of the executive committee. I persuaded the committee to declare itself in permanent session until the river should go down, and then to act promptly or to sanction my acts, sometimes on important question's of policy. Even a change in the complicated district boundaries, to make it easier to direct applicants to the proper office; was made by a vote of two members after I had actually put it in operation. So close were some of the risks I ran that when it was all over I won¬ dered how I had dared to take them. Seven of the districts included flooded territory ; others lodged many refugees ; all had residents cut off from work ; so each had some flood-relief to give. They were enjoined to keep offices open daily from seven to six ; were furnished with a schedule of rations for the different sizes of families and told to restrict their work to their own territory, counting all refugees as belonging where they were found; and to actually visit each case before more than an emergency half-day’s ration was issued. Most of the districts complied at once but a few resented dic¬ tation and proposed to do their work in their own way. One of those which had no flooded territory declined to keep its office open all day. One morning a member of the city council ; many of whom resented the control of the relief by the Associated 28 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati Charities ; appeared at headquarters, bringing a refugee who was lodged in the recalcitrant district and who reported that the office was closed. The councilman loudly demanded food and blankets for the family. I sent the applicant back to the district office telling him I would be there before him; called a young- man who was waiting in hope of a job and started on a run. (This was before the day of the auto.) It was a mile away but I made it in ten minutes, found the door locked and as I had no key kicked it open. I installed the boy with instructions about taking applications carefully, getting surnames and given names of each member of the alleged family with accurate addresses; and issuing the emergency half-day’s ration (there was plenty of supplies on hand). Then I hurried back and wrote a report of my action to the chairman of the district, telling him politely but firmly, that if he did not keep the office open as ordered by the executive committee, I should be obliged to rent a vacant store in the same block install my own clerks and put the district out of business so far as flood-relief went. He sent as polite a reply regretting “the mistake” and promising to comply with all orders from the executive. When we began really doing the cen¬ tral work a few weeks later this district became one of the most loyal and co-operative. Tact is essential but sometimes the iron hand must make itself felt under the velvet glove. As soon as it was known that relief was being given on a liberal scale, the city was inundated by a human flood of tramps and derelicts from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and states farther away. A warehouse on the market square was equipped and all comers fed liberally three times daily. The tables seated six hundred and for weeks they were filled twice at each meal hour. The sight of these hundreds of able-bodied rough-looking fellows waiting on the sidewalk for the tables to be emptied of the first comers, was one never to be forgotten. They were lodged in the police stations and cheap lodging houses. The day after the water went down the foreman of a factory wanted laborers to clean out the deposit of mud on his floors. He went in the morn¬ ing to the Harrison St. station where one hundred and eighty- five men had slept in the tramps’ room and offered to pay $2.00 per day ; a high wage for common labor in 1884 ; but only three men accepted the job. The free meals were still available. The Great Flood Relief 29 Along with money contributions came a great supply of clothing which the railroads carried free. Boxes, barrels and bales came from Maine, Florida, Oregon and states between. This began to accumulate at headquarters and the chairman of the flood committee asked me to remove it. I promised to do it “tomorrow” but failed. I wanted to have the clothing sorted before distributing it to the districts and had no place to put it. The next day he was urgent so I called one of my lieutenants told him to have it loaded (there was already a big two-horse dray load) and to drive slowly up Race St. to Sixth, along Sixth to Center Ave., to Fifth, to Race and so on till I stopped him. Then I ran out to find a place which I did within two squares rented it and caught the dray before it had made the first turn. I phoned a high-school boy upon whom I could depend, and told him to recruit a force of his school-fellows boys and girls and set them to work unpacking and sorting. They were busy within two hours after the dray was loaded at headquarters. Much of the clothing was good and clean but much was unfit for human use and we sold more than a ton of rags. No appeal for funds was made by the A. C. but as happened the previous year many people from a distance preferred sending money to the society instead of to the flood committee, so that we were able to hire some extra help, pay sundry expenses and to supplement the coarse ration of the flood-relief, adding milk and canned goods. Very little hired help was required, there were sometimes more volunteers than it was easy to keep busy. I had as my most faithful lieutenant the managing partner of a large wholesale firm. About the middle of the second week of the flood relief about half past five one evening when business was quieting down; a few members of the central flood committee were sitting round the stove swapping yarns. Some of the members of the common council were much distressed because the relief committee had control of the city’s contribution so that they could not use it with their constituents to strengthen their political fences. One of these from the Fifth ward came in with a lurid story of two dozen or more families occupying the upper floors of Mosler’s Safe Factory who were without the necessaries of life. He demanded blankets, mattresses, meat, bread and whatever was to 30 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati be had, for them. John L. Stettinius was one of the flood-com¬ mittee present and a member of the A. C. He said to me that this was an exceptional case ; he agreed that the man was a faker but he was a councilman, and there might be people suffering and we must break our rules about retail distribution and investiga¬ tion and give him what he asked ; that we must temporize a little with the politicians just this once. Then Mr. Stettinius turned away to talk to the rest of the committee and while his back was turned I sent off the council¬ man with one of my boys, to go in a boat to the factory and get the facts. When Mr. Stettinius found I had sent the man away * he got a little excited but I urged a few minutes patience. In twenty minutes my boy and the councilman were back and his story of many families and hundreds of people was whittled down to seven families of twenty-three individuals all of whom had saved their bedding; they had plenty of bread, coffee and sugar but the boat which delivered meat had missed them that day. A few pounds of boiled ham satisfied the demand which would have taken many dollars worth of supplies to fill if not investigated. Then Mr. Stettinius turned to the other members of the com¬ mittee ; some of whom were only recent converts to the A. C. way of doing business and not over enthusiastic about it; with a lec¬ ture on the advantage of our insistence on investigation; how we had saved much waste by simply doing things in a thoroly business-like manner — I refrained from saying “I told you so”. Many other people came to the wholesale depot for retail supplies and had to be met and directed to a district office often to their serious displeasure. Most of this came to my lot to do. Only once did I let an applicant leave the store mad and I ran up the street after her and managed to smooth her over and send her on her way laughing. She was a stout old Irishwoman of the kind with whom a joke is always available if its point is plain enough. The chairman of the flood-committee told his wife, who told mine, that he could not understand how that man Johnson kept his temper and never got red hot. The secret was an easy one. I did not get red-hot because I was white- hot all the time. I lived on one of the Western hilltops and only went home The Great Flood Relief 31 once in the three weeks of the heavy relief work. To get there I had to cross two big bodies of water in boats and walk a mile or more as few of the street cars were running. Some nights I went to a hotel but they were all so overcrowded with business men who could not easily reach their homes that a bale of blankets at the relief depot was even more agreeable as a bed. It was a hectic time for three weeks but it was of the utmost benefit to the society. Without some such emergency it would never have been possible to unify the work. With it the dis¬ tricts got the habit of regarding the central committee; and with tact they were kept to some extent in the same habit. Incidentally it had much effect in settling me in my newly adopted profession. As the water went down the work of repairing and restoring damaged homes of poor people began. This was done by the dis¬ trict committees and paid for by the flood-committee on my approval of the bills. Three of the districts had much territory of small cottages, many of them owned by their working class occupants. No better use of charitable funds could be made than to restore these homes. Some applications for help of this kind were made by well-to-do people so that careful investigations were necessary. It was hard to convince such people that the flood relief was not a free insurance fund. When the house repairing was well under way the flood com¬ mittee, intending to wind up its business ; called for an estimate of how much each district would need to finish the work promis¬ ing to give them what they asked on my approval. I begged them not to take this course. The money voluntarily subscribed was all spent. They were beginning on the council’s appropria¬ tion. I told them that so far I could guarantee that every dollar had been properly used; but that if the districts had to estimate for work still to be done they would feel compelled to ask for a safe amount. The result would be that their treasuries would contain left-over flood-relief money and that from the council’s appropriation; which would be bad for the reputation of the Associated Charities and worse for the morale of the district directors. But the committee had decided; we had to comply and the districts sent in their estimates. Some interesting sidelights on human nature appeared. One district, in the best residence part of the city with no flooded 32 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati territory and no after-flood work to do; asked for $500 on the theory that they might as well get some of what was going. As the district chairman was a prominent banker and an influential member of my church I got the chairman of the flood-committee to relieve me of the onus of disallowing the estimate by advising the district chairman to withdraw it. One of the flooded districts gave me a lesson in pauperization which I have used a hundred times in lecturing at the schools of philanthropy and in other places. This was in a middle-class and thrifty .part of the city, the population mostly German nearly all working people. Its chairman was a contractor who took personal charge of the repair work giving his services. It included replacing houses on their foundations ; moving some that had floated away; several which had turned over on their sides were replaced. The estimate had been liberal; the work was economically done and the district retained in its treasury a bal¬ ance much larger than the amount it had usually spent for salary and relief during a year’s operation. When active work began in the fall as there was a full treas¬ ury the directors omitted their usual collecting. The easily gotten money was spent freely and before Spring the funds were gone, the directors had lost the habit of collecting which was all they had ever done; and the district surrendered and never resumed activity. It was pauperized out of existence by easy money to which it was really not entitled. It is interesting to note how often things like this happen. As my story shows, the central work of the society in Cincinnati was financed by surplus funds contributed for disaster relief ; money which perhaps ought to have been returned to the givers ; and, as I show later, it lacked the stability which a more deter¬ mined method of securing support would have given it. The most flagrant instance of the kind of which I have known occurred after the great fire of Chicago; in this case the society survived but its work went down to extreme inefficiency. It is rare indeed when an agency, which should by its nature be supported by regular contributions from interested members, gets any real benefit or even escapes disaster when some windfall comes to it. The law of vigorous life is the law of self-help with men or with The Great Flood Relief 33 associations of men. Each may easily be weakened by outside help; each is liable to pauperization. We seldom see a church which is mainly supported by some pious millionaire amount to very much ; and this is not wholly because of the rich man’s meddling or dictation ; it is because the other members lose their independence and their energy. Similar weakening and deterioration happens to an institution which becomes completely endowed so that it can run without having to justify its existence to the minds of supporters. It is cus¬ tomary to speak ill of enormous endowments because they become obsolete; but the evil results begin long before obsolescence sets in ; the fact of complete endowment is the hurtful one. Only what we earn by exertion or purchase by sacrifice does us any good. Nature gives us nothing for nothing ; what we do not pay for in effort we pay for in loss or deterioration. There were other evidences of the pauperizing effects of alms. Surely there can be no question that in the face of a great calam¬ ity relief must be liberal ; if ever it is justified it must be in such cases. Yet even in these we find evil results. Families were found who in 1883 had refused at first to accept relief calling it “charity” ; and who only took it when the emergency became dire; yet who, in 1884, were among the first to apply. The taste for alms seems like the tiger’s taste for human blood. A story is told of an old woman, in 1884, sitting on the steps of Rat Row a tenement house beside the river watching the water rise and saying “the blessed flood, it’s come agin” ; she had enjoyed a few weeks of super abundant food without labor the year before. The Red Cross which has reduced disaster relief to a science warns its officers that the most critical period in an undertaking of the sort is when the real need is met and relief should cease. The human tendency to dependence is so strong that drastic measures are sometimes needed to induce those who have been fed without labor to go back to it. Associating the Districts When the strenuous days of the flood were over and I began to use the newly gained control over the districts I realized how little I knew. I did not know my job and I had no way of learn- 34 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati ing it but by doing it. The committee would have given me clerical help but I felt unable to direct subordinates so I set to work to do it alone. I had been for years engaged in a mechanical task, which, while it required accurate co-ordination of eye and hand, made little demand on my brain ; so I had added to my daily ten hours handwork four more two reading law and two studying short¬ hand. Even then I had a little leisure for my A. C. friendly visiting. * My hours of reading were in the street-car morning and evening and during the noon hour. Now in my new occu¬ pation I had so little judgment that I thought I could work fourteen hours daily at one task and that one requiring con¬ tinual mental effort. Sometimes I greatly exceeded the fourteen hours even on one or two occasions when preparing for some sup¬ posedly important meeting, working for thirty-six hours at a stretch with only brief intervals for meals. Then too my executive committee did not lend me any driv¬ ing power. I felt compelled to be not only all the machinery but the fire under the boiler as well. Of course all this was rank folly or dense ignorance and of course I soon broke down. When the break came and I had to spend some days in bed, I got one of the most salutary lessons of my life. I dropped a big load of work that seemed essential; and nothing happened. Nobody cared nobody knew but myself that the work I had been killing myself with was dropped. I found the world could get along very well without me that I was not nearly the important person I had assumed to be. Luckily my recuperative power was good and a few days complete rest made me able to face the world again. The lesson I learned lasted me for a few years until another crisis brought me to the verge of another break. For the next two years the Associated Charities went on with a varying fortune. I got some clerical help. Some newly appointed district agents and a few of the old ones came to me for advice and training and in teaching them I learned a little myself. To really understand social work we must begin at the bottom ; we must come in actual contact with the clients and their needs. There are advantages which befall the secretary of a small or a poor organization who is therefore obliged to take a share of actual case work, which one who has charge of a Associating the Districts 35 large and wealthy society unless he is wise and determined usually misses. I knew the life of working people because I had shared it but I knew little about poverty. Now I learned to see things as they really were and found more wisdom from intimate con¬ tact with poor people than I ever could have gained from the best and most scientific books on Principles of Relief or even Social Diagnosis taken without the contacts which make their science alive ; or even from the debates at the National Confer¬ ence. This does not mean to detract in the least from the value of book knowledge. Our scientific writers; who have also had the original contacts in their own experience; interpret for us many things which we observe and yet do not see their real implica¬ tions. In this the study of social work resembles the study of medicine. The medical student must have his clinical instruc¬ tion ; and the social worker who misses the first-hand knowledge which comes of actual case-work, is poorly equipped, either for the lowly office of a district agent or the high one of executive of a large society. I remember a lesson on the care of the aged poor which I got one day from one of them. She was an old Irishwoman who had lived a hard and painful life; one of the decent, cleanly, patient, ♦ hard-working, uncomplaining kind; to whom charity is so repel¬ lent, so distasteful. Her tiny room where she lived all alone, her boys and girls all gone far away or dead ; tho bare of all but the simplest requirements was exquisitely neat and clean. She had been living rent free in one of Reuben Springer’s numerous tenement houses and like many more poor people was mourning his death. Few people besides his tenants and his agent knew of his benevolences, of the scores of poor folks who could not pay their rent and whom he would never allow to be evicted. She earned a few cents daily just enough for food making fine Irish lace which she sold to a store-keeper who made a handsome profit on it. Now Mr. Springer was dead and his estate began collecting back rents and she applied to the Asso¬ ciated Charities for help. I took the case myself as I did so far as possible before refer¬ ring them to the districts, with all that came to the central office; and I made the first visit. Her efforts to keep her own 36 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati little dwelling-place, so bare of comforts and yet “home” to her, were so pathetic and seemed so futile. I talked to her glibly of the Little Sisters of the Poor, how kind they were, how much more comfortable they would make her than she could be alone. She told me she knew, — that Father Daley had told her the same and that if she lived until Spring she thought she would go to them, but she said “Oh I hope God will let me die before the winter is over”. Mr. Springer was rich and lived simply some people thought he was a miser. Has name was conspicuously absent from charity lists. When he built a magnificent Music Hall and gave it to the city many of the people who praised him qualified their admira¬ tion by thinking that he was striving for glory. Only a host of poor people and a very few of those who were helping them, (for his poor were not of the pauper kind, they were not asking for charity) knew of the man’s great heart. As time went on some of the district committees as well as the agents began to ask advice and even direction. Fortunately for me I had read all the literature of organized charity that was then available and altho I did not know much those who asked for advice knew even less. Then I attended the National Conference of Charities and Correction and learned much about my profession there. My first attendance on the Conference was one of the turning points in my life. I was barely recovering from my nervous break-down and was still dispirited and discouraged. I found wonderful help and stimulus from contact with others; some struggling along much as I was, some with riper experience nearer to success. On matters which perplexed me I usually found advice and information but always sympathy. I no longer felt alone. I had discovered splendid comrades. My spirits rose from day to day and I went home like a new man. From that day I have known the comradeship of social welfare work; what a splendid fellowship I joined when I became a social worker. I then began to know that it is indeed a profession worthy of the best that is in any man in the very best man. Coming back to work after the stimulus received and with the knowledge gained at the Conference, life looked brighter and more hopeful. We got a new President in Mr. Peter Rudolph Neff, a Fresh-Air for Children 37 wealthy and public spirited gentleman who had long been a volunteer ward-agent of the old Relief Union, which had dropped its attitude of hostility altho owing to its peculiar organization it could never co-operate. We thought it a great gain to secure him. Fresh-Air for Children In the summer of 1884 a Fresh Air Fund for children was begun and nothing I have ever done in social work bore so much fruit of joy and had so little worry or annoyance connected with it as this. A useful feature of the A. C. was a semi-monthly assembly which began in May 1884. Its purpose was to bring social workers especially the volunteers together and to gain good publicity for the society and its work. At the first meeting in June, Mrs. Brown, wife of the president of the Wesleyan Female College, read a paper on the fresh-air-work for children in Pittsburgh. This excited so much interest that a committee was formed on the spot to work under the A. C. and begin a similar enterprise in Cincinnati. Announcement of the committee brought in offers of help and in ten days about $75 was on hand. The committee elected John L. Stettinius chairman and myself secretary. Various schemes for raising money were mooted I remaining silent. Then the chairman said “Mr. Johnson you have said nothing, have you no plan?” to which I replied “the way to get money is to do some¬ thing and let people know about it”. To the remark “you can’t do much with $75.00”, I answered “we can do $75.00 worth”. I then sketched a possible plan. To go up the river to Clermont County to the home of a farmer friend, borrow his buggy and drive round to the neighboring farms and try to secure boarding places each for two children or a mother and babe, to get free places if possible if not for small board. The plan was adopted and during one day’s drive with my friend who knew everybody and was very popular, fifteen places were secured about half of which were free, so that the small fund on hand was enough except for transportation, to provide a two weeks outing for thirty children. Then the R. R. was asked for free transportation and the society’s agents were enlisted to recruit the children and mothers. 38 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati Before this was done Parker Donaldson, my farmer friend, had found three more free places each for two guests, so that we could place thirty-six in all. Just a week later the Little Miami R. R. put a special car at our disposal and with myself in charge twenty-eight children in pairs of two girls or two boys and four mothers each with a baby started. The story had been given the newspapers and the Commercial Gazette sent one of its reporters, dear old Jimmy O’Brien, whom we used to call “the elderly cherub in spectacles”, to see the fun and write it up. At Batavia Junction we changed to the narrow gauge and Jimmy went back to the city promising to come to the office in the afternoon for the rest of the story. At a station three miles south of New Richmond we dropped off two pairs of children into kindly waiting hands. At the terminus the local paper had told the story and the whole town turned out to see something new. The farmers were there for their guests and everything went without a hitch. Tired but happy I went back on the next train to the office and presently Jimmy came in. But he tho the best fellow in the world, would look on the wine when it is red and it was evident he was in no shape to do the story justice so I said to him “old boy, go home to bed, I’ll write your feature for you and give it to Mr. Green (the city editor) before eight o’clock”. So the story was written, about a good half column. It described the bustle at the station; the anemic but excited boys and girls; the fagged-out mothers with puny babies; the fat perspiring man with his collar wilted down, in charge ; the sights of the river and the hills from the car windows; the wonder of the first big herd of cows. Then the change at the junction with the job of herding the crowd now getting to a fine pitch of excite¬ ment ; the arrival at New Richmond with the street full of people, dogs and wagons; the jolly good-natured farmers with their hearty welcome, the very heartiest from those who were giving free quarters;* all that and more; and then the announcement that the show would be repeated as fast as the money came in, ♦One of these, on a subsequent visit, told me, with tears in his eyes, how the two little girls he took home, when taken to the garden with its neat lawn, asked, “Please, sir, may we walk on the grass?” and how he had said, “God bless you, you may walk wherever you like”. Fresh-Atr for Children 39 “please leave your contribution at Robert Clarke and Co.’s book store on Fourth St.” And the money came in thick and fast. From the day of that issue of the paper we had just as much money as we could wisely use. Mrs. George F. Ireland, a member of the committee, under¬ took publicity and the papers morning and evening had each a human interest story of the fresh air fund in every edition. As good Mr. Stettinius said, it was a “sentimental charity”; and as such it was easy to get money, a little harder to get places, and hardest to find the children. But we found them, plenty of them, just the right kind. Every district agent went into it enthusiastically; it brought some of them into sympathy with the central work who had been rather cool before. The best approach to friendship is working heartily together at something you like to do. Everybody wanted to help. Sunday schools gave picnics for the fresh air fund. Little boys and girls on Mt. Auburn and Walnut Hills, ran lemonade stands in front of their fathers’ palatial abodes; entertainments; Sunday school collections; ice¬ cream socials; and the constant stream of people with a dollar or a dime, or sometimes a ten dollar bill dropping into the book¬ store made money the least of our troubles. Every paper published a daily list of subscriptions and near the end of the season came one that took your breath away, a “Friend of Children, $250.00!!” That seemed a stupendous sum in 1884. It’s easier now to raise $10,000 for any good cause than it was then to scrape $1,000 together. People had not learned to give as they have learned lately. The man who gave the big sum attached a condition and made a suggestion; that his name must not be known and that we give a boat excursion for old people and young. So one of the last events of the season was a free excursion to Coney Island ten miles up the river on a big steamboat. “Admission free, by ticket only, everybody bring your own lunch, unlimited lemonade without price.” The boat was full to the legal limit of 1200 and on the whole it was a good time. An interesting sequel to the big gift came the next season. Early in the year the liberal giver sent a check for $100 which 40 Tiir Associated Charities of Cincinnati filtho still the largest single subscription was just a little disap¬ pointing. But about the end of July when the work was in full swing and the stream of money was slowing down, came a letter from the Friend of Children. It read “Dear Mr. Johnson: Last night our baby was sick and I had to walk the floor with him for an hour or more, and I thought if one little sick baby can make so much trouble in our home on this airy hill, where we have everything for comfort that money can buy, what must it be like in the crowded dwellings of the poor in the tenements and T felt ashamed that I had not sent my usual check. Enclosed please find the balance I owe”, with a check for $150. This gentle¬ man was one of the same type as Keuben Springer. His name never appeared on subscription lists for charity but he was lav¬ ishly benevolent in a quiet way. In 1885 the fresh-air-work began early in the season. A few miles north of the city at Mount Healthy there was a splendid location and because the district could be nearly reached by street car, the work was grouped there within a circuit of a few miles. Some farms took four or six children at a time. One whole family the father with lead poisoning the mother worn out with five children under eight, were boarded for a month and the plentiful milk and good air restored the father to health and made the children over into new creatures. Wednesday of each week a party went and one returned and each Wednesday afternoon the publicity lady and I drove from farm to farm to pay the bills and see that all was well and every¬ body happy. The committee met on Tuesday evenings. After a late session Mrs. Ireland passing a tenement house on her way home saw a girl of ten sitting on the door step holding a little boy in her lap. This was about eleven o’clock. She asked the child why she sat there so late. The girl told her that it was so hot up stairs that mother had told her to take baby to the door for air; he was three years old and used to walk but he was so frail and anemic that he had not walked for months. Mrs. Ireland saw a splendid case for fresh air and went up to the mother; pro¬ posing that she and the boy should have a week or two in the country. But the mother refused ; she had never asked for charity and would rather die than accept it; all the arguments that this Fresh-Air for Children 41 was not charity it was just the fresh air fund, availed nothing.* Then at 12 o’clock the father who was a night-watchman at a neighboring factory came in for his midnight meal and the argu¬ ment was renewed. At last Mrs. Ireland prevailed. We had a choice place waiting for a specially good case, an old couple on a tiny farm but with a lovely little house, lawn and garden and to Mrs. Evans’ home the mother and baby went the next day. Two weeks later on our inspection trip as we drove up to the Evans cottage, we saw the mother in a garden chair and the little fellow who had not walked for months chasing butterflies on the lawn. Two weeks of abundant milk and con¬ stant pure fresh air had worked the miracle. And good old Mrs. Evans with tears in her eyes, begged that the dear mother and baby might stay another week as her guests without pay. About the middle of the season Mr. Waldo Brown of Oxford, Butler Co., a seedsman and farm supply agent, offered to arrange for free places among his customers and a group of twenty chil¬ dren were sent. He met the train with a party wagon decorated with flags, drove them all around town so that folks could see the fun and be induced to chip in and then took them out to the farms. He engineered several other parties and collected a nice little sum to help pay expenses ; and for years thereafter the good folks of Butler Co. continued their interest in the children of the smoky city. In the latter part of August I was invited to lunch by a very wealthy man who wanted to know about this lovely new charity. When the story was told the host said, “How are you off for money?” the answer was “Thank you Mr. Emery (for it was L. S. Emery) we have all we can use for this season; but if you would like to subscribe we will take care of your gift until, next year”. His answer came “no, no, let each year care for itself”. He after¬ wards told a friend who of course repeated it; “that man Johnson is the only charity worker I have ever met who does not try to hog anything in sight.” ♦This pathetic, sometimes desperate, hatred and fear of “charity” by the decent poor has a deep-seated cause in human nature. The same people will freely give and take help to or from a neighbor equally poor with themselves. It is one of those facts that needs most careful con¬ sideration by would-be benefactors. He who overcomes this feeling by his administration of alms may be doing a fatal spiritual injury to the recipient. 42 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati That lunch and conversation was an important event for the fresh air fund. The following year Mr. Emery gave the use of a beautiful country house a few miles up the river with money enough to run it all season for twenty guests; the next year he deeded the house and twenty acres of lawn and garden and thereafter liberally supported it. Several other special features were tried; one was single-day outings by street cars to a house with a big garden on the out¬ skirts, for mothers and children who could not leave home over¬ night. It was a busy and satisfying summer. When the outings were over at the last of September, the end of the second year’s work ; the committee detached itself from the leading strings of the Associated Charities and became “The Fresh Air and Convalescent’s Aid Society”. My policy with this work as with some other I organized, was to encourage an inde¬ pendent existence as soon as feasible but to keep it in close co¬ operation with the parent society. A district agent whom I had trained became secretary and manager, living at the country house which Mr. Emery had given us. The society, in 1922, is still a prosperous going concern. Other Welfare Plans Early in 1885 a legacy of $1,000 enabled us to begin a wood yard, used partly to relieve vagrants and partly as a labor test for certain residents. It would be more correct to say the wood yard was to relieve citizens from the importunity of vagrants. It is hard at best for the well fed benevolent man, even tho he knows that begging is hurtful to the beggar, to refuse alms to a poor devil who pleads hunger. When there is some machinery available that offers to help such cases and at least tries to do it without injuring them, the benevolent heart comes more under the control of the thoughtful instructed head. Gradually the district work was improved and unified and some co-operation was established. The City poor commissioners agreed to list all their cases with the A. C. confidential register. Cordial relations were made with the Humane Society in its children’s work; its agents learning to use our register before beginning the investigation of a case of alleged child-neglect; and we co-operated with that society in a successful movement to Other Welfare Plans 43 clear the streets of little “news-girls” ; assisting in the investi¬ gations and helping to provide for those who alleged family pov¬ erty as the reason for their work which had led to shocking immorality. The Jewish Benevolent Society came into close co¬ operation, using our woodyard as a labor test with some of their worst-spoiled cases. A few of the Church aid societies asked our assistance in investigation and case work. A wealthy and very benevolent man for whom one of the districts with my guidance had handled a long standing and difficult relief case, called on me to express his thanks. He told me that the society now met all his needs except in one particu¬ lar and that was with regard to applicants who came to his door late in the evening. He said he knew that his duty was to visit their homes to make sure of facts before giving aid, but his health was not good and in inclement weather, the kind often chosen by skilful professional beggars, he could not safely leave his home at night so that he was obliged to give in ignorance. He said if only some plan could be devised to meet such cases he could wish no better assistance than our society was giving him in his benevolent work. The next day I began keeping evening office hours and also a Sunday afternoon hour to accommodate the ministers who are often assailed at the close of their morning service. Of course the cases were few, not enough to justify the time spent if the purpose of the society were simply relief of the poor. But from the other important side, the relief of the benevo¬ lent and also conscientious rich, I felt it was well worth doing. You cannot tell people to refuse to encourage beggary unless you offer them a proper alternative when their sympathies are appealed to. There is always the possible one worthy sufferer among the one hundred impostors and so that the genuine needy may not be refused the others are encouraged in their impositions. In Cincinnati in summer coal is cheap and in winter it is dear. Many people arrange in summer for their winter supply, sometimes laying it in at once, sometimes contracting for future delivery. One of our Provident Plans was a fuel saving society with a subscription of ten cents or more per week. We made a contract with a big coal firm at summer prices for winter delivery and so gave many poor but thrifty people an equal chance with the wealthy to buy their coal cheaply. Several scores of poor 44 The Associated Charities of Cincinnati families who had usually bought their coal by the bushel sub¬ scribed to our fuel society and bought by the ton. It is a distinct advantage to a general secretary in his rela¬ tions with his board when he receives recognition by some big National agency, and the fact that I had been made chairman of an important committee of the National Conference was quite an asset to me in Cincinnati. So the executive committee sent me to Washington to attend the twelfth Conference in July 1885. I returned from the Conference once more with renewed hope and enthusiasm full of plans for bettering our work, plans in which a steadily growing number of the district agents and com¬ mittees showed interest and even confidence. Then under Mr. Neff’s direction a campaign for funds was conducted in the hope of establishing a firm financial basis for the central work. The central committee needed about $3500 per annum and it was proposed to raise this sum in $5.00 memberships. But unfortu¬ nately most of the people who would have been likely to subscribe were already, members of the districts and the campaign was a sad failure. It seemed impossible to secure adequate support. The effects of the earlier insistence that the Associated Charities was to bring about a great saving of money; seemed to cling to it especially to its directors. Members of the board some of them wealthy men who should have given handsomely took a $5.00 membership. Then came a loud call from the Chicago C. O. S. which had just made an heroic fight for its existence. With much regret on my part and much seeming reluctance on the part of the executive committee, my resignation was given and accepted in March 1886, after two and a quarter years of work, which was my apprenticeship as a social worker. Cincinnati in the eighties affords as good an illustration as any city in the middle West of the setting in which American social work as we now know it began. Its present fine develop¬ ment with its Federation of Social Agencies, its million dollar funds, its Social Unit experiments and its highly organized Asso¬ ciated Charities, shows a marvelous contrast with those earlv beginnings. Still crude as our early work was we did sow some good seed and present conditions are. at least in some small part, the fruit of it. Chapter Two* FAMILY WELFARE WORKf IN THE MIDDLE WEST IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY I wish it were possible to picture in words the fine enthusiasm of the Associated Charities and Charity Organization Society people of the eighteen-eighties. We were so full of hope for humanity thru our efforts, so confident of our new gospel of benevolence. It seemed not a ray but a whole flood of light on the dreary prospect of human misery. We felt that our work of all that could be done was the most hopeful. Our objective was the place where most troubles begin the family life ; which when normal is the source of most social well being: when broken or diseased is the origin of most social ills. We did not have the phrase “family welfare work” but that was what we had in mind to do. We had never heard of “Social Diagnosis” but we tried to diagnose. When we talked of investi¬ gation, registration, co-operation and visitation, those dry terms ♦This chapter is written frankly for social workers and particularly for those whose business is family welfare work. It has been submitted for criticism to two experts. One, the editor of a social magazine, declares its matter is obsolescent: that the struggles it tells of are ancient history; that every intelligent person knows poverty is not to be conquered by charity but by many other things, even by the coming in of a better social order; that the chapter detracts from the value and interest of the book. The other, the head of a great charitable organization who has had a wide experience in several forms of social work, says it is almost if not quite as timely today as it was forty years ago ; that he is now meeting situa¬ tions very much like some of those described and, while he does not agree with all of my conclusions, he still thinks it the most valuable of the three chapters on organized charity ; and by all means should go in. As it is written more intensely from conviction than any other chapter in my book, except some of those about the feeble-minded, I must print it with all its foot-notes and advise readers who think an analysis of the causes of things which happened forty years ago and the lessons to he learned therefrom will not interest them, to skip a few pages. fl want to forestall criticism by confessing that I am using recent terminology (and even present-day slang sometimes), giving modern names to things that existed before the new terms were invented. (45) 40 Family Welfare Work in the Eighties at least to some of us, had life and we used to make strenuous sometimes pathetic efforts to get them across to our scanty audiences at an occasional charity meeting and to make our hearers feel about them as we did. We had neither the technique of the art nor the many luminous terms of the science which have evolved since that day and we had to use other words, less lucid and less accurate, because they were all we had. Some of us tried for years (Frederic Almy and I, I think, a little harder than any one else) to restore the poor, old, ill-used word “charity” to its pristine meaning; we needed it so badly and we only gave up the effort after years of failure.* To us organizing or associating the “charities” meant getting other people to believe as we did and to work with us for the welfare of the less fortunate. Our chief resentment against the old relief agencies was because we thought they palliated often with niggardly, inadequate dolesf, evils we wanted to remove and would not help us to remove them; that they were making possible the continuance of unwholesome conditions. No wonder when we found as we often did in those days people working at starvation pay, only able to live because of “charity”; that we criticized the kind-hearted, soft-headed relief agent. To us he was ignorantly conspiring with some grasping exploiter of labor. This was all long before the scientific studies of standards of living which have thrown much light on the problems of labor __ ___ _____ ______ ______ _ n | rp ♦The study of the depreciation of verbal currency is a very interesting one, all the more that it is not intentional ; as was the debasement of the French currency when the King found he could increase his treasury balance by recoining the money with a liberal alloy of base metal : and it seems as tho the terms of social welfare work are peculiarly liable to depreciation. Could there be a more pathetic fate for a noor word than has befallen “charity”? Think what it means in the 13th Chapter of Corinthians and what it means today. fA curious instance of the results of dole relief which are possible comes from London. There is, or was, a street of tenement houses which is the line between two parishes, each but for this street full of business or factory buildings. From the church in the parish on one side of the street, a dole was distributed on Easter Sunday to poor residents of the parish. With rising property values the fund had increased and the num¬ ber of poor residents decreased, the amount of each dole increasing in proportion. The rents on that side of the street for identical tenements were more than double those on the other : the property owners were the sole beneficiaries of the dole. Instances of the kind miflrht bo multiplied ad lib. It is rare indeed that any dole system, which has persisted over a long term of years, is doing anything the least like its original purpose, or is not doing serious harm. Conflicting Agencies 47 and charity and which are destined to help in bringing about the economic readjustments which are surely coming. I must con¬ fess that we hardly dared say in public what we thought in pri¬ vate about such things because the exploiters or their friends, at any rate people of their “class”, were our supporters. I think the first time any charity-man said “out in meeting” that low wages are among the chief causes of poverty was in 1903 at the National Conference,! in Atlanta, when Edmond Butler of New York gave not only the dole dispensers but us who thought our¬ selves much better, one of the most wholesome rebukes we ever had, declaring that not only palliating relief but much of our other treatment was aiding the exploiters of labor. In 1882 we were sure that if we could only thoroly “organize the charities”; if we could only induce them all to accept our philosophy and co-operate heartily, the millenium would surely be due by the next express. When we met at the National Con¬ ference we grudged the time devoted to prisons and reformatories and hospitals for insane and outdoor relief, and orphan asylums and other political and perfunctory schemes; all these were dealing with the consequences of what we intended to prevent. We wanted to save or restore the homes, which when broken and spoiled filled the orphan asylums and reform schools and later the prisons; to obviate the need of outdoor relief; to improve living conditions so that there should be less insanity and far less sickness. If only the Associated Charities work were once completely done and the breakage prevented all these repair shops would soon be needless. Why waste time on such ephem¬ eral, such transitory affairs?* The Conflicting Agencies Looking backward over the years since I became a friendly visitor and district director of the A. C. of Cincinnati many fThe National Conference of Social Work then called of “Charities and Correction” I shall use the abbreviation thruout. ♦Lest I should be accused of using a figure of speech as tho it expressed a fact, I wish to declare that the above is a faithful statement of the atti¬ tude of mind of a group of social workers at the National Conference of 1886 ; that I fully shared the mental attitude and expressed it on one occasion to the amusement of some of the elder statesmen, one of whom said that it was just this belief by each group in the paramount importance of its own specialty that made the Conference so intensely interesting. 48 Family Welfare Work in the Eighties things which then seemed inexplicable are now clear enough. It was hard then to understand why our radiant theories were not universally accepted, why the old relief societies instead of slamming us right and left did not take us to their bosoms with joy, or come eagerly into close co-operation under our banner. The fact was that because our beautiful schemes of organized benevolence were new to us we imagined they had just been dis¬ covered. No one among us seemed to know that the sort of thing we called “scientific organized charity’7 (how we revelled in “scientific”) , was not invented in 1868 when its new name was coined; that it dated from Hamburgh in 1788 and, with various modifications and under different names, had had its rise, culmi¬ nation and decline several times since Casper Von Voght and Professor Busch made over the Hamburgh Patriotic Society into what was really the first C. O. S. : each new attempt beginning with more scientific method than the one it followed, each rising a little higher and lasting a little longer on the highest level gained and yet all essentially the same. The protagonist of charity organization in America, the Rev. S. H. Gurteen of Buffalo, did indeed in his lectures go back as far as 1853 and call it the “Elberfeld system”. But somehow neither he nor the rest of us grasped the thought that the A. I. C. P.’s* and Provident Associations which began in the U. S. in the forties had been inspired by the same ideas were responsive to waves of charitable emotion from the same sources and were founded on the very same principles which we thought were all new with us. We could not understand when they opposed us as mischievous upstarts and said that we were merely talking about and promising to do under a new name what they had long been doing, that they were justified; at least to the extent that our alleged new gospel altho it had some few original features was on the whole only new to us. It had been new to them forty years earlier and they still thought themselves true believers; in spite of the fact that the only remaining evidences of their faith were in print on an occasional page of their annual report. There they gravely stated the theories of investigation, ♦Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, vide New York, Baltimore, Brooklyn, etc. In Pittsburgh it was frankly the “society for improving the poor”. Conflicting Agencies 49 co-operation, referring cases to appropriate sources of relief, help by employment, etc., while they were doing nothing but some more or less, chiefly less, efficient almsgiving. Nor did we dream that our history would repeat theirs; that we should follow the same downward path; and in thirty years be resenting our would-be successors as they were resenting us.* In every city where one of the old relief societies existed, when charity organization was attempted, it met with bitter opposition ; not only from the officials of the old societies but from many of the best people. The struggles in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati and some other cities were intense and protracted and had various results. In St. Louis repeated attempts to form a Charity Organization Society were thwarted by the Provident Association, which in 1884 when I examined it was one of the least worthy of its name. Some truces were declared; in New York the rival societies came so close together as to conduct a joint application bureau. A few amalgamations were effected some with good, others with disastrous results. When the old lion and the young lamb lay down together the lamb sometimes got his natural place inside the lion.f Most of the paid executives of the old societies were elderly men long past the age when new things come easily. A worn out preacher was thought properly pensioned in such a job. When the Philadelphia C. O. S. began, a leading newspaper criti¬ cised it for paying its agents, saying that no one should be paid for charity work unless he would otherwise be himself an object of charity; and the paper voiced a usual opinion. The A. C. and C. O. S. workers were mostly young, they were full of energy, many of them ached for co-operation but some resented the unkind things that were said about them and were spoiling for a fight. When these met as opponents in public, as they did rarely, the verbal victory usually seemed to belong to the new people but such victories were superficial. The old order had its firm place in the community. It was *It was rather pathetic as well as interesting to have the secretary of the Associated Charities of a large Middle-Western city, in 1915, complain to me that the new Social Welfare League was impudently trying to steal his thunder. fMy society was the lamb in a pitiful instance of this kind in Chicago in 1888. 50 Family Welfare Work in the Eighties chiefly supported by a few wealthy and therefore conservative people. The new conception, or what we thought new was some¬ what disquieting to them. It challenged some things positively and vaguely many others; among them some people thought the Scriptures and even the bases of social order. Its Utopian pur¬ pose was to abolish poverty. A favorite maxim was “wise charity exists to make itself needless”. Now the benevolent wealthy of last century perhaps all unconsciously did not really desire to abolish poverty. What’s the use of being rich if there are no poor? They wanted to relieve the poor in the most eco¬ nomical way ; they were sincerely sorry for them ; but they were piously resigned to the mysterious dispensations of Providence which has so ordained the universe that there must be rich people and poor ones. They would gladly give liberally to the poor, not only their cast-off clothes and other superfluities but even to the extent of a little sacrifice. They would do anything for the “lower classes” indeed except to get off their backs. The old heads quoted the Bible freely. They said “the poor ye have always with you”. They reminded us that “the poor shall never cease out of the land”. They were a little doubtful about investigation, still more of central registration, lest their left hands should know what their right hands were doing and besides we are told to “give to him that asketh thee”. The young enthusiasts did not admire that range of texts. Their favorite passages mentioned Lazarus who in the long run had so much the better of Dives; Job who searched out the causes of trouble; and the camel which had difficulty with the needle’s eye. From so vast and varied a treasury of wisdom as the Bible every one chooses the gem which best adorns the theory he propounds. Years later after I had watched the fatal process of the degradation of charitable energy taking place in many of the Associated Charities, I was able to recognize what had happened to the mid-century organizations.* They had all begun with ideas of preventive as well as remedial work. Each new scheme of benevolent activity as it has developed in its turn has stressed the need of discovering and averting the causes of poverty. Now *See Warner’s American Charities, 1st edition, page 376, for the down¬ ward trend in the Associations for Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, and the Provident Associations. Conflicting Agencies 51 the immediate causes of poverty are many and easily seen. The remote causes are inherent in the present faulty structure of society. Every privileged interest, the existence of all “male¬ factors of great wealth”, means some one injured some one made poor. It is not mere accident that so many settlement workers who have intimate knowledge not of the pauper but of those who feel themselves held down, should lean towards Socialism. To discover and avert the social causes of poverty means to uncover and perhaps disturb the social order.* But each new organiza¬ tion in its turn, inevitably concentrated on almsgiving because that is easy while preventive, still more constructive, family wel¬ fare work is difficult; so the cheap and easy way was taken and gradually in some cases quickly in most, almsgiving wholly pos¬ sessed them. They lost what little of the real spirit of social work they began with and forgot their early programs. And of course the quality of their almsgiving deteriorated, became mechanical, official, routine and, usually, inadequate. Then again we must remember that the clients (as we call them now) were not aware of any necessity for reconstruction or rehabilitation; nor did they deem it possible to prevent distress or destitution. Some of the causes of poverty were subjective were within the poor themselves; they hardly desired to remove them. They were vaguely conscious that the world had used them hardly that things were not quite fair. But what they asked for was relief and plenty of it and what the relief -agent said to them of doing better, or of being better people, was only accepted so far as its acceptance was a condition of relief. So clients and agents conspired to make relief the end of social effort. *See the illuminating indictment of the desire for gain as the inciting cause of much poverty and vice, in Devine’s address as president of the National Conference in the Proceedings of 1906. But all the poverty caused by industry is not from vice or spoliation. Some great essential industries are organized on the basis of the existence of a fringe of unem¬ ployed labor, available when extra help is needed from time to time. I have watched the workers going in to a great packing-house when the whistle blew and seen, after the regulars had entered, the casuals lining up in an eager, pathetic row ; waiting for the foremen to pick out those they wanted for that day ; perhaps ten or twenty from a hundred or more ; and heard the foreman answer the question “Will there be work tomor¬ row?” by “If you want to work, you’d better be here”; and then watched the rejected ones slink away with downcast looks and heard them curse the foreman who would not say “no”, lest they should try for a steady job elsewhere. And there are other factories, with less excuse than the meat-packers similarly treating human labor as a commodity. 52 Family Welfare Work in the Eighties The old societies recognized the evils of duplication almost as clearly as we did, but their remedy was by what seemed the simple way of Concentration, the less direct method of Associa¬ tion did not occur to them. They had no conception of any “social gulf7 between rich and poor so they not only made no effort to bridge it but many of their methods might have been deliberately intended to widen it. They said to the benevolent wealthy “let us distribute your gifts for you ; relief of the poor is a difficult task and sometimes does harm ; we know how to do it wisely and you don’t77. They declared “the less the rich have to do with the poor the better77. This was said to me in bitter earnest by the general superintendent of a large city relief agency in 1886 ; it fairly expressed the opinion of many if not most such officials at that time. But many of the benevolent people did not feel that way. They enjoyed personal “charity77 that they might have the meed of gratitude from the recipients. So duplication went on apace. The Associated Charities people wanted not concentration but co-operation and helpful association. And we did perhaps unduly emphasize the evils of pauperism which arise out of mis¬ cellaneous disorganized charity. Especially did we decry out¬ door relief* ; that for a while was a very bete noir to most of us. There is rarely any rational relation between the size of a popu¬ lation or even the amount of poverty and the volume of relief. That seems to be always and everywhere a matter of administra¬ tion. One of the strange paradoxes of so-called charity is that wherever public alms is plentiful and carelessly given there private almsgiving grows apace. Where there is no public alms¬ giving there is less begging than in cities where outdoor relief prevails. A similar anomaly is seen when we compare outdoor and indoor relief. The casual thinker and many a thinker who is by no means casual imagines that when outdoor relief is cut off or curtailed indoor relief ; that in almshouses ; will inevitablv increase at some proportionate rate. But we know that the con¬ trary is the fact. The two kinds of relief increase and diminish ♦Outdoor relief is a strictly technical term for that sriven by a public official from public funds to persons not in institutions. The term is often used incorrectly. In this book I shall use it, and any other of the few technical terms we have, strictly. Service or Relief v 53 not as we might expect in an inverse ratio but together; or at any rate without causal inter-relations between them.* The same is true with regard to the expected increase of demand on private agencies when public aid is diminished. Usually it does not hap¬ pen. Two classic instances are those of Brooklyn in 1879 and Philadelphia in 1882 and 1883; and many others might be cited. Pauperism is a disease of the body-politic and almsgiving is not a cure for it but works like drugs which palliate symptoms in the human body and increase the disease which causes them. Like many drugs it has a tendency toward increasing doses and to create a habit. Rockefeller’s millions (or billions, is it?) given to the poor of one city would increase not diminish pauperism. It would be a drastic remedy and is of course unthinkable as a practical proposition ; but if all almsgiving of every description could be cut off for a few weeks pauperism would be extinct; if the paupers survived it would be as laborers or depredators. When social work shall reach its highest development of pre¬ ventive and constructive effort alms will be no longer needed and the relief agent as such will become as obsolete as the hang¬ man as extinct as the familiar of the Inquisition. Robert Treat Paine, president of the Boston A. C. devised the motto “not alms but a friend” and we used it as a text. But we were modest ; we thought others were doing better than we. Sometimes we deplored that we could not do in Chicago, Ill., and Cincinnati. O. the beautiful work of the friendly visitor as it was done by the wiser and better folk in Boston, Mass., and Newport, R. T. And sometimes the people of Chicago and Cin¬ cinnati, thought themselves just as charitable as and more prac¬ tical than those wise men of the East and did not relish our com¬ parisons. Our theory about relief was that all alms are degrading and hurtful. We sympathized with Edward Denison in London’s dreadful East End, when he said that every time he gave away a pound he felt he had done four shillings worth of good and six¬ teen shillings worth of harm. We insisted that no relief should ♦Many instances might he cited. For a striking example on . a state¬ wide basis see, in Chap. 10 of part 2, the result of the curtailment of outdoor relief by two-thirds, with a concurrent decline of almshouse popu¬ lation, in Indiana. See also statistics in cities, in Proceedings of the National Conference for 1893, pp. 60 and 69. 54 Family Welfare Work in the Eighties be given except as a step to something better, that only help to self-help was either just or kind. We had not then the lovely term “home service” to conjure with; that our wise Mary Rich- mond gave to the Red Cross in 1917 ; but we had the idea and oh how we tried to live up to it — and how often we failed. Many of the A. C.’s and C. O. S.’s stressed these ideas to the extent of refusing to be either givers or custodians of relief funds. But the almsgiving tendency was strong. We had to secure relief in proper cases, and if your purpose or your main method is relief, what’s the difference except in extra trouble and delay between giving and securing it?* When the report on Charity Organization in Cities was made to the National Conference at St. Paul, in 1886, it showed that of the C. O. S.’s and A. C.’s then at work, twenty gave relief from their oVn funds and thirty-two did not. The Baltimore C. O. S. invented a “Golden Book Fund”; which means money ready on call for special cases from B. I.’s.f That was copied by one or two societies. When I left the Associated Charities of Cincinnati for the Charity Organization Society of Chicago I rejoiced to exchange service in a relief-giving for that in a non-relief -giving organiza¬ tion thinking it would offer a safer saner basis of constructive effort. But as Ingoldsby Legends have it, “Who can fly from himself, black cares when you feel ’em Are not cured by distance, as Horace says, Coelum Non animum mutant qui currunt trans mare, ’Tis climate not mind that by travel men vary.” The pressure of the numerous cases so many more than the staff has time and strength to do more with than to investigate and relieve ; the ever insistent need of some relief in many if not in most cases: the fatal facility of disposing of importunity by *Zilpha Smith says to this, “If your main method is not relief — don’t you give more service to your clients and help more * * * agencies in the community to understand what service may be, if you must ask for the relief needed to supplement the service, and justify your request to yourself as well as to them, by describing it?” and Zilpha is right, as she always is, but I am telling of my own adventures, in cities not so fortunate as Boston, cities where the relief societies were bitterly antagonistic. tB. I. benevolent individual. Thirty years ago a common term, now perhaps obsolescent ; tho I am told by a friendly critic who has just gradu¬ ated from the Boston School that it is still an approved term there. Service or Relief 55 relief; above all the difficulty of convincing our subscribers, directors, agents, clients, — even ourselves, that service means more and is worth more than relief — and even the cowardly fear of the persistent criticism that “overhead is too large for the work done” (which the critics measure in relief given) ; all these together were too strong to be resisted. It is not to be denied that preventive and constructive work may be done; that many broken families may be rehabilitated. I am optimistic enough to believe that the societies which now are being wisely guided by the American Association for Organ¬ izing Family Social Work, are doing many fine things which we in the Middle West, did not succeed in doing or in doing so well thirty or forty years ago; and that they are avoiding and will avoid many of the mistakes and failures into which we were betrayed. But altho we made pretty fair investigations; often were able to help people by employment; did fairly good case¬ work and much thoro and effective relief (along with much that was superficial and ineffective) ; we can not fairly claim many reconstructed families during the early years of the A. C. of Cincinnati and the C. O. S. of Chicago; and we did not go very far in removing the causes of poverty.* * My hope of social work is in its present insistence on some¬ thing widely different from the old philanthropy, an insistence which was made very clear in an absorbing article in the Survey Graphic for July 1922. I wish every reader of this book might first read that illuminating essay. I must remind my readers that I am telling my own adven¬ tures, not attempting the history of the A. C. movement. I have no doubt that a story covering the years 1882 to 1889 ; the period ♦Miss Zilpha Smith, who was my wisest counselor while in A. 0. work, has kindly read some of this chapter. She says, “these pages leave the impression that the trend of A. C. and C. O. S. in many cities was down , * * * Whenever the standard was kept in mind, by doing the best work one was capable of in a small group of families (italics mine. — A. J.) it kept it in other people’s minds also, or introduced it there. It has seemed to me * * * that such leaven was there and worked persistently, and the general trend of case-work in and out of the Societies * * * was upward — that there grew in most communities a stronger sense of social responsibility than heretofore.” Her experience was in Boston, mine in the Middle West, hers covered many years ; mine, in the actual A. C. work, only seven. Then the New England mind is more patient than ours. When we chop we want to see the chips fly. 56 Family Welfare Work in the Eighties during which these first adventures of mine happened; written by Zilpha Smith about the Boston Society, would be widely dif¬ ferent from mine. But I have seen evidences of many more instances of the kind I suggest than of the better sort. Every¬ where and always there is the tendency to the degradation of charitable energy to its lowest form, that of material relief ; and while the tendency may be offset it is hard to do it. When the C. O. S. people got together at the National Confer¬ ence at St. Paul in 1886, we organized what we called “The Council of Charity Officers”. Its special purpose besides raising the standard of our own professional work was to meet and deal with members of another profession, the traveling mendicants, who at that time were numerous and adroit. It is possible that the Council and those who were influenced by it were unduly interested in the repressive side of charity organization which however necessary is never popular. The benevolent would far rather hear of distressed folks being aided than of imposters being detected. Much of the criticism of the movement in its early days, when people spoke of it sarcastically as the “Society for the Suppression of Benevolence”, and John Boyle O’Reilly wrote of, “Organized Charity scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious statistical Christ.” was due to the stress laid on the repressive side. People often say that they would rather feed ten frauds than let one honest sufferer go hungry. The first Charity Organization Society, that of London, grew out of the Mendicity Society whose prime object was to stop street begging ; the lasting unpopularity of that C. O. S. may have had that fact for one of its causes. It may be questioned whether it is not possible to go too far in eradicating even so great an evil. When we remember that it is emphatically more blessed to give than to receive ; that the benefit of all philanthropic work is always to the giver or helper more than to the receiver; and think how many people will give spasmodic alms and so get some little cultivation of their humane instincts ; who otherwise would miss the benefit of the grace entirely, the matter may be at least disputable. No one can read Charles Lamb’s essay on the “Decay of Beggars” and not at least consider this side. Service or Relief 57 We do well to say that irregular alms are hurtful and cause much more suffering than they relieve. But we should not forget that; unless it is accompanied by successful efforts for the perma¬ nent benefit of those We aid ; the same is true in the long run of all or nearly all relief no matter how scientifically adjusted. But the evil results of alms are not alone nor chiefly to the recipients. When by charity we make it possible for people to work for less than a living wage we lower the average standard of wages ; and that means the standard of living for all the lowest class of laborers. Every thoughtful and observant relief agent, has seen specific instances of this awful fact. When a “Home for Self Supporting Women” was planned in Chicago in 1887, the promoters waited on the proprietor of The Fair, a large department store employing many hundred girl clerks, for a subscription. He asked how much they meant to charge the girls for board and lodging and they said $3.50 per week. He cheerfully offered them $500.00 because he said it would enable him to cut the wages of each of his girls at least fifty cents a week. His cynical acquiescence made them pause. I have known of women working fourteen hours daily in one of the lowest branches of the needle trade, yet paid so little that they would have starved had they not been getting “chariU/” from the city relief department. We do well to enact laws for minimum wages. One of the effects on a thinking mind of many years of varied social work is a profound distrust of relief in every form ; a posi¬ tive conviction that its complete eradication ; except in the pres¬ ence of overwhelming disaster; would be a great social gain. One of my most ardent hopes for social welfare is that this will some day be possible; that one of the purposes of social work is to bring it about.* And this is said without minimizing the fact that under present social conditions a vast amount of relief is necessary ; and the present trend towards being less niggardly is a righteous one. But when all we hope for shall be done ; when bitter grinding ♦For a splendidly inspired vision of what onr hopes as social workers are. see Frederic Almy’s presidential address at the National Conference of 1917, on “The Conquest of Poverty”. Almy is a poet, a prophet, a seer, and his prophecy is based on many long years of faithful work in organized charity. 58 Family Welfare Work in the Eighties poverty shall no longer be known among us; the human heart will still need a vent for its benign impulses. May that not be in a return to the ancient classic form of benevolence which found its exercise in increasing the joys instead of relieving the pains of the less fortunate? “The world has such need of joy.” Our working people or so many of them, lead such drab, dull, sordid, hopeless, cheerless lives. Even tho disease, hunger and cold are conquered there will be abounding opportunity for real philan¬ thropy. So we give the heartiest welcome into our fellowship of social workers, to those whose professed aim is not relief nor even prevention of poverty but a saner, healthier more joyous life. Some day we may apply to all our philanthropy the radiant motto of the schools for feeble-minded, “happiness comes first, all else follows”. Chapter Three MY ADVENTURES WITH THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY OF CHICAGO The Charity Organization Society was begun in Chicago in 1883, under the leadership of Mr. Gurteen who had been the inspirer altho never the executive of the society in Buffalo. When I took charge in April 1886, it had a central office without any effective organization ; one rather well managed district office on the edge of the Southside residence section in charge of an agent of much ability and great experience in relief work ; and a provi¬ dent wood yard for tramps very poorly managed and costing the society about $60.00 per month more than it was bringing in. The society had a small group of supporters among them a very few wealthy men. Mr. Gurteen had resigned at the end of his first year and after a checkered career of a year or two, a strenuous effort had been made to raise a fund sufficient to secure an efficient general secretary; and understanding that the Cin¬ cinnati secretary was efficient and available he was summoned. In the course of two and a half years following; the central office was well organized and provided with a special department for non-residents; additional district offices were established on the West and North sides ; the wood yard had been changed from being a steady drain to the point of self support or a little over ; the income had increased from $5000.00 to $11,000.00 per annum and the society was so firmly established that its old antagonist the Relief and Aid Society thought it was about time to take some notice of it other than denouncing it as an interloper and a fraud. The Relief and Aid Society It is necessary to tell part of the story of this opposing society because the facts constitute a noteworthy episode in the history of social work; and because without knowing them it is impos (59) 60 Charity Organization in Chicago sible to understand the tragic fate of the C. O. S. The episode is important because similar things are occurring today, the lessons to be drawn are of present value. The Relief and Aid Society began in 1857 as a union of three agencies, which had been competing and duplicating each other’s work. For a while it did fairly good work. Tho it never attempted the original Hamburgh plan of districting the city, it ranked itself with the A. I. C. P.’s and Provident Associations of other cities and claimed to be the last word as a city relief agency. At the time of the great Chicago fire it assumed charge of the relief and did it well. The disaster had attracted a flood of money from all over the world and when the immediate relief was con¬ cluded nearly $800,000.00 or about ten per cent of the total received remained on hand; of this a considerable sum was divided between eighteen charitable organizations whose build¬ ings had been burned, or whose incomes had been depleted. These agencies had been partially supported out of fire-relief funds for a few months following the fire and when they accepted the money for rebuilding they gave the Relief and Aid a sort of lien on their accommodations for its clients. These liens and the fact that it began as an amalgamation of agencies were the basis of a claim ; made more loudly as C. O. S. became popular; that it was in effect a charity organization society. In the annual report for 1887, the following astounding claim was made: “This society was the first in the United States, if not in the world, to inaugurate and practically achieve the idea of Organization of Charities and Associated Charities.” After the conclusion of the immediate fire-relief and the dis¬ tribution to the various agencies the rest of the huge fund remained with the society; first to meet any aftermath of dis¬ tress chargeable to the fire and then for ordinary relief work. The treasurer reported interest on the money on hand but at a rate of about one-third that current in the city. The society’s printed report for 1873 showed that on Jan. 1st, 1874, two years and three months after the fire the balance on hand was $702,543.10 and the amount credited to interest was $26,340.53, or about 3.7 per cent. Gilt edge commercial paper was paying 10, 11, and 12 per cent at that time. The Relief and Aid Society 61 The only permanent investment was the purchase of a down¬ town lot on which a four story and basement house was built for offices, the basement being rented out. This was poorly located and did not increase in value as rapidly as most Chicago real- estate. It seems incredible, or it would seem so were there not things much like it occurring today, that a board of directors composed of leading business and professional men of a pro¬ gressive city should have sanctioned or permitted the gradual wasting away of this splendid fund in almsgiving ; more especially when we consider the possibility of judicious investment at that time. A very natural almost inevitable result of the existence of the big fund was that for a time relief was given with a lavish hand especially to anyone who had suffered by the fire. One of the interesting aftermaths of lavishness was that the city got a reputation in the Middle West and even farther afield as being a place where alms were plenty and easily gotten. In subsequent years relief agents in the city actually came upon pauperized families or families desiring pauperization who had moved to Chicago during the year following the fire because it was an easy place to live without hard labor. Thereafter for thirteen years no subscriptions were solicited for the society. The fund slowly drained away. Six years after the fire it was $139,011.52. For that year the interest credited was $4,229.59. By 1884 it had got down to $23,264.23 and the interest was only $326.11. The next year subscriptions were called for and over $30,000.00 was collected. Before this time as the fund was wasted the old liberal methods were long out¬ worn and relief was given in niggardly doles. And niggardly dole-relief was the society’s sole activity. For many years the general superintendent added to his relief work the duty of presiding elder over the Rock River Conference of the M. E. Church, said to be the largest in the world. It goes without saying that he was an able and astute man. One after¬ noon during the panic winter of 1873, he was sitting in his office when his negro janitor rushed in and reported that a mob of men and women led by some of the anarchists who were giving trouble in Chicago then were coming up the street headed for the office and threatening violence if they were refused money. The super- 62 Charity Organization in Chicago intendent met the mob at the outer door, greeted them courteously and requested that ten or twelve of their leaders would come into the office and state their case. Then he marshalled those who claimed leadership into the board room seated them at the directors’ table passed round a box of cigars and asked them what they desired. They told him the people were starving and the society had money which should be disbursed. He told them he was glad they had come; they were just the men he wanted to see ; that he and his helpers were doing their best ; but it was hard to find the right people to give to but that they knew the poor since they lived among them. Then he asked them to choose ten capable trustworthy men from their number to report to him the next morning; that he would add them to his force of visitors at $3.00 per day and a liberal allowance for car fare and between them the real poor could be found and helped. The leaders went back to the mob and assured them that all was well; that the relief society was going to do the right thing and the crowd dis¬ persed. The new visitors were allowed to report all the cases they found for a week and then paid off. The society’s board of directors was a rather close corpora¬ tion. They met monthly and gravely voted approval of the super¬ intendent’s report; and met annually to gravely re-elect them¬ selves filling vacancies with names of ambitious young business men who were glad to join so dignified a body even as figure¬ heads among figure-heads. At the annual meeting they gravely approved the superintendent’s annual report, gave him a vote of thanks and a substantial bonus to supplement his liberal salary and re-elected him. The real governing body was an executive committee of three, consisting of the treasurer mentioned above the superintendent and one other. This triumvirate enjoyed the absolute confidence of the board which had the vaguest idea of what its agents were doing in its name. The annual report which was officially addressed to the Mayor, usually contained a string of platitudes reiterating the methods of which the society approved ; congratu¬ lated it upon its existence and record; told how because of its lien on the institutions, etc. it was a real organization of the charities; emphasized the difference between relief to paupers, which was the city’s business, and aid to the worthy poor, which The C. O. 8. Making Good 63 was its own; pointed out the dangers of miscellaneous charity and the value and safety of that dispensed by its experienced employees. It specially stressed that the Society’s purpose was to give temporary aid in emergencies referring all chronic cases to the city alms department with which it carefully abstained from interfering or competing. Meanwhile the city was overrun with beggars. The various church aid societies, national organizations, etc. could get no assistance not even any advice from the Belief and Aid. Its agents were hard-boiled its methods with clients cold and unsym¬ pathetic. Its officers and directors, feeling themselves because of their funded wealth independent of public favor, were oblivious of any need to conciliate or co-operate with other agencies. They would not even consider the case of a client who did not apply in person at the office unless the name was sent in by a member of the board. Every case presented was closely scanned and an applicant who seemed to have a claim on any other agency was refused help and told to apply elsewhere. An able-bodied, unmar¬ ried man or woman applicant was refused even a hearing no matter in what emergency. It was very plain that the purpose of investigation was if possible to find a reason for refusing help or treatment. It was easy to understand why such a society so officered should bitterly oppose the C. O. S. Also not difficult to see why business men with no particular interest in social work; who saw the society doing its relief work at least on the surface passably well and not asking them for money; should be willing to let well enough alone. The C. O. S. Making Good. Under these circumstances it was no trouble with anything like reasonably good management to establish organized charity in Chicago; despite the strenuous opposition of the old society. When its fiscal year closed on Sept. 30th, 1888, the C. O. S. had a firm footing in the city and a substantial body of subscribers. This favorable condition had not been gained without great effort. The society was organized on the non-relief giving plan so co-operation was its most essential need and no opportunity to secure that was neglected. The Belief and Aid was hostile, but 64 Charity Organization in Chicago the St. Vincent de Paul, the National Associations for the relief of their compatriots in distress, English, Polish, Bohemian, French, German, Swedish and others asked for co-operation and help. Many church aid societies worked with the C. O. S. in helpful harmony. Being of English birth I joined the St. George’s Benevolent Society became its secretary and did all its relief work thru the C. O. S. Several of the foreign consuls used the office and our agents when they had distressed people to aid. Most applications for help come in the day time but some of the most difficult for a benevolent person to refuse are made after dark. To meet the need of our subscribers we kept the central office open until 10 :30 every night and also on Sunday from 2 to 4 and from 7 to 10:30 p. m. Cases during evening or Sunday hours were very rare but there are some adroit pro¬ fessional beggars who are skilful enough to apply with a piteous tale at a time when they know it will be difficult for people to investigate their cases. I took a fair share of the evening office- work myself, using the time which was rarely broken in on by an application to catch up with my correspondence. One Saturday night at ten o’clock I was called up by tele¬ phone by a member of the Belief and Aid board. He told me that he was appealed to by a case which his society could not under¬ take at that hour and wanted to know if the C. O. S. was better equipped. I told him we would attend to it. He then said there was a woman at his door on Prairie Ave. who claimed to have a houseful of starving children at 842 West North Ave. I told him to give her car-fare and that our agent would be there before she could arrive as we were two miles nearer her alleged location ; that we would give immediate emergency aid if it seemed neces¬ sary and take up the case thoroly on Monday. I sent a boy with explicit directions, who soon reported by phone that there was no such number on the street. I knew the neighborhood as one of the thrifty middle class ones and was quite sure it was a false address; however I told my agent to enquire at the corner drug store and any other place he could reach. I then called up the gentleman and reported the result of the search; he was evidently dissatisfied but being a sincerely benevolent man, he spent Sunday morning hunting thru the dis¬ trict and convinced himself that my report was justified. On The C. O. S. Making Good 65 Tuesday he sent a check for $50, with a note acknowledging the need and the value of C. O. S. methods. The Legal Aid Society which was begun in 1887 grew partly out of some legal aid given by the C. O. S. I became a member of its advisory board; also of the executive committee of the Humane Society and other agencies of the kind. All this took time and strength but it is the method of co-operation. My motto, parodied from Terence, was “I am social and no social agency do I count indifferent to me”. The beginning of the legal aid work of the C. O. S. which had some effect in the establishment of the Legal Aid Society came out of a case undertaken for us by a firm of young lawyers who wanted to help but had more time than money to give. A client of ours had borrowed $25 on his chattels ; he had paid in instal¬ ments, interest, fees for renewals etc., more than $35, and on the face of his account he still owed more than the original loan. The lawyer followed the case from the office of one firm of loan sharks to another, as the loan had been transferred, according to the devious practices of that day, took the case into court and finally settled the account for $5. From the day of that case in court it was only necessary for the sharks to know that C. O. S. had a case in hand to make them willing to compromise on a fair basis. As soon the Legal Aid Society began its work the C. O. S. according to our invariable policy of co-operation, turned over all its legal cases to that agency. One of the most insistent needs of a C. O. S. is to establish the proper connection in the minds of the public, and particu¬ larly of its subscribers, between themselves, the society and the people in trouble. Each Spring at a time when business is good and the opening of navigation lessens the crowd of transients who winter in the city, a small envelope was prepared carrying on its face the legend, “Do not give to beggars but send them with one of the enclosed cards, bearing your name and address, to the C. O. S. Note the guarantee on the back.” On the other side it read, “The C. O. S. guarantees to avert present actual suf¬ fering from any person sent to its office with one of the tickets enclosed, who is not known as an imposter or professional beggar, and to secure adequate relief, or failing to do so to report that fact to the sender.” In each envelope there were four tickets CG Charity Organization in Chicago with the central office address and a place for the sender’s name and a fifth which read “If you desire a supply of these tickets, phone or send a postal to the office, 116 La Salle St., phone 184 and they will be sent to you without charge.” In 1887 and 1888, 10,000 such envelopes were enough to place one on each business man’s desk in the commercial district where beggars most con¬ gregated. The distribution took about one week. Most of the people getting the tickets gave them to beggars and a few of these came to the office. Each case was investigated and treated; and the signed ticket with a brief report of what had been done and why was mailed the next day to the sender. One man brought in nineteen tickets of which all but two bore the sender’s name. He presented a good case for a certain amount of relief which was secured for him and seventeen people got a satisfactory story of the effects of using our tickets. A few stingy or careless people used the tickets without giving us their names, but most of the users were interested enough in the guarantee to try it out. As the signed tickets were received the sender’s names were listed and after a second case had come from one person he was called on with a polite offer of a book of tickets to be used if he wished us to continue the service. A frequent question was “how much does this cost?” the answer was “nothing”. “Then how is the society supported?” “By subscriptions.” “Who is the collector?” answer “I am” and a small or large check would follow, and the society had made a friend and supporter. My consistent policy was — do the work — do it well, — make it known, then support is certain. Then a card 6" by 4" in a neat frame was offered to the sub¬ scribers to hang in their offices. The card read “We subscribe to the Charity Organization Society and refer all applicants for aid to its office”. Some subscribers hung the card on their outer office railing: its value in discouraging applicants whose cases would not bear investigation, was evident. Occasionally a request for one of the cards came from a non-subscriber; of course the card was taken to him by the authorized collector who could have no better introduction. The vice-president of the largest bank in the city hung his card on the office wall beside The C. O. S. Making Good 67 his desk where it would catch the eye of a customer who came to talk loans and discounts. The value to the society of such an ad was inestimable. The story of this gentleman’s conversion to active co-operation is useful as it illustrates the methods adopted. He was Lyman Gage afterwards secretary of the Treasury under McKinley. He was a fellow member with me of the advisory board of the Legal Aid Society. Coming away together from a meeting he asked me how C. O. S. was prospering. I told him fairly well, but that our own subscribers did not use us as they might. He said, “yes, I know, I don’t, I had a case yesterday when I hesitated between one of your tickets and a dollar, and finally the dollar won”. When I asked him about the case he said “oh it was a good case for help all right, the fellow was no beggar, he was a worker, I could tell by his hands, he was a railroad man, just come from the South, had work to go to in three days and had a wife and two children”. I said in an enquiring tone “You gave him a dollar t” “Yes, how much should I have given him?” “Well,” I said, “you know a family that size could not live in Chicago for three days on a dollar, I should think ten or fifteen would be the least you could have made it.” “Well,” he said, “I can’t give fifteen dollars to every one who asks me.” I said “Why cer¬ tainly not, but just consider what you actually did ; we will pre¬ sume your diagnosis of the case was accurate he had never begged before; in all his life he had never had a dollar that had not cost him two or three hours of hard work. You did not help him out of the hole he was in but you showed him how easy it is to get money without work. Don’t you see that you really may have given him not help but his first shove downwards into beggary and degradation?” It felt so good to have a millionaire at my mercy that I rubbed it in. Mr. Gage was furious, he spluttered as he cried “well, sir, what would you have done had I sent him to you?” I replied “I don’t know, every client presents an individual problem to me, but I will tell you what I did in a similar case two weeks ago”. I then gave him the details of a well-handled case of an Englishman, sent me by the St. George’s Society, in which begging was averted and the family set on its feet; the man first earning a little at the wood yard then being given some 68 Charity Organization in Chicago transient jobs and then found steady employment: — the whole treatment costing sixty-five cents for the family’s first meal which was paid by the St. George’s Society, and brains. Mr. Gage said, “Mr. Johnson, I’ll never do it again so long as you are in the city” then he added, “But yours is not a relief society, how will you help the cases I send?” I replied “Mr. Gage, if you send me one of your poor brothers in distress and $5 or $10 of your money will really help him you shall have the privilege of giving it”. To which he replied, that was well in theory, but he might be away or busy, and he would give me a check for $50 to be used for people whom he might send. I answered I would accept the money to use for him if he would promise to read the report I would send of every case; to this after some demur he agreed. The first check lasted for over two years and the last of it was used with his consent to settle a chattel mortgage case which had not come from him. It was the next day after our interview that he hung our card beside his desk. An Adventure in Publicity It is not enough to do good work for the public, if you want public approval and support you must make your good work known. The best avenue of publicity is the daily press. We used the newspapers to the utmost they would let us and most of them were favorable tho two were indifferent or slightly hos¬ tile. At the time as always there was a strong demand for H. I. stories* and I incurred the dislike of some reporters who wished to write up some striking cases of people in distress giving names and addresses which of course had to be withheld. Because we could not secure all the publicity of the kind we desired in the newspapers it seemed necessary to create some regular method of making our work known. In May 1887, I began a monthly publication which I called “The Reporter of Organized Charity” taking on myself the whole risk and hoping to support the publication by advertising. This was approved by my Board tho not supported by it, altho the formal vote of approval carried a promise of liberal support so soon as the society’s funds should justify it. I printed 10,000 ♦Human. Interest stories always welcome to a newspaper. Adventures in Publicity 69 copies monthly getting a few cash subscriptions at fifty cents per annum sending one copy by mail to each member of the C. O. S. and by special permission of the city government was allowed to distribute the rest from house to house in the three residence districts, the South side, the North side and the West side, once in three months in each. Each issue carried a half -page ad of the woodyard and it was easy to tell into which section the paper had gone by the orders which came in for hardwood and kindling during the month. Of course I charged the woodyard account for the ad at regular rates, but this was all the help I got from the society except the use of its name. The value of the publication was made very evident at the time of a general appeal for funds in October 1888. In this speculation by the end of the first year I had sunk about $1100 and seven members of the Board formed a syndicate and lent me most of the money I had put in or rather helped me out of debt. This was in May 1888, at a time when I was threat¬ ened with a nervous breakdown which my directors dreaded. The loan was conditioned that if as I believed and they doubted the venture should prove self-supporting by October following the money should be repaid as soon as the executive committee gave its promised support; otherwise the publication was to be dropped and the loan cancelled. The paper did so well that in September I was able to make a contract with a trustworthy publishing house to get it out for the advertising which they would solicit; I to edit it and censor the advertising. This bid fair to repay all the money I had put in even without help from my society as under the contract I was to have all cash subscriptions and one-third of any money received for advertising I should secure. This showing of success confirmed my obligation to repay the loan. The suppression of the paper was one of the minor tragedies of the disastrous amalgamation to be told of later; and years afterward I repaid three members of the benevolent syndicate who by that time had become as poor as I, the other four remaining wealthy cancelled the obligation. At that time pamphlets on scientific organized charity were in great demand, a twenty-four page tract published by the Boston A. C. had a circulation of over 100,000; one four page 70 Charity Organization in Chicago leaflet by Dr. Wayland of New Haven was widely reprinted and more than 50,000 copies were sold. I made one reprint as a tract, called “Methods and Machinery of Organized Charity” of which I sold 3,500. This suggested the next step which was a monthly partial reprint without any advertising ; of a few of the best articles in the Reporter. This I called “The Council”, named for the Council of Charity Officers, the society which Rosenau and I organized in 1886, at the National Conference at St. Paul. The Council paid its way from the first issue. Various C. O. S.’s in other cities subscribed for many copies. It was entered at the post office so it could be circulated at a trifling cost. The C. O. S. of New York took 1,000 copies of a special edition bearing that society’s imprint; of these 350 went to the office in bulk and 650 were mailed from Chicago to a list of N. Y. members. For this service the New York society paid $110 per annum for ten issues thus putting into the hands of their members a readable tract each month for less cost than the mailing and postage alone of a circular mailed in N. Y. I had a great scheme for a charity publishing house of won¬ derful value which should issue the Reporter in its then Chicago form and get out special editions for societies in other cities without any expense to them giving them each one page for local matter. It looked like a great opportunity for an enterprising man with a taste for editing and publishing and a talent for advertising. Politics and Relief The governing body of Cook County was a board of fifteen commissioners. In 1887 a majority of this board led by the warden of the county hospital who was a ruthless politician and a man of extraordinary ability; had formed a conspiracy to loot the county. By various adroit schemes before they were defeated they stole an enormous amount of the public funds. The seven honest members by a promise of immunity, won over one of the weaker of the corrupt majority to their side; and then arranged a prosecution of the other seven; which how¬ ever was only successful because the chairman of the board was induced by a promise of a light sentence to act, secretly, in collusion with the prosecuting attorney in the selection of the Fresh-Air for Children 71 jury. The conspirators were sent to the penitentiary the chair¬ man for a short term. The warden after being arrested escaped to Canada in a spectacular manner. While the fight was on but before the prosecution began the spoilers, in order to embarrass the reformers, closed up the county agent’s office so cutting off the outdoor relief. In this emergency the reforming minority asked the Relief and Aid Society to help them by at least receiving applications and investigating cases. When the old society refused they came to us ; and of course we cheerfully undertook the work. A small relief committee of the county board acted on our reports and managed to keep things going. The county agent’s office was soon reopened but the affairs were in much confusion and for some months an applica¬ tion for county aid made to the C. O. S. received attention by the county agent one or two weeks earlier than if it had been made at his office directly. At the time of the trouble I thought I saw an opportunity for the C. O. S. to bring about a great reform. The outdoor relief had been notoriously abused; it had been made into little more than a system of vote buying; it was a common saying among the henchmen that a ton of coal before election ought to be good for at least one vote. I urged the executive committee to propose to the reformed county board that they give up the system entirely, as had been done in Brooklyn in 1879 and in Philadelphia in 1882, and that the C. O. S. take the whole respon¬ sibility for relief of the poor. I believed that if this could be done, the Relief and Aid might have been either forced into co¬ operation ; or put so emphatically on record as inutile and obso¬ lete that some other method might have superseded it; and the result might have been a vast saving of money and a still more valuable saving of pauperism and of political corruption. But the C. O. S. committee altho they assented to my theories either doubted my ability to carry them out or lacked the courage necessary to assume so heavy a responsibility and a great oppor¬ tunity was lost. ' ’ Fresh Air for the Children In the summer of 1887 I had another opportunity to start some health work for children. The story of fresh-air work in 72 Charity Organization in Chicago Chicago is just as interesting as was that in Cincinnati and it had an even more spectacular beginning. The Daily News was the most popular paper in the city. The proprietors made a standing offer of a liberal bonus to any one of the staff who should devise a good advertising stunt to promote circulation. Dr. Reilly was an editorial writer and also assistant city health officer, and planned a campaign for the health of children. He wrote to every physician asking an opinion on the cause of the excessive infant mortality during the summer. In reply he got many hundred letters which were printed on page after page of the paper. One was from Dr. Odelia Blinn, a woman doctor of prominence, who said that the great need of Chicago’s tenement children was some fresh-air-work like that of the N. Y. Tribune Fresh Air Fund, and suggested that the C. O. S. ought to under¬ take it. This gave me an opportunity of the kind for which I was always on the watch. I wrote the paper endorsing Dr. Blinn’s opinion, regretting that the C. O. S. had almost more than it could do to finance itself; but that if the News would create a fund, the agents of the C. O. S. who in summer were not so busy as in winter would gladly undertake the administration without charge. In a few days the “Daily News Fresh Air Fund” was announced, headed by a substantial sum from the paper and in a week it reached $2,000 and nothing had been done. Then I went to Reilly and told him it was up to him to get busy that money would come easily if there was something doing but otherwise the stream would soon run dry. When he asked for a suggestion, I told him the story of the Cincinnati work. Reilly and I called on Melville Stone, the manager who authorized us to go ahead giving us carte blanche as to work and money. I made a tour among the farmers round Highland Park, where I lived, hoping to find boarding places as I had done near Cin¬ cinnati but it was an utter failure. Then I proposed a camp on the lake bluff at Highwood, now the Great Lakes Naval Station. Reilly suggested the use of some big empty houses at Highwood which had been begun by a wild real-estate speculator but never finished, the property being mortgaged to the N. Y. Equitable Insurance Co. Fresh-Air for Children 73 The agents of the insurance company cheerfully gave the use of a large house and five acres of heavily wooded land on the R. R. about two miles north of Highland Park. The house was a mere shell, without kitchen or water supply; the big porch- floor rotten, the roof leaky. But it was well situated, had a fine front and a high cupola. A force of men were set at work, the porch repaired, a tem¬ porary kitchen built in the basement, a water tank planted and a daily supply arranged for from the excellent artesian well at Highland Park. The grounds were cleared of brush, three vistas cut thru the trees giving on the house from the R. R. so that passengers on the frequent trains from and to Milwaukee could see it. From the cupola a big burgee floated with the name “Castle Content”; along the fence by the railway a muslin sign 100 feet long carried the legend “Daily News Fresh Air Fund”. The paper got its advertising all right but it deserved it. The season was advanced when we began and we had to hurry to make good that summer but just one week from the day we took over the property there were forty mothers and children on the ground. Later a floor was laid in the third story making a dormitory for twenty boys tents were pitched on the lawn; the final capacity was eighty-eight guests and once there were more than a hundred on the grounds over night. A good matron was installed ; one of the guests a mother with five children lived in one of the tents and did the cooking. The children were selected by the C. O. S. agents and some other societies. Each boy and girl was given a straw hat and they were taught when a train was approaching to run to the fence climb on it wave their hats and yell as it went by. The R. R. carried the guests free an accommodation train each way stopped once a day at the camp. The newspaper having fathered the plan featured it to the limit. A rainy spell came and the roof was patched with tar paper; some of the mothers resented being invited to do a little house¬ work; wash tubs had to serve for bathing; there was some trouble with the milk supply; other little worries came but on the whole it was a good time for all. The cost seemed excessive for those days, over $3.50 per week per guest; the milk supply alone cost half as much per head 74 Charity Organization in Chicago as the complete board that had been paid by the Cincinnati fund. You cannot work at high pressure in a big hurry and economize at the same time. But no one grudged the expense the managers * of the News said do the work and we will foot the bills, and they did. The next year the work was started in good time and efforts were made to secure free country places with good success. Castle Content had been an emergency operation and it was not repeated; it had served its purpose as a makeshift and was a great success considering the rush that was necessary. But in the life of a big camp there are too many together and the camp¬ ers miss the contact with the life of the country folks which is a valuable by-product of fresh-air work. I used to imagine indeed that it might encourage at least to a small extent that return to the land which seems so desirable ; so many city dwell¬ ers dread the country that to make many thousands of children love it seems well worth while. The Y. W. C. T. U. under Mary Allen West of blessed mem¬ ory and her faithful junior, Anna Gordon co-operated and thru the Union Signal worked up interest among the Y. W.’s in some of the neighboring small towns, chiefly in Wisconsin which has many picturesque resorts by lake and river. Many hundreds of children had each a week or two of country life. Most of those we sent out were good cases tho there were a few discomfiting experiences. In spite of the medical examination which we gave all the guests one little girl carried measles to a country family. Some tough boys very ill selected by a weak agent refused to have anything to do with the people who met them at the station and after a display of rowdyism in the street of the little village, beat their way back to Chicago on the next train. But many pleasant incidents gladdened the workers. Some little mites who went rather ill clad came home with quite a wardrobe. One small boy made such a hit with his host a wealthy farmer that he not only kept him as a permanent member of his home but also took his widowed mother and little sister into the family circle. Many children made lasting friendships and were invited to come again next year and stay all summer. The summer outings became a regular part of the social wel¬ fare program in Chicago, passing in the course of years from the The Appeal for Funds 75 control of the Daily News to that of the United Charities and they still persist. The General Mail Appeal for Funds By October 1888, it really appeared to me that I had found my place in the world and was making a success of life. The struggle had been intense. I had taken risks and incurred obli¬ gations at which I look back in my old age almost with dismay. Some of the risks perhaps ought not to have been run, but, by good luck or good guidance dangers had been overcome or evaded and what people don’t know does not hurt them. As is usual with an attractive and well advertised agency, the intake of work increased more rapidly than the funds to support it and the deficit mounted month by month. My burden of work and anxiety during the Spring and Summer had brought on an attack of nervous asthma which had almost prostrated me. But the success of the first general mail appeal was so immediate and positive that things looked brighter than ever and the nervous asthma disappeared. The financial test is a crude one as to quality of work but it is positive as to stability. The appeal gave the test and demon¬ strated the financial soundness of the undertaking. It was the end of our fiscal year the ledger showed a deficit of $1150.00, the current charges had grown to about $1100.00 per month. The annual meeting was held on October 12th and its proceedings and the society’s affairs were well reported in next morning’s papers. The same night a circular appeal for funds was mailed to every subscriber of the past or any previous year and also to a list of “givers” of the city the names taken from a card catalog compiled from all available annual reports of charitable agencies. Tt included every one whose name appeared in two reports and all who had given $5.00 or more to any one agency. My theory in compiling this list was that the people who have given will give, I admired their habit and wanted to encourage it. With the appeal was sent a terse statement of work accomplished and of our program for the future. By Nov. 1st, just twenty days after the printed appeal was mailed, money enough had been received to cover the deficit and pay the bills for October and 76 Charity Organization in Chicago November, and this without any personal solicitation. I and most of the executive committee felt that the society had arrived. An Adventure in Charity Trusts During the extremely trying summer of 1888, another momen¬ tous event for the C. O. S. was brewing. It was the dawn of the great period of trusts and combines. Two young business men of the best type, one a director of the C. O. S. the other of the Relief and Aid, who were close friends and next door neighbors spent a Sunday afternoon discussing the two societies. Neither of them had been concerned with the early conflicts and were unconscious of any reason for animosity. They asked themselves why there should be two competing benevolent agencies in the same city, why there might not be a “charity trust’’. This was long before that term became one of opprobrium before even the word “trust” had gathered its unsavory meaning. On the Monday following my director called on me for a statement of the differences and agreements between the societies ; and the next Sunday afternoon was spent discussing it. Unfor¬ tunately as it turned out the director of the Relief and Aid did not call on the executive of that society for his views about it. After much discussion during which I was called on for opinions and for facts they decided that a combination was feasible that it would reduce overhead and facilitate the work. I agreed with them with the proviso that the terms of a union must be very carefully made or there would be grave danger to our side of the undertaking. Then several meetings of groups of directors were held includ¬ ing a dinner at the club where the best of harmony prevailed. One circumstance of sinister import was not recognized until too late; that none of the three members of the executive committee, the real rulers of the Relief and Aid society, took any part in the negotiations. There was one exception to this, the third mem¬ ber of the triumvirate did interview one of my directors to tell him that their hold on their executive agent was light, that he was getting old and had talked resignation, that they felt they must soon find his successor, that they had been watching me with the idea that I might be the man they wanted. This of A Charity Trust 77 course made that director favorable to the combine and he took care to repeat the conversation to me and suggest the wisdom of consenting to take second place for a while in the hope that excellent work might be done later when I should become chief. After full and prolonged discussion a contract of union was drawn up which provided for the continuance of the distinctive Vork of each society but naturally gave first place to the older and richer one. Seven members of the Relief and Aid Board were to be replaced by as many from the C. O. S. Mr Trusdell was to remain superintendent, my title was to be assistant superin¬ tendent. There were to be two executive committees of equal dignity, one called “Relief Committee” with Trusdell as secretary, the other called “Associated Charities Committee” with myself at the helm. Our C. O. S. work was hedged about with all the safeguards which seemed possible. If ever a treaty could be more than a scrap of paper this seemed one, altho like most treaties of peace it carried the seeds of future war. I did not expect a quiet career under the new deal; in fact I must confess that I looked forward to a pretty serious conflict prolonged over several years; but I did expect a fair chance to fight. My opponent was old and mentally rigid I felt that I belonged to a newer generation with a forward outlook. I had met Trusdell at the National Conference and had sized him up as an easy opponent. His opinion of me I gathered when after the directors of the combined societies had voted unanimously to have me appear before them and explain the new department they had undertaken he offered his resignation rather than meet me his subordinate before them. The subsequent history was brief and tragic. It repeated the story of many business combines when a troublesome competitor is taken in out of the cold by an old concern which does not admire modern methods. The old triumvirate which had care¬ fully abstained from any share in making the treaty was still supreme. The board refused to receive the superintendent’s proffered resignation and never listened to any explanation of the new undertaking. The new executive committees were not permitted to meet even once. The seven C. O. S. directors who had been taken into the joint board supinely yielded and left the necessary fighting to me who was tied hand and foot. 78 Charity Organization in Chicago In the course of a few months one distinctive C. O. S. feature after another was first spoiled and then dropped. The woodyard policy was changed so that it soon ceased to pay its own way. The Reporter was ordered discontinued my investment in it sim¬ ply disregarded; the new-old society had no use for publicity. The C. O. S. which had demonstrated its vigorous life was killed. There was nothing for me to do but to establish as comfortable a locus as possible and take things easily while waiting for the next turn of Fortune’s wheel which happened to be not TrusdelPs death or resignation, but a substantial advance for me ; a call to be the first secretary of the newly created Board of State Chari¬ ties of Indiana. This ended my official connection with organized charity; altho some years later I helped establish the A. C. of Fort Wayne and served for a few years on its executive committee. Charity organization disappeared from Chicago for a few years. It reappeared in 1896, with the inception of the United Charities. The next year Ernest P. Bicknell became its secretary the Relief and Aid still hostile. Finally Trusdell died. The new United Charities had as far outstripped the old Relief Society as C. O. S. had bidden fair to do nine years earlier. Some new blood in the old society demanded a change and Sherman Kings¬ ley, a thorogoing, well-trained social worker was made super¬ intendent. A few months later a second amalgamation was effected this time on more favorable terms or by less treacherous people; Bicknell being advanced to a leading position in the Red Cross in which he has gained high honor Kingsley became general secre¬ tary. Since then the Chicago United Charities has taken the place in the social councils of the Nation which is appropriate for an organization of that city and the old Relief and Aid society is forgotten. ADVENTURES IN SOCIAL WELFARE PART TWO ADVENTURES IN INSPECTION AND SUPERVISION 79 ADVENTURES IN INSPECTION AND SUPERVISION Chapter One BEGINNING THE ADVENTURES In the early days of the Associated Charities of Cincinnati, Oscar Carlton McCulloch, Pastor of Plymouth Church, Indian¬ apolis, who was also president of the Benevolent Society and unpaid secretary of the C. O. S. was a helpful friend and adviser. He was specially interested in the big flood relief of 1884, and at the next annual charity meeting in Indianapolis, which occurs every year on the Sunday nearest Thanksgiving, he invited me to tell the big audience, in ten minutes, all about the flood. Three and a half years later when I was waiting in Chicago for something to happen following the disastrous swallowing of the C. O. S. by the Relief and Aid Society, I got a letter from Mr. McCulloch asking me to come to Indiana to be the secretary of the newly created Board of State Charities. I promptly replied that I would not even consider such a risky proposition. To come from Illinois to a state position in Indiana, the state with more politics to the square mile than any other in the Union, seemed quite out of the question. I had made some rash moves in my career but this seemed not merely rash but foolhardy. Mr. McCulloch answered that it was not so rash as it looked. He assured me that Indiana was a hospitable state to new men and new ideas; that altho up to that time inviting men of special ability from outside a state to a public office was hardly heard of things were changing and would change more. He added that as I had not heard him preach lately and had not visited him for three years I might run down for a week-end and talk it over. There seemed no danger in this Indianapolis was only four hours away and I consented. When I packed my grip I slipped into it the volume of pro¬ ceedings of the National Conference for 1887, in which there was (81) 82 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision an elaborate report and one or two good papers on state boards ; with a rather full discussion. On the train I read the proceed¬ ings. When I went to my room I read until midnight and began again at day-break. After the sermon at church and dinner two members of the new board who lived in Indianapolis, E. B. Martindale a repub¬ lican member and John R. Elder a democrat came to the Big Elm, Mr. McCulloch’s house on Pennsylvania street for a confab. They talked state board for several hours; said it was to be strictly out of politics ; that the people were ready to be led in the right way ; that there was a wave of social reform going over the state as shown by the legislative session of that year when the Board of State Charities, the Board of Children’s Guardians, the Aus¬ tralian ballot, and several other reform laws had been enacted, particularly one which meant a real merit system in the state’s benevolent institutions* ; that so far from it being a disadvantage to a secretary to have come from another state it was desirable because he would have no entangling political alliances to hamper him. On the whole the situation looked rather favorable and I agreed to stay over Monday and attend the first board meeting in the Governor’s office. After the evening church service I studied the Conference proceedings until the small hours. Next day the meeting convened at ten o’clock and the members were sworn in. Then I was asked to wait in the outer office while the board met in the Governor’s parlor. Presently I was summoned and they began to question me. I told them I under¬ stood city charity work and outdoor relief fairly well, also child¬ helping in its various forms, including reform schools ; but about the prisons and jails, the care of the insane, deaf, blind and feeble¬ minded I had all to learn. They seemed to approve my mental attitude. It was soon evident from their questions that only two of the new board had more than a vague notion about a state board’s work and even their knowledge was not so good as mine had been two days before. But as I had been reading up on the subject •Since the passage of that bill there has never been a case of the removal of a superintendent for purely political reasons. There have been a few removals not always for creditable reasons but none for politics. Beginning the Adventures 83 every spare minute for the past forty-eight hours I felt able to inform them. So I asked, in a naive, innocent way, whether they were familiar with how such boards were organized and what they had accomplished in other states. They said they wkre not. I asked whether they would like to hear about it and of course they said by all means. So I spoke about twenty minutes recount¬ ing the history of the different kinds of organization in different states beginning with Mass, in 1863, and sketched the possibilities of a purely advisory and inspectorial board such as the new Indiana law contemplated. Then they asked me if I had studied their new law and if so whether it was a good one. As I had read it a few minutes before while waiting in the outer office I was able to tell them that it was like the excellent Ohio law with only one difference and that was an improvement. Somehow they did not ask me what the difference was; it was in a clause which in the Ohio law limited the secretary’s salary to |1200 per annum; the Indiana law allowing the salary to be determined by the Board. Then the Governor asked me to withdraw but I told him that so far I was not an applicant for the position and would like to ask a few questions myself. On receiving permission I asked whether the Board intended to follow the example of that of Illi¬ nois or of that of Wisconsin ; the members of the first named being little but figure-heads contenting themselves with choosing a secretary and letting him do all the work; those of the latter taking active part using the secretary as their official hand and eye. Of course they declared for the Wisconsin plan and I announced mvself as a candidate and withdrew. There were two other people considered one of them being Ernest P. Bicknell who was my choice when four years later I was asked to nominate my successor; altho I did not know when I named him nor for many years afterwards that he had been my competitor at the first meeting. I was elected and took possession of the office a few days later. After the meeting was over Mr. McCulloch told me he had been working for a state board for seven years and for four of them he had had me in mind for its secretary. Then began one of the most interesting most useful and in 84 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision many respects most successful adventures of my life. It was a marvellous opportunity. The work was all new to the state there were no precedents to hamper me. The law was rather vague. The duties of the board were defined in the most general terms; it was evident they might do anything that was right so long as they carried public opinion with them. The board was to be non-partisan. It really was bi-partisan as to its members, three from each of the two leading parties. The Governor was ex-officio president and he was a determined partisan but during my term of office he only attended one meet¬ ing. Two of the members were women, Mrs. C. W. Fairbanks whose husband was afterwards vice-president of the U. S. and Mrs. W. F. Peelle a well known and active social worker. The men democratic members were John R. Elder and Oscar Carlton McCulloch. Mr. Elder was a democrat of the old school tho he had never been a bitter partisan. He was at one time owner of the Indianapolis Sentinel and during the civil war his newspaper office had been wrecked and he had had a narrow escape from the violence of an anti-Copperhead mob. Mr. McCul¬ loch was the leader in the city and state in every kind of social welfare work. He was a man of wonderful character, a great leader, one who never said “Go” but always “Come”. His all too early death in 1891, was an almost irreparable loss to the Board as well as to the public. The republican members were E. B. Martindale and Timothy Nicholson. Mr. Martindale was a former newspaper man once owner of the Indianapolis Journal; he was the most partisan of any of the Board. He resigned after a few months to accept a state position which carried a salary; the Board of State Charities was unpaid only their necessary traveling expenses being defrayed. Timothy Nicholson was a well known Quaker from Richmond, who had been the leader among his people in all kinds of civic and social betterment for many years; a man of unbounded courage, deep sympathy and inflexible honesty both of thought and act ; as faithful and wise a friend as ever a man had. He served on the board for nineteen years and is still living in dignified retirement. McCulloch and Nicholson were the influential members of the Board, the others, except Mr. Martindale, heartily following Beginning the Adventures 85 their lead. And they soon showed the utmost confidence in their secretary, not only in his industry, honesty and good inten¬ tions but also in his judgment and common sense. I was pretty well known to social welfare people thru my connection with the National Conference and soon after my elec¬ tion I received several letters of advice from candid friends. The State Board of Indiana was new and the wise men saw a chance to make their wisdom useful to the ignorant board and its raw young secretary. Hastings Hart then secretary of the Minne¬ sota state board, wrote an excellent friendly letter of advice welcoming the new man to the state board circle and predicting all kinds of usefulness for him. He said “Do most of your talk¬ ing the first year, you will never know so much again.” Later he was of invaluable help when some knotty questions came up. Frederick H. Wines, Secretary of the Illinois Board, gave me some wise advice at the first tho later some of his counsels were of different quality. He repeated some of the things the Governor of his state had told him when he began as a new and untrained secretary. One was the maxim that the people of the state would rather hear good than ill of their institutions. Another was a sage remark also from Gov. Palmer, “the first consideration of a public man is to be and do right; the second and almost as important, is to seem to be and do right”. John H. Findlay, secretary of the New York State Charities Aid Association wrote a friendly letter; but he rather regretted the fact that I had left the field of voluntary associations where my initiative and resource could be valuable; to tie myself up in a mere political job in which I could do little but routine work. He thought a state board was so hampered by political red tape that it could not possibly influence the state institutions for the better, as a non-political society like his own, could do and was doing. Dr. Charles S. Hoyt, secretary of the N. Y. Board of State Charities, wrote congratulating the state on the creation of the board and the secretary on his appointment. He advised special attention to the county institutions as being the only ones that the board could have much effect upon. He said “the great state institutions are too big game for you”. Poor old Dr. Hoyt had always had a hard time with the institutions of his state 86 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision with whose officials he was very unpopular. He had begun visit¬ ing them in the spirit and method of a detective and during his long and busy life he never acquired the fine art of inspection. He was honest, incorruptible, a faithful and energetic servant of his state according to his lights ; but his influence was never what it might have been had his theories of supervision and inspection been different. Oscar McCulloch in asking about a new man in social work, used to say, “has he the spiritual touch ?” Nowhere in the world is it more true than in social work that “the letter killeth the spirit giveth life”. Dr. Hoyt not having the spirit himself did not look for it in others. I valued the advice of Hart and Wines, but I did not believe either Findlay or Hoyt and experience soon proved both of them to have been mistaken. No record of any voluntary association for governmental reform has ever equalled that of the Indiana Board of State Charities. And the attitude of the institution men whom Hoyt thought it was useless to try to influence may be shown by an incident which occurred on one of my early visits to the Central Hospital for Insane. Sitting in the superintend¬ ent’s office after a tour of the wards with him the doctor threw a bunch of keys into my lap saying “those are yours, if you lose them a new bunch will cost you a dollar”. In reply to the ques¬ tion “what are they?” he answered “pass keys to all the wards and the outer doors. Come when you will and stay as long as you like, you are as free on the wards as I am.” If Dr. Hoyt had carried such a bunch of keys in his pocket he would never have needed to begin his inspection at the back door of an institution at five o’clock in the morning. Chapter Two THE BOARD AND ITS METHODS Governor Hovey was a good-hearted, honest and courageous man, but narrow-minded, and positive to obstinacy. At the ses¬ sion of 1889, when he had an adverse majority in the legislature, he vetoed every bill that was passed, good, bad and indifferent and every one was promptly passed over his veto* So skilful had been the last democratic gerrymander that altho the Gov¬ ernor and state officers elected in 1888 were Republicans, the Democrats had a majority of twenty-two on joint ballot of the senate of fifty and the house of one hundred members. On the whole that session was a progressive one but it enacted one reactionary measure, — it took out of the Governor’s hands the appointing power of trustees for state institutions and lodged it in the legislature. This was done to avert a complete house¬ cleaning by the Governor, the institutions being in almost exclu¬ sive democratic control. The Governor could not forget the power he had hoped to wield and had lost nor forgive those who took it away from him. The act creating the board was among those he had vetoed, but now that it had become law and he was president he thought he saw in it a weapon he could use on his enemies. He said to me “you have some Augean stables to clean”. Fortunately for the board’s usefulness only one member was in sympathy with him. Governor Hovey was honest in his opinion and showed it by the quality of the people whom he appointed on the Board. He really thought those whom he wished to turn out were rascals ; and the acts of the board which believed differently were a great disappointment to him. Until 1889 most of the Governor’s appointments had to be confirmed by the senate so the boards were often of mixed poli¬ tics. Now one of the new reform laws was devised to make the administrations non-partisan by requiring representation of both ♦In the Indiana Legislature a bare majority vote will override the governor’s veto. (87) / 88 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision parties on every board. This did not lead however, to non¬ partisan but rather to bi-partisan control which may be quite another thing.* Things certainly had been pretty bad. The condition of the Central Hospital for the Insane was one of the causes of Cleve¬ land’s defeat for president in 1888. The hospital had been investi¬ gated in 1887 and the seven hundred and ninety pages of testi¬ mony had disclosed an incredible amount of fraud; corruption; abuse of patients; a conspiracy of officers, trustees and con¬ tractors to rob the state — and the party that was in control was so discredited that it lost the next election. If the fifteen votes of Indiana instead of going to Harrison had gone to Cleveland he would have been elected. That investigation had been one of the causes leading to the creation of the Board of State Chari¬ ties. But reform was working; things were much better and gain¬ ing fast. Non-partisan management of the state’s benevolences had been a plank in the platform of both parties in 1888. The more astute politicians were saying “it’s bad politics to meddle with the benevolent institutions”. A real merit svstem altho •/ not a technically “civil service” plan, was in operation. There were two hospitals for insane and two more had been building intermittently for five years. The Northern Hospital at Logansport had for superintendent Dr. Joseph G. Rogers; one of the great constructive hospital men of the country who had been in charge from its beginning in 1883. Its management had Jbeen above reproach, no breath of scandal had sullied it. The Central Hospital had just changed hands and a new man chosen solely on his merits, had been appointed under conditions which gave him a free hand and he was laboring hard and suc¬ cessfully to improve the administration. To talk about these hospitals as “Augean stables” was an absurd anchronism. That term might well have been applied to the Central Hospital in 1887, but that stable had been flooded out. To have undertaken *In 1886, a Prussian district judge, Dr. Aschrott, was sent by his gov¬ ernment to study the methods of institutional and charitable relief of the U. S. I entertained him in Chicago and was unable to make him under¬ stand how we Americans could expect to get non-partisan administration by appointing partisans. Aschrott had a cold logical mind. There are many things about America which a German cannot understand, as was proved by what happened in 1916 and 1917. r The Board and Its Methods 89 inspection in Governor Hovey's frame of mind would have done much harm and no possible good. The board did not let the Governor have his way but began a policy not of upheaval and turmoil but of quiet steady influence. We began a careful study of the institutions visiting them fre¬ quently and intimately; trying to convince those in charge that if they were doing right the board could be of use to them. I went to them not as a preceptor or judge but as a sympathetic student. I realized that while I did not have the expert knowl¬ edge necessary to criticise the details of management there was something more important than detail, the spirit behind it. While I knew myself ignorant of much of the machinery I thought I could recognize the temper of the men who were handling it. The method of inspection and correction of error which I saw clearly from the first and from which I never deviated, was what Mathew Arnold calls the method of “inwardness”. If I found something I thought was wrong I talked to the Superintendent, not as a superior officer, which I was not, but as man to man. If he met me half way and the error was corrected no one else ever heard about my influence in the matter not even my own Board members. I believed that a reform brought about in that way from within, was a real one while a new procedure forced on an official by pressure from without and not really appreciated by those who must practise it might have worse results than the method it had supplanted. I early recognized the vital difference between inspection and detection. The former has to do with good things and bad, to commend the one and condemn the other; the latter is wholly concerned to find something wrong and expose it. My work was inspection and I did it. There are several virtues of primary value in institution employees, such as industry, sobriety, promptness, efficiency and others. But there is one pre-eminent virtue and that is loyalty. When an inspector says things to a subordinate official which foster disloyalty to that official's chief, he is guilty of a grave social crime. An instance has been known of a so-called inspector who had only the detective instinct, asking for a private inter¬ view with an employee on whose face he fancied he saw a grouch, and saying to him “Mr. Jones, anything you say to me will be 90 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision in the strictest confidence and never known to anyone but our¬ selves, you will never be given away. Now what do you know about this institution that should be different?” Such action is as vicious as it would be to deliberately undermine the founda¬ tions of the institution building. To the detective mind nothing matters except to prove some¬ one at fault. But to the wise inspector the question of whether some person did or did not commit a certain act, is of compara¬ tively little importance. What he seeks to know is the general and habitual trend of an officer’s motives, intentions and actions. When I began my work which for long was chiefly the inspec¬ tion of institutions, I was conscious of ignorance, eager to learn, with a passion for fairness and a square deal. And the institu¬ tion men whom I visited with rare exceptions, believed me to be sincere and became my friends. I was fortunate in beginning at a time when reform was in the air. There was a general pub¬ lic opinion in the state that things institutional had been bad but that we were united in making them better. Much of the remarkable success of the early years of the Indiana Board of State Charities was made possible because of this healthy state of public opinion. Very early in my work with institution people I divined the value of encouragement and praise. An old friend, James Vila Blake, told me “to withhold praise from one to whom it is due is as dishonest as it is to neglect any other just debt”. I had come to my new task with no more knowledge of public officials than the ordinary citizen ; with all the ordinary citizen’s distrust of politics and people with political jobs. I found that most of the public servants of Indiana both those of the state and the counties, were honestly trying to do their work as well as they knew how. Sometimes ignorant of many things they ought to have known; sometimes making serious mistakes; often inade¬ quately supplied with money and help; often poorly paid; but usually responsive to human contact; sometimes pathetically eager for advice; almost always welcoming an understanding sympathy. When it came to making public reports of institutional con¬ ditions, I always began if possible with a word of commendation of things praiseworthy; and it was rarely the case that there The Board and Its Methods 91 was nothing to commend. Then when it came to mentioning errors or things needing improvement ; so far as it could properly be done, the burden was laid where it belonged; it might be on a law which needed amendment; it might be on the legislature whose appropriations had been inadequate; it might be on the board of trustees or the county commissioners. It would be not only cruel but aimless to blame a superintendent or his employees for things about which they were helpless. Then it often occurred that an error had its source in lack of complete co-operation between the official and those who con¬ trolled him. Sometimes a governing board did not know of some need, because the official had been too timid to make it known. Perhaps he had assumed incorrectly that his board knew the facts but would do nothing, being themselves especially if a county board afraid of the taxpayers. Occasionally it was possible to help an official with his own board ; coming from the outside I could speak freely to them. But just as far as possible the stories of errors to correct were kept out of the published reports only when the inward method failed was public repro¬ bation needed and that was seldom. The new Board of State Charities divided itself into a num¬ ber of committees; on prisons and criminal affairs; on hospitals for the insane ; on schools for defectives ; on county institutions. Each state institution was to be visited annually or oftener by the full board or the appropriate committee and quarterly by the secretary; each county institution to be visited annually or oftener by the secretary. As there were ten state institutions in 1889 and two more were added in 1890; ninety-two counties each with its asylum and jail and forty-two of them having county orphan’s homes that meant lots of traveling for the sec¬ retary. No institution needs more thoro inspection in none is there more danger of abuse than the Hospital for the Insane. It is necessary to give those in charge very complete control over the patients for their own good and the protection of the others. Now it is an axiom that no man is good enough to have complete control over his fellow without some competent oversight and control over himself. For this reason and because of the serious scandals of recent years the inspection of the hospitals was regarded as being the most important. 92 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision Early in our work I induced tlie Board to pass two resolutions governing its conduct. The first was to take no action unless the board was unanimous. I argued that our value is in convinc¬ ing people that we are right, — that what we suggest is for the best interest of the state. If we cannot convince our own mem¬ bers how can we expect to convince others? We have no execu¬ tive duties* that must be performed at a specified time so we can always wait to take action until we are all of one mind. Only twice in the history of the board during my term of office was a vote taken and counted. One of those two occasions was at the meeting attended by Governor Hovey when he did his best without success to divide the board on partisan lines. Nothing was ever done upon which the members were not unanimous.f ♦This freedom from executive duties, which is one of the advantages of a Board of State Charities, strictly so-called, was a few years later some¬ what infringed upon. One of the penalties or rewards of faithful and suc¬ cessful work is being given additional duties. The legislature when attempting some new department of work which requires more than rou¬ tine performance, often chooses some existing board in which the public has confidence and imposes the new duties upon them altho they may not be properly cognate to their work. fThe question of the relative advantages of a Board of State Charities such as that of Indiana, and a Board of Control such as many Western States adopt, has frequently been raised in a misleading manner. They are not comparable. One is a board of supervision and the other of administra¬ tion. One does not attempt to administer, the other certaimy cannot exercise supervision. There may be a question as to the relative merits from a business point of view, of a centralized Board of Control for all institutions, and a system of a separate board for each working under the supervision of a Board of State Charities ; altho the observation of many years has abundantly convinced me that the latter method is as good or better for the business of institution management and immensely better for the work of the insti¬ tutions. But there can be no question about the fact that with a Board of State Charities the state can have an efficient supervision which a Board of Control cannot possibly supply ; and that such supervision is one of the most important functions of a state government. There must be a system of administration and there must in a well ordered state be a system of supervision. It is as important to have such an agency in government as in business. In banking we must have state and national bank examiners. How much more important to have proper visitation and examination of institutions which exist for the care of human beings. And an administrative agency can no more supervise itself than a bank can examine itself. There is a further function which a Board of State Charities can exercise and in which many such boards, notably that of Indiana have been successful but which a Board of Control, charged with vast adminis¬ trative duties can not discharge; that is to inform and lead the public opinion of the state, in forward movements of social work both public and private. It has been asserted that a Board of Control ought to be able to do this, but I think no one (or hardly anyone) will assert that any such board has ever done it or is at all likely to do it. The Board and Its Methods 93 The second resolution was that the board should never use its influence nor even give advice about the choice of candidates for appointment. This was occasioned by the fact that the School for the Deaf needed a new superintendent, and two members wished to use the board’s influence in favor of one candidate and strongly against another. I argued against such action; I said “it’s our business to supervise this superintendent’s work and tell what we find out about it. Suppose there should be criticism of him and we investigate; out report must be above suspicion of bias. If we had supported his candidacy and later investigated charges and declared him innocent, some people would say that he was our man and we had whitewashed him. If on the contrary we had opposed his appointment and later found something wrong, it would be easy to accuse us of being against him unfairly. We must be absolutely positive as to policies and methods and absolutely impartial as to men.” The board adopted the resolution I suggested and lived up to it tho the inducement to interfere was sometimes very strong, and on one occasion I altho not the board succumbed to the temptation. There had been serious mismanagement in the Eastern hos¬ pital at Richmond resulting, among other tragedies in the death of a patient from abuse by an attendant and a trial with a verdict that sent the guilty man to prison for a long term. The superin¬ tendent who was one of the last of the old-time political appointees now happily obsolete in Indiana, had resigned and the trustees had to choose his successor. This was immediately after the legislative session of 1891 at which many wires had been pulled and the trustees’ names had been on a political slate which included the name of a candidate for superintendent. This man was one of the noxious class of political doctors. He had been pension examiner in Monroe County and had held one petty political job after another his last one having been that of assistant physician at the Central Hospital from which he had been discharged for cause, but he was supposed to have “influence”. The hospital board consisted as did all such bodies then of three members, two Democrats and one Republican. The latter was a man of high character and ability. One of the Democrats was of similar character but not quite so much ability. The 94 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision other and most influential member was a life-long politician, whose activities had been during the worst era of Indiana poli¬ tics that period which had fortunately ended with the general election of 1888. This trustee’s brother, a man of much more than ordinary ability, was chairman of the State Democratic Committee; an honest man according to his lights but naturally holding the success of his party as the chief consideration. The position of trustee paid only a small salary but it had been thought desirable because under the old regime it carried much patronage. When I discovered the deal the unfit candidate was to be elected in a few days. Nothing could be done about it directly. I determined to try the method of indirection. The editor of the leading democratic paper of the state The Indianapolis Sentinel, was S. E. Morss, a cultured gentleman of high charac¬ ter and somewhat fastidious tastes. He was sincely desirous to induce his party to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the people by giving the state a strong and clean administration. I called on Mr. Morss and told him of the deal and that the candidate was not only incompetent but a man of corrupt life; his misdeeds had taken the specially bad form from an institution point of view of illicit relations with women employees of the hospital where he was assistant; it was for such conduct more than for incompetence that he had been discharged. I tried to make the editor see that the appointment would be disastrous not only to the management of the hospital but to the party; which in the recent past had suffered from bad conduct of insti¬ tution affairs. Mr. Morss at first refused to take a hand he said it was no business of a newspaper to interfere in appointments. Then I played a card that won. I knew the candidate was coarse and vulgar, ill-educated and not even on the surface a gentleman. So I asked the editor just one favor to send for the man and give him a brief interview; this he promised to do. Mr. Morss had as confidential man a rather astute reporter who knew politics from the inside. He had him arrange the interview. The fastidious gentleman was disgusted with the man’s boorishness, especially his atrocious grammar, and sent the reporter to me for advice. He asked me what I knew against The Board and Its Methods 95 the man and I referred him to Dr. Wright at the Central Hos¬ pital and particularly to Wright’s private secretary Mr. Heeb. In an hour or two he returned fully convinced that the con¬ sequences of the appointment would be quite as bad as I had predicted and asked what I could suggest. I advised him to see the state chairman and tell him what he had discovered about the candidate ; to warn him that trouble would be sure to follow his appointment and with the editor’s consent, to say that if trouble did arise, the party organ instead of trying to find excuses for or to whitewash the trustees would declare they had been warned and had sinned against the light. This the reporter did and the candidate was dropped. It is possible that he does not know to this dav the share I had in his defeat. Of course I could not tell my own board because tho my motive was good and the result beneficial I had disregarded a rule which I had induced them to adopt. I excused myself to my own conscience by the thought that I had acted in the capacity of a private citizen not as secretary of the board. A few weeks later the state chairman called to thank me. He said they were about to make a serious mistake and owed me a big debt. I assured him that I had done nothing whatever, — that it was all due to the reporter, — that the Board of State Charities could not do that sort of thing because it carefully abstained from being for or against any candidate. But the chairman with a twinkle in his eve which was almost a wink thanked me again and told me that in future when the board had anything before the legislature I must be sure to let him know. At the Northern Hospital there was a very competent assist¬ ant physician. Dr. Samuel E. Smith between whom and myself a warm friendship existed. In November 1890, Dr. Smith was about to accept a better position in Michigan. I urged him to remain in Indiana assuring him that promotion would come his way soon. I knew the conditions at the Eastern hospital and was convinced that it was only a question of a short time until something would happen that would make a change inevitable, and when that time came the logical man to take charge would be this well-trained, capable and honorable chief-assistant at the other hospital. 96 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision It happened that the superintendent in Michigan who had offered Dr. Smith an appointment was a college classmate and personal friend. The appointment was not to be made for three months. So I advised Smith to ask his friend for a three months option. Ordinarily such a course would have been absurd but the circumstances justified it and the request was granted. Before the three months expired the circumstances related . above came about and after some interesting incidents Dr. Smith w^as appointed at Easthaven. That was in the Spring of 1891 and my friend is today the honored and trusted Superintendent of the Eastern Hospital. Chapter Three THE FIRST ANNUAL REPORT When the first annual report was to be made the board held a special meeting to consider it. A draft I presentel told of the work of eighteen months of the reforms which had already been accomplished; and outlined a program for the future. When I had read the draft, Mr. McCulloch said, “friends if in fifteen years from today we shall have accomplished all those things the Secretary has outlined for us we may count ourselves very suc¬ cessful”. About fifteen years later after reading Amos Butler’s report for the year 1905, I wrote my congratulations and said, “your board, which used to be my board, has completed the pro¬ gram I outlined for it in 1890. Now you must create a new program of reform and progress for yourself and your successor. I hope it will be as successful.” The board fully realized the importance of its first report. Such documents have been fatal to those making them. In Ore¬ gon a few years earlier a State Board of Charities had only lasted two years ; it first report was a great state document but it was so drastic and the board in its brief life had made so many enemies and so few friends that the next session of the legislature wiped it out. The early history of the Ohio board had been similar, tho it had been resuscitated after a short inter¬ regnum as the Oregon board had not. It is essential to success for a board of the kind that it make enemies but it must also make more friends if it is to survive. The dangerous part of the first report was that on the North¬ ern prison. The warden was supposed to be the most influential politician in Indiana and his party was in power. While the report did not accuse him of dishonesty, it did set forth in plain and positive terms the iniquity of the slop contract which then prevailed at the prison as did similar contracts in many states. (97) 98 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision This contract was a method of eking out the warden’s inadequate salary; he was allowed to buy the refuse food, or slop, for a fixed sum per annum and dispose of it in the most profitable way for himself, which he did by feeding a herd of hogs using pris¬ oners’ labor to guard them. The profit was supposed to be about $3,500 a year, altho the warden had told me that he did not know how much he made. The special evil of the contract was not in the illicit profit to the warden but in its effect on the convicts. The more refuse food the bigger the profit and every prisoner believed he was fed in such a way as to increase the slop; and there was some foundation for the belief. About the only meat part of the ration was salt pork. I had made a careful study of the way this part of the food was handled and was convinced that less than one-fourth of the pork bought was actually eaten the rest went to the refuse. The convicts thought they were being defrauded where it hurts the most, in tlieir stomachs, for the warden’s profit. Criminals who have been unjust to everyone else are very sensitive when anyone is unjust to them. Frederick H. Wines of Illinois on a recent visit to Indiana, had warned me when I told him about the slop contract of the danger of attacking it. He said “of course it’s wrong but it is common in many prisons ; much better leave it alone if you want < your board to survive; you will do no good and much harm; the warden is too strong for you, if you make an enemy of him the next legislature will wipe you out”. But I felt that it was one of the worst things I had unearthed in a state institution and to ignore it would be to stultify myself to a degree that would leave me little self respect. When I read that part of the draft relating to the prison, Mr. McCulloch my wise and prudent friend and the leader of the Board, said “now friends let us consider this. It may be right for us to make this report to the Governor and publish it to the state but if we do it let it be with our eyes open. If there are risks let us take them deliberately.” Then turning to me he said “Mr. Johnson what do you expect the result will be if we make such a report?” I told him what Wines had said and added that the most probable result would be the bitter opposition of The First Annual Report 99 the warden and his friends and such a reduction of our appro¬ priation as to make the board’s existence useless. Then faithful Timothy Nicholson said, “ Alexander Johnson, does thee think we ought to make the report as thee has written it?” I replied “Indeed we ought, to abstain would be to sacri¬ fice our own self respect and disgrace ourselves in the eyes of the public”, and Timothy rejoined “Mr. Chairman, I move that we make the report as written by the secretary”. Then for once the board voted, the chairman calling on each member for Aye or No and the motion was unanimously adopted. From that day until the meeting of the legislature I contemplated losing my job and wondered what the next one would be. To the board members the risk was of losing an agreeable and dignified but unpaid position in the state’s service, to me it meant bread and butter. The legislature I had to face in January 1891, was the first of many with which I was to be concerned. I knew little of politicians and was more afraid of them than they deserved. The outcome of the prison report was absurdly different from what I dreaded. The warden was retiring to establish himself as a banker in the town where he had once lived while a section hand on the Monon Railroad ; before he began his political climb by the steps of deputy sheriff, chief of police, sheriff of the county, to the wardenship. He did not care about the fate of the slop contract for his successor and paid no attention to the Board of State Charities. When the first report was published it attracted much more attention than the average state document from which it differed widely. Several of its suggestions were carried into effect by the assembly. A bill became law making more specific the pro¬ hibition of anything like the slop contract ; the previous law had merely forbidden in general terms any personal profit by an official in connection with institution business. All niy dire forebodings were unnecessary and I was encouraged to persevere in following the advice of Emerson “always do what you are afraid to do”, advice which I have always believed in and which whenever I have followed it has proved its wisdom. This first report was one of many which have presented plans and methods to the law-making body which have been approved 100 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision and acted on. At the National Conference of Charities and Correction in 1906, Governor Hanley of Indiana in praising the state board said that many of its suggestions had been approved by the legislature and had been found beneficial and that none of the legislation enacted on its advice has ever been repealed or materially amended. Chapter Four THE BOARD AND THE NEWSPAPERS \ For a time after the board began its work the mere fact that it was a new department of the state government made anything about it “News”. I took advantage of my own and the board’s early news-value to establish cordial relations with the news¬ paper people especially the reporters whose friendship is even more valuable than that of the editors. When the first novity wore off I kept the reporters in line by constant efforts to give them H. I. stories* of which my visits to the varied institutions of the state and counties afforded me an ample supply. I kept a pigeon-hole in my desk for items ready for the news-gatherers of the state house who made my office every day. I never gave the same item to two men except of course the notice of a meeting. The boys had a saying that “you might draw the rest of the state house blank but there was always a story in Johnson’s office”. These items were published in the three metropolitan papers and copied in the many county sheets so that after a few months the Board of State Charities was the best advertised arm of the government, getting scores of items weekly in the various papers. Will Fortune, then on the Journal, used to say in good-humored sarcasm that I made two items out of every interview, one when I gave it another the next day when I corrected it because the reporter had not got me right. Fortune as a reporter had an uncanny and sometimes dis¬ turbing ability of reading the mind of the man whom he inter¬ viewed. On one occasion there was a rather delicate situation in connection with one of the hospitals and some facts leaked out with which the Board of State Charities was concerned. For¬ tune came to me to get the thing straight and was told all that ♦Human interest stories. A rule with some newspapers is that there must be at least one good H. I. story daily, even if it has to be invented. (101) 102 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision was at all ready for publication. In the published interview he told all I had said, but he added in two or three places “but Mr. Johnson thinks” so and so, putting me in the embarrassing posi¬ tion of having given away things I had no business to make public. On his next call I asked him how a public man could make sure of not being misrepresented by a newspaper. He told me the only way was to insist on seeing a proof of every interview before it was printed, and added, “has anyone been misrepresenting you?” I told him that his last interview with me contained statements that I most certainly had not made. He replied “I did not write that you said those things, I said you thought them. If you deny that you thought as I said you did I will make the most abject apology”. I replied “what I think is none of your business ; you should tell only what I say”. Of course the news¬ paper man had the best of it I could not deny that my thoughts had been read accurately. The perfect reporter was Ernest P. Bicknell to whom it was quite safe to give particulars not yet ripe for publication. Then when the fitting time came instead of writing from a hasty interview he knew all about the subject and could present it in masterly style. Both these men and several others of their con¬ freres, it was my privilege to have as friends and helpers. They are today occupying enviable positions in the world. In visiting the counties I called on the local editors and gave them exclusive bits about their local affairs which I then with¬ held from the big city dailies. There was always plenty of matter for each without duplication. Each year when I began to prepare the annual report I would give the news-men “items from the forthcoming report of the Board”. When a report is once published it gets a full notice and thereafter its news value is gone. But “forthcoming” items are always news. I realized how much more value there is in three or four small items than in one twice as long as all combined. I always managed about twelve or fifteen forthcom¬ ing items in each paper no two ever having the same. The value of shrewd handling of the newspapers is well illus¬ trated by an incident that occurred at Logansport. The leading paper there was strong for the hospital at Longcliff, but there was an evening sheet which had acquired a wrong estimate of The Board and the Newspapers 103 what was really a very good administration and which was con¬ tinually printing stories mostly with a very slight foundation of fact reflecting on the superintendent and his subordinates. This was during the first year of the board and Dr. Rogers, tho always very polite had not realized that we could be of any benefit to him. There happened one of those series of misfortunes which sometimes come to the best managed hospital. A patient hanged himself; another strayed on to the railroad track and was killed; a corpse in the morgue was attacked by rats ; and the spiteful little sheet made the most of each fatality until it got on the good doctor’s nerves and he was so worried by the persecution that he wrote the board begging us to make a thoro investigation of these accidents and of his general management. The investigation was promptly made. We found the general management excellent and the unfortunate occurrences altho they might conceivably have been prevented, so purely accidental that they did not constitute a cause of blame. As soon as the investigation was written up I called on the unfriendly editor, whom I knew pretty well as I met him twice a year at the Grand Lodge of Oddfellows, and told him he was all wrong in his attitude to Dr. Rogers who was a competent and faithful public servant. The editor was really a good fellow at heart and had honestly thought his adverse opinion well founded, especially as it gave him opportunity for so many spicy stories. Under my eloquence he gradually weakened and when the iron was hot I struck. I said “if you will publish our report as I have written it and accompany it with an editorial calling attention to it as trustworthy I will give you a copy now. Otherwise I will give it to the city dailies tomorrow and if you print it, as you must since it is important local news it will be second-hand”. The editor yielded to the temptation of a fine scoop and promised to be good. Thereafter Dr. Rogers was as cordial when the board was mentioned as he had formerly been lukewarm. In Indianapolis there were two men’s literary clubs, one whose members were chiefly elderly gentlemen of standing and wealth who were not hospitable to new-comers. Myron Reed was a member and used to declare if the present bunch were all out not one of them could get in. The other club was made up 104 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision of the junior leaders in business and the professions. At that period Indianapolis had on the staffs of its three papers a num¬ ber of exceptionally able young men. Many of the reporters of 1889 to 1899, like Fortune and Bicknell above-mentioned are now occupying fine positions in the newspaper and other worlds. These men belonged to and were the back-bone of the Fortnightly Club to which I was elected soon after I came to Indianapolis. The influence of this club was far in excess of its membership; it was exerted for good causes with telling effect.* At a meeting of the club I read a paper with the title “Common Schools of Vice”. It was a true story of the jails of the state as they then existed. One bad one tho by no means the worst was in the capital city. The young newspaper men took up the matter and conducted a campaign of publicity which resulted in a new and model jail in a year or two thereafter. During my public career in Indiana I always had the best of the newspaper men on my side and I was often helped by them both while I was secretary of the Board of State Charities and after I became superintendent of the School for Feeble-Minded.* ♦It may seem invidious but I cannot refrain from mentioning with gratitude, the names of Brown, Bicknell, Fortune, Lane, Nicholson, Homa- day and Fuller, whose clear vision and forceful pens did much for social progress in Indiana from 1889 to 1903. Chapter Five ADVENTUBES AMONG THE INSANE The work of inspection is in effect the passing of judgment upon what you inspect. To rightly judge a man or an institution one must know many men and many institutions, one needs a standard of values which can only be gained by much observation. So I took every opportunity to learn my trade by visiting institu¬ tions in other states, especially those whose life and labor were like to those in Indiana. Our nearest neighbors were Ohio, Michigan and Illinois, and I never missed a chance to go to one of them, being invited occasionally thru acquaintances made at the National Conference and by reason of a habit of speech mak¬ ing. Then when attending the National Conference there were frequent trips offered to the delegates with some institution as the objective. Wherever I went I saw something from which I could learn, sometimes a thing to copy, sometimes one to avoid. Early in the first year of the board’s history the need of more complete care of the insane either by the state or by the counties under state supervision began to be very evident. At that time there were many insane kept in almshouses some even in jails and other unfit places. It seemed as tho Indiana would never provide for all her insane in state hospitals. At the same time there were many inmates of the hospitals who were old chronic cases, not dangerous to themselves nor to others. Their condition was but slightly different from that of the old paupers in the poorhouses. They were not receiving constant medical care and they did not need it. The per capita cost of the hospitals was high. Now no cost can be too high if it is necessary and if it results in restoring to productive citizenship men and women who otherwise would be permanent burdens. But to keep a host of incurable people at an unnecessary high cost is evidently poor policy. (105) 106 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision On the other hand there were many serious cases needing the sort of care which seemingly only a state hospital can provide; who were being kept in the county poor asylums because there was no room for them in the hospitals, most of whom were badly neglected. Still more serious was the fact that recent and pre¬ sumably curable or recoverable cases were delayed admission until sometimes they became past cure. At the National Conference the delegates from Wisconsin had often lauded their system of county asylums. The details of that system have been a matter of so much discussion at the Conference, being so fiercely attacked by the advocates of exclu¬ sive state care and so warmly defended by the Wisconsin people that it is not necessary to give them here. It is enough to say that the plan is neither exclusive state nor exclusive county care, but a compromise which has the merits of both. At that time Wisconsin was the only state in the Union; with the possible exception of Minnesota; which provided more or less adequate care for all her insane. The State Board delegated John R. Elder and myself to go to Wisconsin and study the county asylum system and to report if it was suitable to be recommended for Indiana. The State Board of Wisconsin had a special fund to defray the expenses of such visitors and they cordially invited the committee from Indiana to be their guests on the tour. Mr. Elder and I were met at Milwaukee by the Wisconsin secretary and taken to seven of the county and one of the state institutions. We were much impressed by what we saw and heard and were completely converted to the Wisconsin plan as being suitable to a sparse, chiefly rural, population. A few incidents of the trip are interesting and illuminating. At Dane County asylum we found a very intelligent superin¬ tendent who with his wife and two hired people took care of fifty men and fifty-four women. All doors were open, all patients busy on the farm or in the house. Seeking to draw out the superintendent I asked him “Mr. Myers, why can’t you take care of five hundred as well as one hundred, why not hire people to help you ?” answer “oh no, it would not do, you see I have fifty men and my wife has fifty-four women to care for, we know them each and we deal with them directly; there for instance,” point* Among the Insane 107 ing to a man who was loading a wagon, “is a fellow who got sour on his job last week. Before I got him suited with another I had to change the work of four other men.” Then I said “but why if he got ugly not lock him up for a while?” “Oh, Mr. Johnson, you don’t understand crazy people; do you know how to make a dog cross?” “Sure, chain him up.” “Just the same with crazy folks. If I locked that man up for three days I would not get any good out of him for months after.” Mr. Myers told us of a man he called “Dutch Louey” who had been a chronic runaway. After a couple of elopements he cured him by appointing him mail carrier of the asylum ; he had to walk two miles twice a day to the post office and he never ran away again. Years afterward I tried a similar remedy on a feeble-minded boy who had the curse of the wandering foot with complete success. Human nature is so made that the tempta¬ tion of things tabooed is very strong. It’s possible that if the fatal apple had not been forbidden we might all have been living in Eden today. Another asylum visited was in Iowa County. Here the reve¬ nue from the state’s contribution which is one-half the cost ; and the amount received from other counties; which did not have asylums but sent their insane to their neighbors ; with the produce Of a four-hundred acre farm well tilled by insane labor; made the cost of the chronic insane to the county nil. On the same farm half a mile from the asylum was the poor house. The work of caring for the paupers all feeble, old people; for an able- bodied sane pauper was unknown in Wisconsin ; was well done by a detail of insane patients from the asylum. Not only were the so-called incurable insane well kept and happy on this system, but occasional recoveries took place; and they were all patients who had been treated at the state hospital for two years without any evidence of return to sanity. The committee reported in favor of the modified county plan for Indiana ; but the state had adopted the complete state-care plan in theory and sticks to it, altho a few years ago the most populous county, despairing of getting all her insane into the state hospital, equipped a county insane asylum as an adjunct to the poorhouse. 108 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision To show the value of a supervisory board and to illustrate the methods of the Indiana board and its secretary with the institutions a few incidents will be helpful. One Sunday morning I received a telegram from Dr. Smith of Easthaven, simply saying “please come over on the next train”. In two hours the hospital was reached. About three days earlier a recovered female patient had been discharged. Her home was within two miles of the hospital and she had started alone to go there but had not arrived. Her husband became excited and made the case known to a somewhat yellow daily. The Richmond Independent. Whether the lie was made of whole cloth by the sensational reporter or was founded on the husband’s suspicions was never discovered ; but on Sunday morn¬ ing a most thrilling scandal was given the county. The woman’s disappearance was blamed on the hospital management; it was declared that she had been a victim of a criminal operation for the purpose of concealing immoral conduct of the physicians and that they had spirited her away. The woman had relatives in Springfield, O. and she had often talked of going there to live. The next morning the superin¬ tendent of the hospital, the district prosecuting attorney, Tim¬ othy Nicholson a member of the state board and I went to Springfield and found the woman. She confessed that she had been induced to desert her husband by a mischievous aunt who had met her on her way home from the Hospital. She was taken to the office of the leading physician in Springfield, a man whose name was synonymous with high character and professional skill. He examined her and made a sworn statement that there had been no operation of the kind alleged nor any possible reason for one for months past. The party returned to Richmond in the afternoon bringing the woman. They were met at the train by the husband whose gratitude was profuse. The next morning the two leading newspapers of the state printed the story in full with a statement signed by the secre¬ tary of the state board; and the scandal was dead. Prompt, decisive and public action in cases of scandal by a board which is not responsible for administration and therefore is not sus¬ pected of trying to justify itself nor to screen its employees and which commands the confidence of the public; is of inestimable Among the Insane 109 value. In the board’s existence of about two and a half years it had gained that public confidence; what it and its secretary said was unquestioned. Another interesting case came in a letter received by the Governor from a lady in Martinsville, saying that she had been told that a cousin of hers, a patient in the Central hospital, had been badly abused his nose and leg being broken. I quickly interviewed the patient, a harmless chronic of a lively temper, who told with great glee how his nose had been broken in a fracas of his inciting with a fellow-patient and showed an old scar on his shin that he had got in falling out of a tree when he was a boy. A prompt report to the lady brought a grateful answer and later investigation traced the story to a former attendant who had been discharged for the hospital-crime of striking a patient. The usual thing in such a case is for the attendant to claim he had to leave because he could not bear to see the way the poor insane people were treated. When the legislative visiting committee of 1891, went out to the Central hospital, Dr. Wright asked me to help him entertain the law-makers. While the party was assembling preparatory to a tour of the wards, one of the senators asked me where he could get information about a patient from his county whom he would like to see. I told him I would be glad to escort him and first going to the registry clerk and finding the patient was on the twenty-fourth ward, I invited the senator to go there with me. From the front center to the twenty-fourth it was necessary to go thru two other wards and up two flights of stairs and several doors had to be unlocked and locked again which as I carried the keys I could do. When we reached the ward I called the head nurse by name and enquired how Mrs. Clark was. Hearing she was well and quiet I told the nurse to bring her into the reception room, where she and the senator had a visit, after which I escorted him back to the front center; whereupon he asked what was my position in the hospital and was told “none”. “Then how do you come to know the attendants and carry those keys?”; answer “you see senator, I am the secretary of the Board of State Chari¬ ties, one of my duties is the inspection of the hospitals and I carry the keys so that I may do my duty thoroly”. Then the 110 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision senator exclaimed “Mr. Johnson I am very glad I met you, I came to the legislature fully resolved to vote to abolish your board as a useless expense. I thought you were a scheming politician and just out for a job ; but I tell you now that I am ready to vote to double your appropriation.” The possession of the pass¬ keys, my evident familiarity with their use and acquaintance with the attendants had had a wonderful effect on the mind of the senator who was an honest man, only desiring that the state’s business should be properly conducted without extrava¬ gance. Another instance of the advantage to the general welfare' of complete knowledge of the institution and free access to it occurred a few months later. As I was passing the front door of the men’s building I saw three well-dressed men standing on the sidewalk. As I bowed in passing (in Indiana the simple- hearted people always bow as they meet, whether acquainted or not) one of the men accosted me as follows: “do you know any¬ thing about this place?” Answer “yes I know a great deal about it”. “Then perhaps you can tell us where they keep the crazy people. We have been shown around but we have seen no one who looked crazy, and we think they are hiding what they do from the public.” I said, “do you mean those who are naked, bedded in straw and kept in cages?” “Yes, those are the ones we want to see.” “Well, you must go outside the state to see them we don’t keep any of that kind in Indiana hospitals.” “Oh well I suppose you are one of the gang here.” Answer, “No, I am not employed here, but if you will come with me I will show you the worst patients in the hospital. We will go in by the back door so the doctors will not see us to ask questions.” I escorted the party thru the back wards of the men’s building, showing them, among about two hundred patients, two or three wearing wristlets or some other simple restraint and about as many secluded. I made the attendants answer the question what a “back ward” means. After the tour I said “now you have seen the worst. Ordinary visitors are not shown these wards. This happens to be a quiet day but there is seldom any more confusion or restraint used than you have seen; are you satisfied?” They replied “we have not seen the basement”. “Nor have I for a year or more I have no key for that.” I took them to the front office Among the Insane 111 and told the physician in charge that I wished to go thru the basement. The porter was summoned and the party went thru from one end to the other. They saw bales of blankets, barrels of flour and sugar, cases of canned goods, crates of crockery and bundles of brooms but nothing alive except two or three cats. As we went out of the front door the leader of the party exclaimed “pray sir, tell me who you are”. Answer “secretary of the Board of State Charities, I have the keys so that I may go freely to make my inspections”. Then the gentleman said in a rather courtly and dignified manner, “you sir, have done us and the state a service this day. I am the editor and proprietor of the Pike County Advertiser. I came here to see the horrors which I had been informed existed in this hospital; I had intended to write them up that all the state might know. You have proved to me sir, that my informant was a dastardly liar, I thank you sir, sincerely.” There was something so unusual in the style of this speech that I wrote it down while it was fresh in my mind. The next week I received a copy of the paper with a half page panegyric of the hospital and half a column in praise of the Board of State Charities and its secretary. The Insane in Almshouses and Jails. In 1889 and later, the difficulties of the superintendents of poor asylums were greatly increased by the presence of many insane. The two hospitals were both overcrowded. It frequently happened that to make room for presumably curable cases patients were sent out from a state hospital as not recovered but not dangerous; these if indigent and many who were not, had to go to the county asylum. In one or two of the most populous counties some attempt at proper provision had been made for these wretched beings but at best this was woefully inadequate. In some of the small asylums they were kept in what were called the “jails”; some of which had formerly been used for criminals. In others they were in cells in attic or cellar. There in the hands of untrained people they sometimes developed very dangerous tendencies, in which case if as was usual the asylum had no suitable ward, they were transferred to the county jail as being the only place strong enough to keep them. 112 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision Some of the conditions which arose were deplorable. Ill-suited as the ordinary poorhouse is to care for the insane, the jail is still worse. Sometimes the poor wretches would be passed back and forth from asylum to jail and jail to asylum, each officer trying to be rid of a troublesome inmate. Usually however when they reached the jail they stayed there until they died or until the state hospital had room. When I found insane people under such conditions I always did my best to get them admitted to one of the state hospitals, and the superintendents of the hos¬ pitals were responsive and took all they could possibly make room for. In the asylum of a Southeastern county I found an old demented man living in a cell with no furniture but a heap of straw ; he was without clothing, covered with an old quilt. The superintendent treated him just as he would a hog and when he Was admitted to the hospital, carried him there in a crate. The poor creature was quite harmless and gave no trouble in the hospital. A negro who when I found him had been for a year or more in the jail of a Southwestern county, occupied two cells week about. Each Saturday morning the deputy sheriff opened the door of the cell he was in and as he rushed out felled him with a blow on the head with a club, dragged him to the other cell and cleaned out the one he had left with a hose. A loud call on the Southern hospital got a quick answer. Seen later in the hospital he was a quiet, timid patient in the epileptic ward. When his spasms came on he would scream loudly but otherwise he was harmless; but there was not a square inch of his scalp from his forehead to his nape, without a scar from that deputy sheriff’s club. Yet the deputy did not mean to be cruel, he was merely ignorant and cowardly. One good illustration of the effects of the inward method and also of the influence of an advisory board upon public offi¬ cials, whom it had no authority to command, may be interesting. On my first visit to Tippecanoe county I found a large well man¬ aged asylum except for the insane men’s ward. This was in a special building, filled with iron cages in each of which an insane man was kept permanently. The ward was fairly well lighted and heated but five or six of the men were without clothing, the superintendent saying they just destroyed it as soon as he put Among thb Insane 113 it on them; and they had no exercise or proper care. The man in charge was good-hearted but ignorant ; he wanted to do what was right and he begged me to tell the commissioners what ought to be done. The commissioners listened but were non-committal and seemed indifferent. About a year later the new hospital for the Eastern district was opened and many patients were transferred there from the Central, making room for some of the chronics who had been returned previously to the asylums, to make room in the hospital for new cases. As I knew all the asylums Dr. Wright called on me for help in choosing the most serious cases, saying with rare wisdom that he would take that kind, not as sometimes happens those easiest to care for. He and I went together to Lafayette to make the choice. The commissioners drove out with us to the asylum. To my surprise and delight I found a new and very suitable build¬ ing for the insane men, inside a nice court with grass and trees and a trained attendant in charge; all the patients decently clad and looking well cared for. When Wright congratulated the commissioners upon what they had done one of them pointed to me and said “that man came and told us what we ought to do and we did it”. During my experience in inspecting institutions, I saw many exhibitions of man’s inhumanity to man, but the most shocking sight I ever beheld was in a jail in the Southwestern part of the state. The cells were back to back in two tiers, the upper ones approached by corridors of iron grating. The cells on one side of the upper tier were assigned to female prisoners. The place was over-crowded with a group of men rather worse apparently than the average. These had the run of the corridors on both sides. On the women’s tier was an old gray-haired, insane woman, waiting to be taken to the hospital as soon as there should be room for her. She had been waiting for several weeks. She was violently excited, had stripped off her clothing and was parading up and down the corridor screaming and cursing at the men who were laughing and jeering at the poor creature and increasing her excitement. I told the sheriff what I thought of him for allowing such a horrible thing to occur in an institution for which he was responsible, using language a little stronger 114 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision than was common and made him remove the poor thing to a room in his own house. Then I telegraphed the circumstances in full to the superintendent of the proper hospital who answered with a prompt wire to the sheriff to bring her in at once. In one of the Northern counties, a district rather above the average for wealth and intelligence, a man was kept in a cage in an outhouse. The cage was of heavy oak bars bolted together, there was no door. It was just long enough for him to lie, just high enough for him to stand. He had been in it three years without a bath or a change of clothing. He was supposed to be a dangerous maniac, so he was treated as one would treat a raging wolf which must not be killed. The present superintend¬ ent had found him in the cage when he took possession two years earlier and blamed his predecessor. It was the work of a cow¬ ardly ignorant official. I made such a statement of the case to the physician at the Northern hospital in which district the county was, that the poor creature was quickly removed to Long- cliff. There I saw him three months later, clean, shaven, neatly dressed, sitting on a cobblers bench cobbling shoes for the patients, a harmless useful patient. He had a fixed delusion which nothing could cure that some malign power which he called “they” would kill him if he went out of doors, so if people tried to make him go he would fight for his life. For such extreme cases it was possible to get quick action but there were many bad but not quite so desperate and for many months my visits to the asylums and jails involved seeing distressing sights, even in institutions where the officials were doing the best they could. No one hailed with more joy than I the opening of the additional hospitals in 1890 and 1891. Chapter Six ADVENTURES AMONG CRIMINALS The Prison North The Northern prison at Michigan City when I began inspect¬ ing, was in the hands of an able man of the old, prison-warden type. His work with convicts was to hold them securely to feed them as cheaply as consisted with a working degree of health and to make the contracted labor pay the running expenses, including not only minor repairs but extensive improve¬ ments. That he did successfully. It never entered his mind that he had any other duties to the convicts. That any criminal could be restored to society as a fairly decent citizen, was beyond his imagination. To him the prison was a place of punishment for those who have broken the law and nothing else. In deference to popular clamor which he thought foolish, he had abolished punishment by the cat-o-nine tails and substituted the dark cell on bread and water, barely enough of each to sup¬ port life. The men went to the “solitary” for all kinds of offenses, talking in line, passing any object to a fellow prisoner, impudence to a guard, attempting to escape, failing in his task, breaking a tool in the shop, assaulting a guard or fellow prisoner, destroying clothing, sodomy, disobedience to a foreman; almost anything from whispering to manslaughter. Except for very grave offenses the culprit stayed in the solitary only until he would “come down”, i. e. profess repentance and promise amendment. The guard who had been his accuser was also his jailer. He had to go each morning after breakfast to the door of the dark cell and ask the prisoner if he would behave. The interview for the first few days was usually as follows : “Well you - son of a - will you behave?” Answer from within, “go to - you - ”. Whereupon the guard would report to the deputy : “Brown won’t come down; he is as impudent as hell,” and the deputy would (ii 116 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision say, “leave him be a while, he’ll soon have enough”. The timid prisoner, easily subdued, got off cheaply by a mild answer to the guard’s abuse, but the man of spirit would endure the cold cell, without shoes or coat, a bare board between him and the stone floor, in pitch darkness, in hunger and thirst, often for many days. It is no wonder that sometimes the poor wretch was carried from the solitary to the hospital and soon to the graveyard ;* especially when you remember that next to syphilis, tuberculosis was and still is the prison disease. Another concession to popular foolishness as the warden thought, was a night-school which the convicts might attend if they wished and there was room. There were about eight hun¬ dred prisoners and the school room seated eighty so that there was always a long list of would-be students. Many wished to learn, but some wanted the change even for an hour in the evening twice a week, from the intolerable dreariness of the cells. The chaplain aided by some prisoners, was the teacher and was very indignant when I suggested that by having school four evenings instead of two each week more scholars could be accommodated. The prison food was of the coarsest, but it was fairly abun¬ dant. The meat supply has been mentioned on page 98 in dis¬ cussing the slop contract. The labor was all on the contract plan and is discussed on another page. With very few excep¬ tions some notable ones but very few, men who went to that prison in those old, bad days, came out worse, physically, men¬ tally, and morally, for their imprisonment. After my first two years experience of inspection it was my deliberate conviction that the evils of the prison and jail systems were so great that on the whole humanity would be the gainer if the state made no attempt to punish crime. In the Spring of 1891 a new warden took charge of the North¬ ern prison and some improvements followed. By this time the Board of State Charities was so generally recognized as a useful and permanent arm of the government that it seemed worth while to placate the secretary in his capacity as inspector, and even to ask his advice. One notable change was in the treatment •This is given on the testimony of an ex-deputy warden who deplored the change from flogging as being inhuman. Adventures with the Criminals 117 of the inspector himself. Under the former warden I had been allowed access to all parts of the plant but always with an escort, I might accost a convict and the convict might answer; but the official escort always heard the conversation and no man Kf was permitted to speak to me unless spoken to. Under the new regime I went where I would alone; every prisoner was allowed to speak to me in private, either at the door of his cell or in the shop or the dining room. While for nearly two years I had never had a remark volunteered; on my first visit under the new warden nearly two hundred men had something to say, and T began to think I would soon see things from the convict’s viewpoint. Next to complaints about food requests for help to a pardon were the most frequent. Some of these had some merit on their face and T took them to the Governor; but he said, “Mr. Johnson I have six hundred pardon applications on file and I have a clerk who does little else than attend to them; you must not meddle in the pardon business”. The old Governor meant it as a reproof but he was really doing me a kindness for my whole time would soon have been taken up if T had tried to ascertain the merits of even a few of the cases presented. One interesting pardon case I did advise about. George Shep¬ pard, a boy of eighteen when convicted, had been with a street gang, breaking open an outside news-stand at a railroad station, and stealing some cigars and candy. The offense was probably larceny but the prosecutor called it burglary. The judge gave the poor devil five years, whereupon he cursed him in court and threatened vengeance when he got out. On that the judge changed the sentence to fourteen years, the maximum for burglary. The boy had never had a chance, never a decent home, his father a drunkard, his mother a wanton. He was illiterate. Going to prison changed him. He went to the night school and poor as it was he learned to read and write. He worked in the hosiery shop was a quick operator made overtime and saved the few cents they paid him. The guard in his shop, who was a man of a quality that was not common among prison officials in those days, called my atten¬ tion to the boy and told me his story. On a later visit he told me George was slipping, was discontented, unhappy, only barely 118 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision doing his task. I talked with him and the boy confessed that he was in despair. Over four years of the five which he believed it was just for him to serve had gone, but he had almost ten years more to look forward to and that seemed a life-time, he had no friends and so no hope of a pardon. I told him he was mistaken, that he had one good friend who had the power to pardon him, namely the Governor, who was a good-hearted man. I said, “George, write a letter to the Gov¬ ernor, tell him your story, say you have learned to read and write and to work here and that if he will pardon you when the five years is up you will be a good citizen.” George took the advice and the last official act of that Governor was signing his pardon. Another case is worth telling. The Governor received a. letter which purported to be from a prisoner making grave accusations against the management. It was signed “Henry W. King” had been posted in Michigan City and the writer declared that a friendly guard would smuggle it out for him; (all prisoners mail is strictly censored.) On my next visit I asked the warden as to the character of King, not mentioning the letter. I was told that Henry was a model prisoner and was employed in a respon¬ sible job on the cliair-shop contract. This was after I had been made free of the prison so that a private interview was possible. King denied any knowledge of the letter and said he thought it had probably been written by an ex-convict. When asked why the writer should forge his name he said that was evidently to gain credence for the story; the Governor would naturally ask the warden what kind of a man the writer was and would learn that he was a good prisoner and probably trustworthy. King’s intelligence and apparent honesty impressed me so that I studied his case and found an evident miscarriage of justice. He was sentenced for life for manslaughter; while he had been guilty at the most of disorderly conduct. He had really been acting in self defense when the accident occurred which caused a death. Henry’s only friend was a sister but she was spending all her time and money working for a pardon which she gained a few months later. Adventures with the Criminals 119 Before the pardon came I had gained a great deal of infor¬ mation and good advice on prison matters from King and we were good friends. A prison is sometimes a good place to make friends in. A few years later I met him on Calhoun St., Ft. Wayne, well dressed in a somewhat far western style looking well and prosperous. We met as old friends. In reply to the ques¬ tion of where he lived and what he did he said “I live in Wyo¬ ming. I am sheriff of Laramie County. I am in Allen County now visiting my old home.” I said “you know how to treat a prisoner don’t you?” and he replied “you bet I do and I don’t have any trouble with my fellows anyway”. Contract Labor. Among the subjects it was necessary to study in my capacity as prison inspector and secretary of the state board, was prison labor and the more I studied it in the prisons the more con¬ vinced I became that the system of contract labor was essen¬ tially vicious and could not but work harm. It had the merits of making the prisoners earn their living and of compelling the habit of hard work; and these merits are real. It is as just to require a man to earn his living in prison as out of it. But its effects on the convict’s moral nature were wholly bad. The men resented being worked for the contractor’s profit. They felt themselves abused and defrauded. They worked with a grudge. Their labor was a curse, not a blessing. The foreman in the shop came between the convicts and a warden who might wish to influence them for good. The fore¬ man’s job depended on getting the most possible profit out of the shop, he had no sympathy to waste on the men. The guards felt the influence of the contract. It was their duty to protect the men from overwork or abuse, but they were usually inclined to side with the contractor who made it worth their while. Such things have been known as direct bribery of a warden or his deputy to influence them in allowing the task to be set high so that the amount earned by overtime should be small ; and political influence in favor of a warden who stood in with a contractor was common. It was difficult, if not impossible, to prevent some of the weaker ones from being overworked. The labor had little trade- 120 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision educational value, since few trades were conducted alike in prison and outside. Convicts were sometimes exposed to unsani¬ tary working conditions, as for instance in the chair shop, where sand belts were used, causing dust which brought on pulmonary disease. At a time when the chair shop at Michigan City was horribly dusty I visited the great workhouse in Detroit where the same kind of machinery was used, and found it absolutely sanitary, fans being used at each machine to clear the air of dust. The difference was that at the Indiana prison it was a contract labor shop, in Detroit the work was on public account. All these things together made contract labor utterly pre¬ ventive of reformation of prisoners. It was also unfair and injurious to free labor. By massing a large amount of cheap prison labor in one industry the trade was ruined for the free workman. For instance the making of tight barrels, formerly a profitable occupation for semi-skilled men, was destroyed for them by prison contract competition. No wonder the Trades Unions opposed it bitterly. Some of the contractors were honorable and benevolent men but they trusted their superintendents and abstained from know¬ ing too much of their methods. Occasionally there would be a contractor of a different spirit. One such for a time had the shoe-contract at Michigan City. He notified the convicts who learned the trade in his prison shop, that he would lend them a hand when their time was out and in his free labor factory in Chicago he did employ some ex-convicts and stood by them when his other workmen threatened to strike against them. But such men as he are rare. People are in business to make money and the most liberal and humane employer has to compete with those of a different kind. There are few of the evils which arise out of industry, especially out of those industries which create poverty as one of their by-products, which have not their source in desire for gain. All during my time as inspector contract labor prevailed in both prisons and when our board’s work began it was even used to a small extent in the institutions for the deaf and the blind. One of the reforms we accomplished at the legislative session of 1891 was by an act which did away with it in those schools. Adventures with the Criminals 121 The great prison reform by which the noble declaration of the state constitution* was made into statute law, was still in the future. That was one of the many Reforms which I saw and had the privilege of helping bring about after I had left the service of the Board of State Charities for other employment. The Prison South In charge of the southern prison at Jeffersonville was a man who differed widely from the usual prison warden type. Without much culture he had imagination and unbounded humanity. Under a rough exterior he was one of the most sentimental of men, but if you had accused him of it he would have laughed at you. Withal he was absolutely without reverence for the estab¬ lished order. Nothing was of value to him that could not prove itself. That a method was old or respectable, or universally believed in, had no effect on him ; and he was positive to obsti¬ nacy, so that when he had made up his mind only some very certain and concrete evidence of the results of an error could make him admit that he had been mistaken. The prison when he took charge was in a deplorable condition. For years it had been a political football, in the control of grasp¬ ing, grafting, self-seeking, political henchmen. The horrible state of affairs which had been disclosed a few years earlier by a com¬ mittee of Quakers, who had secured admission and made the facts known ; and which resulted in the creation of the women’s prison ; had indeed been somewhat remedied. At least the gross immoralities which came from putting women prisoners under the sole control of male guards no longer existed. But filth and disorder were in every part. Jim Patten, as his friends called him, and he had many and almost as many enemies, was just the man for the job. Honest, determined, energetic he surely did clean things up. When I began my visits he had done many things and he did many more. The first thing he abolished was the cat. He said “no man shall •The 18th section of the hill of rights in the constitution of 1816; repeated in that of 1846 reads ; “The basis of the penal code shall he the principle of reformation and not of vindictive Justice.” It was 97 years before that noble clause was wholly embodied in statute law, by the act which created the state penal farm. 122 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision be flogged while I am warden”. The convicts were all close shaved as to face, close cropped as to head. Patten said “what’s the use of it, only to degrade them and make them feel bad ?” It had the sole merit of cleanliness. He proclaimed to the men, “hereafter wear your hair and beard as you like, only not too long. But keep clean. If I find a lousy head I’ll have it shaved.” Then the lock step, that vile invention which marks a convict for life. The man who has shuffled in that devilish march for a year or two never recovers from it, he can be picked out on the street anywhere by an old prison guard. Patton said “no more lockstep, march in two’s like soldiers”. When it came to the stripes he hesitated. The old pattern was the whitest white stripe and the blackest black possible. He hated the zebra uniform for “his boys” as he always called them, but he felt they must have a distinctive dress so that if they escaped they would be known. But in buying the striped goods he chose the darkest light grey stripe and the lightest dark so the contrast should not be glaring. The silent system had always prevailed. It was a breach of discipline for one convict to speak to another, in the shops, the mess hall, or in the cells ; and of course singing or whistling was strictly forbidden. Patten introduced the “free hour” in the evening; the convicts were allowed to converse, sing or play the violin or the mouth harp. Several of the convicts were musicians and formed an orchestra which rendered really good music together in the chapel after their practice as individuals in their cells. But the greatest reform was in the personal management. The old rule, as in most prisons, was that all immediate contact of the men was with a guard or deputy. The convicts often declared that if they could only talk once to the “old man”, they could get justice when guards were unfair. Patten was not com¬ pletely emancipated from politics, he had to give the job of dep¬ uty warden to a favorite of some statesman ; but he picked out a good-natured old man and made the job almost a sinecure. He said to me “what do I want with a deputy ? I am the one that is responsible and I want to know my boys”. So he went among the convicts in the shops and in the dining room. Anyone who wished might speak to him and he gave them a hearing and some Adventures With the Criminals 123 kind of an answer, often a joke, sometimes a reproof, never a snub. Sometimes his jokes got him into trouble. A notorious malingerer, who had been refused release of work by the doctor, complained to the warden telling him that his liver was very bad. Patten said “Well Billy, if that’s the case we’ll cut your liver out”. At a legislative investigation some years later the con¬ vict swore that Patten had threatened to “cut his liver out”. Patten hated dirt, waste, laziness and extravagance. He had no use for a slop contract. He used to say that prison slop meant poor buying or else bad cooking. He said “I buy grub for my boys to eat, not to feed hogs”. His men were better fed than those in the Northern prison yet the per capita cost of food was two cents a day less. A favorite dish was pork and beans which he insisted must be baked many hours, not the sloppy mess often given in institutions. The guards and foremen who had their own dining room, would always ask for some of the convicts’ food on pork and bean day. He used to say “if anything is cheap in Indiana it’s grub. These boys of mine have a hard enough time; at least I can give them plenty to eat; and if the steward does not know how to make it taste good I’ll fire him.” Hje had a steward who was equal to his demand and kept the cooks on their toes. A batch of scorched hominy or oatmeal was a serious matter for the cooks. I got many lessons in institu¬ tion cooking in the prison which I used later when I had charge of the school at Fort Wayne. One of Patten’s first reforms had been to abolish flogging, but a year or two later he was confronted by a situation which it seemed could only be met by corporal punishment. A brutal and powerful convict, working in the molding shop, had assaulted a guard with a “potstick”, nearly killing him. (A potstick is an iron bar used as a handle in carrying molten iron in pots from the cupola to the molds.) The man had always been unruly and was feared by everyone in the prison. He had been in the dark cell on several occasions, each time for an assault on a fellow convict, but that kind of punishment held no terror for him. The assault happened on the evening that the trustees had arrived for the monthly board meeting, and they, as well as the guards and deputy, insisted that nothing but a severe flogging 124 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision would have any effect. But Patten declared against it; said he had not and would not consent to whip any man; that it was meeting brutality with brutality; that it was degrading to the whipped and the whipper. The whole evening was spent in the dispute. The next morning, after a sleepless night, he broke down and said he would take the trustees’ advice; and accord¬ ingly the convict was flogged, not indeed with the cat but with a buggy whip. The warden did the job himself, saying he would not compel a subordinate to so humiliate himself, that if such degradation was to be incurred, as he was responsible he must suffer it. It must be admitted that the result was salutary ; the offender was a markedly different man thereafter. Some time afterwards I was discussing prison punishment with Jim Lee, one of the convicts, and to my surprise Jim said that he and all the men in the prison who had any sense, were very glad when the warden had given in, he said such a man was a danger not only to the guards but to every one. I said, “why are you afraid of him, could you not take your own part?” to which Jim answered “what would a prison be like where a convict must take his own part against such a man ? Hell would be no name for it”. Lee was one from whom I got much information and some good advice, which I passed on, carefully camouflaged, to the warden. He was a “lifer”, a competent engineer in charge of the heating and lighting. He had belonged to the celebrated “Archer Gang”, which for years terrorized a string of counties in the south central part of the state, and had at last been broken up. Jim and his brother Bill had been among the leaders. Bill, also a lifer, was foreman of the saddle-tree shop and had invented some machinery which the contractor had patented. The Lees were two of the best prisoners and each had a sincere respect and admiration for their warden. After the rule was once broken flogging did occur occasionally and some popular feeling arose against it. At the legislative session of 1893, a bill on the subject which I drafted, became law. While it did not prohibit corporal punishment, it provided saf e-guards against abuse which included an orderly trial with recorded, sworn testimony; a lapse of time between the offense and the punishment so that no man could be whipped in the heat Adventures with the Criminals 125 of passion; the flogging to be witnessed by both the doctor and the chaplain, and a writen record kept, signed by these officers and by the warden, and regularly inspected by the secretary of the Board of State Charities. The result of this law which was strictly enforced, was that corporal punishment became practi¬ cally obsolete. Another story told by Jim Lee, was of Patten’s second Fourth of July. Of course the Glorious Fourth was a holiday, and a holiday in prison is as bad for the convicts as a Sunday. It means staying in the cells all day instead of going to the shops to work, and is usually hated. The warden marched the men from breakfast to the chapel, gave them a talk, had the prisoner’s orchestra play for them and a couple of convicts give recitations. Then he said “now boys, after dinner I’m going to give you the freedom of the yard, provided you will all promise to make no bad breaks”. Of course the promise was given enthusiastically; to be free for half a day, out under the sky and the trees; for there were several big maples and some grass in the yard; and be able to talk all you liked was a wonderful treat. I asked Lee if any bad breaks were made and he answered “no, some of us old-timers were a little leary some of the fresh ones might get gay and we kept our eyes on them, if they had tried a break we would have strung them up to the big maple out there”.* Of course not all the men appreciated their warden as Jim Lee did. Many of them had not had Lee’s experience under the old regime. But on the whole he had less trouble with them than is usual in such places. He did his level best to give his “boys” a square deal and most of them realized it and responded. He used to say “there are only a few real crooks among my boys. Most of them got into trouble by accident, by drink, or bad company, or some one ill-used them, or some prostitute made them steal for her. If we use them right, make them behave and work hard while they are here they wont come back. I only wish folks would give them a fair show when they get out.” Patten ♦The difference in thirty years was emphasized to my mind the last time I visited that institution, now the Indiana Reformatory for Adults. It was Saturday afternoon and the whole population was out in the yard, now much enlarged, to witness a base ball match between two convict nines. However it must not be forgotten that the old, futile, repressive methods still prevail in many places. 126 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision had a profound contempt for dilletante prison reformers, and when he attended the National Prison Association he freely expressed his opinions and was not popular with the advanced scientists, who talked of criminal psychology, recidivism and other isms, which he called a lot of d - d humbug. While he loudly resented any advice as to his management he was really very responsive to suggestion. When I would sug¬ gest an improvement his usual answer was “did you ever run a prison? Were you ever a warden or a deputy? Then what in thunder do you know about it?” Then I would persist and make him listen, in spite of his ridicule and invective. On a subsequent visit he would show me something identical with, or suggested by, what I had proposed, as a new scheme which he had thought out. And in this he was quite honest. When it was suggested to him from the outside he rejected it as foolish. Later when the thought came to him, he quite forgot the suggestion and believed it original. And I am proud to remember that I never once said “I told you so”. My object was to get the right thing done ; the credit belonged to the man who did it, not to him who proposed it. Patten made many splendid improvements, using convict labor to a then unheard of degree. He built a magnificent wall to replace an old wooden stockade; a sewer to the Ohio river, running under the Penna railroad tracks, all with convict labor; planning, surveying, and directing the job himself. He told with great glee a story of the sewer building when the work began outside the walls. He noticed a lot of townsmen watching the convicts at work. After a day or two, as the thing persisted, he said to one of his convict foremen, “say Bob, what’s that bunch of civilians doing hanging around?” Bob answered, “why don’t you know warden, they are watching for us to make a break, so they can get $10 a piece for catching us, but we’ll fool them, we aren't going to break away.” There was the usual standing offer of $10 reward for the arrest of an escaping convict ; and his men stood by him, as men, even criminals, will stand by a man who treats them right and trusts them. Jim Patten had many faults, he was brusque, obstinate, some¬ times profane ; but he had a clear head, a warm heart, a hatred for meanness, indomitable energy and perseverence. He was most appreciated by those who knew him best. His faults were on Adventures with the Criminals 127 the surface; you saw them all at the first interview. He was a loyal and useful servant of the state. The County Jails The institutions most needing improvement and those in which improvement is hardest to secure are the county jails. When the National Conference met in 1875, two resolutions were passed, one of them that the county jails of the U. S. are a reproach to civilization. Twenty-four years later I found that the indictment was still a just one. One reason why penal insti¬ tutions of all kinds are the last to be improved is because the law-makers and the public are governed more by sentiment than by reason. In working on an ordinary legislature for institu¬ tional betterments, the best argument is not the saving of money nor the improvement of social conditions. These considerations affect only a few. But if you can present the case of many inno¬ cent victims, suffering from causes which the new method pro¬ posed will relieve, you are more likely to win. You may reach the state’s pocket-book thru the hearts more readily than thru the heads of those who guard it. Now there is little sympathy with prisoners, even with ill-used ones; anything they suffer is thought to serve them right. And if some proposed plan looks toward reformation of criminals it will meet with general incre¬ dulity. The opinion “once a thief always a thief” is very general and is the greatest obstacle to prison and jail reform ; so human justice, so-called, continues to make that adage true. I can never forget my first visit to the jail in the county in which I was afterward to live for many years. The place was filthy and crowded. Men serving sentences, mostly brief, some of months, one of a year ; many waiting trial ; several held as wit¬ nesses; a score of tramps. One man accused of murder was locked in a cell, but all the rest doing as they pleased in the unlocked cells and the corridors. The only occupations were telling obscene stories, boasting of criminal exploits and handling a pack of greasy cards; there was no employment, no discipline. And among this horde of rascals, listening and learning, were three little boys, nine, ten and eleven years of age, who were accused of incorrigibility and waiting till the court should sit in September, it was then July, to be sent to the state’s school to be 128 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision reformed. The state proposed to make over three wayward boys into good citizens and the first part of the process was to plunge them into a moral and physical mud-bath of two months duration. Thanks to improved laws which the Board of State Charities helped to get, such a state of things is no longer possible in Indiana, but some states still commit such crimes. I found many jails so unsanitary as to be a positive menace to life as well as health. Sometimes the condition was due to neglect; often to faulty design; often to bad construction. The last place on which the commissioners are willing to spend money is the jail. What was good enough for their grandfathers is good enough for them ; and if the jail is a bad place let people keep out of it. The annual reports of the board each contained a faithful account of the condition of every jail. Each paper usually copied the story of its locality, but few people cared. On one occasion Gov. Hovey had business in Peru and at the court house someone called his attention to the jail. He was duly horrified and on his return to the state house sent his private secretary to me, enquiring why the abominable condition of that jail had not been discovered and made public. I gave him a copy of my last printed report and told him to ask the Governor whether he thought it was possible to use stronger language, without profanity, than I had used when I described the Miami County jail. The more I saw of jails the more clearly I realized that they deserved the name I had given them “Common Schools of Vice and Recruiting Stations for the Army of Professional Criminals.” I realized that most of our habitual criminals are jail and prison made. That most of them began not as deliberate but as acci¬ dental offenders, who might have been saved to citizenship by proper treatment; that their development into the professional class is partly, if not chiefly, due to our treatment of them. Here is one instance out of many I have on record. On a visit to Henry County jail I saw a noted burglar and safe-blower named “Blinky” Morgan with two of his gang. The day before the visit the sheriff had just prevented their escape. There were two local boys of eighteen and twenty named Katt and Wagner, in for some petty offense. Blinky and his pals being notorious for jail, as well as safe breaking, were locked in their cells ; but Adventures with the Criminals 129 the other prisoners had the run of the corridors and the boys talked freely with Morgan. Katt was bailed out. About three days later the sheriff saw a ladder under an open window and knew there was something wrong. He took Wagner to his office and gave him the third degree ; whereupon the boy confessed that Blinky had promised to take Katt and him into his gang and make men of them, so when Katt was bailed out he took a letter from Morgan to a pal in Columbus, O., and soon received by express a parcel of tools which he had passed to Wagner thru the window for Morgan. The sheriff searched Blinky’s cell and found saws, jimmies and files concealed in his mattress and he did not escape, as he swore he would have done, that night. For that time the boys were not made burglars, just because Katt was too lazy to remove the ladder he had stolen to reach the window. Frequent visits and frank reports did have some effect. Some jails were kept cleaner. In one or two some little attempt at classification of prisoners was made to prevent the contamina¬ tion which had been usual. But it was many years before the most radical change, which was suggested in the first report of the Board, was made. This was the complete segregation of convicted persons serving sentences, from accused persons wait¬ ing trial and presumably innocent until proved guilty. This great reform, which was one ofthe many fine things done during Amos Butler’s term, was chiefly owing to the board. It had been out¬ lined in our first report in the following language. “Until an accused person has been convicted ; the jail is a place of detention not of punishment. The distinction may be made by the estab¬ lishment of a system of district workhouses, each receiving sen¬ tenced felons or misdemeanants from several counties.” It was consummated by the legislature of 1913, which created the state penal farm for short-term convicts who before that had served their time in jail. This was the last, or shall we say the latest, step in making the noble declaration of the constitution into statute law.* 1 ♦See note on page 121. Chapter Seven > ADVENTURES IN BOOK-KEEPING Statistical Work While the most useful work of a state board concerns human and humane interests, it has some duties of a statistical nature which are important. Fred. H. Wines, secretary of the Illinois Board, when asked his profession used to say “I am a statisti¬ cian^. When “Who’s who” asked me that question I wanted to reply “I am an asthenontologist”. But because no one knows what that means I had to say a lecturer and secretary. At the National Conference in Grand Rapids in 1896, Dr. James Walk, then secretary of the C. O. S. of Philadelphia, gave us the word “asthenontology” as the name of a science which should deal with all that concerns the Conference of Charities and Correction, from the care of a foundling to the treatment of a murderer. He said it was a coin from the verbal mint of a pro¬ fessor at the University of Pennsylvania and literally translated was “the science of weak beings”. I accepted the word as valu¬ able, not only as giving a name to the unnamed but as expressing a very illuminating principle, viz, that in all those who come under our purview as social workers, it is weakness, not strength, that brings them. Not the physical nor the mental strength of the burglar or the forger, but his moral weakness makes him an object of our “correction”. For many years I have tried to popu¬ larize not the word merely but the principle it involves ; but out¬ side of classes in the schools of philanthropy and a few other places, altho the principle is usually accepted as soon as under¬ stood, the word has not become current; and those who have accepted it at my lectures have quickly forgotten it afterwards. But I still think it is a useful addition to our language. Of course when organizing statistical work I started by study¬ ing what other boards were doing. A quarterly statistical bulletin (130) Adventures in Book-Keeping 131 ‘ -'-iTrfiifliM was borrowed with a few improvements from the Minnesota State Board. Its first number was in 1890 and the sight of its No. 129, just received at this writing, brings back many memories of effort. One of the purposes of the bulletin was to enable the institutions to compare themselves with each other, and sometimes with those of other states. Classifications were made of various items; of population ; number of employees ; cost of subsistence ; and other particulars. These were worked out by totals and also by per capitas. The figures were made up from quarterly reports fur¬ nished by the institutions. When I planned the bulletin I had already won the confidence of most of the institution men, so that I had no hesitation in asking them for any statistics needed. But there were one or two of the very best managers who so far had not seen any spe¬ cial need of the board’s work so far as they were concerned. To each of them, before printing the blank forms for the institution reports, I sent a typewritten copy, asking them to study it and if there were any figures requested which their bookkeeping as it was, or as it could easily be adjusted, could not furnish, to let me know. Of course this appealed to the pride of a good admin¬ istrator and they each replied that they could certainly furnish all statistics requested; altho several of them had to make some salutary changes in their bookkeeping in order to comply. In classifying institution expenditures one of the headings first adopted was “miscellaneous” ; and a sarcastic editor said the board’s expense accounts resembled those of the college boy, whose “sundries” were his largest item. This criticism was met by the simple expedient of changing the heading to “office, domes¬ tic and outdoor departments” which escaped comment. In the course of thirty years experience the bulletin has been somewhat revised and added to, but its main features are identical with those of the first number. Another valuable statistical method was original with the Indiana board. It consisted of an alphabetical card catalog of the inmates of all the institutions. Beginning with those of ninety-two poor asylums and two state hospitals, the registration contained about 5,700 names at the end of the first year. Other institutions were added. The registration now (June 1922) con¬ tains 165,654 names of persons who are, or within the past thirty- 132 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision one years have been, inmates of the eighteen charitable and cor¬ rectional state institutions, ninety-two county poor asylums and thirty-three orphan homes. It is maintained in duplicate, 'one set arranged by institutions the other alphabetically and phonet¬ ically. It is the latter which brings family names together. The value of this central registration is greatest to the state institu¬ tions ; which on registering their new inmates receive very soon a statement of family connections if there are any such on record, which frequently throws a much needed light on the history of the person registered and the cause of his trouble. The way the registration worked and the results of compari¬ son will be seen by an actual case at the School for Feeble Minded. A new pupil Ethel S - was a moron of good appear¬ ance, gentle manners, healthy except for a slight epileptic tend¬ ency, and with intelligence only slightly below normal. Her mother who had brought her was a refined appearing tho not highly educated woman. The family so far as we could judge, seemed rather above the average of rural dwellers. The etiological • history of the girl showed no bad heredity of any kind. If I had been asked whether or not Ethel might take a usual place in the community, marry and bear children; on the face of the record and the apparent facts, I should have said that if any inmate could be discharged to ordinary life, she was one. The registry card was sent to the state board office and in three days a return reported three insane patients in the North¬ ern hospital of the same surname, from the same county. Dr. S. E. Smith who was at the time assistant physician there, was as much interested in studying the heredity of defectives as I was and between us in the course of a few months we worked out much of the family history. It disclosed the most complete story of hereditary insanity and feeble-mindedness I have ever found. The story began with Ethel’s great-grandfather who lived in central Ohio, a man noted for physical strength and violent temper, a great Indian fighter. He, like the patriarch Job, had seven sons and three daughters. We found no history of the girls. Of the sons three were or had been in an Ohio hospital for the insane, one of whom had killed himself; a fourth had been hanged for the murder of his wife under horrible circumstances that showed it an insane act; a fifth, EtheFs grandfather, was one Adventures in Book-Keeping 133 of those now in the Northern hospital, the others of the name in the hospital were his sons, Ethel’s uncles. Ethel had a brother who was reported to be “queer”, and when her father visited her a few months later altho he was reputed normal it was easy to 'see where Ethel’s defectiveness came from. After the record was as complete as we had time and oppor¬ tunity to make it, had I been asked for an opinion as to Ethel’s future I should have said that she should be the last to leave the safe shelter of the institution. Without the central registration it is possible the facts, which might have been so important in determining our policy, would never have been disclosed. The S - case was about the most spectacular which the cen¬ tral register disclosed, but there were many showing similar conditions. We soon began to see how bad heredity spreads out over county lines and how many of the dependants, defectives and delinquents of the state belonged to a comparatively few neuro¬ pathic families, i. e. those carrying a distinct, hereditary, neu¬ rotic taint which shows itself in similar or varying manifesta¬ tions of defectiveness, dependency or crime, in generation after generation, as they succeed each other. It was upon the evidence which the central register disclosed, that my successors as secre¬ tary, Ernest Bicknell and Amos Butler, founded their remarkable studies of hereditary feeble mindedness.* The mere fact of being required to report to the state board improved the registration of the county asylums and homes. Since this began it is usual to find a record book kept accu¬ rately up to date, while formerly such records were rare. It is extremely gratifying to me, having designed the statistical methods of the board, to see my plans merely extended and ampli¬ fied still in use after thirty-two years of experience with them. Finances and Contracts. The board’s work included more than supervision of the insti¬ tutions with regard to their inmates; it gave much attention to their financial concerns. The method of the purchase of sup¬ plies, which had been adopted by the three institutions in Indian- *See the National Conference proceedings for 1896, p. 319, “Feeble- Mindedness as an Inheritance” by Ernest Bicknell; and in the volume for 1907, p. 611, Appendix to the President’s address. 134 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision apolis, and which later, on the suggestion of our board, was made legal for all the others, was by monthly competitive bids. Spe¬ cifications were filed in some public office, the dealers submitted their bids upon which the contracts were awarded usually to the lowest bidder. As the plan was perfected, contracts were awarded not in gross but by items, so as to avoid a very simple practice of bidding low on some items, of which small quantities would be required, and high on others. The quantities being not exactly defined but always reading “more or less”, a little collu¬ sion between the stewards and the merchants made fraud quite easy. In former days there had been much corrupt practice ; not only gross favoritism but actual conspiracy to defraud the state had been disclosed by the great investigation of the Central hos¬ pital, in 1887. As a rule in such cases the evil practices emanated from the business men’s side. In the course of many years of public work I have seen evidence of fraud and corruption and have taken part in exposing and frustrating some of it. My deliberate conviction is that the average state official is more honest than the average business man who has dealings with the state. Here is an interesting case which illustrated what may and what does happen. One day a reporter for the Journal taunted me with not knowing of crooked financial practices at the Cen¬ tral hospital. He refused particulars but by some questioning I wormed out of him that the alleged crookedness was connected with the purchase of engineers and plumbers supplies. I was very confident of the honesty of the steward and the superin¬ tendent, but acting on my invariable rule of disregarding no criticisms, no matter how apparently futile, using them never as evidence but always as pointers, I went out to the hospital and asked the steward for the bids on plumber’s supplies for the cur¬ rent year. All bids, accepted and rejected, are kept on file and may be inspected by anyone on request. Now the usual method of purchase of plumbing supplies is somewhat intricate. There is a common price list which every¬ body uses, but the prices quoted are subject to discounts, one or more, sometimes as much as 40%, plus 10%, plus 5%, off the list. The bids for the hospital however were not made by the list but straight prices. The steward was an honest country store-keeper Adventures in Book-Keeping 135 not well versed in price-lists, but he had one of plumber’s sup¬ plies in his possession and I found that the prices quoted were only a trifle below the list and probably much higher than the goods would have cost in the open market. A scrutiny of the bids showed a remarkable system. Each month there had been the same three bidders, let us call them Firm A, Firm B, and Firm C. In January, Firm A got the con¬ tract, February, Firm B, March, Firm A, April, Firm C, and so on through the year ; Firm A getting each alternate contract and the others in regular turn between. Firm A was a large and wealthy one, the other two were smaller. The winning bid each month Was almost exactly five per-cent below the next higher. The evidence of a conspiracy among the bidders was unmistak¬ able. Of course measures were taken to break up the fraudulent scheme, although there was not sufficient evidence to justify a criminal prosecution. Some time afterwards I met the junior partner of Firm A, at Marion, Indiana. The commissioners of Grant county were about buying a large quantity of iron pipe, to supply the court house, jail, and some of the city buildings with gas from a well on the county farm. Bids were to be opened the next day. There had been four supply firms represented. Three were in cahoots to milk the county; one was independent. Mr. A, who had been drinking and gave himself away' to me, (I had not disclosed my identity) told me, with some unction, that the independent fourth man had been approached with the question “if you get the con¬ tract, how much do you expect to make?” He answered “about 1500.00”. The gentleman then said “if we give you $500 cash now, will you go home tonight without putting in your bid?”; and he had taken the money and gone. The three firms on the ground were then preparing their bids and would thereafter divide the spoils. Having known what Firm A had done to the state, it was easy to understand what he and his fellow rascals would do to the county. On one of my visits to an institution in another state I saw a so-called “sand-oven” which had been installed as a temporary expedient, and which had worked so well that there was no hurry about replacing it by a more permanent and expensive structure. Shortly afterwards visiting the Wayne county poor asylum, I 136 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision found the superintendent wrestling with a badly worn out brick oven and gave him the name of the manufacturer of the sand- ovens. The county bought one of them, and in the correspond¬ ence mentioned my name. A little later I got a letter from the manufacturer, thanking me for the recommendation and offering me a commission of fif¬ teen per cent on all ovens sold in Indiana on my suggestion. I replied that I was traveling for the Board of State Charities, and not carrying any side lines. A few months afterwards the oven at the school for the blind broke down, and there was no possibility of an appropriation for a new one for many months to come. I told the steward of these cheap sand-ovens and advised him to ask the maker for a bid, warning him not to mention my name. When the bid came, made as low as possible, so the maker said, to introduce the article to the institutions of the state, I advised the steward to write that they would accept the bid if the dealer would give them, as a further discount, the 15% he had offered me. This was done although the manufacturer declared he made no profit on the deal. When the oven was installed and working well I felt that I had got even with the man who had “thought I was altogether such a one as himself”. A very few other opportunities of petty' graft came along. I had persuaded a board of county commissioners to build a new jail and had agreed to accompany them on a tour of several counties in which model jails had been erected. The matter leaked out and an architect called on me and said if I would steer the commissioners to see a jail he had built, and he got the contract, it would be worth $ 100. 00 to me. I answered, “Mr. B, I might do it for you, but to tell you the truth, my salary is large, and I have already more money than I know what to do with”. If there had been a chance before for that architect, there certainly was none after that attempt at a cheap bribe, so far as my influ¬ ence went. An architect who will buy a contract will sell his clients to the building contractors, if they will buy and they often will. Happily for my self-respect, whether the people I met were more honest than the majority, or whether my character did not invite them, offers of the kind were rare. Chapter Eight THE ASYLUMS FOR THE POOR With two hundred and thirty-eight state and county institu¬ tions and many private ones under the board’s supervision, it was evident that if the law which prescribed investigation of them all was to be obeyed, the secretary had some work cut out for him. Dr. Hoyt in his letter of advice had said we could be of most service to the counties and as soon as I began county visiting I found there was a plentiful opportunity of serving them. Years later my successors had assistants who did most of the inspect¬ ing, but I did it myself. I believe it would be well if all men charged with the same duty, could undertake at least a part of the work of inspection of the county institutions as well as those of the state. Any secretary of a Board of State Charities, who feels that his dignity would be impaired by inspecting jails and almshouses, has missed his calling. There is no knowledge equal to that gained at first hand. No part of my education in social work was more valuable than that I gained in poorhouses, jails, and orphans’ homes. Among the county institutions the most important one is that in which the paupers are housed. I often thought of it as the social cemetery. When a man dies physically we put him in a grave yard, where he dies socially he goes to the poorhouse. In our newer nomenclature we are continually trying to find milder names for disagreeable things, by which we may seem to soften the harsh facts of existence; sometimes a new term leaves the thing it stands for unchanged, but it usually indicates something more than a desire for euphuism. The name differs in different states and counties. In Indiana the legal title is “County Asylum for the Poor”, although it is more often called the “Poor Farm”. In Great Britain it is the “Union Work- house” (in my native Lancashire, where the poor fear and hate the place, they call it “the Bastille”). “Almshouse” is used in (137) 138 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision New England ; in the Middle West “Poorhouse” is the most com¬ mon; in Ohio the legal name is “County Infirmary”. When Homer Folks was Commissioner of Charities in New York he changed “Poorhouse” to “Home for Aged and Infirm”. In Cali¬ fornia the “County Hospital” is the generic name, and the home for old dependents is a department of it. In Maryland it is the “County Home”; in Richmond, Va. “Almshouse” has recently become “City Home”. I have heard from Utah of a “Home for those Financially Unfortunate”. On Nantuckett Island there is a beautiful ivy clad house for the poor, over whose portal is carved the name “Our Island Home”. It has generally been with a sincere desire to make the almshouse into a real home for worthy poor people that an attractive name has been found for it. With a less offensive term has usually come a milder and kinder management. A few years ago almost everywhere, inmates of almshouses were, and in many places they still are, a heterogenous mass, representing almost every kind of human distress. Old veterans of labor exhausted by many years of ill-requited toil, alongside of worn out veterans of dissipation the victims of their own vices; the crippled and the sick; the insane; the blind; deaf- mutes; feeble-minded and epileptic; people with all kinds of chronic diseases; unmarried mothers with their babies; short term prisoners; thieves no longer physically capable of crime; worn out prostitutes ; and along with all these little orphaned or deserted children and a few people of better birth and breeding, reduced to poverty in old age by some disaster often through no fault of their own. One of our important duties was to help correct such evil conditions; to bring state and county into co-operation; to see that the different state institutions were used so far as available, especially those for the insane, defectives, and children. Our inspections supplied the basic facts which the lawmakers needed for guidance. We not only had to study and inspect what was being done, but to influence public opinion, and then the Legis¬ lature, to do better. In this the Board of State Charities of Indiana has been markedly successful. My favorite method of inspecting the county institutions was to drive round from county to county, calling at the court houses The Asylums for the Poor 139 to interview the auditors; and the commissioners* if they hap¬ pened to be in session ; inspecting the jails and the orphan’s homes; then going out to the asylums to spend the night with them. The county seats were about twenty-five miles apart, just an easy day’s drive with a horse and buggy (this was long before the day of the auto). Sometimes the asylum of one county is five miles west of one county seat and that of its neighbor a few miles east of the next, so that much travel was saved by this method. Occasionally the asylum was a place where one could hardly stay overnight and I would have to use a hotel, and some¬ times that was very little better than the asylum itself. I would drive up to an asylum about four o’clock in the after¬ noon, put up my horse in the barn and visit the fields and gardens before supper; I would observe the inmates’ evening meal and after taking supper with the superintendent, see how they went to bed, how the sexes were separated, etc. Then the evening was spent, by the stove in winter, on the porch in summer, chatting with the man in charge, telling him the news of the state and the world, talking of other asylums I had visited and so on. To the farmer in his isolation such a visit is a Godsend and he would unloose and tell me all his troubles. Then to bed in the guest- chamber and next morning I was always the first up ; saw how the paupers washed and dressed; how the breakfast was cooked and served ; how the work of the house and the farm started off in the morning; and when I drove away about ten o’clock, I knew how that asylum was managed. Often there would be something to correct and I would tell the superintendent not what he ought to do, but what some other man had done under similar circumstances. Occasionally I had to invent the other place and man, in which case I located the imaginary instance in a distant part of the state. This was teaching by parable for which we have the highest example. Then on my next visit, the superintendent would say “you know what you told me about so and so. Well, I tried it and it worked first rate ;” and the next time the incident was used in illustration it would be history not parable. In the course of my first round of visits, I found four asylums ♦Each county has three commissioners who manage its affairs. In large counties, they meet weekly, in small ones, once a month. 140 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision which were about as bad, in all but one respect, as the one so graphically described in Egglestones “Hoosier School Master”. The exception was that I never found evidence of what I believed to be intentional, purposive cruelty. I found much cruelty indeed, but it was always the result of ignorance or cowardice — the two chief causes of the ills which afflict humanity.* In April, 1889, the date of the organization of our board, twelve of the ninetv-two asylums were still run on the contract plan — which at one time was general in the Middle West — i. e. the superintendent was given the use of the farm and paid a per diem for each inmate. This was a bad method and was success¬ fully advised against ; at the end of four years it was abandoned in all but one county, and that one made the change the next year. I was careful to visit all the small counties and out of the way places. My travels would be noted in the newspapers and the officials would often sav “we saw vou were in the next countv and we were afraid you were going to skip us, because we don’t amount to much”. Such people needed me more and were more responsive, than those in the populous and wealthy counties. In all these inspections and corrections the method of inwardness, which worked so well with the state institutions, was used. Whenever possible reforms were secured from within ; altho it frequently happened that a superintendent would beg me to call on the commissioners and tell them what ought to be done. We had no authority to order changes, so that we had to depend on the powers of persuasion and publicity, and only when the former failed did we use the latter. In a few cases, things were found so bad that stern measures were necessary, even some drastic newspaper write-ups. Usually advice to the officials, perhaps carried to the county commissioners, sufficed. The fact that the institutions were visited frequently and that a public report was made about them and printed every year, had a remarkable effect in amending conditions caused by neglect. I was often able to say that, as my report was not due to be pub¬ lished for a few months to come, if they would promise to make some changes I advised, I would defer my judgment until they ♦What I learned about asylum administration in my visits was after¬ wards embodied in my book “The Almshouse” published by the Russel Sage Foundation. The Asylums for the Poor 141 had had a chance to keep their word. This was more efficacious after our first annual report, and they recognized the frank state¬ ments it contained ; all of which were re-printed by their local newspapers. When I visited Carroll County in the summer of 1889, I found an intelligent and apparently painstaking superintendent in charge of a deplorable institution, with inadequate, over-crowded buildings, a run-down exhausted farm, and a population with more than the average number of insane, defectives and children among them. The man in charge asked me to tell the commission¬ ers about it. I called on the county auditor who told me that the condition I described was well understood, but that the commis- siners were afraid of being charged with wasting county funds if they made any costly improvements. It is difficult to over¬ estimate the power of the public opinion of the tax-payers over the officials of a rural county. The commissioners were in session and I told them my story. They pleaded the taxpayers’ objection to expense for the poor. I told them that the conditions were a sad disgrace to a wealthy county and that I was sorely tempted to make them public, so that Carroll county should see itself in the eyes of the rest of the state. They grasped at the idea and said they wished I would do that very thing; that it would help them to do what they knew ought to be done. Accordingly, when I returned to Indianapolis, I wrote a graphic story of the asylum and gave it to the News. The next day, Mr. McCulloch, who was even more positive in the method of inwardness than I, came to the office, more excited than I had ever seen him. He accused me of going back on all we had agreed upon about avoiding sensationalism. Only when he was told that I had acted at the request of the commissioners and to strengthen their hands, did he moderate his condemnation, and even then he was doubtful about it. As a result of several visits to each county, many things were corrected and the general average of the institution management was greatly raised. I learned to understand the difficulties under which people labored, and so could give advice intelligently. Most of the county officials wanted to do the right thing and were 142 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision glad of advice and information ; some of them were pathetically eager for instruction. On one occasion, when I had called on a board of commis¬ sioners to urge some reforms of their poor asylum, the chairman of the board ‘said, “now, young man, just tell us what we have to do and we will do it.” T answered that it was not my business to give orders; I could only tell them how things seemed to me and offer suggestions. He answered “never mind what you call it, just tell us anyway”. One frequent subject for advice to asylum superintendents was in the matter of the personal cleanliness of the inmates. The rural people of Indiana, like those of many states, are some¬ times pretty lax in these matters, and I found many almshouses where a bathtub had never been seen, and several in which they had been installed by a reforming board of county commission¬ ers, but were never used. An interesting case of the kind was in H - county, in an asylum which had been fitted up elaborately with modern comforts, and then had been so badly managed that it was all out of repair. On my first visit I had wakened up the commissioners and the townspeople of the county seat through their local newspaper, and after an investigation by a committee of citizens to find out how much I had exaggerated the facts, the commissioners had removed the old manager, a lazy, drunken politician of the baser sort, and had installed an energetic, intel¬ ligent tnan in his place. On my second visit, I found the new superintendent, who had already made many improvements and was eager for good advice. He asked me for authoritative rules as to bathing, and was told that a full bath for everv inmate once a week was the minimum. c/ A year later, on my third visit, T was met by the superin¬ tendent with the following story ; he said, “you remember what you told me about bathing these men; well, we did it, but we killed one man. He was a great, fat tramp, looked as big as you are. (I then weighed about 240 lbs.) I told him he must take a bath and he replied that he would not do it; that he had never had a bath since he went in swimming in the creek when he was a boy. I told him that the state inspector said I must make the men bathe, and I was going to do it. So the hired men and I stripped him. He had on two pairs of pants and a pair of over- The Asylums for the Poor 143 alls, three shirts, two vests and a wamuss (a sleeved vest) and between them all he had old newspapers and chaff that filled a bushel basket. When we got him stripped he was not as big as I am. (The superintendent weighed about 125 lbs.) His clothes were all alive, and we burnt them up under the furnace. Oh, but he was dirty; but we scrubbed him well in lots of hot water and soap. Then I was afraid he might take cold, and I gave him a suit of heavy flannels that I had bought for a consumptive patient, who died before he had worn them, and the heaviest suit of clothes I had in the house. Then I gave him an old overcoat of mine. But he couldn’t seem to get warm ; he just shivered and shook ; so we put him to bed and sent for the doctor who said he had pneumonia, and he died in three days.” Thereafter, I was cautious in giving advice about bathing, usually qualifying it with the recommendation that, in extreme cases, it is always well to make improvements gradually. Another subject for good advice was about the employment of inmates. It was often the case that one or two industrious ones among them were worked almost too hard, while the major¬ ity were loafers. I made notes of the good workers I found and used them with good effect upon the superintendents who had not realized that they ought to expect work from paupers, or who had not acquired the knack of getting work out of them. It was interesting to notice that the mildly insane and the feeble-minded were usually the best workers, but some very old people were also quite useful. When an able-bodied, normal- minded person becomes a pauper, in Indiana at any rate, it is usually because he is incorrigibly lazy, and a superintendent would often tell me “it takes more work to get work out of them than the work they will do”. I used to stress the fact that the advantage of steady work to the management, and still more to the paupers themselves, is greatly more than that of its possible economic value. It pro¬ motes discipline and health and makes life better worth living. Here are a few of my favorite cases which I used with superin¬ tendents who needed encouragement in this part of their duty : An old woman of ninety, who cannot stand to wash dishes, sits and wipes them; this is her task three times daily; she does it cheerfully and feels that she is doing her share and is much 144 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision happier for it. A crippled man who is unable to walk, or even stand, whittles out butcher’s skewers, which are sold for a trifle for his benefit. A partly-crippled, feeble-minded man divides his time between the lawn and the green-house; in summer he very slowly but regularly, runs the lawn mower; in winter he sits in the green-house and watches the thermometer, giving prompt notice when it goes too high or too low. In L - county, one insane man has charge of all feeding of cattle and horses, carrying the keys of the feed-room ; he will not speak to a human being but is chatty with the live stock and is an excellent horseman. In W - county, an insane man is the best hand on the farm, has his regular team, plows, harrows and does all a hired hand would do except drive his wagon to town. In O - county, an insane man does all the housework except the cooking for a small almshouse, and washes, starches, and irons the clothes ; he is a very neat ironer, a little cross and some¬ what profane in speech but perfectly kind in action. In H - county, a feeble-minded woman does all the cooking, washing, and ironing for an almshouse of thirty inmates. In C - county, a feeble-minded woman with three illegitimate chil¬ dren does the washing, (Mondays) the baking (Wednesdays and Saturdays), and the churning (Tuesdays and Fridays); Thurs¬ day is the only day she does not seem happy, the regular religious service on Sunday seeming to have as consoling an effect as the active work of the other days.* The Feeble-Minded in the Asylums In almost every asylum I found feeble-minded people. It was what I learned about them when visiting these places that made me so insistent on the need of training and control when I after¬ wards had charge of the feeble minded at Fort Wayne. Generation after generation many of the families to which these defective people belonged had been paupers, in or out of the asylum; *What is said above about the insane in poor-houses must not be con¬ strued as an argument in favor of their continued care under ordinary almshouse conditions. It is meant to show that it is possible, under favor¬ able conditions, to give fairly good care to certain selected exceptional cases. The sad stories that can be truthfully told, of the neglected insane under unfit conditions, make every humane person agree that they should all be, if not under complete state support, very certainly under complete state control. .Support and control are not necessarily functions of the same agency. See about insane in asylums, pp. 113 and 114. The Asylums for the Poor 145 their total number and the proportion of feeble minded among them steadily increasing as time went on. The theory that the county asylum does not and can not control these defectives was abundantly demonstrated. It was my knowledge of such facts which made me unable later, to agree with Governor Durbin when he declared that the burden of the feeble minded belonged on the county government and not on that of the state. The treatment of feeble-minded women in almshouses forms one of the worst chapters in the history of institution misman¬ agement. There are many almshouses in the land where there r may be found idiotic or imbecile women with illegitimate chil¬ dren, often both begotten and born there. One Saturday after¬ noon on my return to the state house after a round of county visits, I found an indignation meeting in process in my office. The participants were the women clerks and stenographers employed in the building. The chairman was a woman of great ability and force of character who was chief clerk in the office of the supreme court. The occasion of the meeting was the reve¬ lations as to the treatment of feeble-minded girls and women in the county asylums of the state, as disclosed by a series of reports which had been accumulating during the two weeks of my absence. My clerk was so horrified by the stories of immorality and illegitimacy which the reports disclosed that she had talked about them to her fellow clerks in the state house, and they had come together to consider what should be done. The chairman of the meeting was a member of the executive committee of the state Federation of Women’s Clubs. She brought the subject up in the Federation, and the interest aroused among the best women of the state had an important influence on the legislature a year or two later, when the act to take feeble-minded females of child-bearing age into the institution at Fort Wayne was pre¬ sented to it. In order that the almshouse, or other institution, shall be a benefit and not a detriment to the body politic, we must make sure that it shall not, either positively or negatively, encourage and foster degeneracy; as will be the case if it does nothing for the degenerate human beings but to keep them alive and allow them to increase and multiply. Care for them kindly, the alms- 146 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision house must, when they come to it. But care of defectives has a necessary corollary, and that is control. At present, a great many of our almshouses; perhaps the majority of them; are doing the first, they are making their inmates fairly comfortable. But very few of them are doing all they should in the way of control; partly because they do not realize the need, partly because they do not know how to exert the power, but chiefly because our laws do not plainly prescribe the duty nor authorize the method of performing it. It is a reasonable assertion to make that a large proportion of these degenerate people are actually by-products of philan¬ thropy and especially of the almshouses. They have been kept alive and their perpetuation has been made possible, if it has not actually been encouraged, by public relief. It is true that many of them would have survived and would have perpetuated their unhappy kind without public relief ; private charity is equally to blame, perhaps more in some cases. Nevertheless the indictment stands. We have these people as a public burden because, when we feed, shelter, and clothe them, as we must ; we do not control them, as we ought. In discussing* the evils of hereditary feeble mindedness and public responsibility for averting them, Ernest Bicknell says, “whatever the differences of opinion among investigators as to first causes or chief causes, or whatever plans may be proposed for reaching and remedying or alleviating the evil, I believe it a safe conclusion, and worthy of acceptance, that; while society is but remotely responsible for the first generation of feeble-minded¬ ness in any family ; its responsibility for every subsequent gener¬ ation of feeble-mindedness in the same direct line of descent, is clear-cut, and beyond question.”* Economy and Expense A few of the populous counties maintained large asylums, but many of the ninety-two were merely overgrown farmhouses in which the classification of the inmates was difficult. The need of extended accomodations was sometimes met by new buildings at great expense. One instance of extension showed a much better plan. In Hamilton county was a good sized brick building, not ♦Bicknell in “Feeble-Mindedness as an Inheritance” Supra. The Asylums for the Poor 147 in very good order and not very comfortable. At the rear of the main building, across a grass plot, was a row of small frame cottages of one room each. In front of them was a long porch, its pillars covered with climbing roses and morning glories. Each little shanty, for they were nothing more, was occupied by two old men or two old women or an old married couple. Abundant natural gas found on the farm made the matter of heating and lighting simple. Each cottage had a small cook stove which served also to heat the apartment : the walls were whitewashed ; the furniture in most of them had been brought from a former home and so each room looked different from every other. At the end of the row lived an old physician, once quite well off with a practice at the county seat, and his wife, reduced to poverty by accident and other misfortunes at the ages of eighty and seventy- five. They had their own feather bed, bureau, and chairs, a small library of books, and a few pictures ; they made their own break¬ fast and supper, sometimes going over to the “brick house” for dinner. Thev were devoutlv thankful, since thev had to end their *//<*/ days in the poorhouse, that their lot had fallen so as to include even a one-room cottage which they might have to themselves. The superintendent of the asylum told me that when there was a vacant place in one of the shanties the other inmates com¬ peted for the privilege of occupying it. To move into it, how¬ ever, was a reward of merit, and the best behaved, most cleanly inmates were chosen to receive the favor. At that asylum I learned the lesson that uniformity of eco¬ nomic condition, the fact that all are alike poor and dependent, does not make them alike socially, nor justify absolute uniform¬ ity of treatment; that the administration which does not dis¬ tinguish between the victims of misfortune and the victims of vice cannot be just to either class. It would be as reasonable to say that every sick patient in a hospital should be fed or nursed exactly like every other, as to insist that all almshouse inmates should be treated alike. To doom decent, honest, cleanly men and women to close association with diseased, vicious and filthy persons, is as unjust as it is cruel. The classification between male and female, or between adult and juvenile; is not more necessary than that between the worthy poor, and the depraved and degraded pauper. 148 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision The law required all plans for new buildings to be submitted to the Board of State Charities before contracts were let; but only for suggestion, we had no authority to do more than advise. In advising county commissioners about extending their accom¬ modations, I often used the example of the Hamilton county shanties, as humane and economical.* In all we did among the institutions and charitable agencies of both state and counties, the matter of wise economy was one of the things we had to stress. But financial niggardliness, the spending of the least possible amount of money, is sometimes far from true economy. It by no means follows that the almshouse with the lowest per capita cost, is the most economical for the community. In many instances the alternative of almhouse care is outdoor re¬ lief. * Now, of all forms of public charity, outdoor relief, except under the most careful supervision, is the most liable to abuse, the most certain to grow to an inordinate amount. An overseer of the poor declared to me that “outdoor relief is as catching as the smallpox, and almost as deadly.” People not really in need of its shelter will rarely seek ad¬ mission to the almhouse. But many will accept outdoor relief who are not really in need of charitable aid and probably would get on pretty well without it if they were offered the alternative of admission to the almshouse or nothing.f When, therefore, the institution is known to be so bare of comfort, so severe in its discipline, or so badly managed, that public opinion will not sanction a decent old person’s being forced into it, then outdoor relief inevitably increases in amount and with its increase comes a rapid growth in the amount of general pauperism. A well-managed, comfortable almshouse is a preventive of unnecessary pauperism. Those who really need public care can have it there, and those who do not need it will not seek it there. - J ft , * “ i ♦See in the “Almshouse” page 184, a description of the little cottages of the Fir Vale Union, Sheffield, England, as reported by Mrs. Alice Lin¬ coln, to the National Conference, in the volume for 1905. tAn elderly woman who had been getting outdoor relief for many years was told that she could henceforth have relief only in the county asylum. She replied, “is it send me to the poorhouse ye would ; faith I’ll take in washing first”. The Asylums for the Poor 149 An ill-kept, disorderly almshouse, without proper classification of inmates, without thorough discipline and order, without ef¬ ficient control over those whom it feeds and clothes, and with¬ out any permanence in its relations to the degenerates among those for whom it cares; may be not only a cause of dire waste of public funds but will inevitably promote and increase pauper¬ ism and degeneracy and all the human ills that come from them. Chapter Nine DEPENDENT CHILDREN No state hoard has had better success in improving the methods of caring for dependent children than has that of In¬ diana. Most that has been done, however, was by my successors, especially by Amos Butler, whose work as a constructive reformer in this department has been unequalled by that of any other man of whom I know. So I have much less to say of work for depend¬ ent children than will fall to him to tell when he shall retire from active duty and write his autobiography. The County Orphans Home The county orphans home system had been copied from that of Ohio many years before but in some of the counties it had gradually deteriorated. The homes were usually owned by the counties but operated by a matron, sometimes working under a board of lady managers, sometimes dealing directly with the commissioners. The county paid for each child at the standard rate of twenty-five cents a day if the deal was with the matron; and usually thirty cents if with a Board. In many cases, the commissioners supplemented this inadequate rate by furnishing a cow, and sometimes the lady-board added to the comforts of the home by private donations. It was possible in those early days of the eighteen-eighties and nineties to keep the children alive, even if there were but few of them, at that rate. As the numbers increased the bargain improved. With thirty children the matron began to get a little out of it for herself ; when the number reached sixty it was quite profitable. The homes were presumably run on the placing-out-plan, good foster homes were to be found for all placeable children. But the temptation to accumulate them in large numbers so as to make (150) Dependent Children 151 the business profitable was irresistible; even to the managers who got no personal profit; still more to the matrons who dealt directly with the counties; and almost everywhere placing was peglected and the numbers grew larger and larger. For the same reason admission was easy; almost every child presented was accepted. In many counties there was no official control of receptions. Often there were cases when both parents were living and able to care for their children, and many cases when there were other relatives who might have cared for them if the home were not complaisant. All kinds of reasons were offered by the matrons when they were asked why the children were not placed. They had not been able to find homes that were fit; they were afraid the children would be unkindly treated ; they had parents who would soon reclaim them and similar- excuses. Meanwhile children were being brought into the state from New York, Massa¬ chusetts, and Ohio, in large numbers, and placed in foster homes with little difficulty. In spite of these drawbacks, many of the forty-two homes which I visited in 1889 to 1893, were well kept, and the children as well cared for as is possible in institution life, which at its best is an unnatural existence for a child. But there were some instances of great abuse. In one county, a matron dealing directly with the commissioners, had accumulated sixty-five chil¬ dren. They were poorly fed and clothed and the matron was making a big profit. The cost of the home was more to the county than that of the asylum, the outdoor relief, and the med¬ ical relief all combined. The agent of a Children’s Home Society approached the commissioners, and offered to place all the chil¬ dren, guaranteeing good homes and adequate after care. The commissioners made a bargain with him, agreeing to pay the society a uniform sum of $50.00 for the expense of placing and supervising each child.* The agent agreed to be ready to take them in three weeks and the story of the bargain appeared in the county paper. At the time appointed, when the agent had presumably sixty-five homes waiting and came for the children, there were only three left. Sixty-two had been reclaimed by parents or other relatives who, ♦Perhaps it is hardly necessary to say that this bargain was not approved by the Board of State Charities. 152 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision while quite willing to let the public feed and clothe the children in the county, would not let them go they knew not where. The effects of the investigations and inspections were cumula¬ tive and finally resulted in a radical change of system, which however occurred after my time as secretary and does not belong in this story, since it was not so positively the conclusion of anything I began as was the reform of outdoor relief which is told in another chapter. Some incidents connected with the inspection of orphans homes were pathetic, some rather humorous. Of the latter kind was a visit to a county a few miles south of the Capital. The home was four miles from the county seat and I drove out, arriv¬ ing about four o’clock in the afternoon. Finding the matron absent and it being my first visit, I waited her return, before beginning my inspection. She came about five, and told me that as she had been obliged to go to town the children’s supper would be a little delayed, in the meantime would I visit the dormitories etc. This took a little more than an hour, the matron rather prolonging the inspection. The house was clean, the dormitories a little over-crowded, but she explained that she had six children to send out to excellent homes next week. Then about 6:30, I was shown into the dining-room where there were thirty-two children, all very clean, the aprons suspiciously so, a clean table cloth on the table and a very nice supper; boiled rice, apple sauce, bread and butter, syrup, and plenty of milk; for the big¬ gest boys who worked on the little farm, some cold meat and hashed potatoes. On the whole the inspection was favorable and the matron got a good report. At the next yearly visit a new matron was found who remarked: “Mr. Johnson the children all remember your visit last year.” When I asked why, she pointed to a girl of fourteen, saying, “there’s one of them, ask her”. When asked if she remem¬ bered, and why, she said, “oh yes, because of the good supper we had ;” and I discovered to my mortification that I had been beauti¬ fully fooled with a fake supper, the real one, a much more frugal meal, had been on the table when the matron arrived at five. While I was inspecting upstairs, the children were all washed, combed and put in clean blouses and aprons, and an extra good supper arranged for my benefit. It was a useful lesson in methods Dependent Children 153 of inspection and I did not get fooled again in quite the same manner ; altho the inspector who is never deceived, is rare indeed. Migrant Children While the county orphans’ homes were professing difficulty in placing out their children, other agencies were having more success. On a visit to the home in Montgomery county I found three children who had been brought to Indiana by an Eastern society ; placed in a poverty-stricken home, and had gravitated by way of the poorhouse to the orphans home. No one could tell the name of the society; but the children were sure they came from Boston. I wrote my friend, Charles S. Birtwell, then secretary of the Mass. Children’s Home Society, who was a martinet in standards of child-helping ; asking which, if any, of the numerous child-helping agencies of Boston, could be guilty of such reckless work. To place children so carelessly and with such poor after¬ supervision that they became paupers, is a grave indictment. Birtwell replied that he only knew of one whose standards were so low, and that was the Blank Home for Blanks.* A few weeks later, being in Jay County on a Saturday morn¬ ing, interviewing the auditor, that officer told me that an agent from an Eastern society with a group of children, was at the railway depot waiting for a train. I hurried to the station and found the Rev. Mr. Blank with thirty children, waiting to go to Huntington. I found that he was from the Blank Home for Blanks. The children were nicely dressed, velvet blouses, lace collars, pretty hats and made an excellent appearance. On being asked how many foster homes he had ready for these children, he replied, “not one, but I will have every one placed in an excellent Christian home by Monday night”. Then he explained his method ; he was to preach in the Methodist church on Sunday morning, have the children on exhibition and take them to Sunday-school; then repeat the performance with them at the Presbyterian church Sunday night. Then from the hotel on Monday morning, he would place the children with the good ♦The society has raised its standards and is now doing excellent work so that I do not think it fair to give its real name. 154 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision people who would come for them. On being accused of reckless work he retorted that I evidently had no faith in that Divine Providence which watches over the orphan. He said he formed a committee of good Christian people in each county, who agreed to supervise the children he placed in their community ; but that his placing was done so well that he never had any unfavorable reports from his supervisory committees. He refused to discuss the cases of the children I had found in Montgomery county. A few weeks later I visited Huntington county and found the matron of the orphan’s home; which was one of the very best in the state; highly incensed against the Blank Home for Blanks. She said, “Mr. Johnson, are not my children just as nice as those from Boston? Why then cannot I find homes for them, as well as that preacher does?” I said, “Mrs. Tremaine, you don’t adver¬ tise as he does. You don’t preach nor show your goods so well. Besides that many of your children have undesirable relatives who are known in the county while these Boston youngsters have left their drunken fathers and uncles 1,000 miles behind them. But more than all, you are particular about the people with whom you place your orphans.” Later I told Kev. Blank that the Board of State Charities was contemplating the law, afterwards made, for the registration of children brought into the state, and he agreed to comply at once with that requirement. But a few weeks later he wrote from Boston that his board of directors would not agree to the registration plan ; and as soon as the state law was enacted that society ceased operations in Indiana. Between 1865 and 1891, the Children’s Aid Society of New York, alone, had placed more than 2,000 children in Indiana; others were coming from Massachusetts, and from Western New York, and many from Ohio. I made an estimate in 1891, from the best data obtainable, that the total number brought from states east of Indiana; from the time the New York society set the example; was probably more than 6,000. About the time I made the calculation, a member of the House who was eager for a reputation as a reformer, asked me for the exact number of children who had been imported. I told him precise figures were impossible but that the number was certainly from six to seven thousand. In a speech the next day, he told his fellow legislators Dependent Children 155 that he had trustworthy information, that in thirty years, sixty- seven thousand dependent children had been brought into Indi¬ ana from the East ! ! The importation of dependent children was checked and almost stopped by the law with which I had threatened Rev. Blank. It did not forbid the benevolent work of bringing the waifs of crowded cities to the country, where they could have a fair chance for life. It merely regulated and safeguarded the activity by requiring all agencies, bringing children into the state for placement, to give bond against their becoming paupers, and to register each child and its foster home with the Board of State Charities. This was suggested to and carried thru the legislature of 1895, by my successor, Ernest P. Bicknell; who in every line of our work builded well on every good foundation I had laid and on many other good ones of his own laying. r * Chapter Ten AN ADVENTURE IN POOR RELIEF When the board began to study the general charity situation of the state one important feature to attract attention was that of outdoor relief. I attempted to get statisics from the town¬ ship trustees* who are charged with the duty of giving it. I sent blanks to the eleven hundred and seven trustees asking for a report upon their distribution of relief for the past year, and got fewer than one hundred and fifty replies, only a few of which showed any intelligent understanding of what was required. I proceeded to collect the figures, as well as I could, from the county auditors, and in most cases it was only by personal requests at their offices that correct and complete figures could be had, and often not even then. The information collected the first year was meager, it gave little but the gross sums charged against the county funds by the trustees. It was sometimes possible to ascertain the separate cost of medical relief, since, in some counties, the commissioners made a contract with a physician for each township for attend¬ ance and medicine for the poor, for a fixed sum per annum. Meager as were the first figures, some very interesting facts were disclosed. The first was that the total for the state was much larger than that for Ohio, which had over a million more people; the amount, per capita of the total population, being more than double that of our neighbor state. The second was that the amount in different counties bore no apparent relation to other conditions. It was expected that the counties which included large towns would show the highest per capita cost; thriving agricultural districts, the lowest. But none of these things appeared. The county whose poor relief was most costly, ♦Each township has one trustee who is ex-officio the overseer of the poor in and for his township. (156) A n Adventure in Poor Relief 157 gave nineteen times as much, per capita of the total population, as that in which the least was given; yet each was a rural com¬ munity. It seemed certain that not the presence nor the absence of large towns; nor the irregularity of employment in certain industries; nor the varying habits of the people — not these, nor any of them, was the cause of the varying effects seen, but chiefly, if not entirely, the difference of administration. The counties which chose to make paupers had many and those which declined that industry, had few. In our second annual report I had an elaborate statement on poor relief. The expenditures of the counties were worked out into comparisons of total expense; of cost of the county poor asylum ; the county orphans home ; the outdoor relief. When one county was shown to be giving to its poor no less than $1.07 per capita of its total population, the county paper pointed with pride to the liberality of the county officials. Of course, it was a pro-administration paper that did so. Public attention was drawn slowly to the subject. At the first meeting of the State Conference of Charities, outdoor relief elicited a long discussion. The story of the remarkable reduction in Indianapolis was recounted as one of the world’s classics on the subject. This had occurred in 1876-80, when an enterprising and intelligent trustee, using good business methods, reduced the annual distribution of outdoor relief in Center township, Marion county, which had then a population of about 80,000; from $85,000.00 to less than $12,000.00, without causing any addi¬ tional suffering and without increasing the population of the county poor asylum. A committee was appointed consisting of three trustees, one county commissioner and myself, to present a careful report to the next Conference. The meeting at which this committee reported was a convention of township trustees and county commissioners, called by the Board of State Charities, in 1891. The report recounted some of the evils arising from misused relief and urged concerted action by the trustees. It recom¬ mended that the principles of scientific charity — full investiga¬ tion, accurate registration, co-operation of relief agencies, etc., — should be adopted by the public officials. The report alleged that if this were done a saving to the taxpayers of a sum of any- 158 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision where from $150,000.00 to $250,000.00 per annum might be rea¬ sonably expected. Subsequent experience showed that this estimate was conservative. So far the results of the agitation for reform were not encouraging. Although the years 1891 and 1892 were generally prosperous, still the total of outdoor relief increased. Then came the panic year of 1893, and the increase was rapid. From this point, for several of the next moves, the story belongs to my successors* who carried out most faithfully every line of policy I had begun; however, I come into the narrative again a little later. The statistics collected up to 1894, were too general to afford a basis for action or for very positive assertion. But in 1895, the legislature, on the request of the Board of State Charities, made a law requiring the trustees to report their relief to the county auditor in detail, quarterly, in duplicate, one copy to go to the state board. Most of them obeyed promptly, and a mass of detailed information about poor relief began to accumulate. Then it became possible to make intelligent criticism ; not merely the totals, but the individual cases being on record. The results published in the reports of the board make wonderfully interest¬ ing reading. Still many trustees and some auditors refused or neglected to make reports, until, in 1897, two far reaching and salutary laws were enacted. One of these required each township to pay for its own poor, by a special township levy each year, sufficient to reimburse the county for the amount it had advanced. The second provided a method to compel officials to do their duty by a simple and easy process of impeachment before the circuit court of their county. Ernest Bicknell deserves the credit of both of these laws. Since the impeachment law went into effect, all that was needed to get the reports was to allude to the law. With the full particulars from every township furnished; in 1897 and 1898, the facts began to show with sunlight clearness. It appeared that townships with conditions much alike varied enormously in the number of paupers. In some one person in every eight received relief; in others only one person in two ♦The successors were Ernest P. Bicknell who served until 1897, and Amos W. Butler, who followed him and retired Dec. 31st, 1922. An Adventure in Poor Relief 159 hundred and fifty was on the poor books. The levies for poor relief varied from as low as three mils to as high as thirty cents on the flOO.OO valuation. The conviction became incontestable that the cause of these differences anvwhere, and of the excessive total almost everywhere, was to be found in the varying efficiency of administration and nowhere else. This was so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. So far in Indiana for very many years, the township trustee had been almost a law unto himself. There has rarely been seen, in a free government, so striking an example of one-man power as was his before the reform acts of 1899. It was the trustee’s duty to levy taxes and to spend them, with little check upon him but that of public opinion. He had charge of the schools, the roads, the poor, and a multitude of other things. He made con¬ tracts, borrowed money, issued bonds, and did almost all business that any government does, with little control. For four years, he was dictator. He appointed teachers and, with his fellow trustees, elected the county superintendent of schools. He nomi¬ nated drainage commissioners and appointed highway super¬ visors. In theory he reported to the county commissioners, but their authority and control were much hampered by both law and custom. It says much for the rugged good sense and honesty of the average Hoosier that with such a method the townships were, as a whole, decently managed; that serious scandals were few; that taxes were not crushing; that many trustees retired without having made a fortune in their four years term. There had long been a conviction among the leaders of the state that amendment was needed to the laws about both the county and township governments. After the election of 1898 when, for the first time for some years, the state government was to be wholly of one party, it seemed that the favorable moment for reform had come. The State Board of Commerce, a body made up of representatives from the various commercial and business men’s clubs, had been considering reform for some years. The president of the board, a far-seeing and public-spirited man, interested the chairman of the state committee of the party in power, who called a meeting of members of the house and senate representing each congressional district. To this meeting the 160 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision State Board of Commerce, the State Bar Association and the State Federation of Labor, each sent seven delegates. I was a member of the State Board of Commerce, as repre¬ sentative of the Commercial Club of Fort Wayne, and one of the seven who represented it on the committee. The large committee met, talked, chose a good chairman and a small executive com¬ mittee, and adjourned. The small committee sub-divided itself, drafted bills, got them introduced, and finally lobbied them thru the legislature. The chief reforms proposed and adopted were of a thorough¬ going character, the committee felt that it had its hands full without attacking minor matters. So far nothing had been said or done about poor relief. Then the chairman sent for me (I was then superintendent of the School for Feeble-Minded) ; and asked me to head a special sub committee to draft separate bills, if any were needed, for reform of the administration of public charity. I accepted the call with much reluctance. I felt that with my own institution to protect I had no time nor strength to spare for other legislation. But either I knew something about such things or else I had been for eight years past pre¬ tending to knowledge I did not possess, so T felt constrained to do as I was requested. My sub-committee included the secretary of the leading C. O. S. in the state, an experienced and able town¬ ship trustee, and Amos Butler, secretary of the Board of State Charities. I drafted three bills which the sub-committee highly approved. One was for a comprehensive act to regulate the management of county asylums for the poor, an act which has worked well, and has met with remarkably little criticism. The second created Boards of County Charities, to co-operate with the state board; the third regulated outdoor relief. When the bills were presented to the executive committee, they were approved; but that com¬ mittee felt it had all the load it could carry with the township and county government bills, and the chairman reluctantly told me the committee’s decision. I told him I was satisfied; I had been called in as an expert and had done my work as such, because the product was to be laid on the shelf did not cause any ill feeling. An Adventure in Poor Relief 161 The next day Butler wrote asking if I would object to him trying what he could do with my bills. T replied they were no longer mine, that while I could not deny their paternity they were now abandoned children of my brain and if he chose to adopt them I would give him a “quit claim”. So he got them introduced, one in the senate, and two in the house, not using my name as author publicly, though it helped a little in private in one or two cases. The three bills went through the legislative mill as though the hopper had been greased and while those in charge of the township and county bills were sweating blood in committee rooms and seeing their bills so mangled by amend¬ ments that their own authors hardly recognized them, my bills, now Butler’s, were being signed by the Governor after hardly the slightest amendment. The new laws went into effect in the summer of 1899, and not until the close of the county fiscal year, on May 31, 1900, was it possible to be certain of their results. The act regulating out¬ door relief prescribed the methods with which every student of economic science is familiar, under the name of “charity organi¬ zation:” — that all the facts concerning poor people should be known to those who would really help them : that full and accu¬ rate records of such facts, of the help given and its results, must be kept : that different relief agencies working in the same terri¬ tory will do more harm than good unless they act in harmonious co-operation: that natural ties of kindred are of immense value and should be conserved: that every man’s duty is to help him¬ self if he can, and the best thing his fellow can do, if he needs help, is to help him to help himself : that the acts of every public official shall be reported to somebody so that there shall be a system of check: that people needing help should get it where they belong: that assisting professional beggars to travel over the land at public expense is bad business: these truisms so familiar to every worker in an A. C. or C. O. S. ; so often ignored by both public and private almsgivers, were organized into the law which governs outdoor relief in the State of Indiana. Since that time, the bill has been copied, almost verbally, in one state, and many of its features adopted in others. It is not an unjust claim that Indiana has the nearest to a scientific law on the subject of any state in the Union. One evidence of this is in the 162 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision fact that the so-called “mothers pension law” ; which provides for nothing but outdoor relief, thinly veiled ; has never seemed necessary in the state.* The law about outdoor relief seemed to many people, espe¬ cially public officials, too drastic. When the State Conference of Charities of 1899 met, a few months after the law had gone into effect but before its results could be measured, the most doleful forebodings were heard. To double or treble the popula¬ tion of all the poor asylums of the state was among the mildest evils to be expected. The author of the law and the statesman who enacted it were called visionaries, fanatics, hard-hearted, cruel. I was present, and argued for the law. I pointed out that it did not abolish outdoor relief, but provided that every proper case should receive it; but I told them that while all of social science was not yet known some of its laws were certain and one of these was that reduction of outdoor relief has never yet caused an increase of indoor relief. As to the charge of cruelty I said I believed that when they knew the name of the author whom they denounced they would change their opinion, and then declared, "I am the author of the law”. Then some of them said of course their good Alexander Johnson, whom everybody knew and loved, was not cruel, but he surely was mistaken. I told them to wait and see. In December 1900, the State Conference met again. Among the papers presented was one by Amos Butler, secretary of the State Board, upon the effects of the new law regulating outdoor relief. The story was simple, brief and convincing. A compari¬ son was shown of the total expenditures in the state for outdoor relief and medical charity, of the years 1895 and 1900. The com¬ parison was as follows : $630,000.00 210,000.00 For 1895 For 1900 $420,000.00 per annum. Saving During the same period the number of inmates in county poor asylums had diminished from 14.8 to 12.3 in each 10,000 of the total population. ♦Since this was written events have made a modification of my state¬ ment necessary. An Adventure in Poor Relief 163 The job was done and it justified the long, slow, steady, patient work. It was the work of the State Board, begun by one secretary ; carried on by another ; completed by a third, with the help of the first; never hasting; never resting; steadily pressing on; always ready for each opportunity to gain a step even a small one. Is it any wonder that at the State Conference last mentioned, when Butler, the third secretary in the sequence, read the report, Bicknell, the second one, who had come to the state for the Conference, should turn to me, the first one, who sat just behind him, and say, “old man, life has its compensations”. It only remains to add that the reform has been permanent and has been recognized. At the National Conference of Chari¬ ties in Philadelphia, in 1906, Governor Hanley of Indiana, speak¬ ing in praise of the Board of State Charities, related the incident of the reform of outdoor relief; confirmed the statement that it was a saving of waste and had not caused additional suffering, and declared that the economy in ten years would exceed three million dollars. Chapter Eleven THE STATE CONFERENCE AND MY SUCCESSOR An important function of a Board of State Charities is to inform the legislators, and to lead the public opinion of the state, on all matters which come within its purview. The board makes no laws ; its function is observation; advice; leadership. The strongest force in a democratic state is that of public opinion. This influences the legislature ; and indeed, without it, most legis¬ lation is futile. It is easy to make laws, but without the approval and good will of the people, it is difficult, if not impossible, to enforce them. A previous chapter shows how the public was being informed from day to day thru the newspapers, and much of the success of the board was due to its appeal to the citizens in that manner. But it seemed necessary to go further; it was desirable to get the people who were interested together, so that they might recognize the existence of that public opinion which they shared. An available method seemed that of public conferences, and with my knowledge of what the National Conference of Charities and Correction had done for the Nation, I saw a field for similar work in the state. Early in 1890, the board acceded to my proposal to call a State Conference, which was the first of its kind to hold regular meetings ; altho there had been one or two scattering meetings of the sort held in Wisconsin, previously. The purpose of a State Conference is much the same for the state as that of the National Conference for the Nation, but it has one added function. It acts: First; as a sort of annual stock-taking of the social welfare of the community; each social agency, public or private, makes its report on the work it is doing and the results obtained; Second; as a place to make known and to popularize all measures of social progress; the (164) The State Conference and my Successor 165 best and most thoughtful people, both from the state and abroad, are invited to tell the best they know, either new or old. The Third; and perhaps most important function, is to promote acquaintance and friendship between all social workers, official and voluntary, so as to make their mutual relations more pleas¬ ant; to avoid friction and misunderstanding between them. These three purposes, especially the last, have been well fulfilled by the State Conference of Indiana. There are few states where the relations between official and volunteer workers are so cor¬ dial; however, a part of that cordiality is due to the native, wholesome friendliness of the Hoosier character. When I planned the Conferences, I was warned, by some of the elder statesmen of the National Conference; that while such meetings might be of benefit to the state, they would compete with and militate against the National Conference and so do more harm than good. I replied that the results would be the opposite, that people would catch the conference idea and the national membership would increase most in those states in which state conferences were held. The results showed that my judgment was sound. The first Conference was held in the Senate chamber and about seventy people attended. John R. Elder presided, and I was secretary, program-maker, and chairman of all the commit¬ tees, all in one. At this first meeting, the agitation began, which led to the great reform in outdoor relief nine years later. In 1891, as the National Conference was in Indianapolis that year, the state conference was omitted but there was instead a meeting of county commissioners and township trustees, for the special purpose of reform of public relief. In 1892, the regular conference was held again, and it has been an annual event for thirty years, the attendance gradually increasing, from the seventy of 1890, to its present number of about six to seven hundred. Its membership is about equally divided between public officials and representatives of voluntary agencies. From the very first, I realized that the work of our Board was not confined to public institutions, authorized by law and supported by taxation; but that voluntary organizations have just as much need of guidance and often of inspection. The 166 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision organic law said, in effect, that we were to study the whole field of social work. When I was engaged in a hard struggle against adverse circumstances, as secretary of the A. C. of Cincinnati; although there was an active Board of State Charities of Ohio, I hardly realized its existence; it gave not the faintest sign of interest in the city society. It was almost equally true of the State Board of Illinois, with regard to the C. O. S. of Chicago ; although because of my activity in the National Conference I had come to know Dr. Wines, the secretary of the Illinois Board. He had indeed written me a warning letter at the time of my move to Chicago, telling me that the C. O. S. was doomed to failure; that it could not survive the opposition of the Relief and Aid Society. When his dire forebodings were seen to be unfounded and the C. O. S. made a success, he quietly left it alone; perhaps because the superintendent of the antagonistic society was a member of his board. Now in charge of a Board of State Charities ; and remember¬ ing how I would have welcomed the help which the Boards of Ohio and Illinois might have given me in my difficulties in those states ; I determined that no struggling voluntary agency should ever hold out its hands to me in vain if I could in any way help it. I did not wait for invitations but made the first advances. Opportunities came through the State Conference of Charities to which special invitations were always sent to the different voluntary societies. They were made to feel that they were rec¬ ognized as useful parts of the state’s social welfare work. In Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Fort Wayne, Evansville, and other cities, the relief societies and Associated Charities wel¬ comed the friendship and sought the advice of the board and its secretary and were always well represented at the state con¬ ference. The plan was early adopted of having the successive meetings in different cities, believing that so, although perhaps the attend¬ ance at each single conference would be smaller, in the course of years many more people would be reached than if all were at the Capital. I was president when it met in Fort Wayne in 1903, just after I had left the State School for Feeble Minded. The plan adopted for these conferences, which has been copied in Ohio and some other states, is worth noting. The conference The State Conference and my Successor 167 begins on a Saturday evening; with a program made especially attractive to the people of the city where it is held. Then on Sunday morning and evening, as many as possible of the pulpits of the city are occupied by conference delegates. Sunday after¬ noon a mass meeting is held, at which some leading man, often the Governor, speaks on a vital topic. Then Monday morning the regular sessions begin lasting through Tuesday. The conference has been of great use in the state in making the work of the board popular and promoting the reforms for which it stands. It has been copied in many states and I have often been invited to attend and speak at meetings in Maine, California, Florida, South Dakota, and others between. For many years, I was a regular attendant at the Virginia Confer¬ ence, which began in 1909. Dr. Mastin, Secretary of the Vir¬ ginia State Board, always invited me, especially for the Sunday meetings, usually assigning me to speak at a church of the col¬ ored people. On one such occasion in Lynchburg, I expressed some wonder at the assignment when a Negro preacher said “Brother Johnson, we all know why Brother Mastin sends you to preach to us colored folks, it’s because you talk just like a colored man”/ When the Committee on Provision for the Feeble-Minded began its work, the state conferences were always used by that society as a place for propaganda, and in several states the agi¬ tation which resulted in a state school began at a conference meeting. While I was secretary of the National Conference, the execu¬ tive committee approved of my keeping in close touch with the state conferences, which by that time had been recognized as valu¬ able adjuncts to, and feeders of, the national body. It is interesting, as I write of things I set going so many years ago, to be invited to attend and speak at the thirty-first session of the Indiana Conference of Charities; and to be asked to dine with many of its ex-presidents and four of the five, living, *1 am told by a Southern friend who has been aiding me by criticising this writing, that the above is a usual compliment to be paid by a Colored brother to a White speaker. But all Southerners, white and colored alike, are much more ready to pay compliments to their preachers, than are the folks north of Mason and Dixon’s line. (Always excepting my beloved Hoosiers.) 168 Adventures in Inspection and Supervision Indiana ex-presidents of the National Conference — Nicholson, Gavisk, Butler and Bicknell ; and also two other national ex-presidents, from other states, who came to the Indiana Con¬ ference as a good place to hear and to tell of progress in social work. The Endino After four years and three months work, my adventures in inspection came to an end. There was trouble in the School for Feeble-Minded and a new superintendent was needed. Gov. Mathews asked for an investigation by our board, but he said he wished to make a personal inquiry, with my help, before the public one should take place. While we were there together, he and Mr. Hackett, president of the board of trustees, urged me to become superintendent of the school. When, after much hesita¬ tion, I accepted, the Governor said “Now not a word to the public until we have found your successor as secretary and I want you to name him”. I told the Governor I had my successor chosen and named Ernest Bicknell. Two years before, when I was con¬ templating a move to Oregon where I was offered a rather attractive position ; I had decided that Bicknell would make a good secretary for the State Board if I resigned; altho I did not know at the time, nor for years after he was appointed, that he had been a candidate against me for the position in 1889. Gov. Mathews said “Bicknell is a good man. I know him well. But Johnson, what’s his politics?” I told him I did not think he had any to hurt, but I was afraid what he had were Repub¬ lican. Then said Mathews, and it was a good deal for a Demo¬ cratic Governor to say in 1893, “well, if you say he is the man we will appoint him, but I wish you could have picked us out a good strong Democrat”. Then came the job of getting Bicknell, who was established in a profitable newspaper business, to accept. His first answer was emphatically “No,” but after long argument, he yielded. The board met, accepted my resignation, with appropriate compli¬ mentary resolutions of regret, and elected Bicknell; and the same editions of the newspapers published the two events together. Certain politicians gnashed their teeth; but the gen¬ eral public, led by the best of the newspaper men with whom The State Conference and my Successor 169 Bicknell was very popular, warmly approved both appointments. Bicknell made an excellent secretary and the board went on with undiminished success, deserving and continuing to receive the confidence of the state. Every plan and method I had begun, my successor continued and improved upon. There is not and has never been a more useful board of the kind in the United States. It began right and has continued right and after thirty- four years it has still only its fourth secretary. Each of its first three secretaries and three of its members have been honored by election as president of the National Conference, and Amos W. Butler, has also been president of the National Prison Associa¬ tion. The enviable reputation of Indiana in social work is largely due to the way the Board of State Charities has made known and has carried into effect, the wishes and desires of the best people of the state. ' * ■ t PART THREE ADVENTURES AMONG THE FEEBLE MINDED (171) » ADVENTURES AMONG THE FEEBLE MINDED Chapter One BEGINNING THE ADVENTURES Ten wonderful years of my life were those I spent among the Feeble Minded; years filled with hard work and anxiety, but also with the satisfaction that comes of a clear and definite purpose carried out with a fair measure of success. I had an opportunity to do a piece of positive social work as it had not been done before in the state and hardly anywhere; work of high economic value to the public and which might bring much added happiness to those who were the subjects of it. The way in which my appointment as superintendent of the Indiana School for Feeble Minded came about is interesting and it is important because much of the early strength of my admin¬ istration came out of it. I had been for more than four years, the secretarv of the Board of State Charities and had been sue- «/ cessful in gaining in good measure the confidence of the state for the Board and also for myself. In the Spring of 1893, a seri¬ ous scandal occurred in the school at Ft. Wayne and Governor Mathews called on our Board for an investigation; he thought the superintendent, who was charged with criminal practices, should be exposed and prosecuted. The alleged crimes were of a revolting nature; the guilty man had confessed and left the insti¬ tution; he apparently had lost his reason; at any rate at the time of the disclosure he was a patient at n private sanatorium for the insane in a neighboring state. I argued with the Governor that it would be bad policy to make the matter any more public than could be helped; that . many thousand young people in the state, and older ones also, had never heard of the kind of offenses alleged ; that the results of wide publication of the details, which a prosecution would (173 174 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded involve, would be demoralizing in the extreme. Reluctantly the Governor agreed to reduce his demands on our Board; allowing the guilty man’s confession and surrender to be accepted as proof and his incarceration in the hospital for the insane to be reason for not prosecuting; only making sure that no other official of the school was involved. Then Mr. Mathews told me that before our Board made the investigation, he wanted to visit the institution in my company, to see for himself how things were. So he and T went to Fort Wayne and spent a day at the school and I convinced him that with the exception of what had been charged against the superin¬ tendent the institution was in fair order. During the course of our journey Mr. Mathews asked me to suggest some one for the vacancy and a name was mentioned, but the Governor said he knew the man and that he would not do. After our visit of inspection on our way to the train with Mr. Hackett, president of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Mathews again asked me to name a man. Mr. Hackett said, “I know the man, but I don’t know whether he will accept”. Mathews said, “I know him and this is he”, slapping me on the knee. I replied that I was not the man and could not consider the position. In answer to the question, “why not?”, I said that I was not a physician. Mr. Hackett said, “We have never had a doctor as superintendent and do not want one”. Then I said my family was too large, to which the Governor replied, “I don’t know how many children you have but if they are all like the one I know I congratulate you on the number,” (my eldest daughter was my clerk in the State Board office and was popular in the State House.) Then I said that I did not want to give up my position as secretary and that I thought he would have more trouble filling that position than he would the other. But the Governor did not think so, he insisted that the institution was under a cloud and the circumstances made it essential to get a well-known man in whom the public had confidence, to restore it to public favor. He added, “we will not accept your decision today. We will give you ten days in which to make up your mind. Talk it over with your wife and daughter and come to me with your answer next Saturday week. In the meantime conduct this investigation.” Beginning the Adventures 175 It was a hard matter to decide. The position paid a little better than the one I held; the compliment of the offer made in such a way, was flattering. But in a sense it was not a promo¬ tion; it was moving from the general to a particular. When Hastings Hart heard of the change he resented it. He said, “if you need more money go into life insurance, with your smooth tongue and your insinuating manner, you can make five times as much”. Other friends regretted the change as a step downward. However I decided and on the appointed day I notified the Governor of my acceptance. Mr. Hackett’s opinion as to the necessity of a physician as superintendent was founded on the fact that a school for the feeble-minded is not a medical institution and that there is no more reason for its superintendent being a physician than there is for that of a school for the deaf, the blind, or the wayward. The essential qualities required for the position are executive ability and a comprehension and love of social welfare work. The superintendent must have a broad and statesmanlike com¬ prehension of the policy of the state in caring for the feeble¬ minded, and be resourceful in devising methods to carry it out. He must be able to meet and understand all sorts of people, many ' of them in sore trouble; to organize and control the work of doctors, teachers, mechanics, farmers, book-keepers and many other subordinates; and also to guide his trustees in the way they should go. In every large school of the kind where the superintendent is a medical man, the actual medical work, which tho important is not of chief importance, is done by his assistants. It is true that there are many admirable superintendents of such schools who are physicians, but the reason for their success is not their med¬ ical but their executive and social ability. The chief executive of an institution must be an economist — of time, of labor, and of money. The highly trained physician, by his very training, considers and can consider none of these; all he can think of is the best results to his patients regardless of labor or expense. Suppose an executive of an institution with 1700 inmates and 300 employees, while maintaining the standard of nutrition and palatableness of the diet, could reduce its daily per capita cost by only two cents. That would mean a saving of 176 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded $14,600 per annum. It might result in coming out even with the appropriation instead of facing a deficit at the end of the year. But imagine a Board of Trustees confronted by rising prices of provisions, presenting to a highly trained physician the problem of saving two-thirds of a cent on each child’s meal ! ! And simi¬ lar questions of economy arise in many other departments of an institution. There might be a good reason for insisting on the superin¬ tendent of a school for feeble-minded being an educator or a psychologist; but there is no reason but custom for requiring that he be a physician. The institution of the kind which has gained the highest repu¬ tation; which has added more to our knowledge of the feeble¬ minded than any other; which was the first to employ a trained psychologist as a regular member of the staff; which has done more than any other to develop the science of the training of children with defective minds; which, in its summer school, has equipped more teachers of classes for defectives than all other agencies put together; has not now, and never has had a physi¬ cian as superintendent. It is difficult enough for trustees to find a competent man for such a position. When to the essential qualities they add unnecessary requirements they increase their difficulties unnecessarily. When I took charge on July 1, 1893, I had been visiting and inspecting the School for more than four years and I had many ideas about how it ought to be conducted. During my adminis¬ tration I was able to carry out some of these ideas fully, some things I began and could not finish and some of my theories proved untenable. But at the end of my ten years service I was still convinced of the validity of most of the principles with which I began. The School was comparatively new in the state and it had not been made popular, few people realized its necessity, hardly any its possible value. In 1893, feeble mindedness had been little studied, in Indiana or elsewhere. It was true that the trustees had begun to realize that state care of the feeble-minded did not mean merely education, but ought to include permanent control for many cases; they had succeeded in changing the law which formerly required them to dismiss their pupils when of legal age. Beginning the Adventures 177 But the conception that the feeble-minded never come of age ; that they should have a training that would qualify them to become useful members of a little community apart from the world of eager competition, and such continuous control that the propa¬ gation of their kind should cease, had not entered the minds of the lawmakers nor of the trustees of the institution. These two conceptions — training in usefulness and perma¬ nent control — had been growing in my mind since the beginning of my visits of inspection, and they were the dominating theories of my administration. The success or failure of each new experi¬ ment I made was measured by its bearing on these main ideas. There is much we do in social work with a certain questioning. The danger of doing for people what they ought to do for them¬ selves is always present. And this applies not only to material things; about these every thoughtful person realizes the danger of possible pauperization which inheres in many forms of so-called charity. But there is a higher pauperism, that of the mind and spirit, not always seen as a danger. It may be even worse to destroy independence of thought and feeling than self- reliance for material support. In all institutions, especially those for children, such dangers threaten. The term “institu- tionism” is recognized as denoting something to be feared and avoided. But in work for the feeble-minded all this disappears. They are children now and always will be. The sooner they are insti- tutionized; that is the sooner they learn to yield to the kindly direction of those who care for them, the better. They should never go into the outside world as free citizens with all that that implies. Some one must always think for and direct them; so for them independence and self reliance are not the paramount virtues. I saw the two things, Training and Control, to be interdepend¬ ent. Altho no one then had an accurate idea of the enormous numbers of mentally defective people, it was already plain that there were far more of them than the state would ever be willing to support in any such degree as it was supporting the insane. Yet I believfed that their control was even more important to the state than that of the insane; that they constituted a graver source of danger. Not danger from the acts of the individuals, 178 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded altho even in this respect there is often much to be dreaded ; some atrocious crimes have been committed by imbeciles who should have been, and were not, under safe control. At the time the boy Pomeroy perpetrated the horrible cruelties for which he has been kept in prison all his long life, his name was on the waiting list of the School for Feeble Minded at Waverly. But great criifies are not frequent and even lesser offenses and misde¬ meanors are not much more common with the mentally defective than with persons of normal mind. The overmastering danger is of the increase of defectiveness thru heredity. Only a few of the insane inherit their affliction; but certainly two-thirds, and possibly more of the feeble-minded come of parents of the same kind. And while there may be a third of the present generation whose defectiveness has had some other cause than heredity, yet hardly any of them if they become parents will have normal chil¬ dren. No other trait either mental or physical is so certainly inherited as this we call feeble-miindedness. So the problem that confronted the state seemed to me to be, how to secure complete control without the excessive cost of total support ; and I thought the answer was by training many, perhaps most, of the feeble-minded to earn their own living; and then retaining them under permanent institution care, in useful, even profitable, employment. I believed that just in proportion as this could be demonstrated as feasible, it would be possible to induce the state to assume the whole burden of their care. This third part of my book of Adventures is mainly devoted to showing how I thought this should be done, how I tried to do it and how the happiness of the children,* was promoted by what I did. I shall often have to show results rather than the methods used to secure them. But whatever the subject treated, the influence of the two dominating principles will be apparent, so there will be no need of a special chapter devoted to them. As I say in my prologue, because I want to be useful to the social workers for whom I write, I shall frankly tell of much *The inmates of an institution for the feeble-minded, because they are and always will be immature in mind, are spoken of as “the children’', even when they appear mature or elderly, men and women in body; any¬ one who wants to understand them and what must be done for and with them must begin by getting this fundamental proposition into his mind; “they are and always will be children, in heart, mind, and responsibility.” Beginning the Adventures 179 gratifying success: but also, as frankly, of some disappointing failures ; some because of other people’s shortcomings ; some from errors of my own ; some from circumstances beyond my control ; but some because I allowed apparent expediency to over-rule my judgment, and was not faithful to the best I knew. Chapter Two ADVENTURES IN EDUCATION I knew when I took charge of the institution that the educa¬ tional department needed more than improvement, that it had to be revolutionized. The school principal was an elderly, good hearted woman, who might have made a fairly competent head for a district school of three or four rooms. She was pathetically inadequate for the specialized and varied requirements of a school for the feeble-minded. The classes were twice too large. None of the teachers had had special training. In those days training for such special teaching was unknown, except as given in the institutions themselves. There was a good kindergarten, but only for the youngest, the idea had not dawned that the kindergarten theory is needed up thru the highest grades and that the industries are the high school of the feeble-minded. Shortly after I took charge I had a letter from the parent of an inmate, which contained a salutary, tho rather caustic, lesson. The parents, or those of them who showed any interest in their children, were receiving monthly reports on their chil¬ dren’s progress, written by the teachers. The letter came in answer to one of these, as follows; “Dear Sir: My wife and I are deeply grateful for all you are doing for our poor boy, and we think you are doing as well as you know. But we would rather hear that Charley is learning to do some useful thing than that he is acquiring the alphabet at the rate of one letter a month.” This was severe but not a bit more so than was deserved. The work had to be radically reorganized and the way how learned while doing it. In 1893 Ireland’s, Barr’s and other books on training feeble minds were in the future. Seguin’s first treatise was the best and it was almost alone. Schools in other states were doing work much like ours and we learned from them as far as we could but it was distinctly a (180) Adventures in Education 181 period of experimentation. Experiments had to be tried and those which failed promptly scrapped. It might be necessary to condemn some new plan almost before it got going. This is a dan¬ gerous condition for a superintendent, whose success depends on keeping the respect and confidence of his staff. When they imagine that “the old man does not know his own mind”, loyalty has departed and loyalty is the supreme institution virtue. In this emergency I sent for a young man of more than ordi¬ nary ability, upon whose persistent loyalty under the most trying circumstances I could absolutely depend. He was my wife’s brother and in engaging him I had to risk the charge of nepotism, which was indeed made by some of my enemies ; and I was for¬ tunate enough to have made some tho still more fortunate to have made more friends. Edward R. Johnstone who is recognized today as the most constructive and aggressive leader in the training of the feeble¬ minded in this country, if not in the world; who has put Vine- land on the map; was teaching literature in a Cincinnati High School. He had the qualities most needed, youth, energy, resourcefulness, a sunny disposition, a fairly good education, and most needful of all under the peculiar circumstances, a devotion and loyalty to his chief which never failed, even when the chief had to deny requests for equipment that seemed essential or to change his mind twice in one day. It has been my good fortune to have done some useful things in developing social work, but not one of them has had happier results than came out of getting E. R. Johnstone into the work of caring for the feeble-minded. I installed Mr. Johnstone as principal and for four years we worked together in perfect harmony. Many new plans were tried ; developed when they proved adequate but quickly dropped if error was discovered. Some of the old teachers resented the new schemes and a few of them resigned. New teachers were trained. The period of change was a trying one and without absolute confidence between the superintendent, the matron, and the principal success could not have been achieved. But fortu¬ nately all three had no ambition or desire but the benefit of the children for whom the institution existed, in all things their welfare and progress came first. This spirit spread thru every part of the organization; it was felt by the most subordinate 182 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded employees and became the test by which every method was meas¬ ured, not alone in the educational department but in every other. The spirit of the school was that of Encouragement. Praise was frequent, blame seldom heard. The child’s first feeble attempts might be poor indeed, but if they were his best they were good, for him. The most valuable habit a child can acquire is that of success, and that especially needs to be instilled in the little imbecile, whose whole life until he comes to us has been a succession of failures. If one in the upper grade presented a written spelling lesson of twelve words, the teacher would say, “good boy, you have eight words right ! Now tomorrow let’s try if we can’t have ten words right or even all twelve.” The differ¬ ence between “eight words right”, with a smile and “four words wrong”, with a frown, was the difference between happiness and disappointment if not sorrow. Because we must be sure not to ask the child for something beyond his ability and so cause him to fail, he must be studied and his capacity measured in every respect, mental and physical equally. This was before G. Stanley Hall gave the pedagogic world his luminous idea of “Child Study” — that the teacher must study the child to know his possibilities and weaknesses, to adapt her teaching to the individual, not to some theoretical “average child”, who at seven years of age ought to be able to profit by the curriculum of the second grade as prescribed by the State Department of Education. The schools for the feeble¬ minded had adopted the method of child study before it was given as a duty to the teachers of the normal. One of E. R. Johnstone’s favorite maxims to the teachers was that we are not teaching “reading and writing”, but “children” and to teach them we had to know them. In those days we had not the copious literature about the mentally defective which every teacher may now profit by if she will. We had not even the Binet system of measuring intelli¬ gence. But we used simple methods of our own devising. Many of them were those of trial and error, but we did get results. We soon discovered the value of the affirmative, the uselessness of negations. As far as possible the child was never told NOT to do something, but always to DO some other. Adventures in Education 183 It is hard for one with no experience among defectives to realize what they must be taught. We had many who could hardly walk, many who shuffled along, their feet never leaving the floor, not because of defect of muscle or nerve but of habit. So contrivances were made, steps to go up and down, ladders with flat rungs to lay on the floor to step into, out of or over. Few of the imbeciles had any idea of play. Now play is the normal activity of the child, the most important thing in the most formative period of life. So teaching to play was as careful and dignified a job as teaching to sew or read. We realized that our task was to develop the whole being, physically, intellectually, and spiritually. Physical training began with good, well chosen food and wisely adapted exercise. The shambling, unsteady gait must be changed to an erect and cheerful walk. The limp and nerveless, or all too nervous, hand must be strengthened and steadied. The eyes must be trained to see, the ears to hear, the senses of taste and smell must be cultivated. With physical training education of the intellect and the emotions goes hand in hand. In every form of exercise and instruction the order is from the larger more obvious and simple, very slowly to the finer, more delicate, more complex. Not merely much repetition but quantity of sense impression is needed. The color blocks must be larger, the sounds more posi¬ tive, the contrasts greater, than for normal children. Many of the children came with what little mental power they had in a kind of comatose condition. Our first task was to waken them up. Some of the methods employed were simple enough, but great patience was needed in applying them. One of the early plans was ball tossing. The child stood near the wall and the teacher, a few feet away, tossed a large soft ball to him, striking him on the head or the breast or the face. After fifty or a hundred times, he might put out his hands to ward it off, after another hundred, he might actually catch it. One day passing the school hall I heard a child shrieking as tho badly hurt. I hurried in to find what was the matter. Little Harold had caught the ball; his shrieks were of joy. For the first time in his life he had actually made a purposive effort, he had con¬ sciously tried to do something and had done it. That tiny effort was the beginning of a little development. 184 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded In the kindergarten and in other classes the child was taught to make something which he could see and recognize as his handiwork when it was finished. What a feeble-minded child learns to say he quickly forgets, what he learns to do he remem¬ bers. So learning by doing was our plan. This was carried up thru all the grades. The lower classes prepared for the higher and those for the industrial departments. Our scholars began in those as soon as they were strong enough, dividing their time between the classes and the industries for several years before their schooling was over. Our highest school standard to which only a few of the brightest morons attained was equal to that of the usual seventh grade. Reading, writing, and arithmetic had modest places in the school curriculum; not nearly so important as those of sew¬ ing, wood work, or domestic science. The sewing class prepared for the dress making room and the tailor shop ; sloyd for the car¬ penter’s and shoe-maker’s shop; domestic science for the kitchen and dining room ; the school gardens for the farm. We fairly tried, and often with more than useful persever¬ ance, to teach each child to read, not for the value of reading to them for that is nil in most cases, but to placate the parents who could not understand a school which did not teach the “three R’s”. I made many efforts to cultivate a love for and a habit of reading and in nothing had I so little success. I specially wanted it to fill in the most difficult period in all the institution day, the hour between supper and bed. I bought the most attractive books I could find and tried out one plan after another until I gave up in despair. Music had a large place, everything possible, not only march¬ ing, dancing and calisthenics, (which we carried out on an exten¬ sive scale) but some school work like drawing on the black board, counting beads, and even sweeping the floor, was done in rythm. We taught all the children, or nearly all, to sing and some in the higher grades became quite good vocalists, so that they could sing in public, even take solo parts in a comic opera. This was not confined to the school or chapel, but each division sang in its day room and prayers as well as grace were sung at bedtime and at meals. Atwentfres tn Education 185 Most of the instruction in singing was by the regular teachers not only in the school proper but during the teacher’s evening hours in the divisions. For the chapel music we used “The Carol”, a collection of hymns of real merit with music of a higher order than the usual run of Gospel hymns, in which banality of words and trashy music vie with each other. I love the elaborate and beautiful ritual of the Episcopal church and am very fond of the chants so we used the Psalter freely. Each Summer the children and I had a surprise for the teachers when they returned from their vacation, in one or two new hymns and chants we had learned while they were away. There was one class of little moron girls aged about ten to thirteen, whose teacher had the art of getting them to modulate their voices and sing with good taste and correctness. One of her specialties was gesture songs in which the music was illus¬ trated by appropriate movements. On one occasion I was escort¬ ing a visitor thru the school and taking her into Mrs. Summer- belle’s room asked that the girls would sing, “The Splendor Falls”. This they did very prettily. The lady turned to me and said, “oh, aren’t they homely?” She declared to her husband, who told the story at the club as a good joke on me, that I flushed up and said, “I think they are very pretty little girls”. They said that any man who could find beauty in feeble-minded children was well fitted for the job I had. This same class of little girls and I had a standing competi¬ tion every Spring, as to whether they or I would find the first crocus. I had planted a great many crocus bulbs on the lawn and encouraged the children to look for the flowers. One day I walked into the class room where some visitors were gathered and gravely said, “girls, the most important event of the year has occurred”. Immediately there was a clapping of hands and joyful shouts, “the first crocus, the first crocus!”, which quite mystified the visitors, some of whom were almost as much in the dark when my explanation had been made; and some evidently thought that I was quite correctly placed in my surroundings. The needlework class was popular and beginning with a plain seam, went thru hemming, felling, herring-bone stitch, to embroidery, tatting, crocheting, knitting and pillow lace making. It was interesting to see a moron girl to whom the simplest 186 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded mathematical problem to be solved with slate and pencil, was utterly impossible; counting the numerous bobbins on her lace pillow, and producing a design of beautiful accuracy. At the County Fair one year we had a display of the children’s work, which included three girls making pillow lace. This excited great interest both among the farmers and townsfolk. Each child who chose was given a little plot to cultivate and the school gardens were something to show visitors. To grow the biggest melon on the grounds, to carry it to the superintend¬ ent’s office in triumph, to have him put it on the office mantel with a card affixed which bore the name and division and age of the grower, to peep through the window and see the big fruit still testifying to his skill and industry, was a great thing for a feeble-minded boy to achieve. The entertainments and amusements which come very close to the school work and are chiefly led by the teachers are told of in another chapter. All these and all the school work were directed toward happiness and happiness is the beginning of all good things for the feeble-minded. We used to reverse the old adage and sav, “be happy and you will be good”. It is easy to understand how with this spirit animating the work, the idea of punishment soon became obsolete. Very rarely was it neces¬ sary to inflict some deprivation. If, for instance, a boy declined to do some little task assigned him, it was given to another and he was not permitted to do anything. To see your job given to a competitor and hear him praised for good work while you stand idly by, was a serious penalty. All work was made a privilege. To be called by the night- watch an hour before the rest in the morning, and trudge a quarter of a mile thru the snow that you may milk the best cow in the herd, or any cow, especially when the superintendent tells some visitor what a good milker you are and how he could not get along without you, is a great privilege, and not to be lightly lost. But every wise teacher knows the value of privileges of the sort, and as we had our pupils twenty-four hours a day there were many opportunities for them. At the end of four years while discussing some slight changes with my principal, I said, “Ed, we are in a dreadful position, we have realized all our ideals. What are we going to do next?” Adventures in Education 1ST Edward admitted that he felt just the same, that something new must be found to strive for, some new ideas to quicken us. We had grasped all for which we had reached and aa man’s reach must exceed his grasp”. So I sent him to visit some of the lead¬ ing institutions in the country, Columbus, O., Syracuse, N. Y., Waverly, Mass., Vineland, N. J., Elwyn, Pa., and one or two more, to see what they were doing better than we. He came back with a few, very few, good suggestions. He saw much work that was poorer than ours. But while he was seeing them they were seeing him. Very soon came a letter from Vineland offering the young man a better position as to pay and other conditions, than the State of Indiana allowed its principal whose salary was limited by statute to $>750.00 per annum.* Especially he was offered a house to live in, so that he might marry a charming girl to whom he was engaged. The offer was too good to turn down and, speaking as a brother-in-law, rather than as a chief to an invaluable assistant, I told him he must accept. It was like cutting off my right arm but it had to be. The result may be seen in Vineland and its unrivalled reputation today. The result at Fort Wayne was a heavy additional burden on me for I never succeeded in ade¬ quately replacing my first principal who had made the school department equal to any in the country and superior to all but a few. But the work so well begun kept on and the school main¬ tained its high standard; altho from that time until the end of my service, I had to be in effect the director of the school as well as superintendent of the institution. *In those days many of the Mid-Western states imagined it was econ¬ omy to pay low salaries. The salary of the superintendent at Fort Wayne was only $1500, until 1901, when it was increased to $2000. The salary at Columbus was $1200 with some extra pay as secretary of the Board of Trustees, and another comparatively fictional position, which made it a little over $2000. Chapter Three ADVENTURES IN AMUSEMENT There are many maxims guiding the government of a school for the feeble-minded, which have been wrought out of experience gained in many institutions, but the supreme one came to us from Vineland — “happiness comes first, all else follows’7. If you make your pupils happy you can do much with them, failing in that you fail indeed. So the department that has to do with games and amusements is just as important and dignified as those which provide food or clothing and there is a close and natural connection between it and the school proper. No train¬ ing you can give feeble-minded children does more for them than that they get in learning to take part in some little play. So the principal of the school is usually the entrepreneur of the playhouse, and for four years E. R. Johnstone did that work well. Every Wednesday night an entertainment in the chapel; once a week a dance for the boys at which a detail of the women employees acted as partners; and once a week a dance for the girls who did not need other partners. (We did not mingle the sexes.) Then special occasions, special events, — Washington’s birthday, a patriotic program; Fourth of July, a picnic dinner and supper on the lawn, races for the girls and boys, jumping in sacks, potato races, a baseball match, fire-crackers all day and gorgeous fireworks at night; Christmas Day! Oh, that’s very special, that comes later. No matter how good the playground or how attractive the menu in the dining room, every one likes a change occasionally. During the Summer vacation of the school, the months of July and August, time was hard to fill acceptably. In the summer of 1895 we began a camp in the woods. There was a pretty valley in the woodland on the farm down which a creek flowed to the river which bounded the estate on the west. Here there was a safe wading beach and a swimming hole. (188) Adventures in Amusement 189 Two tents for children each held sixteen cots and a small one held cots for two attendants. The first group of big boys who went out built a rustic dining pavilion and a rude shed for a kitchen. Here every Summer one party of thirty-two boys or thirty-two girls after another each had ten days at “Camp Mathews”, as we called it in honor of our good Governor who took much interest in all we did. Of course this pleasure had to be restricted to the upper grades; the high-grade imbeciles as we called them, (Goddard had not then invented the term Moron) but we had about two hundred and fifty of those avail¬ able. Most of the attendants were pleased when their turn came to go out to camp with their children but a few of them did not like “roughing it”, did not care enough for the freedom from conventionalities to submit to the inconveniences of camp life; and these were allowed to exchange duty with others and remain at home. The children all were delighted with the camp. To be away for a week or two from the whistles and the bells. To spend the evenings sitting around a big camp fire singing songs. To have the rules of rising and retiring relaxed, so that you did not have to go to bed at precisely the same time every night, these and other little freedoms were very attractive to them. The first season, tho all the boys went in swimming the girls were restricted to the wading beach. One attendant who was 0 strong on physical culture, begged that her girls be allowed to swim, and rigged up their underwear for bathing costumes. Of course in the country boys may go in swimming in “the alto¬ gether” but that would hardly do for girls. So in the Spring of 1896 bathing suits were devised of grey cotton flannel. They were being made in the dress-making room and the girls had not been told what they were, their purpose being kept secret for a joyful surprise to be sprung when the first party of girls went to Camp. I was conducting some visitors through the industrial building when one of the ladies saw the suits and asked, “who are the bathing suits for?” Some of the girls heard her, caught on and cried out, “oh, bathing suits for us girls, we are going in swimming at camp”. I made them promise to keep the secret but before bed-time every girl in the institution knew of the joy in store. 190 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded Hardly second in value to a play as entertainment and first in its regular value to the management, was the Sunday School. As half the force of employees were on leave each Sunday it was necessary to take the children off the hands of those who remained on duty, to allow them time for dinner and a breathing spell. So Sunday School lasted from 10 :30 until noon. I always conducted that myself and I owe the fluency of speech which my friends call eloquence and my adverse critics loquacity to the fact that for ten years and more I talked to my feeble-minded children for twenty minutes every Sunday morning. It is my deliberate conviction that if you can really hold a feeble-minded audience you can hold any other, even the U. S. Senate. In the course of a few years a very elaborate ritual was worked out, including singing, responsive reading, chanting and reciting psalms, with special songs and memory gems by the dif¬ ferent divisions with the band to march in by and play the voluntary at the close. In this way the period of an hour and a half was filled without trouble. All during my term of office about one-fourth of the children were epileptics. Now it is a well known fact that while unpleasant excitement will often precipitate a seizure in an epileptic, pleasurable excitement does not. In the early days at the school a spasm at an entertain¬ ment was unknown but a spasm at Sunday School was frequent. But during my last five years after the ritual above-mentioned had reached its full development, a spasm was as rare at Sunday School as at a play. A popular entertainment devised by the principal and matron was monthly birthday parties for the children who were born in the month, one for boys and one for girls. When this was planned we had about six hundred and fifty children and more than one hundred of them had never had a birthday that was on record. This was convenient because we wanted to keep the parties down to a manageable size. So to those who had no known birthdays we gave appropriate ones spread thru the year. Two boys named George were given the twenty-second of Feb¬ ruary. Abraham got the twelfth of the same month. Charles found to his delight that he shared a birthday with Charles Dickens. Florence celebrated with Florence Nightingale. Claude had the same day as Governor Claude Mathews. Eliza was very Adventures in Amusement 191 proud because she and the beloved matron owned the nineteenth of August, and Alexander was pleased that he and the superin¬ tendent were born on January the second. With each of the birthday-less ones some similar connection was made. It was pleasant to be accosted by an eager smiling little one, with the remark, "I’m going to a birthday party, Mrs. Johnson has given me a birthday”. The parties were simple inexpensive affairs. Just a little cake and candy in addition to the usual supper, with a few special games for the participants and the fun of wearing Sunday clothes on a week-evening. But their value as a coming event of joy, was worth many times their cost. One of the things unprovided for by the state appropriation was Christmas presents and I had to devise a plan to get money for them. A few of the parents sent their children Christmas boxes, which usually contained some present appropriate to come from the hands of Santa Claus on Christmas morning; but there were many hundreds more who did not. Each winter a special grand entertainment was given, to which the public were invited and were permitted to pay for the privilege. These were so popular that the chapel was always over-crowded. While E. B. Johnstone was principal he planned and conducted these events. When he left there seemed no one to take his place, so I made it one of my specialties and I developed the Christmas entertainment to a hither-to unheard of splendor. The work of preparation was divided between the teachers, one having charge of the choruses, one of the boys’ speaking parts, one of the girls’, etc. The teacher of sewing, embroidery and lace-making, had charge of making the costumes which with the help of my wife I designed. That teacher was perfect at carrying out other’s plans but not herself inventive so we worked well together. After the parts were learned, which was a long job since every movement, intonation, and gesture had to be taught child by child, I used to conduct the rehearsals and I had more fun than the children and they had plenty ; bad behavior by a child having a part to be punished by being put out of the play, was rarely heard of. As the plan worked out it grew until the rule was to spend a few weeks of the school time getting ready. This was justified on the theory of the educational value of the training and the 192 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded large proportion of the school children who took part; and any¬ way onr school term of ten months was quite long enough. Then about three weeks before Christmas so as to have time to spend the receipts properly, we gave the play. We had two full dress rehearsals, one on Monday for the girls to see, one on Tuesday for the boys. (By this time the chapel would not hold all at once.) On Wednesday the actors rested and on Thursday and Friday night and Saturday matinee, public performances were given with reserved seats at twenty-five cents per. The house seated 529 and was always full and usually a few hundred tickets were sold more than were used. One of the best of these plays was a comic opera called, “The Pay of the Pied Piper”, founded on Browning’s poem of the old legend of Hamelin. This was given in December 1900. The music was simple yet attractive and catchy. The characters included a troop of rats very realistically costumed, which the children enjoyed enacting; a group of councillors and their wives, the Burgomaster and the Beadle, a crowd of children for the street scene and the Piper. Out of the play of the Piper there grew a myth or legend. Like all good myths that grow, this had a tiny seed of objective reality. In devising the costume for the Beadle who had an important part ; as it was a fourteenth century story I gave him a short purple cloak with a heraldic device on the back. As both heraldic and picturesque this device was a yellow lozenge¬ shaped shield bearing a red griffin rampant. This was the seed fact of the myth. Needing new scenery for the council chamber this was made in panels with a replica of the yellow shield and red griffin on each. Out of that naturally grew the idea that the griffin was the heraldic device of the city. Then came a large shield and griffin to hang over the Burgomaster’s chair in the center of the stage. Next in the course of a few days, for the myth when once the seed was planted grew rapidly, came the fancy that this particular griffin had a magic quality, that his aspect changed with the prosperity or adversity of the city looking serene when all was well sorrowful when disease came and fierce when war fare threatened. Then it was necessary to get this idea across the footlights; so a lady of the cast a wife of one of the councillors, was given Adventures in Amusement 193 the line, “the Griffin, our city’s protector, looks down with indig¬ nation upon a Burgomaster and Council who cannot deliver us from a plague of rats”. Then of course the device had to explain itself and by degrees, in five or six weeks, the myth grew to its final shape. It included a hitherto unheard of “Prince Hamel the Second” who founded the city, its name being variously interpreted as Hamel’s Line or Hamel’s Lin, from a famous lin or linden tree on the river bank, under which the prince when a baby had been thrown out to die; his father, Hamel the First having been deceived by a faithless nurse as to his legitimacy. The griffin had been the kindly guardian of the child, caring for him until when grown into a fine youth he was providentially restored to his father’s arms. The Prince adopted a griffin as his heraldic device and the privilege of using it was conferred by him on his city. The myth was used to advertise the play and the day follow¬ ing its appearance in the Fort Wayne J ournal-Gazette the paper printed a letter written by a man from Brunswick, saying that while everyone knows the story of the piper and the rats is his¬ torical — if you doubt it go to Hamelin today and see Pied Piper Street down which the rats were led to the river; all this non¬ sense about Hamel and the griffin was too silly to be printed. A day later came a letter from the professor of Comparative Mythology of the University of Weissnichtwo, commenting on the story as a beautiful example of the growth of a myth. Just as plants removed from their native habitat to a more friendly clime will blossom out with new splendor, so the old myth trans¬ planted from the worn out soil of Brunswick to the fertile West had developed into this lovely legend. Of course an identical pen wrote the story for the paper and the letters from the Bruns- wicker and the professor. Various other publicity stunts were worked out of the griffin myth and the play was well advertised. Before the first perform¬ ance the citizens of Fort Wayne had been instructed to some extent both in mythology and heraldry. In the play the Burgomaster tells the Beadle to advertise for a rat killer, and he replies in a song which in the original begins “In the London Daily Telegraph, I will put a telling para¬ graph”. This was made, “In the Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, I 194 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded will put a telling article” The proprietor of the paper kindly printed a special front page with the paper’s name in type large enough to be read by the audience when the Beadle held it up as he sang; and also sent a handsome check for the Christmas fund. The “Pay of the Pied Piper” after all expenses including the new scenery and elaborate costumes had been defrayed; netted the hitherto unheard of profit of $350.00 and the Christmas pres¬ ents that year were better than ever before. But even this splen¬ did sum was beaten a year later when we gave the comic opera of “Columbus in a Merry Key”. This was the most sumptuous production of the feeble-minded-stage at Fort Wayne and per¬ haps anywhere else. It had 119 characters and in the final tableau, when they were all on the stage together and nine girls in white headed by the Goddess of Liberty came forward in a cloud of white mosquito netting illuminated by an electric head¬ light from above and the cloud vanishing sang the Star Spangled Banner each waving a silken flag as the whole company joined in the chorus, the effect was little short of sublime. The day after this play, I received an anonymous note which said ; “Dear Sir : I bought two tickets for your play at Siemon’s book store which cost twenty-five cents each. I have often paid $1.50 for a seat at a much poorer performance, therefore I owe you $2.50, which please find enclosed.” The letter was signed, “A Traveling Man”. Columbus netted us $450.00 and we were able to gratify some long unsatisfied desires. Little Minnie Cripe had no hair on her head. Every Christmas for four years back her pathetic request to Santa Claus had been for a wig. Now wigs cost real money and Santa Claus was poor. But this year he felt rich and he said to Mrs. Santa, “If Minnie asks for a wig this year let’s get her one”. Surely enough when the letter to Santa Claus came from division B-2 there appeared, “Minnie Cripe - a wig”. So a friendly hair store lady was taken into confidence who had just the right wig in stock second hand but made over good as new, which she sold with no profit or charge for making over for only four dollars. It was a curly golden-haired wig and matched Minnie’s complexion exactly. Adventures in Amusement 195 On Christmas morning when the “Happy Christmas Day” and “Merry Christmas Bells” had been sung and the wonderful and never-to-be-outworn story of the Shepherds and the Angels, the Wise Men and the Babe in the manger had been told, came the presents. The stage was full of clothes-baskets heaped high. The Christmas tree which nearly touched the high chapel ceiling, was illuminated. So that all the children, who file out of the chapel company by company after receiving their presents might see the fun, Minnie’s division was called up the very first and her name headed the list. She received the box with wonder, not dreaming that her four years’ desire was being gratified. Then Mrs. Santa led her out by a door at the back of the chapel to one of the employee’s bed-rooms and fitted the wig on her head. When the child saw herself in the mirror she screamed with delight. Then she was led back to the chapel and when the children saw Minnie’s happy face surmounted by golden curls, the din was terrific. Clapping, stamping, whistling, all the noises that they liked, because you know, on Christmas Day no one might say “Wo” or “Dont” ; unless indeed some child is hurting another. Poor Minnie faced the joyous tumult for two minutes, then burst into tears and running up to Santa Claus she threw her arms about him and hugged him tightly, and there were two or three other pairs of eyes not quite dry just then. One year the letter to Santa from Colonia contained a request from John Dixon for a cross-cut saw, and he got it, saws are always useful on a farm. Then I asked the head farmer why John wanted the saw and the explanation came that John was working in the woods getting out firing for next year’s brick burning and his favorite job was sitting on one log and pulling the saw over another, and if he owned the saw he had a cinch on that job. Another request was from Duke Bedford who drove the milk wagon from the Colony to the institution every day. He asked for a pair of blankets for his team, a fine pair of Clydes¬ dales of which he was very proud and which he thought he owned. If there was a gayer pair of horse blankets in town than the pair Duke got, it was because Santa couldn’t find them. Of course even the stupendous sum of $450.00 could not buy such costly presents for each of the 800 children who saw Colum¬ bus, but hundreds of the lower grades, the idiots, could not 196 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded appreciate anything better than ten cents would buy and a twenty-five cent toy satisfied hundreds more; so to the morons, especially the big boys and girls who did so much good work, the dressmakers, tailors, shoemakers, assistant-cooks, waitresses, etc., we could give their hearts desire which included mandolins, white dresses, sashes of satin ribbon six inches wide and two yards long, violins, parchesi-sets, guitars and other valuables. One Christmas a pair of rubber boots was the height of the ambi¬ tion of half a score of farm boys. In the course of a few years there were enough mandolins, guitars and violins to equip a girl’s orchestra, which made as much music and not nearly as much noise as the boys’ brass band. Many of the attendants and all the teachers enjoyed taking part in dressing the numerous dolls which were in demand. Every girl had to have a doll but did not need a new one every year. The selecting, purchasing and labeling of the hundreds of presents was a very important job, especially the wrapping and checking off for it would be a tragedy if any child were for¬ gotten. So my wife and I made this our special pleasant duty and for weeks our evenings were spent in Santa Claus work shop, as the room set aside at this season of the year was called. The choice of presents which at first was very difficult became easy when the plan of the letter to Santa Claus from each division was hit upon, and with the great success of the show business the bugbear of expense vanished. For the few children who received boxes from home a present from the box was placed in the baskets with those which came from Santa Claus, and the rest of the box given later. One Christmas a small tragedy was narrowly averted. Little Hattie had lost an eye. That year there were three hundred and seventy girls in the institution and Hattie was one of one hun¬ dred and twenty who each asked for a doll. Now between the time of wrapping and labeling and the present giving on Christ¬ mas morning some accident had injured one doll’s head knock¬ ing out an eye, and by the irony of Fate it was Hattie’s doll!! As soon as a child gets her present the first impulse is to pull off part of the wrapping to see what it looks like, and poor little one-eyed Hattie was confronted by a one-eyed doll. But before she had time to realize what had happened, another pair of eyes, Adventures in Amusement 197 made all the sharper by the deep love in the heart below them, had seen the accident and quickly Mrs. Santa Claus caught the damaged doll out of Hattie’s arms saying, “Why Hattie, that’s not your doll, what a funny mistake”, and reaching over her head she pulled from the tree a gorgeous creation in yellow satin and lace saying, “This one is yours”. To have had the child think that Santa Claus had played a heartless joke on her would have been tragic indeed. To look back a quarter of a century and remember the joy I was able to give to so many of the poorest and feeblest of the little ones, makes memory which often saddens, a great source of happiness. I often declared that on Christmas Day I had more real real fun than any fifteen men in the state. Besides adding to the joy of life, both of the children and my own, I valued the opportunities which festivities of all kinds afforded me of coming in close touch with my children so that I might the better lead and control them. I wanted them to rec¬ ognize the superintendent not as an austere and distant ruler or judge, but as the dispenser of pleasure and happiness. I felt toward them in a large measure as I did to my own family, I wanted them to feel towards me as loving children do to their father. Time went on and the numbers grew so great that per¬ sonal contact with each was impossible, but I kept up my close relations, especially with the morons, the most difficult class to control, as much as I possibly could to the end. Chapter Four ADVENTURES WITH HELPERS One great source of strength to my administration was that, with one rather hurtful exception, the law which made it my duty to choose my staff was strictly observed by my Board. About three months after I took charge Mr. Hackett, President of the trustees paid me a visit and after a complete tour of the insti¬ tution said, “now, Mr. Johnson, you have had time to ascertain the quality of your help. Remember if there is a man or woman among them who is not qualified by ability and character for the service, it is your fault. It is your job and yours only to hire and fire and we (the trustees) have nothing to say about it. We shall not even advise you7’. Only once during my term did the trustees depart from that rule, when they did at the one Board meeting from which I was absent, re-engage a physician whose services were unsatisfactory. In fact for the first eight years of my service, the Board gave me almost too much of my own way so that I got a little spoiled. The school was growing fast, both in numbers and in popular estimation. My administration appeared to be an unqualified success. As I had a natural inclination to assume responsibility, whether that properly devolving on me or not, they just as natur¬ ally shirked or let me assume it. The full bad results of this method did not show for many years, but all my institution life my responsibilities weighed heavily on me and at last broke me down. Part of the burden of responsibility is inevitable. When any¬ thing goes wrong in an institution it is always the man in charge who is held to account by the public, never the trustees nor the subordinates who may actually be at fault. On one occasion, when I was more than usually burdened by work and worry, I had a visit from Ernest Bicknell, Secretary (198) Adventures With Helpers 199 f of the Board of State Charities. He was quite distressed at my condition — I was then showing signs of a break-down which came later— and reasoned with me about it. He told me that it could not last, or I could not, that I would not only become a nervous wreck but that life itself was in danger. I answered, “I know it, but it is inevitable, a job like this to a sensitive, conscientious man, is fatal in ten or twelve years. Think what happened to Doran at Columbus, to Kerlin at Elwyn and others. It’s the price of the job and I must pay it.” Bicknell said it was all wrong, there must be a way out. I answered, “I know it’s wrong but I cannot see the way out, I must just go on till the break comes.” Of course this was foolish. If I had been wiser, or even a little thicker skinned, it would have been different. When the break did come, when grip supervened on over work and worry, and I had to spend some weeks in bed and more recuperating, the institution survived my absence from the helm. But do my best the sense of responsi¬ bility was always a heavy burden, and it really was well for me when I was compelled to resign. I am today strong and vig¬ orous able to do as much mental work as ever and more physical toil than most men of my age. Had I remained at Fort Wayne ten years before this time I would have been sleeping beside my child and my dear wife at Crown Hill. The Matron and the Home There is a usual, and usually wise, institution method when¬ ever there are girl inmates or many women employees, of choos¬ ing the wife of the superintendent if she is at all capable to be matron. This is so generally accepted as good institution policy that it escapes the charge of nepotism. There are institution matters which can be more freely discussed between husband and wife than between unrelated officials of opposite sexes. This is less true today than it was thirty years ago. One of the wholesome changes in social life which I have witnessed during my long experience, has been in the increasing degree of frank¬ ness about sex matters possible between people of refinement of opposite sexes. This may have had some regrettable results, but it has lessened sex obsession to a marked degree and its benefits far out weigh its possible evils. Every wholesome minded 200 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded person must rejoice that the conspiracy of silence on sex affairs has gone, or is fast going. When I took charge at Fort Wayne the matron, left over from the former regime, was one who appeared highly competent. During the investigation which followed my predecessor’s down¬ fall she had been somewhat unjustly aspersed. Governor Mathews and I both believed the slurs upon her were unjust and the Governor asked me to retain her at least for a time. He said, “as gentlemen, we owe this lady such amends as we can make for the unjust suspicions aroused, and if you can keep her for a year or even a few months, that will do it.” So as Mrs. Johnson could not be matron at that time, altho later she held the position well, she was made Assistant Superintendent — at a nominal salary and her influence on the girls and the women employees was salutary. The social and moral atmosphere of the institution soon began to alter, and the change was in the direction of homelikeness. This had begun from the first but became more rapid and positive after the investigation in Feb¬ ruary 1895 to be told of in another chapter, and Mrs. Johnson had become matron in name and authority as well as in effect. We had a gratifying compliment from Hastings H. Hart on the occasion of his visit to the School. He had long been secre¬ tary of the Minnesota State Board of Charities and knew the institutions of that state intimately and he had visited hundreds of others. He declared that he had never found nearly as much homelikeness before in anything like so large an institution. The Democratic Spirit The employees of a school for the feeble-minded are of various r grades and they tend to a hurtful separation into castes. I was a Democrat, not only in politics, but in sympathies, and hated class distinctions. But more important than my dislike was the injury to the administration thru jealousy or envy, which class distinctions were likely to cause and were causing. In attempting to bring about a wholesome unity between employees I had one strong factor on my side; the rank of a common laborer, either male or female, was not included in the personnel of the School and has no place in such an institution. All employees are teachers, trainers, foremen, forewomen. The Adventures With Helpers 201 laborers are the children. The two classes between which fric¬ tion was most likely to be harmful were the teachers and the attendants. The former felt themselves to be a superior class. Their pay was better, their hours of work much shorter, they lived in the front center with the highest officers. They had their special dining room. Their work required no sacrifice of personal dignity. No child who could not attend to his personal wants might go to school. The attendants must necessarily live with the children and minister to their bodily needs. Their hours were long; some of their duties disagreeable, they felt that the teachers had a “soft snap” and they envied them. The industrial workers, engi¬ neers, carpenters, painters, tailors, dressmakers, shoemakers, head gardeners, etc., altho they ate with the attendants and lodged in the rear center, held a sort of median place. All three classes had to do with the children and it was of great impor¬ tance that the training in order and good behavior given in the classes, should not be offset in the day-rooms, dormitories, din¬ ing rooms, and workshops. Institution employees must have their “time off” for health as well as comfort. When I took charge the teachers had no evening duties, except at occasional entertainments, and no duties on Saturday. About one-third of them were on duty for a few hours each Sunday. The industrial employees had Satur¬ day afternoon and all day Sunday off duty. The attendants were on duty daily from early morning until the children’s bed¬ time and were allowed one Sunday off in three, and that only from 10:30 A. M. until the children’s bedtime. This appeared grossly unfair. It was easy to see that the relations between teachers and attendants were likely to be strained and blame for something happening to a child be passed back and forth from one to the other. In the hope of diminishing class feeling, weekly “family* dances” in the school hall, were arranged, to which every em¬ ployee was invited. This had a slight beneficial effect but the classes kept rather to themselves and a lady teacher would sometimes refuse to dance with a male attendant. ♦The staff and employees are often spoken of as “the family” as opposed to “the children”. 202 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded After waiting long enough to assure myself of the situa¬ tion and to gain the cordial loyalty of most of the people, I resolved on some radical changes. The first one announced was that thereafter all attendants and industrial employees would have each alternate Sunday on and off duty. On the Sundays they were on duty the industrial people were required to share with the attendants in the care of the children, and the attend¬ ants’ time off was to be from Sunday morning until Monday morning. Then all the teachers were required to be on duty alternate Sundays, they were still and always allowed all Saturday, but they were required to spend certain evening hours with the chil¬ dren between supper and bedtime, a period which is the most difficult to fill acceptably especially in bad weather. About this time a lucky incident helped the new deal. Two sisters had been employed as teachers. One had resigned and later re-applied. There being no vacancy on the teaching staff she was offered a position as attendant, and thenceforth the sisters were together in the institution one as teacher and the other as attendant. They could hardly treat each other as of different castes and trifling as this was it had a good effect. Other events tended in the same direction. A young woman who began as an attendant was promoted to teaching and eventually became principal. Another attendant was made dress¬ maker, in which place she showed such fine influence on the older girls that she became one of the most successful teachers of that difficult class the adolescent female moron. Her bosom friend was an attendant who was later made the house mother of a cottage for adult females. My plan was successful especially as the personnel changed. The new people naturally accepted what they found, not having former easier experiences to contrast with it. The caste spirit disappeared tho slowly; the general tone of the place was grad¬ ually raised. I did my best to set a good example of democracy and encouraged my own boys and girls to join in the family dances. I told my people that we had room in the service only for ladies and gentlemen and any others who got in would soon be gotten out. The chief benefits of the more democratic rela¬ tions were to the children. Adventures With Helpers 203 But the task of choosing and directing so many people is always a superintendent’s most difficult and anxious one, and I often congratulated myself that during my term of more than ten years it was never further complicated by political influence. I never had an employee whom I would have hesitated to dis¬ charge, if incompetent, because of politics. During my service I was compelled to discharge a few employees for cause and when such a case arose I did not ask for nor allow a resignation. Of course I had some real resigna¬ tions; some of them were because of ill health or marriage, or family trouble requiring the presence of the official at home. Some of them were, frankly, because the employees preferred other service; these were usually of people who had been but a short time with us ; the attachment to the institution and to the feeble-minded children which often arose was very pleasant to see ; it was most marked among the very best class of employees. But when a serious fault such as drunkenness, immorality, cruelty to a child or other grave institution crime was committed, the offender was dismissed summarily. To allow such a one to resign thus implying that he left at his own choice always seemed to me to be dishonest; and incidentally it is very poor policy for the superintendent who is always in danger of attack by political or other enemies. The testimony of an attendant who has been summarily discharged for cause is usually dis¬ credited by that fact, but such is not the case with one who resigns. Institution Method and Spirit In taking charge of a great institution with a large force of employees, I appreciated the value of loyalty as an essential quality of institution life. But I did not at first realize the neces¬ sity of more than loyalty to the state and to the school. After a few months I became convinced that personal loyalty to myself as superintendent was even more essential, that I must deserve it and win it if I were to manage successfully. “Loyalty” is often misused and its meaning distorted. It is a matter of spirit not of letter and does not imply blind unthinking obedience. To obey an order which seems ill-advised or mistaken, perhaps even injurious, in stupid routine fashion is the very opposite of loyalty. 204 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded Occasionally at some moment of emergency, immediate, unques¬ tioning obedience may be necessary, as for instance, during a fire or when some other disaster impends ; but such moments are rare. True loyalty does not preclude question nor even constructive criticism. I told my subordinates that if they received an order which seemed to them ill-advised, one of four things had hap¬ pened; — either the order had been transmitted incorrectly: — or they did not understand it: — or they were mistaken in their estimate of it: — or because of lack of information or error of judgment the order was really ill-advised or mistaken. In any such case a faithful subordinate will believe that his chiefs intentions are good, and will ask for an explanation. The chief who does not give such explanations willingly and cheerfully is not fit for authority. Such a one may secure obedience, but he will never receive, nor will he deserve, the loyal support of his subordinates. One of the theories with which I began was that responsi¬ bility implies authority ; as I was responsible for the acts of my employees I must have full control over them. That led to a belief that a sort of benevolent autocracy is the best form of government for an institution. Of recent years I have seen reason to modify this theory and I know by the remarkable example of Vineland, that an intelligent, sympathetic and friendly democracy if it can be established, is better than the most benevolent absolutism. This does not mean that the spirit of the one in charge must not permeate and animate the whole organization. It is as true as when Carlyle said it, that "every good institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” But it does mean the spirit of co-operation, the devotion of all to a common purpose, so that the giving of orders is merely formulat¬ ing, making definite and arranging who shall do what every one wishes to have done. There’s a homely truth in the sailor’s adage that a new cap¬ tain should have a new crew. But I had a large staff and should I have wished to do so, could not replace them wholesale. To take on a new wholly inexperienced staff would have been sui¬ cidal. There were many details of the institution that at first I could not know, and so could not give orders about. I had to bide Adventures With Helpers 205 my time and often worry about things I saw were wrong but did not know how to right. When one’s staff is numerous it is difficult to keep in close personal relation with each one. Many orders must be trans¬ mitted thru department heads. On the one hand a chief must support the authority of his staff officers; on the other every subordinate must feel free to come to his chief if he has any ground for complaint. I tried various schemes to make it easy for subordinates to come to me for explanations or even with complaints, but I confess it was hard to gain their full confidence so that they would do this freely. One plan that worked well was that of employee’s meetings. At these they received general instructions about their duties and were encouraged to make suggestions for improved methods, whether for their own convenience or for the benefit of the chil¬ dren, or of the state, and every suggestion of merit was promptly adopted. In asking for suggestions I had a favorite story of meeting a girl between the kitchen and dining room where the door opened awkwardly, the collision involving spilling a bowl of soup and the indignant remark from the girl, “that door ought to open the other way,” to which I replied “Mary, it ought to and it shall,” and sent at once for the carpenter to make the change. I told them that if I would act on a suggestion from a feeble-minded girl I would surely welcome one from a strong minded employee. In this and other ways I did my best to secure not mere obedience, but hearty co-operation, which is as much more valuable as it is more difficult to obtain. My first matron often boasted of her loyalty and would declare that if the superintendent ordered her to transfer the contents of the attic to the cellar and of the cellar to the attic, she would do it and ask no questions. But her loyalty was all of the letter. On more than one occasion she transmitted orders to attendants the reason for which she did not understand and, on her theory of loyalty, could not ask. Some of these caused what seemed unnecessary inconveniences ; and then when the attendants grumbled she blamed the inconveniences on me saying the super¬ intendent’s orders must be obeyed without questioning. This roused natural and excusable resentment against what they thought my dictatorial methods. 206 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded This matron had had training in penal institutions; she was a strict disciplinarian but her influence in some ways was bad on the women employees. Her mental and spiritual attitude to the girls being what she had carried over from a prison; was quite inappropriate for our school. My predecessor as super¬ intendent had been a chaplain of a rather old fashioned reform school, all his training for institution affairs had been gained there and the matron having had similar training the govern¬ ment was too much one of repression. Corporal punishment was the usual thing for many offenses. Runaways had been frequent, especially among a group of larger boys who had been transferred as feeble-minded from a reform school. The general spirit of the administration was wrong. I had had little experi¬ ence to guide me and I confess that the gravamen of the situa¬ tion only dawned on me gradually. I was wise enough to go slowly. Changes must be well con¬ sidered for it is as hurtful to institution loyalty to re-install some method once discarded, as it is to re-employ some subor¬ dinate who has been discharged for cause. Better endure a faulty system for months, than try an experiment which fails and be obliged to go back to the plan it supplanted. We soon got rid of corporal punishment, unless for excep¬ tional offenders or very grave offenses, and then altogether. One of the evil methods I found concerned runaways, (or as we called them, “elopements” — I strictly forbade the word “escape”.) This had been introduced by the former superintendent out of his reform school experience. Fortunately these were exclusively of boys. The practice had been when a boy was missing from the grounds, to ring an alarm bell and send every available employee in vehicles or on bicycles to scour the neighboring roads and lanes, and when the runaway was not quickly found to send circular letters to the near-by chiefs of police and county sher¬ iffs describing the missing one and offering a reward for his return; then when he was brought back inflicting some condign punishment. This method was absurdly wrong. The excite¬ ment was bad for the morale of all and the truant enjoyed the adventure which made him of so much importance. Such a method might be necessary when a runaway was from a penal institution. It was ridiculously out of place in a school whose Adventures With Helpers 207 pupils were voluntarily admitted and could be withdrawn. Inci¬ dentally it was very bad publicity. After a third or fourth elopement subsequent to my taking charge I resolved that the procedure was so foolish that it must be changed at any hazard. One morning the boys’ supervisor came to the office in great excitement saying that Harry Black had run away again. He started for the bell rope but halted when I said quietly, “Mr. Knott, don’t ring that bell.” “But”, he said “what must we do, aren’t we going to catch him?” I replied “no, he is not a boy who will do any harm and he will come back soon or some one will bring him. There is going to be no more of this foolish excitement about a straying boy.” And sure enough about six o’clock Harry came back, very hun¬ gry, dirty and much disappointed. He had been hiding close to the road in the woods about a mile north, waiting to hear the alarm bell and to see the men in buggies and on bikes rushing out in search of him. The new plan worked and elopements lost their adventurous charm. One Saturday morning a boy from the third division came to the office to report that “Bobby Jackson is going to run away tonight.” Bobby was a high-grade imbecile of about fifteen with the curse of the wandering foot. He had run away from home, from an orphan asylum, from the reform school and once from the institution. I thanked the informant and gave him a stick of candy. Candy has a large function in a school for feeble¬ minded. Bobby’s parents lived only about three miles away, on a little farm on the road which passes the institution gates. After waiting an hour or two, so that he would not connect the call with the boy who told, he was sent for and asked how long it had been since he had seen his folks. He did not remember but his card record showed that it had been nearly two years. He was told it was too bad not to have seen his mother for so long and I said, “now, Bobby tomorrow (Sunday) morning put on your Sunday suit before breakfast instead of after, the gardener shall give you a bunch of carnations from the green house to take to your mother and you can spend the day at home.” Bobby was dazed ; he was planning to elope in his old clothes that night and was told to go the next day in his best attire. In the morning 208 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded he got his carnations his last inquiry being “when must I come back?” He was told when he was ready for supper or in time for bed. As he started he said, “Fm coming back,” and I said, “of course you are, I know that.” He reported at the office at about five o’clock that I might know he had kept his word. A few months later Bobby was transferred to Colonia where he became a member of the brick yard gang, from which privileged position no boy would be so foolish as to elope. Early one morning word came that four high-grade boys were planning their getaway. I went to the dining room at breakfast and made the assembled boys a speech. I told them I understood four of our company had planned to leave us that I hoped they would be happy and find jobs as good as they had here but that it was sometimes difficult to find the job you like, that outside people have to work hard for poor pay and often got food not so good as we were accustomed to. My only request to them was that they would call at my office to say good-bye, when I would have the cook put up a nice lunch for them and give them each a little money so that they might not go broke among strangers. The other boys saw the humor of the situa¬ tion and laughed the would-be travelers out of the adventure. One boy who had slipped away for a few days and returned very tired and hungry, was over-heard dissuading a comrade who contemplated a similar adventure saying, “you better not, Charlie, I tell you the world is a cold place for us boys.” After my second year elopements no longer annoyed. Only one big fellow ran off and stayed away and he was doubtfully feeble¬ minded enough to be a proper inmate of the institution. This method applied to morons and high-grade imbeciles who were the most likely to stray. The low-grade idiots might wander off as animals would leave their pasture when the gate was open, but any conscious effort to escape was beyond them and they were always in some one’s care. We had a very few boys of low mentality and desperately bad instincts with a crav¬ ing for liberty and cunning enough to make them a constant source of anxiety. These were always a danger since if they got away they were likely to do serious harm. When these escaped, which fortunately was very seldom, we made the most prompt and strenuous effort to return them. Our duty was 1 Adventures With Helpers 209 even more to protect the community, especially the children and property of our near neighbors, than to promote the welfare of the feeble-minded. But the very dangerous ones were so excep¬ tional and so few as not seriously to affect the general plan. The real way to retain the children is to make their life full of interest, and especially to arrange that there shall always be an event of joy in the near future. No one would run away just before Christmas, nor the Glorious Fourth, nor Washing¬ ton’s birthday, nor his own birthday party, nor before an enter¬ tainment in which he had a part to play. Then after a few post¬ ponements, the habit of staying gets stronger and stronger. Adolescence is the period of adventure for defectives as for nor¬ mals and as that wanes, and it wanes early in the feeble-minded, the urge of change dies out and is quite forgotten. Chapter Five THE ADVENTURE OF THE COLONY The institution was located just outside of Fort Wayne, on a fifty-five acre tract of sand hills. When I took it over it had nothing worth calling a farm. An extensive apple orchard had been set out on land ill adapted for that fruit and was practically worthless. The grounds had been poorly cared for, the exterior was bare and unattractive. My predecessor as superintendent had no taste for landscape gardening and defective vision kept him from noticing the poor work of the men he employed. Under these conditions it did not take more than ordinary ability and exertion to make things look better and after a few years systematic work, the front was covered with vines, trees were planted and cared for, flower beds bloomed and the general appearance was greatly changed. After my first year a farm two miles north was rented and the beginning of a farm colony was made. Then a better farm was chosen which was very suitable for a colony. It was held at a fair price; an option was secured, and the legislature of 1895 was asked for an appropriation. There was a tract of twenty acres in front of the institution which a member of my Board was determined to buy. This was held at a high figure and was wholly unsuitable for farming, being neither large enough nor the right kind of land. When the appropriation bill was in the Committee of the House, I told one of the members who was one of my enthusiastic supporters, of the danger of the money being wasted by the injudicious purchase of a small high-priced tract and got him to insert a clause in the act limiting the price per acre which might be paid, so that the Board could buy the land I wanted and could not buy the other. This clause escaped the notice of my Board member until the bill was passed and the Legislature had adjourned. He was very angry but altho he (210) The Adventure of the Colony 211 might have been suspicious he never accused me of what he called, “someone’s dirty trick.” The new farm which we called Colonia, was profitable to the state and a great boon to me. I sorely needed a hobby to take my mind off its overload of responsibility and in planning the buildings and the crops and the development of the herd of Holsteins, I spent many pleasant hours. The breeding of the herd was of absorbing interest. The heredity of cattle tho not so serious a matter as that of human beings especially feeble-minded ones, has many more satisfac¬ tions, because one may eliminate the culls and so control results. Because of lack of money I began with a few scrub cows picked up among my neighbor farmers, but Purdue University sold us a highly-bred bull at a nominal price; three pure bred cows were purchased at sales where bargain prices prevailed and the herd improved rapidly. When I resigned nine years later, I left a fine herd of high grades with many pure bred cattle all of which had cost the state very little. A few months after we begun dairying the farm supplied the school with abundant milk and a year or two later with all the hog products needed except an occasional tierce of lard ; and no one had better hams and bacon than those cured at Colonia. I had a good saddle pony and a ride out to Colonia before break¬ fast made a cheerful beginning of many a day’s hard work and every Saturday morning I spent at the farm. I kept the herd book and milk record myself partly because the head farmer was no book-keeper but chiefly because I enjoyed doing it. My best assistant was a moron boy who was devoted to me and to the cattle. He knew their breeding and could always tell the name of the dam of any calf. His memory was so accurate that more than once he corrected an error I had made in my record of the date at which a cow was due to freshen. Every one who has tried it seriously knows that a farm offers the best opportunity for the employment of feeble-minded labor. When we began the dairy I resolved that the morons and high grade imbeciles should be taught to do the milking. Fernald of Waverly, warned me that this was impracticable, he said the boys would dry up the cows that it was impossible to make a feeble-minded boy milk a cow clean that I should be compelled 212 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded to use hired help for the milking. But that would have upset my plans. I selected for overseer of the boys on the farm a competent attendant who had been highly successful with a division of older morons. He was farm bred had worked on a large dairy farm and was an expert milker so he knew both the boys and the cows and managed them equally well. We weighed and recorded the milk from each cow at each milking and this gave us a con¬ stant check on whether they were milked clean or not, and the close personal attention I gave to the dairy secured the regu¬ larity of the record. This was further checked by weighing in the total amount when it was received at the cold storage each morning, the figures being reported to me daily. All the heifer calves and the pure bred bulls, were given names and numbers as soon as dropped. The grade bull calves were disposed of at once. A few years later we were able to supply some of the other state institutions with well-bred bulls to head their dairy herds. The others were kept for service or sold to neighboring dairy farmers anxious to improve their stock. Every year at the County Fair the Colonia herd was well represented, and the boys who went to care for our exhibits were gratified by bringing home prizes we had won. Several blue ribbons decorated my little office at the farm| If the prize was in cash it was always used for some treat for the dairy hands. We early adopted the practice of weaning the calves from birth. Some of the boys got quite expert as dry nurses for the little animals and became very fond of them and the calves recip¬ rocated. It was pleasant to see two or three calves following a boy round the barn yard. A fondness for animal pets is a frequent trait among feeble-minded boys and girls, and it was easy to teach the boys to be kind to the animals and the dumb creatures responded. By taking the calves away from their mothers and transfer¬ ring the natural affection of the cow from her offspring to the boy who was to do the milking, the most friendly relations were established. Loud shouting, cursing, beating or kicking cows, never occurred at Colonia dairy. One day three boys strayed from the farm and asked a farmer a few miles away for work. As he was badly driven The Adventure of the Colont 213 at the time he gave them something to do, but presently came to the institution to report that he had the runaways. On being asked how he knew they belonged to us as they were dressed like common laborers and were able to work, he said that one of them refused a chew of tobacco; one had reproved his son for striking and shouting at a cow; and another had hit his thumb with a hammer and did not swear ; so he knew they must be from the feeble-minded school. He said if they had only worked as well as they behaved he would have liked to keep them, but he did not know as we did how to get work out of them. When they came home the next day they were complimlented on their good behavior and the fine reputation they had made for the insti¬ tution. The story of one of our best farm boys and his brother is an excellent illustration of the right way and wrong way of dealing with the feeble-minded. Jesse and Jerry White lived in a village in Southeastern Indiana. With an imbecile mother and a drunken father they grew up under as unfavorable conditions as could be imagined. When Jesse was fifteen and Jerry ten, they were caught in some offense and hailed before the court. Jesse was sentenced to the Reform School, whence in due time he graduated to the State Prison. When as Secretary of the Board of State Charities I made his acquaintance there he was serving his third short term. He was feeble-minded, but no one saw it, no one cared if they did. He was always in trouble, never could do his task, was frequently punished, whenever a legislative investigation was made Jesse was there with a tale of woe. As soon as one prison term ended he commited another offense. He spent much more of his life in prison than out of it. Finally he died of tuberculosis in the prison hospital. Jerry was just as feeble-minded as Jesse but had better luck. Instead of the reform school he was sent to an orphan’s home. There an intelligent matron recognized his mental defectiveness and he came to the School for feeble-minded. All attempts at ordinary education failed with Jerry, but he learned to work and soon became one of the most useful boys in the house. When Colonia began he was among the first colonists. He loved ani¬ mals, learned to drive and to care for a team. While reading and writing were far above his mental caliber, he soon could 214 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded harrow and plow and even use the one-horse cultivator in the corn field. He was faithful, cheerful, happy, contented and use¬ ful. He became very much attached to one of my sons who often spent his holidays working in the woods or the fields with the boys. One day Jerry said to me, “as long as you and Johnny Johnson stay here Fm going to stay too, but when you and Johnny Johnson quit, Fm going to quit.” One day Jerry was harrowing a field when his team became frightened and ran away dragging the harrow and Jerry who clung to the lines, half way across the field. Jerry got them subdued but in the struggle broke one of the bones in his hand. This was about ten o’clock in the morning. His hand hurt and began to swell up, but he went on harrowing. At noon he drove his team to the barn, watered and fed them and got his own dinner. When the bell rang at one o’clock, he hitched up and went back to the field. At four o’clock he reported to the head farmer “Mr. Reichelderfer, I’ve got that field done har¬ rowed and I broke my hand.” He was hustled down to the “big house” to the doctor and as the buggy came past the office I asked him what was the mat¬ ter. When he showed his hand swollen to three times its natural size and told me the story, I said, “oh, Jerry, you foolish boy, why didn’t you quit as soon as you hurt yourself?” He replied, “Mr. J ohnson I wanted to get that field done harrowed.” Jesse and Jerry were equally feeble-minded. If Jesse had had as good a chance as Jerry he might have been equally happy, equally useful. One was treated with dull, official, stupid routine, and the other with reasonable common sense and kind¬ ness. To Jerry the state was a kind mother, to Jesse she was a cruel or indifferent step-mother. The farm work offered many opportunities for festivals. The end of a harvest of any kind when a little extra exertion had been necessary was marked in some joyous way, some treat like ice cream or lemonade and cake for those who participated; a half holiday with a trip to the city at the end of silo filling or the hay harvest ; a day’s nutting in the woods with a picnic sup¬ per when the potatoes were all gathered in. The value of the “event of joy in the near future” was never disregarded. The Adventure of the Colony 215 Lumbering at Colonia One of the attractions of the Breckenridge farm was the presence of a good deal of standing timber which might be util¬ ized for the numerous buildings which a dairy farm requires in our cold Northern winters. Before the brick making began this seemed the best material for the purpose. A traveling saw-mill outfit was rented during each of two winters and nearly 200,000 feet of timber was cut and sawed. This cost only $4.00 per thou¬ sand feet, the rough work done by the boys and being in the winter teams were available for hauling without expense. The school had as head carpenter a man of great skill and ingenuity and the buildings he constructed were models. A big octagon barn with a fine stone basement for the cows, was quite a landmark in the neighborhood. After its completion a friendly contractor was asked for an estimate of its value ; and the actual cost which was closely computed showed a saving of about $3,000.00. Wagon sheds, calf houses and other necessary build¬ ings soon made a complete and handsome plant. Later after the brick making began, a slaughter house, milk house and some sheds were built of brick. The state by this time owned no other farm plant of equal value altho the total cost was less than any other. One of the first buildings was a circular silo which was the first silo owned by the state and the first circular silo in North¬ eastern Indiana. All this work was done without any special appropriations, this leading to the closest economy for only buildings that were actually needed were put up. This some¬ times resulted in accepting make-shifts afterwards to be dis¬ carded, but it had many compensating advantages. Fruit Growing as an Industry The farm was well adapted to fruit growing but its old orchard which had been a good one, was decaying. Many hun¬ dreds of trees were set out, chiefly apples and peaches but a variety of others were used. The planting was well done, our proportion of failures being below five per cent. After a few years the promise was good. My hope was to develop fruit grow¬ ing as a basic industry and add canning, drying and preserving; 216 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded the product after supplying the institution to be sold to the other schools and hospitals owned by the state, few of which were so favorably situated. I had resolved never to invade the ordinary avenues of commerce. There was market enough in the institutions in the capital city alone for a large output. I did not remain long enough to begin this plan much less to carry it out. The only thing done in the way of supplying other institu¬ tions, except the bulls mentioned above, was that for each of several years I was able to send a few barrels of sauer kraut to the Hospital for Insane at Easthaven, where “feeble minded kraut” became quite popular with the employees. A few years after I had left the School, about the time the new apple orchard I had planted came into bearing, Purdue University began an annual Apple Show with the purpose of encouraging fruit growing in the state and advertising the value of the soil and climate of Indiana for apple growing. The Colonia orchard competed and for two succeeding years won the best prizes. Two large silver cups now adorn the trustees Board room. After the second year the managers of the show ruled out all the state institutions from the competition. The first season that the peaches should have borne a full crop, three frosts on the nights of the 5th, 6th, and 7th of May, destroyed every one. Before the next season my service had terminated. One of the mortifications of my life occurred when it was reported to me that the Colonia peach orchard had borne a wonderful crop, but that hundreds of bushels had been allowed to rot under the trees. Success in so many and varied enter¬ prises needs a persistent driving energy on the part of the super¬ intendent which only the exceptional man possesses. Feeble-Minded Brickmakers The hope of finding or inventing some permanent and profit¬ able industries for the trained imbeciles and morons was always present in my mind. My theory of the possibility of their com¬ plete care depended on doing this. I wanted to graduate them to the colony as soon as they were ready and then keep them there, useful, happy and innocent, as long as they lived. After the farm was well established there came a chance to add at a very low price a forty acre tract that cornered into the The Adventure of the Colony 217 first purchase. An option was secured and later a legislative appropriation of $2,000.00. I had plans for a permanent pasture and an extensive apple orchard, Northern Indiana is one of the best apple growing districts in the world. Quite by accident I discovered that the land held a deposit of excellent brick-clay and here seemed a golden opportunity for profitable employment of some imbecile boys. The first step was to make sure of the quality of the clay. An old friend, Mr. Leonard of Fort Wayne, who had been making brick all his life was induced to visit the tract and examine the clay. His verdict was that it was the best he had ever seen, being free from the small limestone pebbles which spoil so many bricks. He declared that had he known of this bed of clay so near to the city, he would have been glad to buy it at double the amount it had cost the state as his own clay land was exhausted and he was about retiring from business. We bought a second hand plant at a nominal price; when installed ready for work it had cost less than $200.00. With a hired foreman and a force of ten morons and imbeciles, the work began in May 1897 and went on until the autumnal frosts. Our lumbering operations had left a supply of firewood that needed little but hauling. The first season we made 350,000 bricks of fair merchantable quality which cost the state $1.10 per thou¬ sand, the estimate including every expense but the boys’ labor; the profit paying the cost of the plant several times over. The first bricks we made were used at the institution for some minor building, for flooring the extensive cellars, for sidewalks around the houses, and for the floor of a vegetable preparing room. I had learned from Patten of the Southern prison, a method of making a cheap floor by laying bricks on a good foun¬ dation and then slushing the surface with a thin cement. While not so smooth as a trowelled cement pavement this can be flushed and is equally sanitary. The next season the work began as early as the weather would allow and half a million bricks were made. These cost a little more than those of the previous year as we had to buy some firing, but the cost was less than $2.50 per thousand, the market price was then about $6.50, so that the net profit was about the same as the first year. 218 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded During subsequent winters we got our firewood for the brick yard by buying by the acre the tops left after lumbering opera¬ tions by our neighbors within eight or ten miles. The boys would drive to the place early in the morning, spend the day chopping and sawing, make a fire and enjoy a picnic dinner in the woods. They were all well clad, with “felts” and “overs” to keep their feet warm in the snow. We managed to keep the cost of our firing below two dollars a full cord, and it was splendid winter work for the brick yard gang and greatly enjoyed by them. Visions of extensive improvements began to dawn on my mind. With abundant bricks at so cheap a price, with labor available for excavating, hauling and all rough work, it seemed that the development of the institution was assured so far as buildings go. When I went before the legislative committee I showed them samples of the bricks I had made and a card-board model % inch to the foot of the cottage I next wanted to build. I got their hearty approval and they gave me the modest appropriations I asked. It was the way of development and I did it year after year until in 1901 an economical Governor forbade the method, which he imagined led the Ways and Means Committee into extravagance. The third year I induced the Board to buy a modern soft-mud plant, with a 20 H. P. gasoline engine and the Mock system of carriers and dry sheds; the whole equipment costing about $5,000.00. A permanent kiln was built and thereafter for five years the yearly tale of brick was one million. It would have been easy to sell the output at a handsome profit. I had been offered $6.50 per thonsand in the spring for all on hand the pur¬ chaser to do the hauling; but I hoped to get appropriations for several buildings and more over I did not wish to incur the ani¬ mosity of the labor unions, which so far were on my side. When the new law allowed the commitment of adult females it was necessary to build a cottage for them. By this time I had learned a good deal about the trade of brick-making and I deter¬ mined that the bricks for the new cottage should be the best and handsomest soft-mud bricks ever seen in Indiana. Now the color of bricks depends mainly on the sand used in the moulds and a car load of special sand was secnred. But important factors are The Adventure op the Colony 219 the burning and the cooling. When the kiln designed for the new cottage was nearly burned, I went to the brick yard one Satur¬ day afternoon and found the kiln closed the burning was sup¬ posed to be done* The foreman had been watching the fires day and night and was asleep. I climbed to the top of the kiln and was not satisfied with the “settle”. (We tell when the bricks are burned enough by the amount of settling, as the bricks shrink in burning.) I told the assistant to open the kiln mouths and continue firing until I ordered him to stop. The firing was kept up until Tuesday morning, when another inspection showed a perfect settle. Then the foreman was ordered to close the kiln and not to open it till it became per¬ fectly cool, which took three weeks. An earlier opening, by admitting cold air on hot bricks, would cause some to crack and discolor. The result was a kiln of 350,000 with an almost unheard of proportion of “line brick” i. e., fit for the face of the wall ; and of the most beautiful color. The only fault ever found with them was by the masons, who grumbled because they could not cut them with their trowels, but had to use the hammers. The evening following the closing of the kiln the brick yard gang had their usual treat. Hot coffee and doughnuts, weiner- wurst, potatoes baked in the ashes in front of the kiln doors followed by songs and recitations was the regular program. It was a sort of “Harvest Home” for the brick yard, a celebration of Colonia’s most profitable and most certain crop. While the cottage was building for which these fine bricks the best ones we ever turned out were made, a business man driving past saw what he thought were costly pressed bricks being used and reproached a member of the Board for extrava¬ gance and would not believe the bricks were made by feeble¬ minded boys until he was taken to the brick yard and shown them at work. Feeble-Minded Laborers and the Labor Unions When Labor day of 1894 was approaching, I was waited on by a delegation of union officials who begged that the Institution band might march with and play for the Parade. I asked them if they had engaged all the Union bands. On being assured of the fact I consented to join the march. Then they asked how 220 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded much I should charge for the boys’ services, I answered, “not one cent, but you may give them their lunch, and pay the leader $5.00 for his work”. To this they gladly assented and the feeble¬ minded band in their handsome uniforms led the Parade. I also sent as many of the male employees as could be spared and as cared to go, altho of course they were not unionized. Thereafter I made a point of employing strictly union labor about the institution so far as it was available. I found it the most trustworthy and satisfactory that could be had. The friendly relations thus begun were kept up. The boys were allowed to work as laborers side by side with union men whenever building which was not under contract was going on and that meant all our smaller jobs. Union bricklayers even accepted our boys’ services as tenders, never asking to see their union cards. During the legislative session of 1899, I was present for a few days in the interest of the appropriations. A certain amount of lobbying was then considered proper for each institution head. When Governor Durbin came in in 1901 this was sternly for¬ bidden by him and the institutions frequently suffered in conse¬ quence. The president of the United Labor Trades of Fort Wayne was there looking after some labor bills and I, knowing the man for a good citizen, was able to be of service to him by introducing him to some of the senators and representatives many of whom I knew quite well. About the time to begin operations in the following Spring these friendly relations were well established. But I was plan¬ ning to use my boys’ labor on an extensive scale and there was danger of union brick-layers not only refusing to work with them, but even that they might decline to lay bricks made by non-union labor. I invited my friend the Labor President to visit the school and took him all over the plant, showing him the work the boys and girls were doing and explaining my plans for utilizing imbe¬ cile labor, in all of which he showed deep interest. Then after giving him a good dinner I drove him out to the brick yard. The story of its rise and progress made a great impression on him. Then back at the office over a good cigar, I laid my plans before him. I told him, that the facts of making our own bricks and of the available labor capacity of the boys, were strong The Adventure of the Colony 221 arguments with the legislature in securing appropriations for buildings whose cost to the state could be so largely reduced. Then I said “the success of all this depends on your labor men. You know I have never employed non-union men if I could help it. If you will get your union brick-layers to agree to use the bricks my boys make and let them help with the work, I can get appropriations to do a lot of building and employ your members at good wages. But if your union men turn me down, a great deal of work, not only for masons, but carpenters, plumbers and others, that they might otherwise have had, will be impossible.” With homely fervor he replied, “Mr. Johnson, we are with you till hell freezes over”. And he kept his word. When other people were having all kinds of labor trouble the feeble-minded boys were working along with union men without friction or any trouble (except that the men would give the boys chewing tobacco) and most of the union workmen really seemed to take pride in doing a good job for the state. Chapter Six ADVENTURES IN CONSTRUCTION A live institution is a growing one and growth at Fort Wayne, when it began was rapid. While nobody knew how many feeble¬ minded children there were in the state it was evident that the number was much greater than the school had room for, and there was always a long waiting list. So the urge to extend our accommodations was always present. Unfortunately the trustees when planning the institution, had followed the pattern set by the school at Columbus, O., which was a large, three-story and basement, congregate building with two wings and the administration part connecting them. This had been the typical institution plan when the Ohio school was built. It is one which appeals to anfbitious architects and to trustees who love to see their names chiselled on the front pillars of a pretentious edifice. The instinct to build themselves monu¬ ments is very frequent in people who have the spending of public funds ; and there are always enterprising citizens who want show places in and near their city. The money which has been wasted in architectural display on ostentatious institution buildings, would provide accommodation for many of the unfortunates who are debarred admission to the institutions because there is no room for them. As the Ohio school was famous it was copied in many states besides Indiana. But in the intervening years since that school was built, the cottage plan of simple construction ; first designed for orphan asylums and then adapted for all kinds of institutions, had been invented; and its many advantages gave it the lead with pregressive Boards. And the Indiana trustees were all the more blameworthy when they allowed a routine architect to build them a somewhat inadequate specimen of an obsolescent type, that they were actually occupying a partly finished plant on the cottage plan, at Richmond, which had been designed for the (222) Adventures in Construction 223 insane by Dr. Joseph G. Rogers, one of the great constructive institution men of the country. However it ill becomes me to blame the Board for what it did for a few years later when I was planning Colonia I made a similar grave error. Sunset Cottage The first extensive building operation when the brick yard supplied material, was a cottage for low-grade imbecile and idiot girls. This had a choice location on a hill north of the main buildings and was well designed and very cheaply, almost too cheaply, constructed. It would have been wiser to spend a little more on outside appearance, even had the capacity been restricted to come within the meager appropriation. However as it was in the rear of the plant and chiefly visible from the road some distance away, this was not a serious fault. The most important part of the house, the inside, was satisfactory. The cottage got its name from the fact that it faced the West and commanded a beautiful view, especially in the evening as the sun went down. There is no better method of employing the elder children than to use them in caring for the younger and feebler of their kind and twelve girls who had lived from two to six years as inmates, were installed at Sunset as “aids”. The womjan in charge of the cottage being called the House Mother, these girls were given the title of “Sunset Sisters”. That may seem a senti¬ mental name for moron girls, but no one who has seen the sisterly way in which the better ones among them minister to one who is afflicted, for instance to an epileptic in a spasm, to a paralytic in the bath tub, or to a helpless idiot, who must be fed at the table, will think it unfitting. Everything that could be devised to make the position attractive was done. To become a Sister was a valued promotion. There were other inmate workers in the cottage besides the Sisters, but they slept in the dormitories with the idiot children. The Sisters were treated as much as possible like employees. They were to all intents assistant attendants. They slept in small rooms with two cots in each. Two girls shared a dresser, each having her own drawers. They were encouraged to make their 224 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded rooms gay with flowers and pictures. At Christmas time the letter to Santa Claus from the Sisters was always answered in full. It was a happy and useful relationship. But it was not only the morons who were useful aids, many of the imbeciles even of pretty low grade, were trained in house¬ work and were proud of the work they did and eager for a word of appreciation and praise. Pearl, an imbecile of three years mental age but a big strong girl, had in her charge a wash room in the basement. Whenever I visited Sunset she would tell me what “your Mudder”, (by which she meant Mrs. Johnson) had said about her work and would implore me to come and see how well she had “sham- pooned de basement”. Then next day she would tell my wife what “your Fadder” had said, how I had “bragged on de base¬ ment”.* Most appealing of all the touching sights in the institution, is to see the tenderness and patience exercised by a big over grown man-baby or woman-baby, towards a tiny child-baby when put in their care. The maternal instinct is almost always pres¬ ent, and is often as strong in the males as in the females ; fortu¬ nately for them and for us it is much stronger than the sex instinct. Here is a place which the imbecile can fill often as well as, and certainly more willingly than a hired helper. For the one thing the feeble-minded child, like every other child, must have, no matter how many so-called necessaries he can do with¬ out, is love from the one who tends him. With whatever defects the capacity to love and the craving for being loved, are usually present in the feeble-minded. One of the pathetic questions I used to hear often as I went among mly children was, “do you like me?” The need of someone to love her and whom she can love, which in the outer world so often betravs the feeble-minded girl in the institution may make her chief usefulness. When we take a child from his natural surroundings because they are uncleanly and his mother is ignorant, hardly knowing how to feed herself, still less him ; and place him under perfectly sanitary conditions on a scientifically accurate diet but without •At a recent visit, September 21, 1922, I found Pearl, still a useful worker, still, so she told me, “shampooning de basement” and when I told her “my Mudder” was dead, she cried. Adventures in Construction 225 mother love; we may be supplying his lesser needs, and taking from him the most essential thing in life. Many of our imbeciles were taught to wait on and care for the idiots, some of whom were quite helpless. Lucinda was about twenty-five, tall and strong, usually cheerful and good natured with a mentality below six years on the Binet scale. Her work in life was the care of Mary, a helpless idiot of forty-five, speech¬ less, ugly, deformed, unable to do one hand’s turn for herself, who had to be washed and tended like a baby. Bepulsive as the task of caring for such an idiot would have been to a normal person, Lucinda loved Mary as a mother loves her baby and found nothing disgusting in what she did for her. Every morning when the whistle blew she rose and after her own toilet, carried Mary to the bathroom washed and dressed her. When the breakfast bell rang, Lucinda put Mary in her wheel-chair, took her to the dining room and fed her. After breakfast, an airing on the gravel walk, or if it rained, under the corridor. On the monthly weighing day Lucinda wheeled Mary along¬ side the platform scale, took her in her arms, stepped with her onto the scale, and then, putting her back, stepped on alone. She knew the difference was Mary’s weight and was proud and happy when Mary had gained half a pound. But Lucinda had one fault, she would sometimes get very angry and when in her “tantrums” would tear up her clothes. On one such occasion an attendant put her in a “quiet room”, one well lighted and warmed but without furniture, a usual mild, disciplinary method. Going back in an hour or two, she found her sitting in the corner stark naked with all her clothing, except the soles of her shoes, in tiny shreds in a heap on the floor. Now a superintendent’s prime qualification is to know what to do when nobody else does, and Lucinda was brought to me for treatment. We had just opened a new cottage for adult females and Mary’s age entitled her to admission. I knew how Lucinda loved the poor creature so I said to her, “now Lucinda, the next time you tear up your clothes I shall take Mary away from you and put her in ‘Harper Lodge’. Whereupon Lucinda wept copi¬ ously and begged me not to take Mary away promising she would never again be guilty. The threat was enough. Thereafter if any evidence of destructiveness appeared, a reminder of the danger of losing Mary always had the desired effect. 226 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded The idiots and imbeciles were well cared for in Sunset Cot¬ tage, and the per capita cost was the lowest of any department of the institution except that of Colonia. I was rather proud to believe that no others of the class, in any institution I had ever seen, were so well cared for made as nearly happy as they, and none who had anything like adequate care, cost the taxpayers so small an amount each. Harper Lodge and the Adult-Females Of all the many classes of defective people, the one most need¬ ing the care and protection of the state, is that of the adolescent and post-adolescent female imbeciles and morons. No other class is so easily and so sadly victimized. If not protected they will be the mothers of the next generation of mental defectives. They are a much greater source of danger to the community than the male imbeciles; and this is not because of vicious tendencies in themselves. There is a common opinion that the feeble-minded are excessively erotic, but this is erroneous; the sexual urge in them is usually less strong than in the normal. What seems eroticism is really weakness of self-control. While the mother of a feeble-minded child is usually a feeble-minded woman, the father is usually of a different class. Only an extremely depraved woman will have illicit relations with an imbecile man ; but the imbecile girl is recognized as proper sexual prey by many boys and men who pass muster as ordinary citizens, as well as by more depraved beings. At the legislative session of 1901, with the help of the Board of State Charities, the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, and some other organizations of socially minded people; I succeeded in getting a law for the reception by commitment of feeble¬ minded females, between the ages of 15 and 45, to be held until in the judgment of the Board, it was best for them or for the state, that they should be discharged. All the previous receptions had been by simple admission of children below 16, the parents or guardians applying having the right of withdrawal. The bill carried a modest appropriation for building and by this time I had become a capable designer. We engaged an architect of great ability and he welcomed my floor plans and drafted a cottage to fit them. The design was simple but attrac- Adventures in Construction 227 tive, the bricks had been made with special care as told in the chapter on the brick yard ; and the cottage was the best building on the grounds and considering its quality much the most eco¬ nomically constructed. It was named Harper Lodge in honor of the gracious lady who was the woman member of the Board and whose never failing sympathy and appreciation were most helpful to the matron and superintendent in their arduous duties. The capacity of the cottage was 124 beds. It was opened in August, 1902, and in a few days sixty new-comers were received. The new class of “children”, with the new cottage designed espe¬ cially for them, presented a fine opportunity to try out some of the theories about the care of adult female imbeciles, which had long been seething in my brain. These new children, aged 15 to 45, were received with some apprehension. It had been proved quite feasible to control and employ adults who had grown up from childhood of body in the institution and who were therefore “institutionized”. For nor¬ mal children to be institutionized is a calamity, it unfits them for the rude shocks of the outer world which come when they leave their safe harbor. But to the feeble minded who should never be exposed to those rude shocks, it is the best thing that can happen. Institutionism means submission to control, cheer¬ ful obedience to command and the life of the feeble-minded to be happy, safe and successful, needs just these conditions and needs them permanently. Now we were to care for a group of adults in body, children or babes in mind, who had never felt the gentle but firm influence of good institution life. Many of them had come from the worst kind of environment. A few of them were helpless idiots but many were capable physically and even mentally, of a good deal of usefulness. How to control these new children, how to dis¬ cover and develop their capacities, were problems which were faced with some anxiety. Fortunately for me I had in my wife a helpmate of rare quality, resourceful, capable and with a heart full of sympathy for all under her care. Wordsworth might have known her when he wrote, “A noble creature wisely planned, To guide, to comfort and command.” Adventures Among the Feeble Minded The personnel of the new cottage was chosen with great care. The house mother was Miss Battershall, whose name I write with affection and respect. She had been head attendant of a division of moron girls, whom she managed admirably since she secured their love as well as their obedience. The assistants were chosen for proved ability and loyalty. Then for the house¬ work of the cottage, ten moron girls who had grown up and been well trained in the institution were drafted as aids. The task was not only to care for the new inmates but to develop their capacity. Mrs. Johnson and Miss Battershall set themselves to it and were successful far beyond my most enthu¬ siastic hopes. By the end of the first year the cottage was full ; the new-comers had been trained to do the housework so that not only had the ten aids been returned to the main building but three of the new ones had been transferred there for useful employment. One of the perennial worries in most institutions comes from the laundry work. The amount of it is so great and increases so rapidly in a growing plant that it is hard to keep up with it. At Harper Lodge the children were trained to do their own washing. A simple hand-laundry was equipped in the basement and beginning with their hose, then their underwear, in a few months they were washing, starching and ironing all their clothes. The mending room underwent a similar evolution. Imbeciles who had never seen a needle were taught, often to their great delight, what sewing can do. The dining room, scullery, and kitchen were controlled by one head cook who marshalled a force of ten children and taught them to help in the kitchen and to wait at table. The cottage grounds were ornamented with flowers and shrubs tended by the children. Two acres of good land which had been in field crops for several years, were plowed and turned over to the cottagers. Miss Battershall was a farmer’s daughter and loved gardening, and under her care the children planted, hoed and cropped. Their garden was always ahead of the others on the estate, they were proud of the earliest radishes, the best lettuce and finest tomatoes. The experiment was a most grati¬ fying success. Adventures in Construction 229 Incidentally the per capita cost was remarkably low, the number of employees being the minimum and the proportion of self-help the maximum of any department of the institution. It was an emphatic demonstration of how to care for adult feeble¬ minded females. Out of the success of Harper Lodge came a day dream of the future which I did not live in the institution long enough to make into a reality. The vision was of a colony with hundreds of girl colonists; the employees of every grade including engi¬ neers and farm managers, to be women. The industries to be first, the laundry for the Colony and also for the rest of the institution; which by that time would have grown to 2,000 inmates ; then the making of clothing for all ; then fruit growing, canning, preserving and drying; then poultry raising. I had actually selected the site for the colony houses on a hill in plain view of the high-road, but separated from it by a large field and then a wide brook which should serve as a moat and also as a fish preserve; perhaps even as a swimming pool; all to be sur¬ rounded by a stout ten-foot barb wire fence which should be the stay of a high mock-orange hedge. I dreamed of calling it “The Grange” and using as a motto a quotation from Tennyson’s Marianna in the Moated Grange “He cometh not, she said”. It was to be a place where no male came; where there could be absolute freedom within the sacred enclosure. I believed, aud still believe, that such a colony would be one of the most valuable investments any state could make; that once equipped the cost would be insignificant since the industries would nearly support it, while the benefit to the state in preventing the propagation of what would otherwise be the next generation of idiots and imbe¬ ciles would be incalculable. The probability of the prevention of feeblemindedness by sterilization is so remote; the possibility of prevention by segre¬ gation so positive ; that altho I fear I shall not live to see it I am optimistic enough to believe that some day it will be effected in many states on some such plan as my dream of the Moated Grange. The development of low-grade labor illustrated in the story of Harper Lodge, was typical of all parts of the institution. There was nothing more satisfactory than this. It was not merely 230 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded that waste humanity was salvaged and made of use, but the gain in the life and happiness of the laborers was still more gratify¬ ing. To see a big uncouth idiot boy, who had always been an eye¬ sore; with his clothes unbuttoned, his shoes unlaced, slobbering and dirty; transformed into a decent-looking laborer shoveling clay into a wagon at the brick yard or gathering up and piling firing in the woods ; was one of the sights that made the thought and effort which had produced the result well worth while. And such things were done more and more as knowledge and experi¬ ence showed the way. I felt that the degree to which the lower grades could be employed, and the amount of increased happiness and fulness of life which would result from such employment, were still unknown. The more it was tried the more it was found possible. I had set this before myself as one of my main tasks and had the satisfaction that comes of real achievement. I honestly believed that no other institution of the kind in the land had done better and very few as well in the useful and happy employment of its inmates. It was a saddening commentary on institution management when I was told by the superintendent who followed my imme¬ diate successor, that when he assumed control, which was ten years after my resignation, he found the employment of the inmates the very weakest department of the institution. s The House at Colonia In the winter of 1896 a bequest of $1,000.00 came to the School from a citizen of DeKalb county. The farm house at Colonia could only shelter twenty boys and I was anxious to develop the plant, especially in view of our long waiting list which , about that time contained over 200 names. So the money was used to begin a house which later grew to be a handsome structure, too large to be justly called a cottage tho no larger than many houses called by that name at other institutions and at our own. All the numerous farm buildings which were constructed, barns, stables, etc., well served their purpose, they were models of efficiency and economy. But I have no greater regret about anything connected with my institution experience than of a radical error in planning the main house at Colonia. Instead of attempting the small cottage plan I began a congregate build- Adventures in Construction 231 ing, which altho when completed later looked well from the road and had many convenient features, was never what might have been had I been true to the best I knew. And some disastrous consequences which followed have left bitter memories. We had a tiny appropriation that year for unspecified “Improvements”. This with the bequest was enough to build one wing; and we had to save from maintenance appropriation to complete it. „ It was hard to get money to go on with the work and some unlawful debts were contracted forestalling hoped for appropriations which failed us. It was necessary either to do this or to expose an unfinished house to the winter storms; and the latter seemed the greater evil. Had I foreseen all the con¬ sequences I should have made a very different choice of evils. Chapter Seven ADVENTURES IN NUTRITION One of the constant cares of the head of an institution is the food supply, both for the inmates and the employees. Any man can lead a horse to water but no one can make him drink. The most careful and scientific dietary is valueless unless your people eat it. The dyspepsia which is one of the chronic institution troubles among both inmates and employees, is often due at least to some extent to the deadly monotony of the diet; a weekly repetition of the same bill of fare which you may not choose for yourself, sometimes eaten with a grudge against some dish which you don’t like but which comes along in regular sequence. This violates the rule “now good digestion wait on appetite and health on both”. So it is not enough that the dietary contain the requisite number of calories and the various salts and vitamines, it must also taste good and be varied. One of my many day dreams of the future which I did not live long enough in the institution to attempt was of a possible a la carte service for the employees tables, with a price set against each dish and a definite allowance for each person, from which each might save if he would or exceed if he chose to pay the difference. When I took charge in J uly 1893, in dining room Q, where the attendants and industrial people ate, for four years beefsteak had been served for breakfast 364 days in the year; on each Easter Sunday morning they had eggs for a change. I began to give them a reasonable variety using broiled ham, bacon and eggs and other appetizing dishes, with always fish on Friday. An attendant who left the service for that of a hospital for insane, told a friend that she liked insane people to work for better than the feeble-minded, but she did wish the hospital had the Fort Wayne bill of fare. (232) Adventures in Nutrition 233 Much of the dislike of certain dishes is purely psychological and that is the hardest to overcome and the children are not the worst food faddists. One good food which is absurdly unpopular in Indiana, is mutton. Now mutton or lamb, is the best of the meats, most easily digested, making the best stews and broths, as well as roasts. I wanted to use it at least as often as pork which with the possible exception of veal, is the only meat as popular as beef (except of course chicken which belongs on Sun¬ day). It was possible by careful camouflaging to get the children to eat mutton, but with the employees except those of the higher grades, it could not be done. On one occasion some very choice young lamb was served in dining room Q. A woman attendant was eating it supposing it to be veal and remarked to a neighbor on what nice veal we were getting. She was overheard by a moron waitress who said, “Oh, Mrs. McChesney, that’s not veal it’s lamb”. Whereon the lady pushed back her plate and said “I never could eat lamb”. When I succeeded in growing asparagus I was delighted when the crop became adequate for the tables in the rear-center as well as the front-center, dining rooms. The first batch served in Q, was thrown away because it “tasted bitter”. Thenceforth this choicest of vegetables was used only in the front-center and on the tables of the feeble-minded children. As a small boy in my English home the main element of breakfast used to be a bowl of oatmeal porridge. When I under¬ took to feed children by the hundred, I naturally thought of the good food which old Sam Johnson said was eaten by horses in England and by men in Scotland ; which gave Boswell the chance for one of his most brilliant retorts, “and where will you find such men and where such horses?” The feeble-minded children objected to any cereal but rice which is the poorest in food ele¬ ments of all and they shared Sam Johnson’s opinion about oat¬ meal. I declared to my staff that the children were going to eat oatmeal and relish it. I was told it could not be done, it had been tried in vain; to put oatmeal mush on their tables was to waste it. But I told them it had not been tried my way. I selected for my experiment half of a division of little boys, at a table of sixteen. I told the attendant and his wife (for little boys a married couple is preferred.) what I intended to do. 234 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded They were skeptical but were loyal people and agreed to try. I impressed upon them that they must tell the children the new food was good and must sedulously ignore previous failures to use it. The morning of the experiment I went to the boys big dining room where 240 ate, making sure that the mush was thoroly cooked well salted in the cooking and served hot. Then a small serving was given each child with milk and syrup poured on it and the attendants and I urged the children, who at first refused, just to taste it. One of the brightest of them, a little moron who was the leader of the group, stoutly refused, setting his face like a flint. I put my arm around his neck, pried his mouth open and put in a spoonful with plenty of milk and syrup on it. The little chap gulped it down smacked his lips and said so all the table could hear, “gee, you know what’s good to eat”, and the victory was won; that very first morning all sixteen at that table ate their oatmeal. The second morning thereafter it was served again at the same table with equal success and so on for six days each alternate morning. Then the other boys of the same group asked for it and for two weeks it was restricted to division one. By this time all the other boys knew what a choice delicacy was being reserved for the little chaps, and wanted to know why they could not have some also. Then in a week or two the girls had heard the news and put in a claim for their dining room. Thenceforth that best of cereals was used about twice a week. An intelligent woman attendant who had charge of a division of low-grade children, noticed that about 10 :30 each morning her charges became restless and hard to control. She suggested that she thought they were hungry, (they were of too low a grade to tell their wants), and asked to be allowed to give them a lunch. This worked so well that it quickly spread thru the institution and the 10:30 lunch became general. One morning a visitor to the school, who had always been critical and rather unfriendly to me, walked over to witness the excavation being made for a new cottage. This was particularly interesting because the dirt was being removed in little trucks on a temporary railway, to fill up an unsightly hollow. About five employees and twenty- five boys were at the work. As he was commenting on the display of engineering, a boy arrived with a basket of lunch for the Adventures in Nutrition 235 laborers. Such consideration for imbeciles struck the visitor as so remarkable that he was completely converted and became as enthusiastic over my management as he had formerly been critical. In choosing a balanced ration when economy of cost must be considered, a serious problem is the supply of protein. For that, meat is always available and always eaten, but it is the most costly part of the diet. Beans, which supply ample protein can¬ not be used often because of digestive disturbances. Salt cod fish, a cheap food, rich in protein, and which Eastern institutions use freely, is unpopular and practically unusable in Indiana. It is inevitable in institution cooking on a large scale that much of the meat must be served in stews and hashes, and these are often made with so little variety of flavor that the inmates get very tired of them. I used the time honored Irish Stew and Hun¬ garian Goulash and taught the cooks other kinds to which I gave attractive names and in which while the ingredients were the same the appearance, odor and flavor were distinctive. I early established the custom of weighing each child, on admission and monthly thereafter. I was particularly careful that an ample supply of pure drinking water be always avail¬ able, and discountenanced and abolished the institution habit of refusing a drink to a thirsty child near bedtime. I had reduced the proportion of meat in the dietary to what I believed was a reasonable minimum. One day I got a letter from Butler, Secretary of the Board of State Charities, asking my opinion on the relative proportions of meat per day, per inmate, in the twelve State Institutions, with a chart showing the quan¬ tity used in each. The highest amount was nineteen ounces in one of the hospitals for insane, the lowest seven ounces which was in my school. Mr. Butler, I have no doubt, intended his letter as a gentle criticism of my supposed over zealous economy, tho he did not say so. I answered his letter saying there was evidently gross waste in some of the institutions; reminded him that the U. S. Army ration was sixteen ounces of beef or twelve of pork. I said that while the ration of the children could not be worked out so accu¬ rately in terms of proteids, carbo-hydrates and fats as that of the cows and must after all be done somewhat by rule of thumb 236 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded or of trial and error, I believed that when children showed steady and satisfactory gain in weight and looked well; they were prob¬ ably well fed. I enclosed a statement showing for the past two years the average increase in weight of the children who were gaining ; and an explanation, as for instance that they were sick in the hos¬ pital, or full grown, of those cases where the weight was station¬ ary. I called his attention to the fact that my use of milk was much greater per capita, than that of any other institution ; that many of my inmates were small children and many epileptics for whom meat must be used sparingly. I said that in my opin¬ ion the purpose of meat in an institution dietary is rather to furnish flavor than sustenance. I reminded him that some very robust races of men eat very little meat and that there are many vegetarians whose preference for vegetable food is not mere sentiment but is based on convictions of its value. Then I said I would give him two instances, one ancient and one modern, of vegetarian diet which seemed to have resulted satisfactorily. The modern instance was that of a 100 mile road race in Germany, where of the ninety-three competitors, the first three at the post had trained on a vegetable diet. The ancient one was the well known case of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed- nego told in the book of Daniel, who when they refused to eat the King’s meat and drink the King’s wine preferring to be fed on peas and beans (pulse) not only showed more flesh and better complexions than their carnivorous competitors, but also devel¬ oped a remarkable ability to stand fire. Butler never answered my letter, but I read his challenge and my answer, to my own Board, whom I always tried to keep en rapport with whatever came from the Board of State Charities, one of whom was almost a vegetarian, and another a lady who had advanced views on diet of children which quite agreed with my own. One valid reason for dairying and fruit growing on an insti¬ tution farm inheres in the fact that there are certain articles of diet, which, while they are valuable and palatable, are rather costly to buy and are on the verge of being considered delicacies. This should certainly not be the case with milk which is the most important element of children’s food. Yet it is true that very few of the institutions which do not produce their own Adventures tn Nutrition 237 supply, buy as much milk as it would be well for them to use. This is still more true about fresh fruit. Most schools use as many dried peaches and prunes as they think desirable, but unless they grow their own strawberries and blackberries the supply of these is never adequate. The price to the consumer of many articles of diet, is based as much on the cost of transportation and merchandising as on that of production. When food is used on the farm where it is grown, these added charges are eliminated, so that even if the first cost is a little more on the institution farm than on one where the owner is the farmer and his whole energies are given to producing the crop at the lowest cost; yet the final expense is much less. When I told my Board I wanted a farm they asked if I could make farming pay. I told them that with a home market at highest market price for everything we could raise; with no expense for hauling or selling; if an institution farm with an abundant supply of free common labor and moderately good man¬ agement does not pay; then surely the farmers of the country must be on the verge of bankruptcy. One of the problems of the commercial small-fruit grower is to find a supply of pickers. We trained our children, especially the little girls to this work and the berrv-picking season was a time of joy. The best way to get work done at any rate by feeble¬ minded children, is to make it a privilege and a play. Straw¬ berry picking was one of the little festivals of which I made use to keep in touch with my children. I would start out a group of thirty or forty little girls to the patch, first giving them a story of what they were to do and exacting a solemn promise that they would put two berries in the basket for every one they ate. After the second or third day’s picking this restriction was not needed. T have known of children who worked at berry-picking being punished if they were caught eating one but T remembered my own childhood, as well as the Scriptural command, “thou shalt not muzzle the ox when be treadeth out the corn”. Chapter Eight AN ADVENTURE IN INVESTIGATION There is a French proverb which says one must not speak of a rope in the house of a man who has been hanged. For years the word “investigation” was taboo in my household. I who as Secretary of the Board of State Charities had conducted investi¬ gations of others, became the subject of one myself. Altho I came out of it easily and its net results were fortunate both for me and for the institution, yet the operation was painful while it lasted. It happened that the Republicans won the general election in 1894 and for the first time in many years had a majority in the legislature, altho the Democratic Governor had still two years to serve. In 1889 a Democratic legislature had taken from a Republican Governor the power of appointing trustees for the State institutions but two years later a Democratic Governor had been elected and the appointing power replaced where it properly belonged. Now the conditions of 1889 were reversed, the Governor was a Democrat, the General Assembly had a Republican majority. Some of the party henchmen were eager to give the Democrats a dose of their own medicine by taking the Governor’s power away; and then to make a clean sweep of every possible Democratic office holder. The matter was hotly debated. The better Republicans opposed the nefarious design which was flatly against the party’s policy as declared in the platform on which the last campaign had been conducted. But the temptation was strong and for a time things looked squally for a Democrat who was in the state’s service. In some way I have never been able to make out I had incurred the animosity of a Republican Senator, who had declared to a friend, who told a friend of mine, that he would “have Johnson’s scalp if it took him ten years”. This Senator 238) An Adventure in Investigation 239 had secured the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Benev¬ olent Institutions. He was a lewd and offensive person, his pri¬ vate life very unsavory. But he was a veteran of the Civil War, an officer of the G. A. R. and had “influence”. I had two other enemies who belonged to the party in power and thought an opportunity had come to use their political con¬ nections for their own benefit and my hurt. One of these was a physician who had a feeble-minded sou among my pupils. He had no particular animosity against me, but he wanted my job. The other was the doctor employed at the School who had been illegally re-appointed by my Board and who knew I was dissatis¬ fied with his services. He also thought he would like the job and in the hope of something happening, had been keeping a “black book” on me for more than a year past, noting down every accident or error he saw or heard of no matter how trivial. The two M. D.’s were in collusion against me, but if they had won they surely would have quarreled over the spoils. The matron thought the conspirators would succeed and as they guaranteed her position she sided with them. There was also a poor, little, futile stenographer who felt himself aggrieved because he had missed promotion. He had made copies of some private letters which he had written for me to political friends and tho they were innocent enough, he supposed they might be used for my injury. So far as I know every other member of my staff was loyal. On the strength of some letters written to him by the doctor, some telling of minor errors of administration and some alleging more serious faults, my Senator enemy had denounced me in the Senate and demanded an investigation. A file of charges was prepared and I was ordered to appear at the State House to be investigated. The scheme was to conduct a quiet enquiry in a committee room at the Capitol a hundred and twenty miles away from the institution, and since I could not possibly bring down many witnesses for the defense to make a show of listening to . / what I could say on my own behalf and get my head. I had shown the charges to a friendly Senator, a man of much legislative experience and influence but on the minority side. He had dismissed them with the emphatic assertion, “Johnson, they don’t amount to a damn, not a damn”. But a 240 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded star chamber trial no matter how futile the accusation was dan¬ gerous. With some effort by my friends headed by the Governor who made an appeal on the floor of the Senate for a square deal for me, a public investigation was ordered, to be conducted at the School where I could summon all the witnesses I needed. A committee of three Senators was appointed my original enemy being chairman. A second Republican member was a worthy old physician from a Southern county, whom the chair¬ man erroneously supposed to be a weak-kneed follower. The Democratic member was a warm personal friend and great admirer of mine. I had won his friendship while Secretary of the Board of State Charities, he then being Sheriff of his county. He was a man of strong character but with not much tact. For a while things looked rather dubious. My friends insisted that I must have legal counsel and not attempt as I had determined to conduct my own case. They insisted that no one could do that well ; that witnesses would testify falsely and must be cross-examined; that they would say mean things about me; that I would get excited, lose my temper and give myself away. One of the charges was that I had a violent temper, a charge that was, alas, too true, altho it was equally true that I usually had it under control. Altho I did not agree with the opinion of my friends I yielded to their judgment and engaged a leading lawyer of Fort Wayne a Republican in politics to represent me. He was a dignified, elderly gentleman with a mind not quite so agile as it had been thirty years earlier. Legislative investigations of the kind are really prosecutions, sometimes persecutions. The adverse testimony is heard first and is answered if at all, later. As the proceedings are interest¬ ing “news” the papers publish the unfavorable material one day and the offsetting facts in a later edition. This results unfairly if the charges are false, because many people form opinions on the earlier statements and do not always correct them when the refutation appears. State Board investigations, as I used to conduct them, heard a charge and got its answer, if there were one, before a second charge was made so that the attack and the defense appeared in the newspaper together. An Adventure in Investigation 241 The Committee came to Fort Wayne on Saturday evening, the chairman bringing in his train two or three lady friends to whom the pick of the institution jobs had been promised as soon as I should be deposed. The Sunday was a hectic one the insti¬ tution full of barely repressed excitement. The hearing began on Monday morning and by noon most of the testimony supposed to be important was in. The institution doctor with his black book which he consulted from time to time, was the chief prosecuting witness and he suffered rather severely in cross-examination. When the committee adjourned for lunch the second Republican member said to him, “doctor, you can write a good letter, and you are an interesting conversationalist, but put you on the witness stand and you are the poorest and weak¬ est witness I ever heard of”. To all intents the investigation was over then. After the proceedings, before leaving the Institution, this same honest old Senator expressed his regret for what had occurred saying they had been much deceived, especially about my wife and her work as Assistant Superintendent; that they had been told that she had been appointed solely to evade the law which limited my salary, but that what he had seen had convinced him that she was a valuable member of the staff. Several streaks of my usual good luck came during the trial. When my lawyer began questioning the witnesses I prompted him with written questions which the old gentleman did not grasp quickly. After he had missed one good point with a witness, I said, “let me ask him one”. The lawyer assenting I drew out the answer I wanted which quite disposed of a charge, making it appear ridiculous. My counsel whispered, “go on with it”, and from that time until the end of the ceremony I did all the cross- examining, without raising my voice or appearing to lose my equanimity. But of course I was winning and it is easy to keep your temper, even under intense excitement, when things are coming your way. The doctor’s testimony included the charge that I wanted to get rid of him ; the charge was admitted and he was asked if he did not think I had reason for the desire. This he indig¬ nantly denied when he was reminded one after the other of sev¬ eral cases of children sent by me to the hospital as sick and 242 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded refused by him as not needing hospital care, with very serious consequences. He had to admit the facts but declined to answer any more questions, declaring that he refused to discuss medical matters with a layman. In this he was supported by the chair¬ man who said the doctor was not on trial, which was true. One charge made rather by inference than directly, was that my wife’s position in the Institution was really a sinecure. This was rather well refuted in answering a charge made by the doc¬ tor that on one occasion some sour milk had been sent to the hospital. He gave this on the word of one of the nurses who he said had told him. The nurse confirmed the statement, but added that it was Mrs. J ohnson, who detected the bad milk and promptly had it replaced and that she had told the doctor so. The matron testified that because of my over economy, the food supply was often poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. Now I had installed an elaborate system of dining reports which gave the menu as served for each meal and had a place for remarks as to quality and quantity. These were inspected each morning at staff meeting, at which also detailed daily reports of each division of children and each industrial department were received and scanned. The dining room reports were scrutinized and initialed by the matron and myself. When the matron had sworn to the charge she was given a year’s file of dining room reports, over 1800 in all, five for each day from as many dining rooms, and was asked to tell the Com¬ mittee what these were and what the initial M. E. O. (her own) signified. She was then asked to read some of them; with evi¬ dent reluctance she read three, each having under “Remarks” the words “Quantity ample”, “Quality good”. But before she could be asked for a fourth the second member of the committee exclaimed, “oh what’s the use of wasting time on such nonsense, that food is good enough for anybody”. This about disposed of Mrs. OrFs testimony, anything else she had said earlier, was thoroly discredited. Another charge which resulted very favorably for me was that of disrespect for the bodies of the dead. In a large insti¬ tution for defectives deaths are not infrequent. I always con¬ ducted funerals myself and used a simple, but appropriate, service designed to make the idea of death not dreadful but An Adventure in Investigation 243 rather beautiful to the feeble-minded, many of whom have not much else to look forward to. After one such interment, a girl who was not feeble-minded but paralytic, said to Mrs. Johnson, “I have always wanted, when I die, to be buried beside my mother in Crown Hill, but now I don’t, I would like to be buried here beside Maggie”. One of the doctor’s terrible charges was that I doubted the immortality of the soul. This was thought to strengthen that of disrespect for the dead. As is often the case with a trumped up charge there was a trifling fact behind this one. Through an employee’s neglect, the rough box, to contain the casket, had not been prepared in one case, and when the coffin was laid in the grave it was merely covered by some boards hastily assembled from the carpenter’s shop. The witness summoned was John Conklin, a moron who had been the bosom friend of Howard Crouch the boy whose interment was in question, John told of the absence of the rough box. Before the cross examination I whispered to a friendly reporter, “take this in full, it will make a good story for the News”. Then I said “ J ohn, do you remember Howard’s funeral ?” — “Yes Sir”. — “Where did it begin?” — “Why where it always does, in the chapel.” — “Who was there?” — “All of us.” — “What clothes did vou wear?” — “Whv our Sunday clothes of course.” — c/ %J “Tell the gentlemen what happened.” — “Well we sang and the band played and Mr. Johnson talked.” — “What then?” — “Why we marched to God’s Acre.” — “Did the band go too?” — “Why yes, it always goes when we march.”— “What happened at God’s Acre?” — “Why you read the service and prayed and we sang a hymn.” — “What was the last thing you did there?” — “We all walked past the grave and threw in a bit of cedar.” — “Do you remember what I told you about the cedar in chapel on Sun¬ day?” — “Yes, you told us it was to remember.” — “What else did I tell you?” — “You said Howard had gone to Jesus and if we would be good and kind like Howard was and Jesus was, we would go some day.” — “Thank you John, T’m glad you remember so well.” The Indianapolis News had the above verbatim the next day and the dear old ladies in the city said they knew that nice Mr. Johnson was not a man who would show disrespect to the dead. 244 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded The question of my orthodoxy, which I must admit was and is rather shaky, was well disposed of also. The only charge which did not disappear on a slight cross examination was that on one occasion I had been too severe in punishing a high-grade moron boy who had addressed some very obscene language to my little daughter. The boy was placed on the stand and told the incident even repeating the language he had used, and the sympathy of the committee was with me not with him. A circumstance that took the spirit out of the chief prose¬ cutor was that on the Monday evening, the House and Senate had caucused in Indianapolis on the bill to take the appointing power from; the Governor and decided against it. This disposed of the main purpose of my persecution, which was to get the jobs. The decision of the caucus came to the Fort Wayne papers late at night and a reporter called the chairman out of bed at two A. M. to interview him. That reporter used to entertain his newspaper friends with a dramatic account of the Senator in his night shirt, stalking up and down the hotel corridor, pouring out denuncia¬ tions of the “damned white-livered scoundrels” i. e. his Repub¬ lican colleagues. The next morning at the concluding session of the investigation, he was quite dull and indifferent. He was a poor loser. When the chairman gave in his report which was prepared for him by Ernest Bicknell who had attended the investigation as a representative of the Board of State Charities, it was highly complimentary to the general management. The only censure was an implied one that I ought to have dismissed the disloyal doctor and matron a year before. This was soon remedied altho to my mortification the Board bought off the doctor by paying him in full to the end of the year for which they had illegally appointed him. I begged them to let me dispose of the case by simply warning him off the grounds, if he attempted to continue bis unwelcome services. But they compromised with him and with their consciences, and wasted nearly two hundred dollars of the stated money. The day after the legislature adjourned, after having got the old matron, whose capacity for mischief I feared, safely out of the house, I went to Indianapolis on business. As I entered the An Adventure in Investigation 245 State House Governor Mathews was seated in the boot-black’s chair in the vestibule. As soon as he saw me he leaped from the stand and rushed to me, shaking my hand and slapping me on the back, he said, “you old rascal, it was a put up job and I believe you put it up yourself to get glory out of it”. It was all over, the danger was past yet I realized how grave it had been as I had not until I saw the Governor’s exultation over the victory. Many other friends were equally pleased. Dr. S. E. Smith wrote a letter of congratulation and added, “now you know your duty to those disloyal subordinates, be sure you do it and the more promptly the better”. The investigation and the removal of the disloyal doctor and matron closed the most difficult and trying eighteen months of my life, and the next six years tho not free from worry and over¬ work were on the whole happy ones. The result of the trial disclosed and disposed of most of my enemies and and gave me a stronger position that I had before. It had also made, or dis¬ closed some valuable friends. Chapter Nine ADVENTURES IN MEDICINE As soon as I was able to get such a physician as I wished, I had begun to use some of the abundant material available for research which might add to the world’s all too scanty knowledge of mental defect. I had been much impressed on a visit to the Norristown, Pa., Hospital for Insane a few years previous with their pathological laboratory, and believed it a duty to science to do similar work wherever the material was available. The bodies of some of the children who died were sent to their homes, but many had no homes, many parents could not afford the expense of transportation, so that the remains must rest in the institution cemeterv. On all of these, and on some others whose parents consented, autopsies were made especially of the brains which were carefully preserved. A small laboratory was equipped at the hospital with an autopsy room in the basement. In preparing a corpse for interment after an autopsy, the operators were required to remove or cover up as far as possible all traces of their work. On one occasion an autopsy had been held on the body of a little boy whose parents afterwards changed their minds and wired to have the body sent home. With some trepidation this was done, the body was clothed in a new suit, the hands were folded, a few flowers laid on the breast and the casket was sent home with nothing said about the autopsy. It was re assuring to receive a letter from' the mother thanking us for the beautiful way the body of her child had been prepared for burial. The mother never knew that her baby’s brain was in a glass jar, nor that specimens of other organs which had disclosed some interesting complications, were among the treasures of our little museum. Under a state law the Ft. Wayne Medical School might claim for use in its dissecting room, the corpse of any inmate of the institution which was not taken away by friends. A few years (246) Adventures in Medicine 247 earlier I had been obliged to refuse a cadaver to the doctor in charge of the dissecting room at the Medical School in spite of his legal claim to it. The body was that of a pretty and very popular pupil, dearly loved by her moron companions. No matter what precautions might be taken, the truth that her body had been used for dissection at the college would have leaked out sooner or later and the effect would have been distressing. So when the claim was made I politely refused it, stating my rea¬ sons, which only convinced the claimant that I was, as he expressed it, “a darned old sentimentalist”. However the claim was waived and no subsequent one was made. Most of the leading physicians of the city were members of the faculty of the Medical School and among them I had several warm friends, and some rather bitter enemies. Some of them could not forgive me because, as a layman, I had presumed to accept a job for which they considered the possession of a med¬ ical diploma to be a positive pre-requisite. On the colony farm there was a spot which could easily be made into a very beautiful cemetery. The site of the old grave¬ yard which at one time the children used to refer to as “the potato patch” but which they had been taught to call “God’s Acre”, was needed for building and we determined to move the remains to a new resting place. This was done with care and decency and a little ceremony was made of the re-interment. The old site was of dry, gravelly soil and there was little danger in the transfer, no ill effects followed. In removing the bodies to the new cemetery, we found that of a hydrocephalic girl with an enormous head. It had been buried in the dry sandy soil for several years and had become completely mummified, every part was perfect and it made a valuable patho¬ logical specimen. There was another unique example in the body of an idiot girl of remarkable apelike appearance; tiny forehead; immense prognathous jaws; leg bones short and crooked; arms nearly as long as the legs. The Professor of Anatomy at Earlham College, who was an enthusiastic evolu¬ tionist, had vainly tried to get the skeleton of this girl for his museum. I saw an opportunity to heap coals of fire on the heads of some of the doctors who had done their best to make life miser¬ able for me at one time. 248 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded I was lucky enough at this time to have a physician who was* as enthusiastic about science as I was. Under his direction the remains of the pithecoid girl, who had died of diphtheria, were carefully removed and thoroly drenched in formaldehyde and the skeleton was sent to Gustave Nolte, a famous expert at Rochester, N. Y., for articulation. He did an admirable piece of work. The skeleton was perfect except for one of the phalanges and part of a vertebra, these were replaced by wooden carvings ; all the prin¬ cipal joints were hinged; a silver ring was set in the skull and the specimen was such as to be an ornament to any anatomical museum. When the skeleton came I had it and the mummy neatly boxed and took them to a staff meeting of the Medical School, pre¬ arranged by a member of the faculty who was as friendly to me as the Dean was adverse. Of course the Dean of a college must protect and enhance the value of his diplomas, and if we make the possession of the sheepskin a pre-requisite to a good job of any kind that makes the document worth more. My friend introduced me to the faculty as a sincere friend of the School, mentioning the fact that my eldest daughter was one of their most promising students. Then I showed my speci¬ mens, explaining the mummification of the one and the pithecoid appearance of the other suggesting its resemblance to the missing link. I then presented them to the College for their anatomical museum, as being the only place where they might be legally deposited, except the little museum at the institution where they could not be of as much service to scientific students. Then several of the faculty made complimentary speeches, congratulating the state that a man with so scientific a habit of mind who was also so enthusiastic a humanitarian, should be in charge of the important institution. Even the Dean managed to squeeze out a few kind words tho he did not seem to enjoy them. It is interesting to remember that his enmity thenceforth became inactive. On a later occasion when some trouble threat¬ ened he remarked, “oh, Johnson’s pretty smooth they can’t beat him,”. A few weeks later I did another thing to placate the profes¬ sion in a fair and proper way. The doctor who had tried hard to get my scalp during my investigation in 1895, was now Pro- Adventures in Medicine 249 fessor of Theory and Practice at the Medical School. Because of his unfriendly relations with onr institution his students were missing some important clinical instruction which they might have had in our hospital. Its special value to the student who expects to engage in general practice, over that to be had in the usual public hospital was that with us they could see the common diseases of children, while in a public hospital only accidents or extreme cases could be studied. I told my friend whose position on the faculty was a leading one, that it was absurd to let the students lose valuable clinics because the Professor and I were not friendly, and begged him to assure his colleague that he might bring his class to our hos¬ pital without danger of discourtesy. The result was a regular Saturday morning clinic of a kind which could not be had else¬ where, an advantage to the students which they appreciated highly. Another step towards harmony was when I offered the college, as a prize for each graduating class, the position of interne for one year at the Institution hospital, with board and a modest stipend. This was heartily accepted and satisfactory internes succeeded each other for several years, two of them in turn being made chief physician at the end of their interneship. From the time this arrangement was perfected there was little trouble on the medical side. But every layman who has had the arduous duty of superintending an institution which must employ a phy¬ sician, knows that to avoid friction more than merely a square deal is needed. Tact, savior faire, and firmness are required in a marked degree. After the disloyal doctor had been bought off in March 1895, as told in the chapter on investigation, I got my Board to permit me to engage a full time physician, the former one having only attended for two hours daily altho he might be summoned when needed. I determined to get a woman for the task. I believed that it was just as reasonable to employ a woman physician for boys as a man physician for girls; especially for adolescent moron girls is this the case, some of whom have been known to malinger, because they enjoyed the ministrations of a man. After the woman doctor was installed, there were no more malingerers among the girls than among the boys. 250 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded A lady of admirable qualifications and experience was secured and the children were more skillfully and far more conscien¬ tiously treated than ever before. One particular case excited my admiration. It was that of a low-grade idiot boy with a disease of the scrotum. He had been given up to die by the former doctor, but the new one declared the case was by no mjeans fatal and merely required very careful treatment. She gave the attention herself telling me it was too serious a case to be left even to a trained nurse, and the poor creature got well. It was a matter of very great regret to me when differences of opinion about administration, failures in tact and still more in frankness and certain peculiarities of temperament which could not be, or were not, divined beforehand, and indeed of which the lady herself was hardly conscious, made it necessary to sever the connection. The woman doctor was succeeded by one of the internes above mentioned, who was. not only highly skilful but who fully shared my enthusiasm for scientific research. He did excellent service until tuberculosis compelled his resignation. By this time at the cost of much worry and several mistakes I had learned enough of my trade to know how to handle the profession and I had no more serious trouble with the medical department. Epidemics In an institution with many hundred children-inmates, noth¬ ing is more dreaded than an invasion of epidemic disease. The first of these with which I had to contend was diphtheria. We had fifty- three cases and three deaths. Anti -toxin had just been discovered and was still little used. After the first few cases developed we were able to secure a supply of this invaluable remedy and with its advent the disease was controlled. During the second month of my woman doctor’s service a case of scarlet fever was brought in with a new pupil. The diagnosis was prompt and accurate, the child quickly isolated and to our gratification we did not have a second case. We had a small building near the general hospital which had been known by the odious name of “pest house”. It did not seem nearly so objectionable a place when its appellation became “The Fever Hospital”. Adventures in Medicine 251 A few months later we had a widespread epidemic of measles, fortunately in mild form with no fatalities and very few serious sequelae. The disease spread rapidly and the hospital was soon over-filled. I opened a measles ward for boys and one for girls using a dormitory in each wing, where we treated the disease in a sort of family way, only asking the doctor for diagnosis and prescriptions, choosing a few of the most motherly attendants for nurses. The results were fortunate and the disease ran its course and soon abated. As adjuncts to the hospital we had two “nurseries”, one for each sex. Here we cared for children who were not actually sick but who needed special diet and coddling. They stayed in the nursery sometimes for weeks sometimes for months or longer. Each nursery was in charge of a trained nurse, who had moron boys or girls as “aids”. In the boys’ nursery was a little para¬ lytic named Eddie who was in the special care of an aid named Joe. The affection between the younger and feebler children and the aids, who are carefully selected for their disposition as well as their ability, is often very deep. Eddie took the measles Joe did not, but another nursery-aid named Reuben did. So Eddie and Reuben were moved to the measles ward, and as Reuben’s attack was a light one he continued his services as aid with the children there. When all the children were well and were returning to their usual places Joe came over to take Eddie back to the nursery. I went to the measles ward to see how the removal was being done and noticed Joe sitting on a bed with his face in his hands, in an attitude of profound dejection. Joe was such a kindly, useful fellow that he was a great favorite of mine. I sat down beside him and putting my arm over his shoulders asked what was troubling him. He burst into tears and between sobs, said, “Eddie don’t love me no more, he only loves Reuben”. I said, “Oh, never mind that, take Eddie back, in three days he will love you just as much as ever” and so it turned out. The feeble¬ minded are often very affectionate but usually just as fickle. When small-pox occurred in town we quarantined the Institu¬ tion and vaccinated all the employees beginning with the Super¬ intendent; and all the children, the latter with almost disas¬ trous consequences. We kept out small pox, but difficult as it is 252 Adventures Amonc the Feeble Minded to keep normals from scratching their vaccination sores it is impossible with feeble-minded children and a year later there were still many ugly ulcers on the children’s arms. I resolved that should the danger threaten anew, I would depend on quar¬ antine and never again indulge in wholesale vaccination. When the discovery was made that the thyroid gland controls metabolism the failure of which produces cretinism, Armour & Co. found a better use for some previously waste matter than to throw it into the fertilizer vat. From the thyroid glands of the sheep they slaughtered they began making dessicated thyroid extract. They offered me a free supply in case we had any cretins on whom we would like to experiment. Cretins are rare but we had some cretinoids, and with the consent of my physi¬ cian who doubted its value but did not think it would do harm, I sent for a free supply. We decided to make the first trial with a little cretinoid girl, Bessie Patterson from Shelby county. She was four years old but had never walked nor stood erect; very short for her age; enormous abdomen; short thick limbs; little stubby fingers not two inches long; swollen lips, tongue protruding; hair black, crisp and scanty, breaking and falling out; skin yellow and parchment like ; eyes drawn like a mongoFs ; and apparently com¬ plete mental hebetude; a typical case of cretinism except for the goitre which was lacking. After a few weeks use of the extract we fancied we saw a slight gain ; after three months the improvement was marked, the abdo¬ men diminished, the skin began to clear, the child began to grow ; in six months she had grown four inches and began to stand erect; after a year her fingers had doubled in length, the crisp black hair was replaced by silky brown locks, the mouth was closed, the tongue normal, she walked with a tottering gait, but she walked. After two years steady treatment she appeared almost a normal child with a pretty pink and white skin and limbs almost slender ; she was going to kindergarten and playing with a doll. About that time her sister who had placed her in the School, the child being an orphan, came to visit her. I wanted to watch the effect on this sensible, middle-aged woman of the marvelous change in the child and escorted her to the girls’ nursery, a large Adventures in Medicine 253 room in which ten or twelve girls were playing, Bessie sitting on a mat nursing a doll. I said, “do you see you sister ?” She looked around and said “no, Bessie is not here”. Then I pointed to Bessie and calling to her she came to me walking still a little unsteadily. I sat down beside the visitor and took Bessie in my lap. Then the sister said, “no, Mr. Johnson that’s not the child; I came to see Bessie Patterson who came here from Shelby county two years ago”. I described Bessie as she had been and on her admitting the truth of the description, I said “this is the same child” and put her in her arms. Of course she hugged and cried over her; the nurse also was wiping her eyes and I confess my own upper eye lid was not quite rigid, we had a real moist time all around Bessie looking on in wonder as to what it was all about. Unfortunately the thyroid extract does not restore the gland to its normal function it merely replaces it for the time being so that its use must be continued. Perhaps some day it may be possible to cure cretinism by implanting the thyroid gland directly from the animal. So far, I believe experiments of this kind have been unsuccessful. Dentistry for the Feeble-Minded Defective children even more often than normals suffer with defective teeth. For some years it was the practice to send a child who needed dentistry to a city office where the work was done at a reduced rate. This meant that as a rule only extract¬ ing to relieve toothache was done and much preventive work had been neglected. After our system of medical internes proved successful I wrote to the Dean of the College of Dental Surgery at Indianap¬ olis, offering an interneship in dentistry with a modest stipend as a prize for the graduate who carried off highest honors, the college to be responsible for skill and character. The interneship was to be for a minimum term of three months. The first interne, Dr. Little, was highly satisfactory. His minimum term stretched out to half a year during which time the mouths of all the chil¬ dren were put in the best order possible. The work was so thoroly done that during the next and subsequent years the minimum of three months was but slightly exceeded. 254 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded One year’s class at the College was headed by a woman. The interneship belonged to her if she chose to claim it. The Dean wrote to know whether I would accept a woman interne. I hesi¬ tated just a moment because I had been severely criticised when I appointed a woman physician and I did not want to be accused of the dreadful crime of feminism. However I stuck to my prin¬ ciple of believing that the opportunities of life rightly belong to women equally with men and I told the Dean that as our bargain threw all the responsibility for the character and ability of the interne upon him, I could not justly decline to accept anyone whom he would send. The woman dentist came and did excellent service and if I was criticised it did not hurt me for I never knew of it. Our second interne Dr. LeG alley, who afterwards became the leading dentist in an important city, had a really scientific habit of mind and was a very agreeable member of our staff. I was preparing for the meeting at Orillia, Ont. of the Association of Medical Officers of Schools for the Feeble Minded, and as always was ambitious for the reputation of our institution; more espe¬ cially because it was with one exception the only one with a lay superintendent. It was also the only one employing a dental interne and as I fancied giving proper and adequate attention to the teeth of all its children, whether they were those of wealthy parents who could pay or of poor ones who could not. Even the low-grade idiots had their share of the interne’s services. I wanted to make a good report to the Association on our dental work so I asked Dr. LeGalley, who could not attend the meeting, to assist me. This he did by writing an excellent paper for me to read, on the abnormal mouths of the defectives, illus¬ trating it by twenty-two plaster casts of vee-shaped, saddle- shaped and other arches, and a variety of other abnormalities. This paper led to a lively discussion in the course of which Dr. Rogers of Minnesota declared I had an advantage over a med¬ ical Superintendent with my Board of Trustees when I wanted to do something new ; trustees being inclined to refuse consent to what they were apt to call “doctors fads”, while my experiments escaped that category. To this I replied “then Doctor you agree with me in thinking that it is better for a superintendent not to Adventures in Medicine 255 be a physician”. But this of course was carrying the war farther into Africa than he was willing to go. I attended the meetings of this Association for many years and want to hear emphatic testimony to the fact that while all but one besides myself of the regular members were physicians, they treated me in every respect as an equal and even elected me, a non-medical man, as president for one year. Twice during my term; in 1894 and again in 1903, they held their meeting at the Fort Wayne institution and I have rarely met a more agreeable or cultured body of men and women, for they usually brought their wives with them. While their discussions are scientific and technical, the actual sessions are the least valuable part of the meetings, the social intercourse is quite as useful in a pro¬ fessional way and very delightful otherwise. I am glad to num¬ ber many of these devoted and competent men among my list of permanent friends and one of the regrets I had in leaving the service was that I should not be able to spend three or four days each year in their company. Chapter Ten ADVENTURES WITH THE GOVERNORS One of the new friends developed by the fierce attack of my senatorial enemy, in the investigation wherein he was so signally defeated, was Mr. John M. Spann, who applied for appointment as Republican member of the Board of Trustees. His desire to serve was solely in order to protect me in my position because he had a son in the institution whom he wished to remain in my care. Mr. Spann continued as trustee until his untimely death and was a faithful and valued friend as well as trustee; it was at his urgency that my salary was increased. The retiring Republican member was an elderly physician who had been on the Board since the Institution was built. He had been neutral when I was attacked by men of his party. The Governor said that as trustee he was in a position to know the facts ; if he had known I was to blame he ought to have demanded my resignation without waiting for an investigation. If on the other hand, he knew the persecution was unwarranted he ought to have gone to work among his political friends to avert it. He did neither and Governor Mathews, who was a fine, courageous gentleman, perhaps a little old-fashioned, but of a fashion of which the state might be glad to have more, despised a coward and a Laodicean. He said that the reason for appointing trus¬ tees of both parties was that there might be one belonging to either on the inside knowing the facts so as to avert futile inves¬ tigations which no matter how they result are always harm¬ ful. The trustee had failed utterly in the very thing he had been appointed to do and the Governor said he would not re-appoint him if he were the last Republican left in Indiana. Mr. Mathews’ death eighteen months after his term of office ended, was a great loss to me, I had learned not only to respect and admire, but to love him. On one occasion early in 1898 he was coming to Fort Wayne on business. He was keeping up (256) Adventures With Governors 257 some political activity and was being seriously overworked. A business friend who was in Ft. Wayne to meet Mr. Mathews, told me he was getting no rest as he traveled over the state and here a crowd of politicians had designs on him and would keep him up to a late hour. He begged me to help him save the Governor from his friends. We went to the station to meet his train. I took my carriage and sat in it instructing the driver to start quickly as soon as he heard the door slam. The friend met him at the train, told him he had a carriage waiting and adroitly evading some enthu¬ siastic politicians, escorted him to the vehicle. Mr. Mathews stepped inside, the friend slammed the door and the driver whipped up the horses. Mr. Mathews was surprised and pleased to see me. Presently he said “It seems a long way to the hotel”. I replied, “Governor, you are not going to the hotel, you will stay with me tonight”. “But,” he said, “these people are expecting me, I must not dis¬ appoint them.” I said, “well, come and have dinner first, we’ll settle that later”. The dinner was a happy occasion. Some old battles were fought over. Mr. Mathews always greatly admired my wife, who he said was the most mother-like matron of any he had seen in the institutions. His sense of duty to his political friends gradu¬ ally waned. After a long talk and several cigars he went to bed early and had the best night’s rest he had enjoyed for weeks. In the morning after a leisurely breakfast and a stroll over the grounds, he went to the hotel thanking me warmly for having “kidnapped” him. The next time I saw my friend was in the casket at his funeral. When the Republican James A. Mount succeeded the Demo¬ crat Claude Mathews in 1897, his first evidence of sincerity was to re-appoint every institution trustee he found in office as their terms expired, except one who died, one who left the state and one who declined. Mathews had complied in spirit as well as in letter with the law requiring non- (or rather bi-) partisan Boards. He might have chosen strong men of his own and weak kneed trucklers of the other party; but he chose the best he could find of both, he gave the law a fair chance. 258 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded Speaking of this law whose intent was to avoid political interference with the institutions, Mount said to me, “Mathews drove the nails and I have clinched them ; you will never see political meddling with the institutions again”. He was opti¬ mistic yet on the whole he spoke the truth. If there has been such meddling it has been well camouflaged, so it has not been seen. Governor Mount’s first public utterance about the benevolent institutions, was at the State Conference of Charities. It was heard with some trepidation. He spoke strongly about economy and demanded drastic reform in money spending. He was con¬ vinced that the defectives and insane were costing the taxpayers a good deal too much. This made him rather unpopular with the institution people, yet before the end of his term we not only respected, but many of us loved him. It was three years before I could get the new Governor to visit the School, but finally he came to Fort Wayne to spend a day. One of the common errors into which institution managers who are successful with their farms often are betraved, is to show them as tho they were their chief pride. Now Mount was a farmer and a real one not an agriculturist. He was much inter¬ ested in Farmers Institutes, those and country Sunday Schools were his favorite hobbies. I was proud of my farm and prouder of my brickyard, but I kept the Governor at the school all morn¬ ing. I showed him the classes and the workshops and got him much interested in the economic development of the feeble¬ minded. Knowing his interest in Sunday schools, I had all the children in the chapel and put them thru the exercises just as I did every Sunday morning : he was pleased with the performance, and told the children, who were delighted to have a talk from the Governor, that he had never seen a better children’s service. At dinner Mr. Mount said, “but what about your farm, I have heard so much of it that I want to see it”. I assured him that he should be satisfied. After dinner the buggy with a pair of, for¬ merly, runaway ponies was hitched up. The Governor admired the team and was pleased with my story of its purchase for a song and of my re-education of the ponies whose behavior had frightened their former owner into the sacrifice. Adventures With Governors 259 As we neared the farm gate Mr. Mount said, “now, Mr. John¬ son I believe a state farm ought to be the very best in the county, it ought to lead the neighbors”. As he was shown the big octagon barn and all the sheds and was told of the purchase, the lumber¬ ing and the economical building he became more and more inter¬ ested. The alfalfa field, which happened to be the first success¬ ful one in that part of Indiana, was about ready for its third cutting for the season and was praised. I told him of our method of handling the manure, which he at first thought was good for us because we had plenty of cheap labor but then admitted it was really a labor saving device. He approved our crop rotation, use of ensilage, (then not very usual) and other farm plans. Concerning several of our methods he admitted that he had heard ot them at Farmers’ Institutes as valuable innovations, but had not seen them in practice before. He asked to see our hog-yard which he said Dr. Hurty, the secretary of the State Board of Health, had described at a Farmers’ Institute as the most sani¬ tary in the state. On our way to the brick yard I drove over the big pasture that the Governor might see and admire our herd. As I told him of the way we had built up a fine grade-herd out of a bunch of scrubs by the use of pure bred bulls and careful breeding, he enquired with a shade of criticism in his tone, “but what did you do with the culls?” When I answered that “we ate them”; and explained that long, slow cooking makes the toughest beef tender, he laughed heartily. At the brick yard again he was deeply interested. When he expressed doubt that the work he saw was really being done by feeble-minded boys, he was introduced to a few of them. They were wonderfully impressed at meeting and shaking hands with the Governor and tried to show off a bit. After listening to their artless, childish talk, he said, “why they are idiots”. This gave me the opportunity of teaching the chief executive of the state the difference between idiots and imbeciles, — we did not have the term “moron” in those days. As we drove away from the yard he said with much feeling “I would give a thousand dollars if I could make each citizen of Indiana see what you have shown me today”. 260 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded After the brick yard we returned to the barn in time for the afternoon’s milking. The Governor drank a glass of freshly- drawn ice-cold milk as it came over the aerator and cooler, which was a new device then and one he had not seen before. He praised the white milking suits and caps which we made the milkers wear as a standing object-lesson in cleanliness. He was particu¬ larly pleased when he noticed two calves following the boy who fed them around the yard; and when he saw the herd bull har¬ nessed to a cart, hauling the green feed for the cows, he said “you make the old fellow haul the food for his harem”. He came away the most enthusiastic farmer Governor who ever inspected one of the state’s farms. From that visit to the end of his term Governor Mount was a staunch friend and in his farewell message to the legislature of 1901 he praised my administration and said my salary ought to be increased, which was some commendation coming from a republican governor about a democratic official. Ths last interview I had with my governor friend was on the second day before the end of his term. The Industrial School for Boys needed a new superintendent. Knowing Mr. Mount’s character, his sincere religious spirit, his uncompromising con¬ scientiousness, his sense of public duty, the trustees had con¬ ceived the idea that he might be induced to become the head of the important task of making wayward boys into good citizens. They imagined that I had some influence with him and begged me to intercede for them. I met two of the trustees of the Boys’ School in Indianapolis and we called on the Governor, who invited us to dinner at his hotel. After the meal we went to his parlor ; the trustees slipped away and left the Governor and me together. Our conversation naturally turned to the Boys’ School. I spoke of the importance of the task and how it was one for which no man was too high ; even ex-President Harrison might undertake so useful a work for his state without condescension. To this Mr. Mount heartily assented saying that he felt it one of the most useful services any citizen might render. Then I spoke of the kind of superintend¬ ent needed and the difficulty of finding all the qualities, — high character, experience with men and affairs, executive ability, public spirit, and most of all sincere love for humanity — com¬ bined in one man. Adventures With Governors 261 Mr. Mount said that was how he felt and added, “where shall we find such a man?” I said , “Governor, we have found him and his name is James A. Mount”. Then he said, “no, no, I can¬ not do it, I am tired, you cannot know how tired I am, I have had a long and busy life ; now I have done my share of work for the state. My term is over. I am thru with politics. I am going back to my home and farm which I love. I shall take part in no public affairs, except the Farmer’s Institutes and my Sunday Schools.” Then he told me the story of his early life with its early pov¬ erty and hardships; how hard he had worked for his education; of his early marriage to the noble woman who had helped him so well ; of his army experience and the disease while in the field when he refused to be sent to the hospital with the result of the loss of his voice (that squeaky voice at which before I knew him I had laughed, a laughter of which his story made me heartily ashamed.); how slowly he had worked up against great odds; how he had built his farm out of waste land ; how hardly all his victories had been won and ended, “I have earned peace and rest”. I was answered. Just one week later, the noble man, the good soldier, citizen, farmer, governor, friend, had rest indeed. He died three days after the end of his term, worn out in the service of his state; and tho our meetings had been few I mourned for one of the finest men I had ever met and one of the truest friends ever a man had. The failure of an expected appropriation in 1901, led to finan¬ cial complications and money worries which had most unpleasant consequences and particularly to the condemnation of my admin¬ istration by Governor Durbin, who was a martinet in business matters, and finally to my resignation. Certain laxities and irregularities had crept into the state’s service in many of the institutions, involving no dishonesty but a system of make-shift and postponements from one year’s book keeping to the next. For instance altho the state’s fiscal year ended Oct. Blst, it had been customary to use up the year’s maintenance fund with the expenses for September which were paid in October. Then the expenses for October, paid in November, came out of the next year’s appropriation. The school at Fort Wayne had been doing this for many years with no suspicion of misappropriation but 262 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded it was irregular and not lawful and Governor Durbin deter¬ mined it must change. Then the specific sums which the Ways and Means Committee would insert in the appropriation bills were sometimes changed in the wording by the clerks, so that the money could only be used by what the Governor called “twisting appropriations”, which he sternly condemned. Especially after he forbade the institution superintendents haunting the State House during the session, did these things happen. To get one’s appropriation thru the committees and the two houses without error required a degree of watchfulness which the trustees who, Governor Dur¬ bin said, should do it, could not or would not exercise. One example of an error of the kind, results of which were sternly reprimanded by the strict Governor will suffice. At the session of 1901, we asked for $3,000.00 for a new well and pumping engine and $300 for a steam washer. Both were granted but the clerk put it in the bill as “Laundry machinery, etc. — $3,300.00”. The money was used for the purpose for which it was requested but the Governor when he visited the plant, wanted to see the $3,300 worth of new laundry machinery and could not forgive me who could not show it. There was a statute forbidding the trustees from incurring any obligation in excess of a granted appropriation, which had been frequently disregarded. The most conspicuous instance of this was when the institution first began, years before my time. The appropriation for building was $50,000 and a clause in the act specially forbade the trustees from using this for anything but a complete structure. But they spent the whole sum for the administration center and asked another appropriation of $189,000.00 two years later, to finish what $50,000 had begun. The statute was sometimes evaded by the debts being contracted by the superintendents, who did not present the bills to the trustees until the appropriation became available later. On one occasion the superintendent who had been my predecessor bought an extensive laundry plant, costing several thousand dollars, the bill for which was not approved by the trustees until an appro¬ priation could be secured a year or two later. Of course these practices were irregular and wrong and Gov¬ ernor Durbin who was not only an adroit politician but a highly Adventures With Governors 263 competent business man, very properly undertook to correct them. And those who had been practicing the irregularities had to suffer condemnation both for their own sins and those of their predecessors. These financial worries clouded the last two years of my service. For the first time I had an unsympathetic Governor over me, one to whom good institution management did not mean so much the welfare of the inmates, nor the social progress of the state, as meticulous accuracy in financial transactions. And I would be the last to deny the importance of such accuracy. If I were advising an administrator of the public service on finan¬ cial matters, I should lay the utmost stress on compliance with the letter of the law. I know by bitter experience what comes of anything else. But, when this is the chief consideration, when it leads, as so-called “business administration” often does, to the neglect of the purposes of the institution; when the financial i business overshadows the benevolent wor'k; then it is like paying tithes of mint, anise, and cummin and neglecting the weightier matters of the law. Another disagreement between my last Governor and me was on the general policy of the state towards the feeble-minded. I believed the state should care for all or most of them. My high¬ est ambition had been to make this possible by developing their ability and employing it profitably. Governor Durbin told me that the onus of the defectives, like that of the paupers, should be thrown on the county governments not on that of the state. I think it was chiefly this radical difference of opinion which made him unable to see merit in my constructive work, and to interpret my efforts as being merely for the aggrandizement of an institution of which I was Superintendent. The fact that the Governor was a republican and I a demo¬ crat had little to do with our differences; except that had I belonged to his party he might have listened to me with a little sympathy, at least enough to understand what my plans and ambitions were. The result of all this was that I realized I must leave a work which had for so many years wholly possessed me and in the central purpose of which as I saw it I had been successful far beyond my early hopes. i Chapter Eleven THE ADVENTURE’S ENDING With the inauguration of Governor Durbin and his meticulous “business administration”, so different from the warm, human and statesmanlike administrations of Mathews and Mount, came the beginning of the end of my Adventure among the Feeble- Minded. Mr. Hackett, the first chairman of the Board of Trus¬ tees, who with Governor Mathews had induced me to undertake the work in 1893, had moved to California, Mr. Spann died in 1902. The new trustees were men of different caliber. There arose a growing mutual lack of confidence between the Board and myself. All the fine things that were being done began to appear an old story to them; they seemed to realize neither their value nor the effort required to bring them about. Institutionism comes not only to the inmates; in one form it often happens to those who have charge and very often to the trustees. This consists in valuing the “institution” for itself ; not merely nor chiefly for its purpose in the benefit of its inmates and of the state. I recognized this spirit as one of the dangers against which I must guard and believe I escaped it but I noticed it often in my Board, especially when it came to a question of doing things in a showy way. As I look back with the wisdom that comes of mature reflec¬ tion on things of the past, I see now that I did stress economy beyond reason. The appropriations were always limited.* There were so many things that I felt to be essential which we could not afford that I resented expenditures for purposes that were more ornamental than useful. This was a natural enough men¬ tal attitude and one which I could hardly escape, possessed as I was by my overpowering main purpose of demonstrating the *On one occasion a prominent editor who was present at a meeting of the Ways and Means Committee when I was presenting the needs of the feeble-minded, advised them to give me all I asked and then if there was any money left to divide it between the other institutions, because mine was the most important. (264) The Adventurers Ending 265 possibility of the self-support of the trained, imbeciles as the con¬ dition of their complete care by the state. One result of this was that the trustees and I differed in opinion on the question of the right place in which to be economical. The living quarters for myself and family were in the main building. I had a family of children some of them quite young. I longed for the privacy and comfort of a home. The trustees agreed that I ought to have a home on the institution grounds; but while I wanted to build a simple cottage for which I could have had an appropriation for the asking; they would not be content with anything less than a pretentious mansion for “the home of the superintendent of a great state institution”. This was something that neither I nor my wife with our simple tastes, would have enjoyed. The result was that we had neither the one nor the other. A notable instance of difference of opinion on such matters has been mentioned in my account of the purchase of land when we began the colony farm. The trustee who wanted to buy the small tract in front of the institution thought of the showing that could be made in ornamental grounds; I wanted and suc¬ ceeded in getting a useful farm upon which I might employ the inmates and produce food. But more important than any differences of taste was an almost radical difference of opinion about the main purpose of our work. With all my eloquence and with the actual results which I could show, I never felt that I had succeeded in winning the enthusiasm of my Board for the necessity of adequate train¬ ing and control of all the feeble-minded. I had succeeded in this with two successive Governors and so long as I had their influ¬ ence on my side that had a strong effect on the Board. But now in 1901 that advantage was lost and I began to fear that my great experiment was never to be adequately carried thru. I had held the position for nearly ten years. I had carried out many cherished plans. I had demonstrated the validity of the theory of training and employment. It was not my theory — I had learned it at the National Conference from older experi¬ menters — but I had made it my own and carried it further than most. The number of inmates had increased from about four hun¬ dred to nearly nine hundred. While the standard of care had 266 Adventures Among the Feeble Minded been maintained and in many respects raised; and while the actual expenditure for each “school child”* had increased; yet the average per capita cost of maintenance for the whole number, notwithstanding steadily rising prices; had been reduced by nearly one-third chiefly through the use of inmates’ labor dis¬ placing hired help. And the physical value of the plant had been increased by many thousand dollars more than the amount the state had expended upon it. Tho the years 1901 and 1902 were prosperous ones for the institution, I had lost some of my old courage and with it much of my energy and I slowly realized that my time to retire had come. I was tired out in mind and heart. I was always fool¬ ishly sensitive to the feelings of those with whom I had to deal; discouragement and lack of appreciation weakened me and the constant draft on my energy could no longer be met. I discov¬ ered that a trusted employee upon whose honor and loyalty I had depended was working against me in the hope of being my successor. At the same time some serious family trouble came upon me. Then ten years is a long time on one job for any man; most of all for one of my habit of mind, I whose favorite poem of Kipling’s is his “Sestina of the Tramp Royal”. I yearned to turn the next page in the book of life maybe not so good but different. So early in 1903 I handed my resignation to the trustees to take effect at their convenience. They held it up until August when I was notified that it would be accepted in September. I left the service of the state and her weakest children and for the time the profession of social work, and essayed a role for which by temper, habit and character, I was utterly unfit, that of making money. The disastrous story of that exploit does not belong in a volume of social adventures. Suffice it to say that when I was called back to the field where I belong, I promptly obeyed the summons and began two new social adven¬ tures simultaneously, the Adventure of the New York School of Philanthropy and the high Adventure as paid secretary of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. ♦The children getting School instruction were about one-fourth of the total inmates ; the others were idiots below school grade and adult morons and imbeciles who had graduated from the school and were employed in the house, the shops and on the farm. PART FOUR ADVENTURES WITH THE NATIONAL CON¬ FERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION (276) ADVENTURES WITH THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION Chapter One THE CONFERENCE AND SOME OF ITS EARLIER METHODS The place of our National Conference in the world and in social work is unique. Twelve years ago I had an opportunity of comparing it with The International Congress of Public Relief and Private Philanthropy which before the great war used to meet once in five years in Europe; and I was impressed by the great superiority, in usefulness and interest as well as in attend¬ ance, of our Conference over that assemblage of distinguished Europeans. To write the history of the National Conference, though it would be a valuable contribution to the literature of social work, is far too ambitious a project for me. I shall not even attempt it for the period when I was its secretary. I only hope to tell of some of my own Conference adventures, and of the benefits it brought to me and to some of my friends. A bright newspaper man attending his first Conference said that its purpose was “to reduce the tuition fees in the School of Experience”. I can think of no better definition of it than an occasional, or post-graduate, school of social work. It was my Alma Mater; at its meetings I acquired my education for the profession I had adopted. I learned not only the general prin¬ ciples but many of the methods appropriate to the different departments of social work which successively it became my duty to practice. At the Conference, I learned the theories and much of the details of organized charity which were invaluable to me in Cin¬ cinnati and in Chicago. As secretary of the Indiana Board of State Charities I was guided by what I had learned in the same (269) 270 Adventures with the National Conference great school. When I undertook the care of the feeble-minded my administration was based on principles I had gained from older, more experienced students and I practiced many methods I had first heard of at the Conference. Of course it was at the Conference that I was prepared for my nine years work as its paid secretary and what happened the first time I attended did much to establish me in the profession, in which at the time I was by no means firmly settled. My debt of obligation can never be paid. The Conference began as a committee of the American Social Science Association, of which Frank B. Sanborn, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Charities, was secretary. Its field was, in effect, the social work of the states and the members and secretaries of the Boards of State Charities were its natural clientele. These quickly assumed control of the committee and detaching it from its parent association gave it an independent existence and the offspring very soon far outgrew its parent.* The name of the new organization was derived from that of the state boards. In those days they were all called “Boards of State Charities” or of “Charities and Correction”; the modern title they are assuming of “Boards of Public Welfare” is an indication of a widening of their horizons, to include more than the work of public officials who deal with criminals, paupers and defectives. It is a recognition of the fact that to enhance the general public welfare is a function of government. The Conference has influenced this development to a marked degree. For many years the state boards kept the Conference going. There was no membership fee but each delegate was expected to subscribe for a copy of the proceedings. Each board bought one or two hundred copies annually for distribution in its state ; and without that support the publication could not have been made; nor even with it had it not been for a complaisant publisher who gave the Conference unlimited credit. So very naturally from the beginning there was an unwritten law that no one could be elected president unless he were a member or secretary of a ♦The above is a somewhat generalized statement of the facts. Anyone wishing to know just how and when they occurred will find a brief account of them in the Proceedings of the Conference of 1898. pp. xvii, et.. s eq. The Conference and Some of Its Earlier Methods 271 state board. It was not until the 21st Conference, in 1894, that this rule was rescinded by the election of the president of the leading Associated Charities of the country. While the state board members did not make any such claim, it was evident for many years that they were the Conference. They heartily welcomed all who would attend; but others than state board people were courteously tolerated, or at least seemed of lower rank. The government was a benevolent oligarchy ; part of its strength coming from the fact that each ex-president became a life member of the Council ; and later of the executive committee; the real governing body. Another determining fac¬ tor was that all service was volunteer. It was many years before there was even a paid official reporter and editor. The first secretary to receive a salary was Hastings Hart, who was chosen in 1894, and his stipend was merely nominal so that his service was practically unpaid. Even in 1904, when I was elected sec¬ retary, I was presumably engaged for only one-third of my time though I actually gave a great deal more. For most of its life the Conference had no constitution nor by-laws. There were a few “Rules of Procedure” but even these were not printed until 1892, at which time also the plan of a membership fee was mooted. The government was by resolu¬ tions, passed from time to time by the executive committee; and by a body of “unwritten” or customary law. Any experienced member who would gravely rise during a debate on procedure and say “the unwritten law is so and so” usually had his way. The Conference in having no written constitution resembled the British Empire, , , x . . , “Where freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent” and like the great Empire, it was a place “Where girded round by friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will.” Now unwritten laws are what you remember and one always remembers that of which he approves. Of course the man who kept what records there were, who had a good memory, and who had attended the most meetings, had a good chance to help free- 272 Adventures with the National Conference dom broaden down so long as he did not try to lead it down too fast. When I became paid secretary, in 1904, my official posi¬ tion and my experience during twenty years of regular attend¬ ance, made me the natural authority on customary law and I did occasionally revise the code in the interest of progress. This had to be done with caution and the new-made law had to be such as to meet the situation and promote harmony. Once or twice a revision was made by a quick decision on the spur of the moment, but my usual luck attended me and I was never once called down. One occasion of the kind occurred when I had been secre¬ tary for seven years and believed I had won the confidence and friendship of the general body of members, so that I felt safe in assuming that they would support me in anything in reason. An unwritten law required all resolutions to be referred to a committee, without debate. There was a delegate, an extreme radical, who had a grudge against some of the oldest and most respectable (and wealthy) members. He offered a resolution the object of which was to stir up strife by implied censure of impor¬ tant organizations which were represented at the Conference by some of its leading delegates. I tried to dissuade him and warned him that if I was compelled to present it to the meeting it would be in a way that he would not enjoy. As he persisted I had no choice but to read it. I prefaced the reading by reminding the audience of the early days when many cranks used to appear amongst us with all kinds of cranky resolutions ; that such people now rarely came but that a resolution I was obliged to read was from one of that kind. Then I read it and the president announced its reference. The next day the gentleman appeared along with one of the rare “stormy petrels” of the Conference, who always made trouble or tried to do so. From the floor they made and seconded a motion that “the remarks of the secretary in introducing the resolutions of the previous day be expunged from the record”. The vice-president who was in the chair said that this motion must follow the usual order. But I wanted to get it disposed of forthwith and asserted that the unwritten law (which I framed for the occasion) allowed the Conference, by unanimous consent, to take such action as it chose, and I therefore moved unanimous The Conference and Some of Its Earlier Methods 273 consent for immediate consideration. I added that whenever I had done anything I ought to be sorry for I was always willing to be forgiven for it and I therefore supported the resolution. The Conference laughed and unanimously ordered the obnoxious remarks expunged although they were in no danger of ever being recorded. Only once during my experience did a president deliberately attempt revision of the unwritten law, and as I did not agree with him and his attempt was in the direction of an infringe¬ ment on our democracy (of which we did not have too much) he did not have his way. When the eager young reformers began about seven years ago to make the Conference “more democratic7’, they were actu¬ ated by the highest motives. But democracy however admirable as a habit of mind, is not, as thoughtful people are beginning to see, a workable plan of government for an assembly larger than a New England town meeting or a small Swiss canton, and is especially ill-suited to a large and loosely knit organization. What does work is an oligarchy, not a selfish one, but one which secures all that democracy hopes for — that things shall be done in a way to bring the best results and as far as possible to please the whole company. A successful oligarchy must be benevolent, wise, unselfish, democratic in spirit and moderately progressive. These good qualities have always been conspicuous in the National Confer¬ ence to those who could or would see. I love the method of the Quaker’s business meetings where they never count heads, but when a leader has been moved to speak, his listeners or those who have opinions, express them if they are different or if they agree say “that friend speaks my mind”, and after all have spoken who are moved to do so, the clerk announces the decision by general consent. The government of the National Conference, for more than forty years at any rate, was by general consent. That is the best form of government which ever grew. But it must grow. It cannot be made to order. I was once told while I was secretary that a clique, or inner ring, of the executive committee, ran the whole affair disregard¬ ing the great majority of the membership; but I silenced and I think convinced the critic by an analysis of the attendance at 274 Adventures with the National Conference executive committee meetings during several years, which showed such an irregularity and diversity of those present as quite disposed of the governing clique idea. I felt flattered that the critical member did not accuse me of being “the clique” but he evidently did not think me guilty. For many years the only subject on which the Conference divided was the location of the next meeting. The election of president has only twice in forty-nine years showed opposing nominees, needing a count of votes. In fact anything like being a “candidate” was repugnant to Conference ideals. If a member had “announced himself” his election would have been impos¬ sible. At one meeting a gentleman who by force of circum¬ stances was the logical man for president for the next year and whose name was under consideration by the nominating commit¬ tee, narrowly escaped defeat by the action of an injudicious sup¬ porter who attempted some crude political electioneering on his behalf. We did count votes on one occasion at Atlantic City, on the question of dropping a man’s name from the ticket presented by the nominating committee. He was at the time a conscientious objector in a federal jail. For years he had been a useful mem¬ ber and as I believed his objection to war really was conscien-. tious, I and other liberal minded people tried to keep his name on the ticket but war hysteria was at its height though the war was over and our opponents prevailed. There were many good points in the old methods which helped make the Conference the wonderfully useful thing it has been. « One was a custom of giving representation on the list of officers and committees to every organization which sent delegates and to as many states as possible. Nearly every state had its cor¬ responding secretary, and “Reports from States” was a standing committee of which the general secretary was usually chairman. On the general committees through which the program must be presented each state had to be represented in proportion to the number of delegates it sent. The list of committees was revised from year to year ; in those days they were not “sections”, which are more difficult to change. A committee would report for two or three successive years, usually with a new chairman each year ; and then be dropped for The Conference and Some of Its Earlier Methods 275 a year or two, re-appearing when it might have something new to present. This gave flexibility to the program. A very few of the committees reported every year; their titles being revised from time to time as a different phase of their work seemed to need emphasis. The committee which first appeared on the program as Organization of Charities in Cities” became one of the most permanent under diverse names, such as Organization of Charity”, “Charity Organization”, etc. In 1901, it was called “Principles of Associated Charities” and in 1902 it appeared as “Needy Families in Their Homes”. Then a new committee came in called on “Neighborhood Improvement” which had in mind chieflv the settlement work ; and shortly thereafter, in 1907, the two committees were united under the name of “Needy Families, Their Homes and Neighborhoods”; continuing under the same or a similar title until 1917, when “Community Programs” took its place. To choose the committees which should be asked to report, to decide on their precise titles, to select the best available chair¬ man, to divide their membership so as to represent each state; was the function of a very important business committee, that on “Organization of the next Conference”. This had also to nomi¬ nate the president and other officers for the next year. For many years this committee and another one on “Time and Place”, were made up of one delegate from each state represented chosen by those present from that particular state. After a time as numbers grew this method, though democratic, was found to be clumsy and appointment by the chair was substituted. Continued efforts were made to interest new people in the Conference by putting their names on committees, asking them for papers or to lead discussions. Sometimes there were as many non-members as members on a committee. The chairman of the nominating committee was the hardest worked man except the general secretary, during the Conference week. The old heads on the executive committee had a knack of discovering members who were willing to work and then keeping them busy, and for several successive years I held the chairmanship of the committee on nominations. The Conference’s greatest safe-guard against division and friction has always been its custom of never dividing on any 276 Adventures with the National Conference question but that of the next place of meeting, and not adopting resolutions except those of courtesy. No one can demolish a verbal opponent by saying “The National Conference says so and so” because while its platform is free, and its members say what¬ ever they please, the Conference does not say anything. It is not a convention. Its members do not believe that a count of votes can possibly prove anything to be right or wrong. People who do not understand the spirit of conference are often dissatisfied with our methods as to resolutions. They think we are missing opportunities of influence. They ask what’s the use of talking if we come to no conclusion, and how can we know that we have reached a conclusion unless we express it in some positive way? But the history of the Conference has abundantly justified its methods. Its influence has been nation¬ wide. It has helped to promote scores of good “causes”, as it could not have done by endorsing them in resolutions, which might convey the opinion of the greater number but would leave a sense of defeat with the minority. People of widely different opinions meet as friends. They find a common ground upon which both can stand; some wider truth which includes the partial one which each upholds, and often their opinions grad¬ ually change. I have even known them to exchange. Some one appear with a new theory. He gets the floor and a handful of people with him and many more opposed because his theme is new. Next year he comes again and finds more adher¬ ents and perhaps more forcible opposition. After a while, if the thing is right, he has a majority on his side and presently everybody wonders how so sensible a proposition could ever have been questioned. The method of shelving resolutions which might cause dis¬ agreement, or commit the Conference to some policy upon which it would not have been unanimous ; was by referring them with¬ out debate to a committee which sometimes reported them out if they were harmless ; but often let them sleep in the chairman’s pocket. For many successive years Andrew Elmore, a member of the Wisconsin Board of State Charities, a charter member and ex-president of the Conference was chairman of the committee on resolutions. He was a bluff, hearty old man with a great The Conference and Some of Its Earlier Methods 277 sense of humor and was long one of the most popular members. Being American the Conference loves a joke, and Elmore’s reports were famous for humor as well as good common sense. One resolution called on the Conference to denounce certain crimes and proscribe the criminals; Elmore read the resolution and said the committee did not think it necessary to re-enact the Ten Commandments. Another was directed against the sport of trap-shooting pigeons and declared it was against the law ; the committee referred the mover to the prosecuting attorney of his county. A famous resolution referred to the evils of adulterated spirits; Mr. Elmore reported “if there is anything this sub¬ scriber desires it is that his liquor shall be pure”, but advised the Conference not to meddle with chemical experiments. During the first twenty-three years of its history the settle¬ ment people avoided the Conference; they were first represented by a committee on the program in 1895. One man appointed on this committee resigned from it and from the Conference because, as the head of a settlement, he could not have anything to do with an organization which had the word “charities” in its title. The name repelled them because they felt, as did many other people, that alms and charity are synonymous; and almsgiving is one of the destructive forces with which the settlements have to contend in dealing with their poorer neighbors. And it must be confessed that they were often justified. We see too often at the Conference as in almost every department of social work, a tendency towards palliative dealing with the consequences of evils which is so much easier than efforts to remove their causes but which helps to make possible the continuance of the evils we deplore. I believed when I was president in 1897, as I do still that the settlement theory, at its best, is one of the most hopeful principles of social work. Now if we judge at all we should always judge each other by our best. I was convinced that if only we people of the Conference and those of the settlements could understand each other as we were at our best; and if we would forgive each other’s trespasses committed when we were at our worst; there was plenty of place for settlement workers at the Conference, plenty of standing room on its platform which they might enjoy occupying. 278 Adventures with the National Conference At the Grand Rapids Conference in 1896, I was able to get in touch with some leading settlement people and, in 1897, being as president responsible for the program I determined if possible to get the settlements heartily in line. How well I, and those who followed me and believed as I did, succeeded may be seen from the fact that since the day the head of Hull House came to Toronto as chairman of a committee, we have had five of the most brilliant and influential of settlement people as presidents of the Conference; Jane Addams, Graham Taylor, Julia Lathrop, Robert Woods, and Allan Burns, and three of them were actually settlement head-workers while they presided. Similar efforts with various groups of social workers have marked the development of the Conference and have been the open secret of its evolution ; from a rather close corporation of people more or less in the public service of their states; to its present position of including every form of work which may properly be called social. The beginning of this evolution, like the beginning of the profession of social work itself, may fairly be credited to those who represented organized charities. But some who began attending the Conference as public officials have greatly aided in the evolution; although others of that class have persistently, and sometimes bitterly, opposed the growth and development of the organization which they, or others in similar positions, created and which therefore they thought they owned. For the first twenty years of the Conference any slant towards sectionalism was scrupulously avoided. Only as the membership grew to unwieldlv proportions so that meetings began to lose their value for discussion of any but the most general propositions, was any division permitted and it was long before it was encouraged. The first of what are now called sec¬ tion meetings and make the largest part of the program; were held in 1884, at St. Louis, by the C. O. S. group. These continued year by year but we were strictly enjoined to call them “special sessions” not “sectional meetings”. The first printed program of special sessions was made at St. Paul by the C. O. S. commit¬ tee and was unofficial ; and not until six years later were notices of the special sessions admitted into the official program of the Conference. The Conference and Some of Its Earlier Methods 279 The danger which the conservatives thought they foresaw, even up to 1892 and after, was that sections would be popular, would draw the largest audiences, and would presently create independent Conferences. I was sure the conservatives were wrong ; I knew that the representatives of one important group — that concerned with juvenile reformatories — were at the moment (1892) contemplating the very action that was dreaded; for the reason that the Conference did not and could not give them time for their own affairs. As soon as time was made by setting aside certain periods for special sessions, and allowing three or four of them to be simultaneous they agreed to remain with the Con¬ ference and we actually held them for several years thereafter. My theory was to give each committee one general session of the Conference; which every delegate would be expected to attend; where the group could make its appeal to the Nation; and then just as many special sessions of its own as it desired. The elder statesmen feared we should distract the attention of the delegates by offering several simultaneous meetings, so that they would be undecided which to choose and compromise ' by choosing none. A well worn joke on the subject was com¬ paring such a program to that of a “three ring circus”. When the history of the National Conference shall be written the events of the meeting at Denver will make an interesting chapter. It was here that as secretary I succeeded in getting the announcements of the special sessions admitted to the program and giving the groups all the meetings they needed. I had not then fully conceived the idea of what the Confer¬ ence might grow to; a congress of conferences; to which people might come not only as individuals but as associations; but the germ of the future growth was there. When I became full-time secretary I developed the germ and succeeded in getting one national body after another to hold its sessions in connection with ours, taking advantage of the great gathering to win recruits and make friends with individuals and with Associa¬ tions which were germane to themselves. In this development with its vastly increased membership much that was charming and delightful in the early days has been lost but very much more has been gained. To one who as I do expects (though he does not hope to live to see it) social 280 Adventures with the National Conference progress of a variety and amount that will make all we have done in forty years seem insignificant, the prospect is very hope¬ ful. Some day social work will be so harmonized, so co-operative, that all competition and jealousy will vanish. Some day not only men but associations of men ; even great National organizations ; will “look not every man on his own things but every man also on the things of others”. More and more we shall do social work socially, as individuals and as associations. When that good, time comes the National Conference will have done much to make it possible. Chapter Two MY EARLY CONFERENCES 1884-1889 The first Conference I attended was at St. Louis in October 1884. Nearly all the fine people I met there have retired from social work and most of them have gone behind the veil and joined the great majority. Two choice spirits among them are still in my old age among the most valued of my long list of friends. One is Hastings H. Hart, known to every social worker. He is the oldest, living ex-president of the Conference, (oldest in date of service, I rank him in years) ; having presided in 1898, four years before my term. The other friend is Zilpha Drew Smith who was for many years secretary of what everybody who knows thinks the best Associated Charities there ever was, that of Boston. The opening meeting of the Conference was on Saturday evening. I arrived in St. Louis at noon, found the headquarters and registered. Then ascertaining that the president was at the Lindel Hotel, in my simplicity I thought the courteous thing to do was to pay my respects to him. I sent up my card was ushered into a room and four dignified looking gentlemen rose to their feet. The card was handed to Mr. Letchworth, and I told him I represented the Associated Charities of Cincinnati. The four gentlemen stood waiting, looking, though not saying, “well, what about it? what do you want?’’ I did not want any¬ thing. I was merely doing what I thought was the polite thing. But it was not what they were looking for and I hastily retreated, chilled, embarrassed, humiliated. They did not mean to humiliate me and were not conscious that they had done so I think they were even a trifle perplexed by my call. They were good men, but it had not occurred to them to be good fellows. Thirteen years later when I became president I got even with them in an interesting way. (281) 282 Adventures with the National Conference One of the defects of the Conference, even in the old days when it was not a tenth of its present size, was a certain lack of sociability. The common folk were sociable enough among them¬ selves, but there was always an inner circle, a group of elder statesmen, who not so much held aloof — they always spoke pleas¬ antly if spoken to ; they were really good hearted men — but made little effort to meet and greet newcomers except perhaps new members of state boards or similarly dignified people. There was always a headquarters hotel at which the president and all the elite stayed; with the “president’s table”, where a few of the higher officials were seated and to which any spe¬ cially distinguished stranger would be invited. But hundreds of shy, modest first-comers never met the president socially nor saw him except at a distance. My getting even with Mr. Letchworth for which I had waited thirteen years was as follows: the Conference met at Toronto; the headquarters were at the Rossin House, an American plan hotel; I had a room with a parlor for myself and wife. The dining-room had two doors one of them opposite our parlor. For a modest initial tip, I got the head waiter to arrange a table for twelve near the door, to serve the meals as at home ; soup in a tureen, meats carved but on platters; and give me plenty of service. My wife provided flowers; in those days flowers on a hotel table were rare. Then for each lunch and dinner we filled the chairs by inviting Conference delegates to eat at the “presi¬ dent’s table” ; each time getting two or three of the leading mem¬ bers to lend grace and dignity to the occasion, but specially inviting any bashful new-comers. For each meal the guests gath¬ ered in our parlor and when the waiter announced the service we crossed the corridor to the dining room. In the course of the week we had entertained more than one hundred different guests. Of course, we were limited to those staying at headquarters but there were more than two hundred and fifty to choose from. The scheme worked well and had con¬ sequences which were felt in the social tone of the Conference for years after. When I became secretary in 1904, I always chose, if possible, an American plan hotel for headquarters as affording at the table the best and easiest opportunity of sociability. Mr. Letchworth was not present at Toronto and never knew how I My Early Conferences, 1884-1889 283 got even with him; but my revenge was my own private affair it did not concern him. After a few years of regular attendance I found deep interest in every committee’s work ; but my main concern at the first was with the meetings devoted to charity organization. This was one of the newer committees, it was on the program for only the second time.* Mr. Charles S. Fairchild, president of the State Charities Aid Association of New York, who later was Secretary of the Treas¬ ury under Cleveland, was chairman. He had a report ready but no papers nor assigned speakers. The session of Tuesday morn¬ ing was to be occupied by his subject. On Saturday evening he asked Zilpha Smith and myself each to write a paper to read on Tuesday; Miss Smith’s paper was on “Friendly Visiting”; mine was on “The Danger to a C. O. S. of Relief Work”. Of course they were hurried productions or at least mine was. When the proof sheets came to me several months later, I found a para¬ graph which I could not understand. No doubt it had a mean¬ ing when I wrote it and there may have been a printer’s error which clouded it, but I had to cut it out. Mr. Fairchild called several meetings of the A. C. and C. O. S.f people at which he presided and had me act as secretary. These were the very first of the section meetings which now make the bulk of the program. They were eagerly attended especially by the new recruits to organized charity. At the meetings of the C. O. S. group I met Mr. E. I. Galvin, vice-president of the society in Chicago, which was then strug¬ gling for existence. The acquaintance then made led eighteen months later to my going to Chicago as secretary. The National Conference is one of the best places to bring social workers and those who desire their services together. It happened that there were few C. O. S. people present at St. Louis. But the Conference leaders had discovered that the new committee was to be an important and popular one; and when Washington was chosen for the next meeting that impor¬ tance was seen to be greater; partly because its subject was a ♦The committee was first appointed in 1881, but it made no report to the Conference of 1882. fAssociated Charities and Charity Organization Society. 284 Adventures with the National Conference live local topic for that city, where there were two competing societies one called Associated Charities and one Charity Organi¬ zation Society; and partly because the Conference would attract many people from the part of the country in which most of the new societies were located. Here came in one of those streaks of luck which have attended me all my life. It was my first Conference; I was utterly unknown in the world of social work ; of the few C. O. S. people present most and the brightest were women. If it had been a few years later Zilpha Smith would have been made chairman of the charity organization committee for 1885, as she actually was for 1901 ; but the conservatives who made the slate could not dream in 1884 of giving the honor to a woman. The unwritten law demanded that the chairman of a committee must be present when elected. Little known or qualified though I was thanks to Mr. Fairchild’s unpreparedness, I had read a paper and I seemed the best available; so they made me chairman of the committee for the next year. During the Conference week I visited the St. Louis Provident Association and got my first comprehension of how alms-giving can dominate and spoil a society which had begun with prin¬ ciples of prevention, co-operation, and service. My visit was after I had read my paper on the dangers of relief work or I might well have used the local society as a terrible example. Because the Conference met at the Nation’s capital everybody came to Washington in 1885. The attendance was double that at St. Louis. The early enthusiastic period of charity organiza¬ tion work was at high tide. Most of the new societies sent their secretaries to the national meeting and they were all eager to learn from and teach each other, and I who a year previous had been the most raw and unknown beginner, was now as chairman of the committee, the leader of the C. O. S. people at the Con¬ ference!! Luckily for me I realized that the honor was due to my good fortune, not to any special ability of my own. During the year between the Conferences I had done my best in preparation. Among other things I had secured from the Boston society a copy of its list of correspondents for charity purposes which covered New England well and included many places in New York and other states. To this I had added many My Early Conferences, 1884-1889 285 names, some representing organizations, some public officials, and some private citizens; so I was able to announce a list of more than three hundred cities in each of which a correspondent would give at least some information about people who came from or desired to go to them. This was the beginning of that united action among the societies which has had many good results, especially in dealing with applicants for transportation. Among the new people Nathaniel S. Rosenau was the most brilliant. He came as secretary of the Buffalo C. O. S. He had been a student of law and coming under the influence of Felix Adler, leader of the Ethical Culture Movement, had been advised by him to enter social work as a profession. He gave promise of taking high rank. His sad downfall and untimely death from tuberculosis a few years later was one of the tragedies of social work. Rosenau and I worked together for some years, both while he was with the Buffalo C. O. S. and afterwards when he became general secretary of the United Hebrew Charities of New York. At Washington we arranged a program of special meetings for the A. C. and C. O. S. people. These were attended by an eager earnest group. In those days the regular sessions were held morning, afternoon and evening, and time for special meetings had to be stolen from the hours of rest or meals. The elder statesmen looked askance at these meetings; they dreaded decen¬ tralization ; they were afraid the Conference might split into two or more parts and lose its influence with the nation. Each morning at eight the group of organized charity people met, and again at 1 :30. A typewritten program was made with a copy for each attendant; Rosenau acted as secretary and I presided. Among the group were Zilpha Smith of Boston, Walk of Philadelphia, Massey of Wilmington, Del., Hutchins of Minne¬ apolis, Visher of St. Paul, Buzelle of Brooklyn, and Lockwood of Cleveland. We felt that the special meetings were to us the most valuable part of the Conference and resolved they must continue; though nobody had the slightest notion of what they would some day develop into. Rev. Oscar Carlton McCulloch of Indianapolis came to some of our meetings; he preached what was in effect the conference sermon that year. I renewed my acquaintance with him made a year before but little did I dream of the close relations I was to have with him in the future. 286 Adventures with the National Conference When I was told in St. Louis that I was to be chairman of the C. O. S. committee for the next year, I was asked to secure the interest and attendance of representatives of the big city relief societies, such as the Relief and Aid Society of Chicago, the Provident Association of Pittsburg and others. These people had not seen that the Conference could be of any benefit to them, and had not attended its earlier meetings. Now the charity organization group had seen the light and were becoming promi¬ nent but did not recognize their kinship with the other agencies. The relief people felt themselves slighted when they thought about it at all; and there was some animosity between the two groups. I made a determined effort to do as I was requested. At that time as a worker in associated charities, I hoped the big city relief societies might be induced to co-operate and to do all relief -giving, leaving us free to develop service; later experience showed me how futile that hope was in most cases. The history of organized charity in the Mid-West would have been very dif¬ ferent had the older relief societies there taken the position which was adopted by the Boston Provident toward the A. C. of that city. I succeeded in getting two papers, one by Rev. Trusdell, Superintendent of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, on “Organized Charities”; and one by Rev. Donehoo who held a similar position in Pittsburgh, on “Combined Efforts in Charity Work”. The two papers were alike in showing that neither author had learned anything new about social work for many years. Although Trusdell was a member of the Illinois Board of Public Charities, he had not attended the National Confer¬ ence ; but he felt his own importance and he came to Washington with a chip on his shoulder. He early sought an interview with me as chairman of the committee and declared that he proposed to be heard. He said the C. O. S. of Chicago had invaded his domain with specious pretenses and he meant to make people know that they were frauds and imposters. He believed that most of the A. C. and C. O. S. people everywhere were four- flushers, impudently posing at the Conference as the only char¬ itable societies worth attention. I assured him that he should have his day in court; that the Conference is nothing if not My Early Conferences, 1884-1889 287 impartial; that its most earnest wish is that every side should be heard. But the old relief-man did not wish to be placated. He imagined he had a real grievance and was spoiling for a fight. On the Sunday afternoon I invited Trusdell to my room to meet Rosenau of Buffalo and Walk of Philadelphia, and we spent several hours discussing the situation. The Chicago man finally agreed that in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Buffalo, it was right for C. O. S. to claim first place but insisted that in Chicago the field was occupied. We parted good friends but his last words were that we must remember he proposed to be heard. The C. O. S. session was set for Tuesday morning. On Mon¬ day at breakfast, Trusdell announced that he was going to Chi¬ cago on the night train. He said, “what’s the use of mV staying? You fellows will all be against me; I shall have no backing; I am going tonight.” I did my best to reassure him, reiterating my promise of a fair hearing etc., but I could not persuade the old gentleman who after all his vaporings was so easily daunted; so I hurried to Mr. Garrett, the president, and others begging them to induce him to remain and read his paper and under their influence he consented. When the meeting began Trusdell was as nervous as a high school valedictorian. Mr. Garrett had introduced the custom of the chairman of each committee presiding at its session, so I held the gavel. Trusdell begged me to rap him down without mercy if he exceeded his time limit and was as mOek as Moses. He did exceed bv fifteen minutes but of course I did not call him t / down. His paper which was to be so incendiary was prosy and platitudinous; it fell absolutely flat; no one said a word; the C. O. S. people did not even feel themselves attacked. It was this circumstance which made me so ready to meet him when we became antagonists in Chicago three years later; it may have been his recollection of it which made him, after the amalgama¬ tion of the two societies in 1888, offer his resignation rather than meet me before our joint board of directors. The popularity of the committee and the large attendance of C. O. S. people which it attracted to the Conference showed its value to the executive committee which has always recognized success ; so the committee was continued for another year, and I was re-elected chairman. This was unusual then; it was almost 288 Adventures with the National Conference an unwritten law that a committee chairman like the president served for only one year. In June 1886, the Conference met at St. Paul, and as I had been re-elected chairman of the committee on C. O. S., my Chicago directors cheerfully agreed to send me as a delegate. St. Paul was an attractive location for the Mid-West people and as was the case at Washington everybody came. I had put in a good deal of time and work on the report and the papers to present. Rosenau was present and was an invaluable second for every¬ thing I proposed and had lots of good ideas of his own. After the opening meeting of the Conference we got together at the hotel and with the help of Dr. Kloman, who represented the Baltimore C. O. S. and one other delegate whose name I have forgotten, we arranged a program of C. O. S. meetings. It was long after midnight before it was in shape, and the next morn¬ ing I was waiting with it at the door of a printing office before the men came to work; but we got it into the hands of the C. O. S. people at the first morning session of the Conference. This was the first printed program of section meetings, or as we called them then, “special sessions,” to avoid the charge of fos¬ tering the sectional idea. Our meetings attracted others besides the C. O. S. people. We had arranged an exhibit for which a pleasant room in the state house where all the Conference meetings were held was secured. Rosenau showed a model life-size “creche” or day nursery, which was a new thing then, and a special feature of the Buffalo C. O. S. I had a display on forty large cards 30x24 inches, of tickets, record cards, report blanks, etc., used by the leading societies, with samples of pamphlets and circulars. This was later sent from city to city on request as a traveling exhibit of office methods. Our exhibit was the first thing of its kind seen at the Conference. During subsequent years the exhibit idea has been largely stressed particularly by representatives of institutions who have often shown displays of the work of their inmates with good effect ; and some graphic illustrations of office methods and systems have been valuable; including a diagram¬ matic model of a confidential exchange which came from Boston one year. My Early Conferences,, 1884-1889 289 At St. Paul, Kosenau and I organized “The Council of Charity Officers” of which he was secretary and I president. Its pur¬ pose was to promote good professional standards (we were even then claiming to be a profession) and incidentally to keep tab on some other professionals, the traveling mendicants, who at that time were numerous and adroit. We printed a weekly con¬ fidential list of these fraudulent people which was contributed to by each member and was sometimes very useful. Some of the most expert of the professionals found themselves confronted by an advance knowledge of themselves which seemed uncanny. To be told the history of their lives and schemes for years past ; and given twenty-four hours to leave town or be arrested for vagrancy, was very disquieting. In Chicago I did have two of the worst frauds whom the black list had helped me to identify, arrested and committed to the workhouse; but the net results were not satisfactory; even less so than my own attempts at reforming such people which always failed, partly because so small a proportion of the benevolent would co-operate with us, either negatively by refusing their demands or positively by assisting us to punish them. At the St. Paul Conference there were several new notes struck in famous papers presented. One of these was by Gov¬ ernor Hoadly of Ohio, on “The Pardoning Power” which was so popular that the issue of the proceedings of that year in which it was printed was soon exhausted. Bishop Ireland, of Minne¬ sota, spoke on “The System of Charities of the Catholic Church” and began by denying the existence of a system. Twenty-one years later when we met in Minneapolis the same dignitary now Archbishop Ireland preached the Conference sermon. Bishop Whipple of the Episcopal Church, paid a glowing tribute to his brethren of the Roman communion, on their work of building churches and sending priests to civilize some rough settlements. The good Bishop also introduced to the Conference the idea of America’s duty to the immigrant, and made a pathetic plea for the helpless ones among them; that they should not be ruth¬ lessly excluded; that when we are receiving the sturdy and vig¬ orous, we should permit them to bring a reasonable proportion of the weaker ones with them. 290 Adventures with the National Conference Rabbi Sonneschein, of St. Louis, spoke as a Hungarian immi¬ grant and said his fellow-countrymen had no reason of poverty or lack of opportunity at home, for emigration, and that we may justly ask them why they came as we need not ask those from impoverished lands. This speech moved me, as an immigrant from England, to declare that the same was emphatically true about those from the land of my birth. My remarks aroused the ire of Dr. Gundry, who was also an English immigrant; and when the session was over he accused me of slandering his and my fellow countrymen. I replied, “Doctor, tell us why you came?” to which he answered that his family had lost money and had to make a new start and it was less repugnant to do this in new surroundings. I told him that his reason was valid and was much the same as my own. The good doctor got over his pique and we became warm friends. Dr. Gundry was an apostle of the non-restraint system of caring for the insane. He was one of Ohio’s prophets whom she stoned ; he had been highly successful as superintendent of a state hospital, and was deposed for purely political reasons. He then took a similar position in Maryland, and held it with honor until his death. In those days in Ohio and many other states which are now more civil¬ ized, a change of party, or even a change of dominant faction of the same party, meant a clean sweep of all the state’s servants on the principle that their jobs were spoils and so belonged to the victors. It was at this Conference that I first met Clara Barton, then and for long the presiding genius of the Red Cross, whose work I had first seen in 1884, during the flood relief in Cincinnati. In 1887, the Conference met in Omaha and though the attend¬ ance was smaller than at St. Paul or Washington, the delegates got much benefit. The program included a good report on state boards of charities with several papers and a full discussion following. From it I learned much which was to be useful to me two years later in securing my appointment as secretary of the Board of State Charities of Indiana. Charles D. Kellogg, of the New York C. O. S., was chairman of the committee on organized charities. He had a good report and some useful papers. But the early enthusiasm was beginning to wane. One or two special sessions were held, but the lack of a strong directing hand was plain. My Early Conferences, 1884-1889 291 At Omaha one distinctly new note was our responsibility to the African and Indian races. Miss Alice Fletcher, who had lived among the Omahas, contributed a notable paper on allot¬ ment of land in severalty to the Indians.* Gen. Armstrong of Hampden Institute, and Frank B. Sanborn of Massachusetts spoke on “The Future and the Education of the Africans”. In 1887, we were far from the modern conception of social work and were still hampered by old theories of charity; hence the discussion of the affairs of Negroes and Indians was deemed almost irrelevant; and the committee on such affairs which seemed likely to be useful was dropped from the program and has not re appeared. This was the last Conference I attended in my capacity as secretary of a charity organization society. The meeting for 1888 was at Buffalo; but the financial stringency from which the C. O. S. of Chicago was suffering, and the heavy burden of work I was carrying made it seem advisable to stay away. In 1889, I had changed my occupation and had entered on an adventure even more attractive and inciting than that of associated charities. When the Conference met in San Francisco in 1889, I had become secretary of a board of state charities so it was all the more fitting that I should continue my membership. Our board sent two members besides myself. A special train filled with delegates started from Chicago and made a leisurely trip across the Continent; stopping for a few hours in Denver, where we were entertained for dinner and some speech-making by the local social workers; a day and a night at Colorado Springs; and a day at Salt Lake. We crossed the divide at Marshall Pass, the highest railroad station in the Kockies, where the train halted long enough for us to count our heart-beats as accelerated by the altitude. Seven days together on the train brought about a companionship that had rarely been equalled since the early days when thirty or forty people made up the Conference. Bishop Gillespie, long the chairman of the Michigan Board of Charities, was president. He was one of the worthies of the ♦Anyone who wishes to understand what giving land to the Indians in severalty, should do, or should have done, for them and for us, should read Miss Fletcher’s paper in the Proceedings for 1887, page 172. 292 Adventures with ttte National Conference old days {vho has passed over a still greater divide than that of Marshall Pass. One of the valued acquaintanceships I made on the train was that of Mr. John Glenn who was then president of the Baltimore C. O. S. One of his errands at San Francisco was to invite the Conference to meet the next year in the Monu¬ ment City in which he was successful. Mr. Glenn was blind and from him I learned a true conception of what our social work for the blind ought to be; pre-eminently for them it is to help them help themselves. There was something very delightful in the friendships we made at the National Conference in those early days; before the gathering got too large for everybody to know everybody else. The associates we met there seemed more charming than those we saw during the other fifty-one weeks of the year, per¬ haps because, for that one week, we were all on our best behaviors. We all agreed so admirably in everything but opinion. And other people also thought well of us. During the meeting at Atlanta in 1903, the head waiter at the Piedmont Hotel, a rather famous and quaint old darky, was asked by one of the other guests who all these people in the dining room wearing badges were. He replied “it’s some sort of a convention, sah. They suah ah mighty fine folks, sah. They don’t find no fault with theirselves.” Timothy Nicholson was not able to attend the meeting at San Francisco, but he was much interested in the published proceed¬ ings. It was the custom in those days to print with the index of the volume, a list of the speakers reported in it, with the number of the page on which each speech appeared ; it was therefore very easy to see who had talked the most frequently. A few days after we had received the proceedings for 1889, Mr. Nicholson came into the state board office and referred to the fact that his copy of the proceedings had come and then said “I see there was one man who spoke oftener than thee did.” — I said “who was that?” — he replied, “Oscar McCulloch”. I told him that the fact of our names appearing the most frequently; as the reporter was also the editor; merely meant that what we said was best worth printing. But he thought that was specious. At San Francisco there was a group of earnest people from Portland, Ore., who invited the delegates to hold a supplemen- My Early Conferences, 1884-1889 293 tary two days session in that city. A few of us went and held meetings on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings. On Sunday morning many of our delegates spoke in the city churches and on Monday we were given an excursion on the Columbia River. I spoke in the Unitarian church and was invited to stay over the week with the Pacific Coast Unitarian Conference, which was in session, and to address that conference on social work. Rev. T. L. Eliot, pastor of the church, who was the leader in social work in the city, asked me to inspect their state insti¬ tutions at Salem, (Oregon had no state board of charities). I later sent him a fifty page report on their prison, insane hospital, and the schools for deaf and blind. A few weeks after I had sent the report from Indianapolis, I got a letter from Mr. Eliot, inviting me to become superintend¬ ent of their Boys and Girls Aid Society. I answered that while the offer was attractive I had only recently become secretary of the Indiana Board and had begun much work that would lose its value if I did not finish it and I could not in honor desert my post. In about three weeks I got a letter saying there was no hurry and asking how soon I should consider it proper to con¬ template a change. Then I thought I would settle it. I wrote that Mr. McCulloch and I had resolved to bring the National Conference to Indianapolis in May 1891, and that I must cer¬ tainly see that thru. A few weeks later a third letter came say¬ ing a year would soon pass and he might write again. Early in 1891, when I was awaiting with some apprehension my first experience with a legislative assembly, and fully expect¬ ing an attack from disgruntled politicians, which might end our board’s usefulness;* came a letter saying the year was over and would I now consider the position if so at what salary. The call was attractive, I liked Portland; and the opportunities Oregon might offer for my three boys about whose careers I was anxious, seemed specially good. The glamour of the Far West attracts those who love adventure as I do. So I offered to take the position if they could make the salary enough more than I was earning to offset the higher cost of living; and would pay ♦See page 97 “The First Annual Report”. 294 Adventures with the National Conference my moving expenses. To this Mr. Eliot agreed. But I added a third condition — that when they offered me the position at $2500.00, they should say that this was a minimum and that they would hope (not promise) to make it $3500.00 when the society should be well established. On this point our difference was final and I stayed in Indiana where I belonged. I attended the next Conference in a new role for at San Francisco I was elected general secretary an honor I held with great satisfaction (to myself) for four years. In those days that office like all others of the Conference was unpaid, but it brought compensations worth more than money. Chapter Three ADVENTURES AS SECRETARY First Series/ 1890-1893 I went to Baltimore in 1890 as the secretary of the Confer¬ ence. Perhaps because it was my first year as secretary and I was enjoying the work and the position ; but certainly the people who came to our meeting at Baltimore seemed to me the finest lot of folks with whom I ever had such intimate acquaintance. Dr. Albert G. Byers, whose reputation as the only secretary in very many years of the Ohio State Board of Charities was nation-wide, was president. He was old and in failing health and he carried thru his duties on his nerve not on his bodily strength. Mr. Joseph Cushing was chairman of the local committee and was a noble and lavish host. John M. Glenn was local sec¬ retary; he was getting his first taste of social work in which he holds a unique position today. Baltimore people lived up to their reputation for hospitality; they not only entertained us, both publicly and privately, but they crowded our meetings. Some years afterward when I was preparing publicity for a com¬ ing meeting, I wrote to a friend in Baltimore with the question, “what effect did the Conference have on your city and its social work?” and the answer was that many good things had hap¬ pened and in every one of them the initial impulse might be traced to the Conference. It was wonderfully interesting to go again to Baltimore in 1915, after the lapse of a quarter of a century; to recall old memories of great-souled people who had passed away and remember what they had been to the Conference and could be no more. It impressed me with the transitoriness of human life ♦The second and third series in Chapts. 5 and 6 tell of my work as paid secretary which began in September 1904, and continued for nine years. (295) 296 Adventures with the National Conference and the permanence of great and noble human institutions. Those who had made this splendid instrument for the promotion of human welfare were forgotten except bj a few lingering sur¬ vivors. But the Conference they had helped to create endured; stronger; with a more vigorous life; with many times greater attendance; than in the days when those early leaders seemed essential to its existence. Most of all it was inspiring to see the new leaders at the front ; strong men and women who had been little children when we met before in Baltimore ; braver, more hopeful, more earnest, more determined than those whose work they were carrying on to heights undreamed of in the olden days. I know nothing that makes me feel more optimistic than does the transformation of the National Conference; from a group of people chiefly concerned with various kinds of relief, correction, punishment; at best amelioration; to a body of social workers whose devotion is not merely to prevention; still less to relief; but emphatically to social construction. Some of the common¬ places of the Conference today would have sounded wildly radical if not Utopian to many who were leaders in 1890. To have had a share in that marvelous transformation fills me with gratitude to those who first caught the vision, — who kindled the torch, ran with it a few steps, and then handed it to others each to carry a little way and in turn pass it to their successors. When we went from Indianapolis to the Conference it was with the determination to bring back with us the promise of the meeting of 1891. We took a Pullman car load of thirty-one people. Mr. McCulloch and I had outlined our campaign; we had resolved to use our best persuasion before the committee on time and place and get, if possible, a unanimous report; but if we failed in that our plan was to secure a minority report and then get the floor and with all the powers of speech we had stampede the Conference into supporting the minority. As it turned out although there were five or six other invitations to consider we had no trouble; the report was in our favor. As Indianapolis was chosen Mr. McCulloch was the logical president. He had force, eloquence, character and he was a mem¬ ber of the Board of State Charities. After the election was over the local committee invited us to a carriage ride about the city. As Secretary — First Series, 1890-1893 297 I was in the same vehicle with Mr. McCulloch and noticed how silent he was, he who usually had so many interesting things to say; this endured for the first hour of our ride when he turned to me with a smile and said “ Johnson, I have got it all settled”. I said “settled what?” He said “our Conference”. He had planned his arrangements for the local committee, chosen the chairman, the method of raising the necessary local contribution, the place of meeting, and had outlined his presidential address. Thenceforth for the rest of the ride he was his old genial self. At the concluding meeting, a wonderful gathering, a crowded house in a large theatre, the stage full of distinguished people; Cardinal Gibbons in his scarlet robes the most conspicuous fig¬ ure; Hr. Byers was taken sick and had to leave the platform. Oscar McCulloch, the incoming president, on receiving the gavel paid a touching tribute to the old veteran whom he was to suc¬ ceed. The occasion was an intense and pathetic one. The con¬ trast was extreme. McCulloch, though slender, was the picture of middle-age virility; his splendid, resonant, human voice was at its best. Byers, feeble and frail, was a vision of outworn senescence. Before the next Conference convened Hr. Byers was given still greater promotion he left us for his permanent home. And after Mr. McCulloch’s magnificent Conference in Indianapolis, he too passed over, before his friend and comrade Myron Reed called the Benver Conference to order in 1892. At the close of the Baltimore Conference I spent three days as the guest of Mr. John M. Glenn, visiting with him the various state and city institutions and discussing social work. His friendship then gained has been one of the valued possessions of ray life. The Indianapolis meeting in 1891 was an especially memor¬ able one for our board and myself. With one member presiding every member in attendance and its secretary the secretary of the Conference, we were much in the limelight. Our board was only two years old so that its novity made it attractive to the newsgatherers. Mr. McCulloch was an expert in publicity as in everything he touched and very popular with the newspaper people ; so the proceedings were better reported than ever before ; he had secured from nearly every speaker an advance copy of 298 Adventures with the National Conference his paper ; these with infinite labor he briefed ; had them printed in galleys by the local agent of the Associated Press; and sent to a large number of newspapers with a release date; and most of them were used. The sessions were held in Plymouth church of which Mr. McCulloch was pastor. It was a fine auditorium with good acoustics and plenty of vestries for committee meetings. The chairman of the local committee was H. H. Hanna, a leading business man who, though not a member of his church, was a great admirer of Mr. McCulloch. His method of collecting the local fund is worth telling. He wrote personal letters to some people explaining the Conference and its value to the city and state each ending “your share of the necessary local expense of $3000.00, is f 100.00 ; please send a check to the treasurer”. A few more he assessed $50.00; others $25.00; and a very few $10.00. Only one letter failed to bring the check requested, and this was to a man who sailed for Europe before the Conference met. I tried the same plan in miniature for the state Conference which met in Fort Wayne in 1903, with similar results; I learned the lesson that in raising money it’s always well to ask each man for a definite sum ; if that is a liberal one the implied compliment is valued. A feature of the Indianapolis Conference which has some¬ times been repeated but never equalled was the introduction of congregational singing. McCulloch was an artist in church serv¬ ices and a great believer in the humanizing effect of people sing¬ ing together. The organ in his church was with one exception the best west of the Alleghanies and was used at every session. We compiled a little book of Conference songs with tunes which everyone knows, and we sang once or twice at each session. When I was president of the Indiana State Conference I reprinted this song-book with Mr. McCulloch’s portrait as a frontispiece and under the picture one of his favorite bits from Browning which I thought very appropriate for him, “One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward; Never doubted clouds would break ; Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph ; Held we fall to rise; are baffled to fight better; sleep to wake;” Of course the members of the state board had to take part and John R. Elder read a paper on “How it looks to a New Member”. As Secretary — First Series, 1890-1893 299 Early in the state board work Mr. Elder had been discouraged at finding, as he said, that the board had no authority; that no matter how rotten we might find things we had no way to right them. I told him that he was mistaken, that we had the very strongest force in the world behind us; that of public opinion; without which no law-made power can be effective in the lines of our work. He had decided on resigning but changed his mind and remained a useful member for many years, until failing health compelled his resignation. As our board was new to the public the discussion on state boards was a popular part of the program to the local people. During this we had a piece of testimony from Dr. Thomas the newly installed superintendent of the Southern hospital. He had been an early opponent of the board; had been interviewed and had spoken in a very uncomplimentary manner. I called on him the day the interview appeared and made him change his opinion and when he became superintendent of the Southern hospital and was having trouble with an ignorant and old- fashioned board of trustees I helped him materially. In his speech at the Conference he told of his early distrust and opposi¬ tion; but said that since he had learned to know our board he would not wish to be superintendent of a hospital in a state which lacked so useful a department of government. The care of the feeble-minded had been introduced to the Con¬ ference in 1884, and a committee on the subject under slightly varying titles, became a permanent one for more than thirty years. Much of the present public interest in that vital topic has come from the Conference. At Indianapolis Dr. Fish of Illinois brought out a new feature in a paper on “Colony Care for All the Feeble-Minded’7. This was the introduction of the principle of permanent care; and my own convictions which I was to have the opportunity to carry out at Fort Wayne a few years later were based on this paper and similar ones at later Conferences. When the time and place committee reported Denver was chosen for the Conference of 1892. Rev. Myron Reed of Denver had been a faithful comrade of Mr. McCulloch when they had preached in neighboring churches in Indianapolis. Together they had put thru many social reforms, “Mac,” as Reed lovingly called him, always the leader. Their first meeting had been at a 300 Adventures with the National Conference Monday morning gathering of ministers before which Reed had presented a paper on Mathew Arnold. As soon as he sat down all his clerical brethren save one expressed their horror of Arnold as an atheist; all the more dangerous because of his personal morality and his attractive literary style. They warned Reed that he was on dangerous ground; that when he spoke well of Arnold his own orthodoxy would be seriously questioned. When the torrent of invective ceased, — as Reed told the story, — a modest looking young man, a stranger to the rest, rose and quietly said it was evident that no one present but Mr. Reed and himself had ever read Arnold; and went on to show how futile was all the terror which the brethren had expressed. The stranger was McCulloch who had just taken Plymouth Church and as he sat down Reed grasped his hand and thenceforth they stuck closer than brothers. Reed was pastor of a Presbyterian and McCulloch of a Con¬ gregational Church. They were equally liberal in their doctrine and equally enthusiastic in social welfare. For years thereafter they worked side by side; read the same books; every kind of literature except theological which both eschewed ; preached from the same texts; spent their vacations together fishing the same Northern streams. Reed used to tell with gusto, of Mac, up to his middle in ice-cold water, in a rough, rocky stream, handling a five pound trout on an eight ounce rod, and quoting “Paracel¬ sus”, or “the Ring and the Book”. They were strong Browning- ites and led a little Browning Society. Reed used to say it was their test of brains; anyone who could understand and appre¬ ciate Browning was good to tie to ; he would not misunderstand you. As Reed was now holding the same place in Denver as leader in liberal opinion and in social work that his friend held in Indianapolis; and as the Conference was going to Denver in 1892, Mr. McCulloch determined that his comrade should follow him as president. Now I knew Reed and loved and respected him for what he was; but he had not the qualities needed for a president of the Conference ; he hated detail ; he could not do plodding work ; he was rather impatient of stupid people. McCulloch knew all this as well as I; but he was the most faithful of friends; he wanted As Secretary— First Series, 1890-1893 301 Reed to have the honor, and the strength in his city which the position might lend him. When I remonstrated he said he had determined to help Reed out that he would do the preparatory routine work for him and help him to ntake the program. But though he did not know it he was then carrying the seeds of dis¬ ease which had a quick development in his death a few months later; so his plans to help his friend carry off with credit the honor he had insisted on giving him, were of no avail. McCulloch’s influence prevailed and Reed was elected. I was re-elected secretary. I explained to Mr. Reed what a president’s duties were; making the program for which he was wholly responsible ; the vast amount of correspondence needed at once in confirming committee appointments and all the rest. He said, “I can’t do that I sail next week for three months in Europe”. Then I asked him if he would stand for whatever I did in his name during his absence and he heartily agreed. When Reed returned to the U. S. I had a copying book (it was before the days of carbon paper) full -of letters, and scores of answers. I wrote reminding him of his job and asking him to take it over at once. To this came no reply nor to a second letter of the same tenor. Then I wired him that I would ship the mass of correspondence by express. He answered by wire adon’t you dare ship that stuff to me”. We finally agreed that I was to continue with the program and other detail he promising to pay any bill for expenses I should present. When the program was ready we called an executive committee meeting in Chicago, which was more fully attended than was usual at meetings between Conferences there being nine or ten present. At Indianapolis a committee on sec¬ tion meetings had reported favorably but had referred the matter to the executive committee for action. This was pending and was felt to be important as it involved a new principle and a new development of the Conference. The executive committee consented with some reluctance to the new plan, in fact Hastings Hart, the president, and I were the only ones at all enthusiastic. The dread of division which sectionalism might lead to was still very strong, and we were emphatically forbidden to use the term “section” we might only speak of “special” sessions. 302 Adventures with the National Conference After the discussion on the new deal was over Reed said, “Now, Mr. Johnson read our program to these gentlemen”. Then he called for criticism; there being none he polled the meeting; asking each in turn “Mr. Elmore, does this suit you?” “Mr. Wines, what have you to say?” “Mr. Hart, do you approve?” After getting expressions of satisfaction from each he said “now gentlemen, I have not written a letter nor done a thing about that program. It’s Johnson’s work from beginning to end.” This made it easy for me; if it had been presented as my tentative sketch ; instead of a finished project by him ; there would have been many suggestions of change. Reed had the art of making his friends do his work for him but he was always positive in giving them all the credit they deserved. The Denver Conference under the new method of numerous meetings in different halls was increasingly interesting, but it greatly increased the work of the secretary. To keep track of all that was going on ; to be able to direct enquiring delegates who would not study their programs, to the meeting they wished to attend; to assign with prophetic insight each meeting to a hall that would be just the right size for it ; to make certain that the janitors had three or four halls ready; to keep seven or eight . chairmen in the path of duty instead of just one President; to placate chairmen who thought ‘their meetings were not properly advertised so that delegates were not paying enough attention to them but were wandering off after strange gods; all these and a thousand and one other details made the seven days of the Conference a most strenuous time ; not only for the secretary but for the local committee; who also must be managed and kept in good humor. And while doing and seeing to all these things to keep one’s own head and preserve one’s own good humor, gave the task the attraction that comes from a difficult job. It is no wonder that the day the excitement was over and the Confer¬ ence adjourned, the secretary was in a condition approaching collapse. Mr. Reed carried a strong infusion of Indian blood in his veins, his grandmother was a full-blood Narragansett Indian. He could sit for hours on a log in the woods but a few minutes in the chair at a meeting irked him. At the first morning session I saw him becoming restless and reminded him that he had three As Secretary — First Series, 1890-1893 303 vice-presidents any one of whom he might call to the chair if he wished to do so. With a gleam in his eye and a sigh of relief he replied, “tell that man Hart I want him”. I brought Hart to the chair and Reed went to the back of the house where he stood behind the last row of seats, breathing deeply and occa¬ sionally stretching out his arms in a characteristic gesture, until the meeting adjourned. It was usual before the membership became too large, to devote an hour at each Conference to memorial addresses in honor of well-known members who had died since the last meet¬ ing. The addresses at Denver in memory of Mr. McCulloch, of whom our thoughts were still so fresh and who was very much beloved, were particularly beautiful and appropriate. One of the most touching was by Mr. Reed. No one else had known our dead friend so intimately, nor had been under such spiritual debt to him. In concluding his speech he told of a fishing trip among the mountains, which he had shared with Mr. McCulloch ; how they were driving towards Leadville and had got on the wrong road. Inquiring from a teamster whom they met he told them they were on the road that led to the Mount of the Holy Cross, and they turned back. “Since then,” Reed said, “he has returned to that road and has arrived; and I, for my part tread a somewhat lonesome trail.” It is hard to turn away from thinking and writing of a man whom I loved as I did Oscar McCulloch. When I remember what he was and what he did it is impossible to think of him as non¬ existent. But certainly he lives again as part of “the choir invisible, whose music is the gladness of the world”. His influ¬ ence on the city and state which loved him and he loved, did not end with his death. I know of no better example than his “Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.” and who are The sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense.” The Denver meeting closed my first period as secretary, as I was chosen general secretary of an international meeting to be held at Chicago in 1893, and the two positions were thought to 304 Adventures with the National Conference make too heavy a burden for one volunteer worker to carry. Many interesting adventures came to me before I became the secretary as a vocation, instead of an avocation, in 1904. The second series of my adventures as secretary of the Conference will be written later. The next chapter to this will tell of the meetings I attended while I lived and worked among the feeble¬ minded. Chapter Four CONFERENCES FROM 1893 TO 1904 In Chicago, 1893 As the World’s Columbian Exposition was to be held in Chi¬ cago, that city was selected for the session of 1893. This was a departure from a previous wise custom of avoiding any city at a time of some other great meeting. A large part of the useful¬ ness of the Conference is in calling affairs of social welfare to the attention of the leading people in the city which acts as host ; so that it does well not to compete with other interesting public gatherings. Only once since 1893 has this rule been ignored ; that was when we met in Portland, Ore., in 1905, during the exposi¬ tion there; and the local interest was so poor that the attend¬ ance from Portland and all the Coast was less than one-half of the number of delegates who crossed the continental divide to attend. At Chicago, Hastings H. Hart was president and his pro¬ gram was an historical one. It was the twentieth Conference. Each committee chairman made his report a history of the interest he represented. When, in 1905, I began a systematic effort to sell the accumulated files of proceedings to college and public libraries, and to students of social affairs; I always advised as complete a file as could be furnished, but recom¬ mended those who could not afford to buy all the volumes avail¬ able, to begin with that of the historic Conference of 1893. The Exposition offered a fine opportunity for big gatherings. Among these was an International Congress of Charities, Correc¬ tion and Philanthropy, which was organized as a department of The World’s Congress Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian Exposition. This quite over-shadowed the National Conference for the year, so we restricted ourselves to a short three days ses¬ sion preceding the Congress. This was rather hard on Mr. Hart who was, and is, one of our ablest men, and who would have (305) 306 Adventures with the National Conference given us a great seven days program if he had had the oppor¬ tunity. Over the International Congress, which was really a tem¬ porary expansion of the National Conference, ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes presided, and I was general secretary. My friend N. S. Rosenau was organizing secretary. In connection with the Congress, a department of the World’s Exposition was devoted to Charities and Correction, and Rosenau was its Director, which duty he performed with much ability. Frederick H. Wines was first vice-president of the Congress, and was the active man, with Rosenau, in planning it. Among his other duties was to secure a preacher for a congress sermon. I was somewhat disturbed when he told me that the minister was to be the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer; not because of any objection of my own to a woman .preacher, but fearing that popular opinion would be adverse. Wines assured me that the choice was good and said “wait till you hear her, you will find I have made no mistake”. Mrs. Spencer’s sermon was one of the most inspiring I have ever heard. She was a woman of deep spirituality, with a won¬ derful brain and a heart for all humanity. Her voice was of fine quality, and coming from a frail and exquisite body, of surpris¬ ing power. She made a great impression on her hearers, many of whom were distinguished people and most of whom had never listened to a woman preacher. This was before women had come into their own; in the days when the highest praise we men folk would give to some, as we thought, exceptional speaker of the gentler sex, was that she did remarkably well for a woman. Perhaps some of our grandchildren may say, of some exceptional male orator, “how well he speaks — for a man”. I had the privilege of winning Mrs. Spencer’s friendship at the Congress, tho I little thought then how close and satisfactory our relations were to be when she and I became associate direc¬ tors of the N. Y. School of Philanthropy, eleven years later. I had already been appointed superintendent of the school for feeble-minded so that the Chicago Conference was the last I was to attend as secretary of a Board of State Charities. I look back on those meetings from 1890 to 1893, my first period as secre¬ tary, as among the pleasantest memories of my life, I never made Conferences from 1893 to 1904 307 so many nor so good friends during the same length of time, and in 1896, the fact that I had been secretary of the Conference while connected with a Board of State Charities, was one reason why my election as president seemed appropriate; notwithstand¬ ing that at the time I was in such different work. I was the only superintendent of a state institution, who ever received the honor of the presidency. Nashville in 1894 The Conference of 1894 was at Nashville. Here the unwritten law, that the president must represent a state board, was abro¬ gated when Kobert Treat Paine, president of the Boston Asso¬ ciated Charities was chosen. He was a man of illustrious line¬ age, fine culture and attractive personality; one of the few who in middle life have had the resolution to abandon a profitable profession in which he was very successful, and devote himself to the welfare of his kind. His connection with the Associated Charities was one of the main reasons — there were many others of the same kind and quality — why the Boston society was so clearly the best among the many useful ones. In writing of the leaders in the Conference the temptation to exhaust the superlative is almost irresistible. It may be I am overzealous in their praise, but I know that whatever is best in my own character is largely due to contact with them. One can¬ not live with ignoble minds without loss ; nor associate on terms of equal opportunity with noble people without some gain of nobility. It is one of the chief attractions of the profession of social work that one’s associate workers are usually people whose character helps enhance one’s own. At any rate, if I am to write of them at all, I must write as I feel ; so I shall risk the old fling that was sometimes made; that we were a mutual admiration society. At Nashville I had a few friends, and many pleasant memo¬ ries, dating from the time when we went to that city for the American Prison Association’s meeting in 1889. That was one of the National meetings that I had to attend, as secretary of the state board. While interesting and useful they were so far overshadowed by the National Conference of Charities and Cor¬ rection, that my memory of them is comparatively dim. Not 308 Adventures with the National Conference being a prison man I did not take much active part, although I did get a few ideas which helped me in my work as inspector of prisons and other penal institutions. At Nashville a committee reported on “Instruction in Sociol¬ ogy in Institutions of Learning”. This subject had been pre¬ sented at the International Congress in Chicago the year pre¬ vious, but it was introduced to the National Conference now for the first time. The chairman was Dr. Fulcomer, lecturer in social science in the University of Chicago. Dr. Fulcomer’s ideas of social science were very practical and his paper was an emphatic public recognition by a university man that our science of social work exists and is an integral part, or a practical appli¬ cation, of the science of sociology. The report in the proceedings is still valuable for reference as a summary of sociology teach¬ ers and classes of that date. During the discussion on this report one good talk was by Miss Lathrop on “Hull House as a Socio¬ logical Laboratory”, thus linking up the settlements with the National Conference on its highest side. The National Association of Officers of Institutions for the Feeble-Minded met at Nashville with the Conference, so that the discussions on feeble mindedness were better than uspal. As I came to the Conference representing the Indiana School, I was eager to learn all the experienced people had to teach. A paper by Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows is still one of the best on its subject, “Manual Training for the Feeble-Minded”. It was given in con¬ nection with a useful exhibit of handwork from several insti¬ tutions. The attendance at Nashville was only fair, and towards the end of the session the local interest seemed to fall off from day to day, or so at least the executive committee thought. The pro¬ gram called for the final meeting on Wednesday, but on Monday morning the committee, fearing a fiasco, decided to cut one day and adjourn to Memphis where they were invited to hold two or three meetings. Although a member of the executive committee I had missed the meeting, but as soon as I heard the decision I was indignant. Roseneau joined heartily with me and together we canvassed the committee and got another meeting. We told them they must keep faith with the public ; we had promised a meeting on Conferences from 1893 to 1904 309 Wednesday and we ought to hold it, if there were only a cor- poraPs guard of us left ; that they were all wrong about interest falling off; that the last meeting would be one of the best. When they said that because of lapses they had no speakers for e d esday , we said we had lots of program available. Then they told us we might go ahead but they were going to Memphis. Then Rosenau and I got busy. We found excellent speakers and the meeting was the largest of the Conference, except the one on Sunday night, and faith was kept with the public. Since that day the Conference has never cut its advertised program, nor indeed has it had any temptation to do so for want of mate¬ rial, its programs are usually overloaded. At our meeting we specialized in women speakers getting Mrs. C. W. Fairbanks of the Indiana State Board to talk on “Women on Public Boards”, and Miss Julia C. Lathrop of Hull House to tell us about “Nursing in Chicago”. This was Miss Lathrop’s first Conference, and she won a distinct place among Conference speakers. Every one who has heard her give a public address will understand how her charming voice and manner and her delicious sense of humor captivated the people of that South¬ ern city, to many of whom the idea of a woman speaker was new. When the Conference met eight years later at Detroit, Miss Lathrop was chairman of the committee on insanity, and gave the best statement to date of the social side of the care of the insane. By 1902 the sex line in Conference affairs was almost obliterated, though we still had to wait a few years for a woman president. Miss Lathrop was a member of the Illinois State Board and a resident of Hull House; the opportunities she had had for first hand knowledge of social conditions and of state affairs were unusually good and she made good use of them. There have been few public men, still fewer women, who have had equal opportunities of information, or equal powers of both head and heart to use them. She was the first woman to be made head of an important department of the U. S. Government, and no department has made a higher reputation. She was presi¬ dent of the National Conference in 1919, at Atlantic City, and showed rare ability in the chair, handling some rather difficult situations with tact, judgment and firmness. 310 Adventures with the National Conference Yale and the Conference The Conference of 1895 was held under the famous elm trees of New Haven. It was notable because of its president, the first to be elected from outside the circle of the state boards, and from the interest taken in it by eminent university men. The dean of Yale Law School, Judge Francis Wayland, was chairman of the local committee. The committee on Sociology in Institutions of Learning offered five papers, each by a university man; one from Columbia, one from Smith, one from Chicago and two who were at home at Yale; and there were three other papers at the Conference by college professors. Sociology was then one of the new sciences ; it was knocking at the doors of colleges and gaining tardy and cool reception at some of them. Many people said there could be no science of human behavior since what a man would do under a given set of circumstances could not be predicted, and no given set of cir¬ cumstances could ever be exactly repeated. Some purists even criticized the name of the new science because it was a hybrid of Greek and Latin. There might indeed be a science of Political Economy, or the Wealth of Nations, because that was founded on selfishness and every man is selfish, at any rate every man has a stomach to be filled. But a science which should build itself of such thin air as altruistic sentiment, would surely fade like the baseless fabric of a vision. Yet here were some feeble social workers, pretending that there could be a science even of their little department of social affairs; the least exact of any, since it involved the higher emo¬ tions. And here at the very seat of learning, and helped by the most learned professors ; we would-be scientists got more encour¬ agement than we ever had before. Things have progressed since 1895, and every university has its course of sociology (though we hear of one* that is dropping it for geology — the students who ask for social bread are to be offered a stone) and many have a department of applied sociol¬ ogy which is social welfare. The events at New Haven, when Yale joined hands with the National Conference of Charities and Correction, have surely had some influence in this advance. ♦The University of Georgia. Conferences from 1893 to 1904 311 • By this time the C. O. S. section (they were not sections then but I use the term for convenience) was no longer my chief attraction ; what I was now concerned with treated of the defec¬ tives, especially the feeble-minded. Just as family welfare work had seemed to me, in 1884, to be the only, or the straightest road to social reform; so now the prevention of hereditary defective¬ ness seemed the most important study. There were some valu¬ able papers and discussions on this topic, one by Dr. George Keene on “The Genesis of the Defective” gave Frank B. San¬ born, who was nothing if not a humorist, a chance for one of his famous bon mots. He said “we don’t want to hear of the Genesis of the Defective, tell us of his Exodus”. At New Haven once more the superintendents of institutions for the feeble-minded attempted to hold their meeting in connec¬ tion with the Conference. The result was unfavorable; but I induced them to try it again the next year at Grand Rapids. There, as at New Haven, their association was over-shadowed by the large one; attention was dissipated and lost, and they did not repeat the experiment. Most of the members were physi¬ cians and though they were always scrupulously fair to us who were laymen, the majority felt more drawn to the American Medical Association than to the Conference of Charities. Being doctors they saw the medical part of the work as most important ; the laymen amongst us more correctly estimated the social as far more necessary to the community than the medical side, but we were in a very small minority in the association. Grand Rapids in 1896 By the time the Conference met in Grand Rapids in 1896, I had made a reputation as a ready speaker. Frank B. Sanborn who had promised to make the response to the address of wel¬ come at the opening meeting, was belated and wired his regrets, and Wright, the president, five minutes before the meeting, asked me to take his place. To my mortification, when he called on me, he prefaced my speech by an apology, telling of my unprepared¬ ness. My father, fifty years before, gave me a homely proverb, “never cry stinking fish,” (a quaint Lancashire variant of the French “qui s’excuse, s’accuse”), ever since I understood that wise saw I have despised pre-apologies. 312 Adventures with the National Conference Addresses of welcome are usually platitudinous productions, but this time we had a welcome from Governor Rich, which was eloquent, sincere and luminous ; he showed such a comprehension of what we were about as we had rarely heard expressed. At the meeting in Detroit twenty years before, Governor Bagley, also of Michigan, had been equally happy in a similar address, and though I had not heard it I had heard of it; so I was able to say that only once before had we received so able a welcome and that it, like the present one, was by a Governor of Michigan. Then I knew of many fine things the state had done and also that their delegates to the Conference (singularly for Mid- West¬ erners) had been almost unduly modest about their perform¬ ances. Of course all this pleased the Michigan people and my speech rather surprised my good friend Wright and confirmed my reputation as a pinch hitter. Some of the settlement people, and especially the few of them who were also interested in associated charities; had long deplored that even the best of the working people were not inter¬ ested in us or our work. A few of them got together at Grand Rapids and arranged a Sunday afternoon meeting, to which working-men were specially invited. Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop and a few others, consented to speak on the more pos¬ sible topics; but a speaker was needed, so they thought, to con¬ vince working people that associated charities is worth while. I was elected to lead that forlorn hope and was allowed five min¬ utes to do what they confessed was an almost impossible task. I thought the same, even in as many hours as they offered me minutes, and told them so. Miss Lathrop was the chairman as well as the entrepreneur of the meeting and tried to flatter me into making the attempt by admitting that it was almost impos¬ sible, but that I was the only man (if any) who could do it. Of course such flattery from such a woman was too much for me and I yielded. After the meeting Florence Kelley said to me “you and I have learned one thing about public speaking at any rate”. To my question “what is that?” she replied “quitting”. It was true I had learned to stop at the time appointed. Hers was the only compliment I had on my speech. It was deserved. Conferences from 1893 to 1904 313 At Grand Rapids the committee on feeble-minded of which T was chairman, made an exhaustive report on “Permanent Cus¬ todial Care”. Unlike many of the reports of that day, this was really the work of the committee, I merely putting it in shape. Ernest P. Bicknell, who was then secretary of the Indiana Board of Charities, read a paper, since much quoted, on “Feeble-Minded- ness as an Inheritance”. The report is as timely today as it was twenty-six years ago ; and BicknelPs paper, as later amplified by his successor on the Indiana Board, Amos W. Butler; remains the most thoughtful and conclusive essay on the social side of its subject, which has ever been published. Wright had asked me a few weeks before the meeting, to fill my usual place as chairman of the nominating committee, but when he made the announcements my name was not on the list. I was just a trifle piqued and mentioned his queer action to Ernest Bicknell ; all he gave me for an answer was a wink of his left eye. I guessed it meant that they had me slated for some honor, perhaps vice-president, but when the committee reported I was named for president. It was a complete and rather stag¬ gering surprise. Bicknell had done it, I am afraid, by some very quiet (and quite conscientious) wire-pulling. At any rate it was done, and much as I was pleased by the honor, my dear wife, who was with me, was made still more happy. Twelve years later I got even with Bicknell and was able to make certain his nomination as president; which was in danger before the committee from a vicious and treacherous opponent; a man who had a morbid hatred of organized charity and never missed a chance at the Conference against any one who either was at the time, or had been, connected with it. People of his sort were so rare at the Conference that whenever they bobbed up it gave us a shock of surprise. The night after my election I did not sleep until I had out¬ lined my presidential address for the next year, and also planned that pleasant and innocent revenge on Mr. Letchworth, of which I have told in the story of my first Conference. New Orleans and Toronto The year 1897 was that of the most exciting of my Conference adventures. The New Orleans delegates, especially Michel Hey- 314 Adventures with the National Conference mann who had been a faithful attendant for many years, had frequently begged us to come to the Crescent City. But Confer¬ ence meetings are usually held about Midsummer and people dreaded the far Southern climate. In 1896, the invitation was vainly repeated and after the decision for Toronto was an¬ nounced, was re-iterated in a new form; we were asked to visit them for a short extra session in the Spring. So in 1897, we held two conferences; one of three days in March, in New Orleans, convening the day following Mardi Gras; and one of the usual seven days duration, in Toronto in July. Only about ninety people from the North and East went to New Orleans, and the attendance from Texas, Alabama and Mis¬ sissippi was very disappointing; but the Conference had a good local attendance and won many Southern friends, both for itself and the interests it stands for. Its net results were beneficial to the city. But the dominating influences of old fashioned and sectarian charity are strong. There is a little leaven, but it will be long ere the whole lump is leavened. It was an interesting sign of the advance of social work, that when the Conference met for the second time in New Orleans, in May 1920, there was a large audience of people from all over the country, and a degree of attention from the citizens that was very gratifying. At the New Orleans meeting as president I abolished one rather annoying custom, that of allowing discussions to be inter¬ rupted by the injection of notices and invitations to receptions and institutions. This had grown until it was a serious evil and I determined the time had come to abate it. Notices have to be given, and given in a way to be heeded; they are important enough to have a place of their own. When I became full-time secretary I made the giving of notices a specialty and developed it almost into a fine art. On one occasion a transient visitor was heard to say, to a friend who wanted to leave the meeting because a prosy speaker had poor terminal facilities ; “no let’s wait and hear that man give out the notices”. In fact one friend said I had missed my calling, I ought to have been a monologue artist. There was a tragic incident in connection with the New Orleans meeting which excited our sympathies. Robert Treat Paine had come to the meeting leaving his wife apparently in Conferences from 1893 to 1904 315 perfect health. On the second day he had a wire telling that she was very ill, even in danger of death. The fast train for the North had left a few minutes before the telegram came. Mr. Paine ordered a special train for Boston; everything the roads could do to speed it was done ; but he arrived too late to see his beloved partner alive. The pathetic figure of that noble man sitting alone in the train as it speeded over the rails; receiving telegraphic bulletins at every division point of his wife’s condi¬ tion as it steadily grew worse; was one that stirred the hearts of those of us who knew him well and revered him highly; and the news that she had passed away before he reached her side was received with very deep regret. Toronto in July has many attractions, I had lived in Ontario and was married there, although in the intervening twenty-five years most of my old friends were gone. But there was a spe¬ cial pleasure in returning to the Province in the dignified char¬ acter of president of the National Conference. My wife went with me and helped in the social life of the meeting, and when it was over we took a brief vacation, revisiting places of which we had happy memories of the long ago, we had quite a senti¬ mental journey. In reviewing the old Conferences, the most interesting memo¬ ries are of those in which some important new notes were sounded, leading to developments of new features of social work. I have alluded to the friendly relations between the Confer¬ ence and the settlements which were begun in 1894, and strongly re-enforced in 1897. Several other new developments came this year, some of which were transitory, but others had permanent effects upon the Conference and upon social work in general. Among these by far the most significant was the idea of estab¬ lishing schools for social workers. There was a time when the would-be lawyer or doctor, served an apprenticeship under a master of his craft. Now we have schools of Law and Medicine and without them the professions would make little progress. If social work is to be a profession, new workers must have a wider and more systematic preparation than they can get by serving in a humble capacity under some experienced secretary; or at any rate some training they may get more readily. 31(5 Adventures with the National Conference At the Toronto meeting, Mary E. Richmond read a paper on “The Need of a Training School in Applied Philanthropy”. She gave the credit of the original idea to Miss Anna L. Dawes, to whom it came during a vain search for a suitable superintendent for the charitable society of a small city. Although it seemed at the moment, in the rush and bustle of the Conference, to excite little interest, this paper had a great and speedy effect. Edward T. Devine has long been recognized as among the most forceful clear-sighted and enterprising of our leaders. He has a specialty in which he is unique. Socrates said of himself, that he was engaged in the profession of the midwifery of ideas ; that it was his business to help people give birth to their thoughts. One of Devine’s useful services, in which he leads us all, is a sort of midwifery of social movements, committees, asso¬ ciations, agencies of various sorts, which have the common object of taking from weak shoulders burdens too heavy for them to bear.* He caught the vision of the training school and backed by Robert W. deForest; who has for his social specialty the dis¬ covery of men who can do things, setting them to work doing them, and then giving them whole hearted support; a year later organized the six-weeks summer school of philanthropy in New York; which has resulted not only in the great school for social workers of that city, but has been the precursor of many more of the same kind. Another idea; new to the Conference but fifty years old in Paris; recognized for eight years in London; and for several years by the American Neurological Association and the Medico- Psychological Society; was that of the after-care of the insane. This was presented in a paper by Dr. Richard Dewey, then of Wauwatosa, Wis., formerly of Kankakee, Ill., where he had made the state hospital a model for the Nation. His paper was entitled “The Destitute Convalescent”. The idea of after-care was taken up by the N. Y. State Chari¬ ties Aid Association under another constructive leader, Homer Folks. As the beginning of that work was aided by the school of philanthropy while I was director, the story of that develop- *See in the proceedings for 1905, page 625, Devine’s speech on being elected president of the Conference. I wish Devine, or someone for him, would write for us the story of his brilliantly useful life, maybe when he retires at seventy-five he will do it. Conferences from 1893 to 1904 317 ment will be told later in my book, as an adventure in social education. The plan of after-care for the insane was approved in other states, besides New York and at least one Board of State Charities, and perhaps more, have made it a regular part of their work, with great benefit to the convalescent insane and much advantage to the states and relief to their hospitals. An unwritten law of the Conference, specially binding on the president as program-maker, was that efforts must be made to arouse local interest in the cities which are visited; to discover any line of social welfare with which our hosts, or any of them are vitally concerned, so that it might be well presented in the program. There was in Toronto a large and influential single tax club. The Canadians have done more than Henry George’s fellow citizens to carry out his great reform. There are thriving cities, especially in the N. W. provinces, which have realized the advantage of a law which promotes the creation of plentiful housing for all, and discourages the grasping, real-estate specu¬ lators, who try to get rich thru the exertions of less selfish or more enterprising people. As soon as the club heard we were coming to talk ; as they interpreted our program ; about relieving the poor; they demanded that their theories of abolishing pov¬ erty; which they conceived would be one effect of the single tax, should be heard. I was all the more sympathetic with the club’s demand because an ardent Henry Georgeite myself. Now the only way to get a subject before the Conference, after the general features of the program have been outlined by the nominating committee at last year’s session; is to have it adopted by one of the com¬ mittees; the only one on the list which could possibly father a paper on “The Abolition of Poverty” was that on charity organi¬ zation in cities, and I told the chairman of the club’s demand. The chairman opposed the intrusion as he called it, and I had much ado to convince him that we must not deny the request. I argued that tho we are greatly concerned with organizing relief, we profess to be still more eager for prevention ; and here was a respectable local group who thought they knew ; not merely how to prevent; but how to abolish the chief evil we were fight¬ ing; who certainly ought to be heard. He very reluctantly gave in to my urgency provided I would find him a good speaker. 318 Adventures with the National Conference With the help of Mrs. Barrows who was then, and for many years our official reporter and editor; I did my best to induce some of the prominent single-tax men to come to Toronto. I tried Bolton Hall and William Lloyd Garrison without avail. They thought twenty minutes, which was all I could offer them, too short a time in which to produce any effect in what they called “the enemy’s country”. I told them twenty minutes was only the beginning; that if they sounded the right note a dis¬ cussion was sure to follow ; that I should hold the gavel and be too much in sympathy with them to use it hastily, if only they captured the audience. I reminded them that Moody used to declare that there are no conversions after twenty minutes. I said if an enemy of mine would give me twenty minutes in his country I would ask nothing better. But they did not realize the value of the opportunity I offered them; or they were too faint-hearted or indifferent; and I had to give them up.* Then I wrote to the Toronto single taxers of my failure with their big guns, and told them if they could find an acceptable speaker they should have twenty minutes to abolish poverty in. They named Rev. S. S. Craig, one of their members, an ardent enough believer, but with little magnetism and a distinctively pulpit voice; his speech elicited no discussion and was a great disappointment. However “Abolition of Poverty” got into the Proceedings and when I compiled the cumulative index of thirty- three volumes, in 1905, the first line on the first page was “Abo¬ lition of Poverty, The, Craig, S. S., 97, 272”. Believers in tax reform, as a great social need, tried several times to get the Con¬ ference interested, notably at Cleveland in 1912; and we have often had side-meetings on the subject, but this most positive and most certain of all preventive measures, is still too much in advance of social thought, and presents too much danger to the interests who rule our country for their own benefit, to gain its due recognition. In a previous chapter I have told a part of the story of my efforts at Toronto to promote sociability among the Conference delegates. I set this before me as a chief duty of a president, I stressed the idea that social work ought to be done socially, and ““Twenty years later, Mr. Hall came to the Conference at Pittsburgh and read a paper on his favorite topic. Conferences from 1893 to 1904 319 with the help of my wife I really made same success. It helped a little with the Canadian delegates that Mrs. Johnson had been born among them, and my own English nativity was of value in the Dominion. The Association of Officers of the Schools for the Feeble- Minded, or as we often called ourselves, “The Feeble-Minded Superintendents”, was to hold its meeting at the Ontario School, at Orillia, immediately after the National Conference. Here we found some old friends and made many new and pleas¬ ant friendships. The whole adventure was one of the most agreeable of my life. In the Empire City, 1898 New York may have some sad social defects, but it is emphat¬ ically the center of the social movements of the country. So when an invitation came to the Conference to hold its twenty- fifth session in the great city it was accepted with enthusiasm. The very first session of the committee which grew into the Con¬ ference, was held there in 1874, and occasion was taken to make the twenty-fifth a notable one. The president was William Rhinelander Stewart, of the N. Y. Board of State Charities and he discharged his duties as host with thorough efficiency. The opening session was to be on Wednesday and on the day before, Mr. Stewart invited a group of ten conference men to dine in his house on Washington Square, which had been in the Rhinelander family for more than a hundred years. It was a stag party and the host called in nine notable gentlemen as convivialists with the conference folks. As I had been president the year before I was one of those bidden to the feast. My escort to the dining room was Levi P. Morton; Hastings Hart, our secretary, went in to dinner on the arm of Jacob D. Schiff; Thomas Ellison of Indiana, who was first vice-president, had Morris K. Jessup as a partner — Whitelaw Reid, Seth Low, ex-Mayor Dailey, were among those invited to meet us. The dinner was by far the most gorgeous affair of its kind I have ever attended. This was long before prohibition, so the wet-goods were of the best, including some cognac laid down by our host’s grandfather, the year the house was built. When the formal menu concluded, Mr. Stewart turned to me (I was at his 320 Adventures with the National Conference left) and asked whether we Westerners enjoyed making speeches at dinner parties. I assured him that only a stern sense of duty ever made us speak in public at all. He said that was the way he felt about it, so instead of formal speech-making over the wine, he re-arranged the seating twice, the first time placing me beside Mr. Schiff and later by Whitelaw Reid, with each of whom I had an interesting conversation, although as our host intro¬ duced me to each of them as a “feeble-minded expert”, I had to talk shop; while I had sat beside Mr. Morton our converse had chiefly concerned pure bred cattle, about which we were equally enthusiastic. At the opening meeting, because I was the latest ex-president, I was called on to respond to the address of welcome. Carnegie Hall was crowded with the best people (or rather the most prominent) of the city; on the platform was the most notable group we ever had together. Joseph Choate, leader of the New York Bar, presided ; Seth Low, then president of Columbia, made the address of welcome; Archbishop Corrigan and Bishop Pot¬ ter each made a speech. On the stage were the gentlemen with whom we had dined on the previous evening and thirty or forty others of similar distinction; of the many I remember Richard Watson Gilder, Charlton T. Lewis, J. Kennedy Tod, ex-Governor Flower, John S. Kennedy, Everett P. Wheeler and Isaac N. Seligman. There were no ladies on the platform, they filled the boxes. Jeffrey R. Brackett of Maryland was to speak for the South, and Frank B. Sanborn of Massachusetts for the East; my response was to be from the West. Like every other would-be orator, I had long craved a chance at a New York audience, and now it had come. It was no wonder that the great occasion and the array of intellect on the platform made me desperately nervous. About the middle of Mr. Low’s speech I had an attack of stage fright so intensely severe that it more than paid me out for the nonchalance with which I had faced hundreds of audi¬ ences before, and with which I have met thousands since. The speaker’s voice changed in my ear to a distant rumble; I felt my heart beating like a hammer ; my mouth went dry ; every vestige of my carefully prepared speech vanished from my mind; and I forgot all about the notes in my pocket. Conferences from 1893 to 1904 321 While I was in that condition Mr. Low concluded ; there was a roar of applause and I heard Mr. Choate announce that the first response to the address would be by Mr. Johnson of Indiana, president of last year’s Conference, who would speak for the West. As I rose to my feet, my knees trembling violently; the story of the old lady who had difficulty in living up to her blue china, flashed on my mind and I said that we simple folk from the South and West had expected great things of New York and of Mr. Stewart, but (waving my hand to the platform) we were hardly prepared for such a magnificent array of blue china, to whose level we must live up for a whole week. The audience caught on and laughed and clapped. Some of the dignitaries on the platform laughed and pointed at themselves and each other, and during the laughter and applause; which lasted all of two minutes ; I recovered myself and remembered the things I had prepared to say. At the concluding session of the Conference, Mr. Stewart insisted on getting all the ex-presidents in attendance to sit on the platform, and before his closing speech he called on each of them. There were eleven of us in a row and I came last. I reminded them of my comparison of Mr. Stewart’s distinguished friends on the platform at Carnegie, to a shelf of blue china to whose level we must rise for a week ; and congratulated him that, at the closing meeting, he had exhibited such a delightful collec¬ tion of antiques, to which he too would belong when the Confer¬ ence should adjourn in a few minutes. There were not many new notes struck at the New York Con¬ ference. It was chiefly a glorified love feast. But many new and improved connections were made. Catholic, Protestant and Jew, were brought nearer to each other. There was much frank discussion and many theories were weighed in the balance. The attention given to our Conference by social workers of every kind in the great city, helped to establish it more firmly than ever, in its place in the Nation. Topeka and Cincinnati, 1899-1900 The Conference of 1899 was held at Topeka, Kan., and I did not attend, so I have no adventure there to tell about. When we 009 Adventures with the National Conference met in Cincinnati, in 1900, with my friend Charles Richmond Henderson, as president, I was merely a private in the ranks. T was usually a member of a committee and had part in some discussion, but T felt myself always a learner and attended every general session and as many of the section meetings as possible. Washington a Second Time, 1901 It was interesting at Washington to recall what had occurred sixteen years before; to notice how the Conference had grown, and remember with gratitude what it had done for me. As I glance over the proceedings and read again an occasional address or sermon, I am continually struck by finding the source of some idea or principle, which I have used, both in speeches and among the things I live by: that T acquired at the meetings, but had forgotten where I found them. Sometimes I have even imagined things heard at the Conference and then forgotten by my con¬ scious mind: when they have later come out into consciousness: to have been original ideas of my own. I can say after thirty- eight years, as I said after four or five, that all my most valuable knowledge of the principles of social work has been what T have gained at this great school, whose proceedings T have studied and used, more, I think than any other man. John M. Glenn, presided over the Conference at Washington, and with ultra modesty, declined to make a presidential address, but called on Dr. Samuel G. Smith to do it for him. Most of us who knew Mr. Glenn’s sterling qualities, regretted his decision. We were quite certain that any address he would make would rank up well among others of the kind. We had heard D*r. Smith before and knew the measure of his mind fairly well. His address was a good one, a man of his ability could not make any other, but it was not our president’s voice, nor our presi¬ dent’s thought. It was good at Washington to have my dear friend Zilpha Smith as chairman of the committee on charity organization. If women had been regarded by the Conference in 1884, as they were in 1900, she instead of I, would have been chairman in 1885. Tt has been bv a slow and tedious approach, that the Conference Conferences from 1893 to 1904 has come to practice the principles of equality which it has always professed. When a society claims to be essentially democratic; to make no distinction of sect or sex among its membership; and yet restricts all its principal offices and honors to those of one sex and of a few religious denominations; real democrats look on it with some suspicion. I was never satisfied with the nominating committees, until they had given us, as presidents, a Woman, a Catholic and a Jew. And when after many Conference Sermons preached by Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and even Unitarians, we had one by a Catholic Bishop, and another by a Jewish Rabbi; I was able to feel that the democ¬ racy — not toleration but recognition of equality — which I liked to proclaim in making speeches for the promotion of the Confer¬ ence, was real. The platform of the Conference is not one of toleration; people of various sects and opinions share it, not by ignoring diversity but by recognizing it. I love to stand shoulder to shoulder with my Jewish brother because he is a Jew. I lift my end of the log the more cheerfully because my fellow worker who is toting the other is a Catholic. I despise the idea of “tolera¬ tion’’ and refuse to go anywhere, or join any society, where I am “tolerated”. At Washington, Jeffrey Brackett was chairman of the nomi¬ nating committee and asked me to suggest a president for the next year; he said, “We are going to Detroit and for the Middle- West we want one of your good Indiana men; who is the best?” I named Timothy Nicholson. Now Timothy, though often attend¬ ing, had been seldom heard. His theory of participating in dis¬ cussions was to keep silent unless the thing which needed saying was not being said by someone else, and Jeffrey questioned his ability. But I knew the man, what sterling qualities, what knowledge, wisdom, balanced judgment, fairness, insight, sym¬ pathy and absolute integrity of thought were his; what ability of leadership he had shown for fifty years past among his own people. In choosing him they gave the Conference one of the worthiest in its long line of worthy presidents. There have been few so useful citizens in Indiana or any other state, as this grand, old Quaker. Few who have given their best 324 Adventures with the National Conference services to the community in such Quaker measure.* To have known him well and to have gained his confidence and lasting friendship, are among the best of the many good things which came to me out of my adventure with the Board of State Chari¬ ties of Indiana. Homer Folks was chosen secretary in Washington to suc¬ ceed Hastings Hart, but soon after the Conference he was appointed Commissioner of Charities of the City of New York, which was just then enjoying a reform administration. He filled the position with marked success and made many salutary changes which have had lasting beneficial results. But the exact¬ ing duties of the office made it necessary for him to resign the Conference secretaryship. Joseph P. Byers was appointed by the executive committee, and continued as secretary until after the Conference of 1904, when I was elected. Mr. Byers was one of us from the Middle West, and one of the few men of that day who had been a social worker all his active life, beginning as clerk, and later secretary, of the State Board of Ohio, and having been superintendent of the Indiana Beformatory ; warden of the famous Cherry Hill prison in Philadelphia and for many years highly successful as head of the House of Refuge on Randalls Island N. Y. Because I had known him long and intimately, I was glad to have him as a workfellow many years later when we began the committee on Provision for the Feeble-Minded. He and I had many points of sympathy besides our Conference experiences; having done similar state board work, and both of us having suffered under Winfield Durbin, in Indiana, “I indeed, justly but this man has done nothing amiss”. Detroit for a Second Time Mr. Nicholson's Conference at Detroit was marked among other things by the presence, as preacher of the Conference ser¬ mon, of a dignitary of the Catholic church, Bishop Spalding of Peoria Ill., who gave us one of the great Conference discourses. That a Quaker president should deliberately choose a Catholic Bishop to preach for him, is a striking evidence of the spirit of ♦“Quaker measure” is a familiar term in Indiana. It means “good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over”. (See Luke VI. 38.) It is a colloquialism which throws an interesting side-light on what we Hoosiers think of our Quaker neighbors. Conferences from 1893 to 1904 325 the Conference and the spirit of the man. Six years later a Catholic president showed the same fine spirit, when he had me choose a Baptist preacher for the same high duty. Atlanta in 1903 The Conference at Atlanta in 1903 with Mr. Robert W. deForest of New York as president, was by far the best attended and most influential that had been held in the South, with the possible exception of the one in Baltimore, which hardly seems like a Southern city. This was the last one I was to attend as the superintendent of a state institution. My resignation had been presented ; and if I had not been chairman of the committee on feeble-minded, my board of trustees would not have sent me. The name of the committee this year was “The Segregation of Defectives”. The report had been considered by all the commit¬ tee members and approved by all but one. That one, a woman member, who was a member of the state board of Missouri, ques¬ tioned our treatment of the topic of sterilization. The majority report stressed segregation and the colony plan, and questioned ; though, it did not condemn; not only the practicability but the ethics of sterilization. The dissenting member took the opposite view and I insisted she must present a minority report. When positive views are expressed in a report, if there is a minority who differ their views should be given as clearly as those of the majority. The Conference does not decide anything; but a strong report has the effect on many people of a decision unless it is questioned; and that not merely in the discussion which often escapes attention. The Conference attracted many of the Southern leaders in social work. One of its most interesting sessions was devoted to child labor, which, because of the cotton industry, was a liv¬ ing, almost a burning, question in Georgia, South Carolina and some other states. At the time there was a movement on foot in Georgia, for child-labor legislation which was at the debatable stage. A series of papers by Jane Addams, Edgar Gardner Murphy, Florence Kelley, Frederick L. Hoffman, Hon. Hoke Smith and Rev. C. B. Wilmer, contains some of the most convincing arguments on the subject which have ever been presented. Adventures with the National Conference Gardner Murphy’s address was particularly eloquent and convincing. His position as a leader in Southern affairs, was unquestioned, and he was one of the founders of the National Child Labor Society. Hoke Smith was also a leader. There can be no doubt that the debate had much to do in influencing public opinion in favor of the new laws. A similar result can hardly be claimed in the case of the feeble-minded, although no doubt a little seed was sown. But it was seventeen years later before the legislature of Georgia created a small institution. Portland, Maine When the Conference met in 1904 at Portland, Me., with my old friend, Jeffrey Brackett as president I was unable to attend. I had left the Indiana State School, and was adventuring at working for money. Several notable things occurred there, the most notable for me being my election as secretary of the Conference, to which I was thenceforth to devote my energy for the next nine years. / Chapter Five ADVENTURES AS SECRETARY OF THE CONFERENCE Second Series, 1905-1907 When I left the school for feeble-minded, I thought I was bidding farewell to social work as a vocation. I had made no provision for old age, except that I had reared a family of chil¬ dren, whom I now esteem, though I hardly did so then, the best investment a man can make. I was offered what seemed a good business opportunity in a new industry, and decided to embrace it and thenceforth for my working life, to be a plain business man, and incidentally make a little money. But twenty years of work for other people’s interests, had made me less fit to work for my own than I had been in 1882, and my fine scheme was a disastrous failure. In the early summer of 1904, when the world looked blacker than almost ever before, I had a letter from Edward T. Devine, offering the position of associate director of the N. Y. School of Philanthropy, which was to be developed from its original six- weeks summer work, to a 'more formidable affair. He suggested that the duty might be combined with, and the inadequate salary supplemented by, the position of secretary of the National Con¬ ference, as Joseph P. Byers, then secretary, was resigning, and he was sure the Conference would be glad to elect me. The offer was tempting ; but I felt that the man who had con¬ ducted the summer school for six years should be promoted and I told Devine so. He replied that what I suggested had been well considered and that the man I mentioned would not be chosen. The Conference was in session at Portland, Maine, and the day after Devine’s second letter I was offered the secretaryship by wire. I gladly accepted the two positions and returned for the rest of my active life, to the profession to which I belonged. The arrangement was that one-third of my time and energy was to be given to the Conference, and two-thirds to the school, (327) 328 Adventures with the National Conference and the salaries were arranged accordingly. It might have seemed a formidable undertaking for a worn-out man of fifty- seven. But I knew the Conference thoroughly, having been a member for twenty-one years, and its secretary for four; and I had had some experience as instructor with the summer school. Then the lines of work were parallel ; the period of greatest stress of Conference work would be during the school vacations ; it seemed a possible and happy combination ; and I began life anew ; the world once more looked bright. The retiring secretary was a faithful friend of long standing. The business affairs of the Conference were in good shape; the correspondence necessary for the next year’s meeting, was well begun; the transfer of duties was easily made, and T began my work under favorable auspices. The meeting for 1905 was to be in Portland, Ore., and Rev. S. G. Smith, of Minnesota, was president. He was a man of strong character and large experience in social work. He fully understood how to make a program and knew it was his duty; so I had no anxiety on that score. During my experience as secretary, I had several varieties of presidents to work with ; one kind knew his work and did it, only asking from me an occasional word of encouragement, since he needed little advice. Among these I count McCulloch in 1891, Smith in 1905, Devine in 1900 (though his absence for a month or two before the Conference met had to be provided for), Butler in 1907, and Folks in 1911. Another kind left as much as pos¬ sible to the secretary, giving me a free hand and cheerfully assuming responsibility for all I did in his name. The perfect example of this second kind was Reed in 1892, who made me do it all, though at that time, my office, like his own, was unpaid. Mulry in 1908, was almost as good. He was a very satisfactory president, from the secretary’s stand point. He had a good sense of responsibility and a generous and whole-souled frankness in asking for and acknowledging all the help I could give him. Judge Mack in 1912, occupied a median position ; he had strong and clear opinions of his own ; and though he called on me for a fair share of the work of preparation, he was distinctly the maker of the program; but our relations were very cordial. As Secretary — Second Series, 1905-1907 329 It was a rare privilege to work with Jane Addams for the 1910 Conference. She was seriously ill during the spring of her Conference year, and I had the opportunity of relieving her of much of the detail which usually devolves on a president. But her clear brain, fine sense of values, and warm human person¬ ality made association with her, not only satisfactory, from the business side, but a delightful social experience. Working with Bicknell for 1909 was like going back to Indiana with a trusty comrade. But for the Messina earthquake, which took him to Italy on Red Cross business in the spring, my work for his Con¬ ference would have been confined strictly to the duties of a secretary; as it was, I had many things to do which usually fall to the lot of the president, even choosing the preacher for the Con¬ ference sermon, which is always the president’s prerogative. But Bicknell’s business promptness in answering letters, and his clear insight of every part of the work, made my duties easy. Frank Tucker, the last president under whom I worked, was clear-headed and positive. Any one working with him is never in doubt of what is expected of him. The only point upon which we differed was that of economy. He several times reproached me for being niggardly in expenditures, which he thought proper and I grudged. On one occasion, he said, in good humored pique, “oh damn your economy,” but our friendship, which was close when we began to work together, was closer at the end of the year. With the single exception of Dr. Smith, my relations with my presidents were never marred by the slightest friction. With Dr. Smith a work-fellow needed tact, patience and courage, but with a reasonable amount of these qualities, I managed to get through the year without discord. The Conference in Portland, Oregon After getting the correspondence in order, my first adventure in 1904, was to take advantage of the Christmas vacation of the School of Philanthropy, and cross the continent from New York to Portland, to make the preliminary arrangements for the Con¬ ference there. On my way, I had ten minutes with my family on the railroad platform at Fort Wayne, and a brief interview with Dr. Smith between trains at St. Paul. I ate my Christmas 330 Adventures with the National Conference dinner on the diner with the one other passenger in the Pullman I was in. We fraternized over a sumptuous table d’hote meal, and toasted “absent friends” in brandied figs, as there was no more appropriate drinkable to be had. My companion joined his family at Billings, Mont., on Christmas afternoon, and from thence I had the car to myself. A brakeman passing through said he saw I was using my private car. The Portland people were responsive and hospitable. I renewed friendships of fifteen years before, and made some new ones. Stephen S. Wise was then Rabbi of the Jewish temple, and invited me to his pulpit for the regular Friday evening service. On Sunday morning, which was New Year’s day, I spoke in the Presbyterian Church, the pastor declaring that the Conference was so important that he gladly yielded me his place, even on the special occasion of the first Sunday morning in the year. The weather was of the usual northwest coast winter variety. It rained all Saturday and Sunday morning, yet the big church was full. On my expressing surprise, the minister said “Oh, if we stayed at home in Portland because of rain, we should never go anywhere,” which made me think of my native Lancashire, where not even a Sunday school picnic is deferred because of rainy weather. We got a fairly good local committee going; but they did not understand the importance of publicity, and it was a far cry from New York to Portland; many local needs were neglected. When we went in July, I called on the editor of the Oregonian, the leading paper, with a request for liberal reports of the meet¬ ings. He asked how much space we usually had on such occa¬ sions. When I told him from one to two pages daily, he said that must have been in small cities ; and I answered yes, rather small, such as Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis and New York. But he could not see that we had much news value and would not even print the daily program except at advertising rates which we had to pay. This lack of publicity was one cause of poor attendance, pub¬ lic lethargy was another, but the chief cause was the competition of the Pacific Coast Exposition and the American Medical Asso¬ ciation, both of which were in progress during our Conference. As Secretary — Second Series, 1905-1907 331 There was one very notable new departure of the Conference at Portland, in the work of a committee on “Care of the Sick,” with Nathan Bijur of New York for chairman. When we con¬ sider that sickness is by far the greatest immediate cause of dis¬ tress leading to the need of relief, it seems strange that the National Conference of Charities had not earlier paid more attention to this most important branch of relief work. How¬ ever, the committee on “Care of the Sick” at Portland made amends for long neglect in a luminous and complete presenta¬ tion of the subject. The great work of the Anti-Tuberculosis Society was at its beginning. This had been fostered by Edward T. Devine ; it was one of his notable achievements in his specialty of the “mid¬ wifery of new social movements” to which I have already alluded. Another new departure in health, especially in New York City, was the Visiting Nursing Association. Mr. Bijur besides his own committee reports and papers, had two sub-committees ; one on tuberculosis, with Devinei as Chairman, and another on visit¬ ing nursing in the care of Miss Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock. Devine’s report was a masterly presentation of the needs of the tubercular, and of the progress that had been made in meet¬ ing them. He had secured some brilliant papers by medical men. Miss Hitchcock’s contribution to the literature of nursing was equally valid and comprehensive. Few groups of papers ever presented at one session by a Committee, have been so timely and valuable as those which the Conference owes to Mr. Bijur. It is contributions of this kind which make a file of Conference proceedings among the most valuable of the contents of a public or university library. One other notable committee at the Portland Conference must be mentioned, that on “Neighborhood Improvement”. This was headed by Miss Louise Montgomery of Buffalo, and was almost wholly directed toward the problems of Americanization. This aroused special interest among the dwellers on the Coast, in view of the Asiatic immigration, which some of them dread, and some of them (who want plenty of cheap labor) encourage. It is interesting in going to the various sections of our country, to notice the attitude of local residents toward the rest of us ; when it comes to consideration of problems which they fancy are spe- 332 Adventures with the National Conference cial to them. No Southerner believes a Northern man can talk intelligently on the Negro problem. No Californian thinks an opinion on Chinese or Japanese labor, coming from East of the Kockies, is worth listening to. It’s the old story of the shoe that pinches, or the ox that is gored. The Conference renders a distinct service when it brings people from every section face to face, to frankly discuss prob¬ lems that are felt as sectional, yet must be dealt with nationally. No matter how radical may be a man’s opinion, lie seldom expresses it, at such a gathering as the Conference, quite so radically as he feels about it; so speaking your mind not only eases tension by letting off steam, but actually leads to modera¬ tion of extreme views. The most radical reformer inclines a little towards conservatism when given the responsibility of administration ; and it is much the same with discussion. To listen to an intelligent earnest-minded speaker, expressing with good temper and in moderate language, views which differ rad¬ ically from your own, is the first step towards moderation, and that is the second step to harmonious co-operation. There were many other of the papers and discussions of the Portland Conference of equal value and interest with the few I have mentioned ; and the 1905 volume is one of the best of the long series. In reviewing it for my present purpose, sixteen years after it was issued, I am impressed anew with its time¬ liness and quality. The papers were much more than “reports” ; they were vital human documents. There are few indeed of the many volumes on social work which are now keeping linotype men busy either so valuable or so interesting as is a respectable proportion of the Conference proceedings. Dr. Smith was the only president during my experience who attempted to put across a change in the unwritten law. He ruled from the chair; after I had made the usual announcement of the choosing of the nominating committee by the delegates and instructed them when to meet; that the committee could not meet till it was organized (by himself). This committee at that time, was the stronghold of democracy in the Conference. It was appointed by the delegates by states, one member from each, and I had the Conference with me in standing by our long estab- As Secretary — Second Series, 1905-1907 333 lished custom and declaring that it could not organize until it met, when it would choose its own chairman. Dr. Smith had some views regarding the future of the Con¬ ference, and other things in the Middle West. He had long been a member of the Minnesota Board of State Charities, which was being supplanted by a Board of Control. He wanted the Con¬ ference to give some emphatic recognition of the Boards of Con¬ trol, which he believed had not been fairly estimated hitherto, although, as he thought, they were coming to be the important state boards, and was particularly anxious to have a member of a Board of Control as first vice-president. His intentions were good and he succeeded in his endeavors, altho not in the way he first attempted, but some consequences were rather unfortunate. The Conference had accepted an invitation to Philadelphia for the next meeting, and the delegates from that city made a very earnest request for a strong local man, in whom the citi¬ zens would have confidence, for first vice-president, and were much disappointed when their request was disregarded. i The Guide and the Index In the course of thirty-three years the Conference had accu¬ mulated a large stock of volumes of proceedings, many thousand in all. Some of these were bound in cloth, some in paper, and a great many were in sheets in the printer’s warehouse. I had collected a file of the Proceedings of my own, and had long used them freely. When invited to speak on any subject with which the Conference has been concerned, I found the easiest and best way to prepare myself was to read a few addresses and discus¬ sions in the proceedings. When I went for my first interview with the Indiana Board of State Charities, I got ready for them by spending a few hours studying state boards in the proceedings of 1887. My predecessors as secretary had given some attention to selling the back numbers, but they had never been able to devote time or effort to such work as I now could. At that time the present flood of social work literature had scarcely begun to rise, and the Conference proceedings were the best available source of information. I succeeded in turning many copies into money. Adventures with the National Conference 334 When preparing a speech, I had often used some paper which T knew was not the best in the proceedings on the subject, because of the difficulty of finding in the mass of poorly indexed volumes a better article which I knew was somewhere among them. I determined that a cumulative index would add immensely to the value of a file of proceedings, and incidentally would help the sales. I decided to issue the index in parts in the Conference bulle¬ tin, which we were printing quarterly. My original plan was merely to cumulate the existing indexes which would have been a light task; but as soon as I began the work, I found my plan would not do. The indexes were simple and crude, they had only the titles of papers, and I wanted a topical arrangement. Then the first ten volumes had no indexes, and some of them not even a table of contents. So I set to work to make my cumulative index an original production. This filled the leisure hours of nearly two years and I burned a good deal of midnight oil in the process. In my library I had a volume which a lady book-agent had cajoled me into buying. I had never used it, but it now gave me an idea worth its cost. It was called “Guide to Readings in the Encyclopedia Britannica” and consisted of references to articles in that work, which taken consecutively, made consistent trea¬ tises on various subjects. This suggested a “Guide to the Study of Charities and Correction” by means of the Conference Pro¬ ceedings; which I thought would be a good addition to the index. I divided it into books and chapters. Every paper which had appeared from the beginning of the Conference, was briefly reviewed under appropriate headings and some thousands of ref¬ erences to the discussions were included. It was printed partly in 10 pt. and partly in 8 pt. type. The reviews in 10 pt. were those more valuable or more accessible because more recent. Anyone wanting to know the salient facts on any topic, who would read in the proceedings the articles reviewed in the larger type, would get a good working knowledge of the subject so far as the Conference had treated it; then to add detail and fulness he could read articles reviewed in the smaller type. The reviews varied from three lines of text to fourteen, and were explicit enough to enable a student to judge if he should read the article. As Secretary— Second Series, 1905-1907 335 The Guide was later than the Index and applied to thirty-four volumes. Five years later, I published a quinquennial appendix to the Index, bringing it down to the year 1911. When I resigned from the secretaryship, I offered to the executive committee, as a labor of love; a parting gift to the Conference; to make in my leisure hours, new editions of the guide and the index brought down to date, provided they would publish the two works. Luckily, for me, they did not see the value which I imagined there would be in the publications, and possibly they were right. Every year more and more social work literature was issuing from the press, and the value of the proceedings was becoming comparatively less. To illustrate the difficulty of getting people to appreciate and even know of the good things you do for them, I want to tell of a member of the executive committee, who was one of the best members of the Conference, coming to me at the meeting in Philadelphia, a few months after the index had been circulated. He was preparing a memorial address on a deceased member. He asked in which volume of proceedings he could find the papers which the deceased member had presented. I told him he would find them all, listed under the man’s name, in the cumulative index. He had never heard of the index, and denied that a copy had ever reached him, although he admitted he had received the bulletin regularly, in which it had appeared. While making the index and guide was a big job, it gave me a familiarity with the proceedings that I suppose no other stu¬ dent has ever had, and the knowledge I gained was well worth its cost. It also helped me in my work as secretary, especially in program making and sometimes in my duty of expounding the unwritten law. The Conference in Philadelphia, 1906 Some of the leading members of the Conference had long desired to hold a meeting in the Quaker city. But the state board of charities of Pennsylvania had taken little active part with us after the earliest years, and no invitation had ever been stressed. Now the active people in organized charities were leading a campaign for better social work, and at Portland a 336 Adventures with the National Conference warm invitation was extended to the Conference to meet in Phila¬ delphia, and was eagerly accepted. In preparation for the Conference, the local committee planned a “get-together dinner’’ to which two hundred and forty representative citizens were invited. This was the first time such people had come together in that city, to consider “the charities”. They had often met to honor some distinguished foreigner, or for purposes of art or music; and they met inter¬ mittently every few years to tinker their politics, which need frequent re-arrangement ; on which occasions, they usually achieve some spasmodic reforms which barely last over the next election. But on charitable matters, although Philadelphians are liberal, often lavish, they had never been co-operative. The executive committee met in Philadelphia the day of the dinner, and its members were among those who had to make speeches. I happened to hit the audience with a story of a cook in my employ at the school for feeble-minded who was much dissatisfied because I would not permit him to get up an elabo¬ rate seven-course dinner for board meeting day. He told me what he had done in a Philadelphia institution on similar occa- tions and said “the Philadelphians is the eatinest people they is”. I did not realize, till after the laughter and applause which followed, that Philadelphia is proud of being “the gastronomic center of the Universe”. The result of the dinner was to bring the value and impor¬ tance of the Conference home to the social workers of the city and still more to the benevolent people who support their work. It fairly set the local committee going. A round sum was sub¬ scribed for local expenses. The largest and best halls were rented. Free excursions, on a scale previously unheard of, were arranged for the delegates. The committee took the New York Conference of 1898, for its pattern, upon which to improve. They specialized in membership as had never been done before, and ere the Conference opened, had enrolled many hundreds of both sustaining and of ordinary members. At the date for the Conference approached, we were con¬ fronted by a very difficult and delicate situation. The president, Edward T. Devine, was in San Francisco in charge of the enor¬ mous relief work of the Red Cross, which followed the earth- As Secretary — Second Series, 1905-1907 337 quake and fire, and could not discharge his duty in the chair. The first vice-president, elected at Portland, had died, the second was sick. The third on the list was not thought to have quite the qualifications needed for this, in many respects the most • important Conference ever held. The situation in Philadelphia was a somewhat critical one. The idea of co-operation of charitable interests was new to the city, which, although it was of all American cities, the most richly provided with charitable societies and institutions, was sadly behind in charity organization. The earliest of the socie¬ ties for organizing charity in the United States was in Phila¬ delphia, but it was constructed on a faulty plan ; and though its principles were excellent it had not lived up to them. The pres¬ ent secretary and board of directors were putting forth the most strenuous effort to make the society what it had started out to be, and should be; and were succeeding. It was with the hope of helping forward the re-constructive reforms at which they aimed; that they had invited the Conference to Philadelphia. They were ready for any exertion and any reasonable amount of expense to gain their object. When the Philadelphia delegates had gone before the nomi¬ nating committee at Portland, they had been well pleased when Devine was named for president. He was well known and popu¬ lar in the city, having been at one time a professor in the Uni¬ versity of Pennsylvania ; they knew he would be able to handle any situation that might arise. Their request for a local vice- president had been refused and they were a little sore in conse¬ quence. Now a contingency had arisen such as they wanted to provide against. They made an emphatic protest against the third vice-president assuming the position to which he was entitled, and flatly declared that they would not stand for it. The executive committee met in New York, and had a long and earnest debate. During the long life of the Conference, no such situation had been known. The office of vice-president had always been considered merely a complimentary one ; at any rate his duties had been confined to an occasional occupation of the chair to relieve the president. We had not even a senate for him to preside over. In many organizations, being elected vice-presi¬ dent is a usual step to first place ; but the Conference is nothing, 338 Adventures with the National Conference if not American, and no American ever votes for a vice-president with expectation of his being president later, though the instances of Tyler, Fillmore, Johnson, Arthur and Roosevelt ought to have taught us better. A deputation of the Philadelphia people waited on the execu¬ tive committee, and reiterated their demand for a different pre¬ siding officer. I urged the committee to stand by the regular order, arguing that the gentleman whose ability was in question was amenable to suggestion; that some of our most experienced members knew him well and had great influence with him; that he would feel the dignity of the position and there was little danger of him compromising us. But after long and anxious debate, the committee determined that it was a case wherein the individual must suffer for the general good. They elected Mr. deForest, who had been president in 1903, president pro-tem, in Devine’s absence. The member who was so unfairly treated was very angry, but he attended the Conference and before the end seemed to have forgotten his pique. But he always insisted on believing that I had been the instigator of his ill treatment, and it was many years before he forgave me for an offense of which I was inno¬ cent. Of course, it goes without saying that Mr. deForest made an admirable presiding officer, and in numbers, influence and every other way, the Conference was one of the best ever held, and its influence in the city was all that its promoters had hoped for. Many new departures in the social affairs of Philadelphia date from the National Conference of 1906. Among the Philadelphia delegates was a lady who was devoted to equal suffrage. She was the wife of the chairman of the local committee, and was constant in attendance and in friendly social relations with the lady members. She came to me to know how she could get a chance to talk of equal suffrage as one of the im¬ portant social reforms which would lead to many others. I told her it would be impossible to get the floor for a speech on that topic, but if she was shrewd enough to take advantage of some opening in one of the discussions, she might get a few moments suffrage talk interjected before she would be called down as out of order. I suggested that there would be an excellent oppor- As Secretary — Second Series, 1905-1907 339 tunity for this when Judge Lindsey made his talk on juvenile courts, from the fact that the women voters of Denver had been for him, and really saved him to his work when the machine had attacked him fiercely. The lady was equal to the occasion, and when Judge Lindsey sat down, asked him how much woman suffrage had contributed to his success, and whether it was not true that women voters could usually be counted on for the right attitude on social affairs in politics. Of course, Lindsey’s answer was an emphatic yes, and turned the trick. HeT question and his answer each got a round of applause. If I were writing a history of the Conference, a long chapter would be devoted to the meeting in Philadelphia, which was one of the great seven days of social work. I may not use a whole chapter so, but I cannot refrain from reprinting here a few para¬ graphs from the presidential address. Devine was in San Fran¬ cisco up to his ears in relief work, but Mr. deForest read his address which was the most challenging of the kind in Confer¬ ence history : “If I have rightly conceived the dominant idea of the modern philanthropy, it is embodied in a determination to seek out and to strike effectively at those organized forces of evil, at those particular causes of dependence and intolerable living conditions which are beyond the control of the individuals whom they injure and whom they too often destroy. “No doubt there are individual as well as social causes of de¬ pendence. No doubt the poor, like the rich, have their faults and weaknesses, the consequences of which recoil upon themselves. * * * * But since such follies and sins are peculiar to no one class, may we not profitably turn to other evils from which the poor suffer greviously. “I ask your attention to the common element in alcoholism as encouraged by the liquor trust; * * * * broken health and ex¬ hausted resources directly due to poisonous and fraudulent pro¬ prietary medicines; other injuries for which manufacturers and sellers of adulterated foods are responsible; the manufacture of sweated goods, with a sharing of the profit between dealer and consumer; the destruction of the health and the sacrifice of the lives of little children in cotton factories, coal mines, glass fac- 340 Adventures with the National Conference tories ; the sending of messenger boys of tender years to brothels and hotels, to their grave moral injury ; the abduction of innocent country girls at hotels and railway stations as a systematic indus¬ try; the payment of less than a living wage to girls in stores and factories, with sickening indifference to the methods by which the remainder is secured ; * * * * the erection and management of dwellings which are unsanitary, and indecent, because they are gilt-edge investments. * * * * “Are not these, and other forces of a like kind, responsible for the accession to the numbers of those who come to require our help? And is there not a common element in all these* * * * agencies of the evil one. The love of money is their common root. It is the financial interest threatened in any reform which makes reform difficult or impossible. * * * * “I am constrained to charge my brethren in the charity organization movement itself, which stands pre-eminently for analysis of causes ; with not having appreciated the importance of the environmental causes of distress, with having fixed their attention far too much upon personal weaknesses and accidents, and having too little sought for the evils which might yield to social treatment.” Devine challeneged many other departments of social work, as he had his own, and some resentment was felt by some of those indicted. But on the whole, it was a wonderful key-note speech, and its high level of interest, thought and passion, was sustained throughout most of the proceedings. The Conference in Minneapolis, 1907. There were many notable features of the thirty-fourth session of the conference, perhaps the most striking being the degree to which consideration of the less immediate causes of pauperism and distress occupied the attention of the members. Questions of relief were hardly mooted, and of the work of the Associated Charities, only that of the friendly visitors took up much time and space in the papers and debates. Equally noticeable was the large amount of time devoted to the welfare of children. On the official program three general and five spe¬ cial sessions were alloted to them ; but an eloquent address by a United States Senator at the opening meeting was on “Child As Secretary — Second Series, 1905-1907 341 Labor and the Constitution” ; the committee on defectives and that on statistics had each one or more papers devoted to chil¬ dren’s affairs ; and the new committee on “Promotion of Health in Home, School and Factory” dealt chiefly with the second sub¬ ject in its title. The series of papers and discussions on the care of the insane forms an admirable summary of the subject, from the onset of the disease to the after-care of the recovered patient. The com¬ mittee on defectives gave much of its time to the care of the deaf and the blind; topics whoch had not been treated for some years; the industrial aspect of work for the blind had specially com¬ plete and intelligent presentation. The committee on statistics surprised us with some addresses of great value. No paper in recent years has attracted so much attention as one on vagrancy, presented by the committee on state supervision. The attendance was good, altho the number present from the Northwestern states, after very thoro advertising, was disap¬ pointing. It was made evident that the serious and difficult prob¬ lems of pauperism and crime are yet hardly felt in that impor¬ tant section of the country. Butler made his presidential address a cogent presentation of what he claimed to be, of many anti-social forces, the one de¬ manding most earnest thought, most immediate action. He gave the facts about “Feeble-Mindedness as an Inheritance”, and urged for public control of the whole class. As an appendix to the address he offered a study of eight hundred and three families on record with the Board of State Charities of which he was sec¬ retary, who were or had been inmates of Indiana poor asylums. This was a valuable scientific document and has been frequently used by students and others. As was to be expected with Butler as president and program- maker, there was less than usual of speculative theorizing and more than usual of practical application ; but Raymond Robbins carried us all with him in an address on fair working conditions for labor which he called “The One Main Thing.” An interesting event was the rising on the Conference horizon of a bright particular star (if not rather a comet) from the baby State of Oklahoma. Some of our members had been called during the past two years to the new state to help guide their legisla- 342 Adventures with the National Conference tion. H. H. Hart had helped them write their children’s law. Dr. Barrows had told them of the weaknesses and other defects of the criminal codes of older states. I had drafted a bill for a school for feeble-minded, and had spoken for it successfully before legislative committees and at a joint session of the House and Senate. The state had chosen to have an elected commissioner of char¬ ities instead of a state board; Kate Barnard had won the elec¬ tion and her popularity and eloquence had greatly aided the suc¬ cess of her party at the polls. The question of the constitution of the state was a burning one. The draft prepared was full of advanced social doctrine. Miss Barnard made an appeal to the Conference that it should, as she put it, help them to win a constitution whose details had followed National Conference teachings. Her eloquence and per- sonality made a great impression, especially on the younger men, who all fell for her. But of course the Conference could not de¬ part from its time honored custom so far as to endorse a state constitution. An interesting event occurred which came near lending a special emphasis to the distaste of the Conference for election¬ eering. The nominating committee was considering a man for president, and the leaders were for him. His availability was partly personal but chiefly because he represented a large and influential body of people who had so far been luke-warm and whom it was highly desirable to attach more firmly to the body. An injudicious would-be supporter of the gentleman under con¬ sideration, tried to make a political deal in his behalf, and did it so clumsily that it became public before it was pulled off. Political deals are intrinsically bad; but when they are handled clumsily they become positively wicked. This excited so much feeling that only by very judicious management on the part of some wise and prudent members was it possible to avert what would have been a disaster. To have let it be known that the gentleman’s name had been considered and then turned down, would have alienated those we wished to attract. Only thrice during my nine years of office did f say one word which could influence the nominating committee as to a presi¬ dent. The first time it was when I was called on to testify to As Secretary — Second Series, 1905-1907 343 the character and ability of a gentleman upon whom a majority of the committee had decided, but whose election was in danger from a minority report, threatened by a vicious and treacherous opponent. Once it failed when I suggested that choosing an institution man might help keep his fellows in line; another time, I did say, when by the merest accident I heard that a cer¬ tain man was being considered, the one word “impossible”. This time the candidate was defeated, partly because I said the word and partly because of his friends’ electioneering, but chiefly because of his personal character. In this case the defeated man became my bitter enemy and made a fierce attack on me with the executive committee, which though unpleasant did no harm and even a little good, since he combined with the personal attack an indictment of the policy into which I was leading the Conference. The result was that some of my plans, which so far had simply been permitted, were voted on and positively approved by the executive committee and so more easily carried out. The man in question was one of the three or four personal enemies I have ever had so far as I know; although there may have been others whom I did not understand as such. I think I cannot be insulted nor slighted by accident ; anyone who chooses to insult me must make it very plain; not because I am thick- skinned but because I don’t look for slights nor insults and take every one’s good will for granted unless they positively prove the contrary. Most slights and insults are accidental — were not intended as such by their imagined perpetrators. Then again, most serious enmities arise out of greed, and I have rarely pos¬ sessed anything which another wished to take away from me. Chapter Six ADVENTURES AS SECRETARY Third Series, 1908-1913 With the growth of the Conference and the coming of the various social organizations now meeting in connection with it, the duties of the secretary became more and more merely those of administrative detail. My appearance on the platform was chiefly to make announcements and give explanations. The business engrossed me so entirely that I had little time or energy for the work, and I like the work much better than the business. I could no longer act as chairman of a committee; and only twice since the Conference of 1908, have I been asked to read a paper. I had, however, the pleasant duty of preparing the way each year with the local committee; helping them to interest the people of the city in which we were to meet; and on Confer¬ ence Sunday there was usually a pulpit or two for me to fill. Yet still I felt I had become a deacon instead of an apostle; I had left the ministry of the word to serve tables. The Conference at Richmond \ The fact that our president at Richmond was leader in the Catholic Charities of New York helped to bring the St. Vincent de Paul Society in closer union than it had been before. Its con¬ ference was held in Richmond immediately before the national one, with mutual benefit. I was called on to speak to the Vin¬ centians, and at the close of my remarks Monsignor McMahon of New York said I understood their society as well as possible for a non-Catholic. When it came to choosing the preacher of the Conference sermon Mr. Mulry delegated that duty to me. He said he did not wish to obtrude his religious faith by inviting a Catholic priest to preach. I asked the secretary of the local committee to suggest the name of a minister, not of Richmond, but one who 0 As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 345 was known there, and who would be acceptable to the Southern people. He named Rev. M. Ashby Jones, then of Columbus, Ga., now of Atlanta. The sermon was of a high order. Mr. George Foster Peabody who heard it asked me to get the manuscript and print 20,000 copies and distribute them, sending him the bill. I made the friendship of Mr. Jones on that occasion and have kept it since. The sessions were held in the old Episcopal church where we were shown the pews of such leaders of the Confederacy as Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. Some beautiful stained glass windows, among them memorials placed there by Mrs. John M. Glenn’s grandfather, made the interior glorious. The rector of the church, Rev. Robert S. Forsythe, was constant in his hospitality and interest; attending every session and often opening the meeting with prayer. When it came to the Sunday night meeting, we had arranged to use one of the theatres, think¬ ing it an intrusion to hold a session in the church on Sunday, but the rector was quite disturbed; he begged us not to desert him ; promised to fill the chancel and every available place with chairs, to accommodate the large meeting we expected; and was so evidently sincere that he had his way. The conference being in the South, the committee on public health paid special attention to problems of health among the negroes; and the committee on children to those of child-labor, especially in cotton mills. The committee on family welfare had some good papers and discussions on work among the mountain whites. 1 1 Among the papers presented by the committee on children was one by Dr. McKelway, the assistant secretary of the National Child Labor Committee, on the topic of “Child Labor and Citizenship”. He ended his paper by a declaration of dependence” which he made in the name of the children of America. It is so interesting that I quote it in full. "In the name of the toiling children of America, the neglected children, the children sacrificed to greed, I presume to suggest a paper which I shall read in their behalf : Declaration of dependence by the children of America in mines and factories and work shops assembled. 346 Adventures with the National Conference Whereas we, children of America, are declared to have been horn free and equal, and Whereas we are yet in bondage in this land of the free; are forced to toil the long day or night, with no control over the con¬ ditions of labor as to health or safety or hours or wages, and with no right to the rewards of our service, therefore be it Resolved I, That childhood is endowed with certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which are the right to be children and not bread-winners ; the right to play and to dream ; the right to the sleep of childhood during the night season; the right to an education; that we may have equality of opportunity for developing all that there is in us of mind and heart. Resolved II, That we declare ourselves to be helpless and dependent; that we are and of right ought to be dependent and that we hereby present the appeal of our helplessness that we may be protected in the enjoyment of the rights of ‘childhood. Resolved III, That we demand the restoration of our rights by the abolition of child labor in America.” In a paper on compulsory education, Prof. Hand of the Uni¬ versity of South Carolina, had given some statistics on illiteracy ; among them that North Carolina was at the bottom of the list, with the largest percentage of illiterates in the United States. His figures were eight years old and in the interval North Caro¬ lina had made strenuous efforts at education ; the value of school property had been quadrupled and, during five years past, new schoolhouses had been built at the rate of one a day. A delegate from North Carolina, the secretary of the state board, was heart¬ broken to have her state so maligned and came to me in tears. She was a modest, timid woman, and did not know how to get before the Conference, to refute what she felt was a slander on her state. I undertook to do it for her, and getting the floor at the next session I told the audience of the facts and won the lasting gratitude of the lady. A committee on “Press and Publicity” made its first report. This was quite new and of a different order from the usual Conference work. It was a sign of the way the Conference was becoming useful to its members, not only teaching them what to do, but also how to get the means of doing it. This committee produced a set of papers of great value to the executive officers As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 347 of charitable agencies. The chairman was H. Wirt Steele, who for several years had been employed by the Conference as pub¬ licity agent; and who had been very useful in the position; he reported regularly for three years during which time the papers covered the subject so well that it was dropped and has not been necessary again. At its session shortly before the Conference met, the legisla¬ ture of Virginia had enacted a law for a Board of State Chari¬ ties, copying the Indiana law almost verbatim. The Board, just appointed by the Governor, was about to select for secretary a well known politician who had no knowledge of social work and little capacity for learning it. I met Gov. Swanson at a recep¬ tion given the Conference at the executive mansion and when he heard that I had been the first secretary of the Indiana Board, he wanted to know all I could tell him. He was soon convinced that the man they had chosen would not do and while the Conference was in session a suitable secre¬ tary was chosen, Rev. J. T. Mastin. He came at once to see me, and I introduced him to Amos Butler. Between us we got him started right and his administration has been conspicuously successful. Social work in Virginia, both public and private, has advanced greatly and is still advancing under his influence. One of the pleasant incidents to me personally in being among the Richmond people was that they liked me all the better because I used to be an Englishman. I have often been among groups with whom my nativity was a liability; I was a good fellow in spite of it; at Richmond the liability turned into an asset. Conference Finances The Local Contribution During the years that the Conference had no membership fee, the question of finance was a troublesome one. As I showed in a previous chapter, the only support the Conference had at first was by selling its proceedings and the treasurer was always more or less worried. When a membership fee was established it was quite small and not nearly enough to defray our expenses. At each meeting we usually had invitations for the next one from several cities. One of the early conditions of acceptance was 348 Adventures with the National Conference that the local committee should defray local expenses, such as publicity and rental of halls and the salary of the official reporter. To these, at their choice, they added expenses of receptions and sometimes excursions. When we met at Omaha in 1887, the local fund was more than they were able to spend and when the accounts were adjusted a balance of $700.00 remained; this was turned over to the Conference and thankfully accepted. This gave the idea of requiring a certain subscription from each local committee towards the publication of the proceedings which was always paid; usually very cheerfully. The sum first arrived at as proper was $500.00 and it remained at that figure for a good many years. The local committees did not officially tell the executive committee how much the Conference cost them; but for some years it was supposed to be about $3000.00 in each city. This was the amount collected in Indianapolis in 1891, and when the committee there met to close its accounts, the first check made was one for $500.00 to the treasurer of the Conference. It was characteristic of the chairman of that committee, of which I was a member, that when we found we had incurred liabilities of $270.00 over the subscribed sum and one of us suggested ask¬ ing for subscriptions from some people who could well afford to give them, Mr. Hanna said “no, we will not ask anyone to pay for a dead horse’7 and promptly wrote his own check for the deficit. In the course of four or five years after I became secretary in 1904, I was able to work up the local contribution towards publication to $1500.00, and afterwards to $2000.00. I justified the request for this mpney from the city to my own conscience (unless I had done so I could not have asked for it) not only because of the great social benefit which the Conference carried with it, but also as an actual good investment of the business people. When the Conference brings two thousand people to a city for a week their actual hotel bills are on the average at least $5.00 per day, or a total of $70,000.00. Their other necessary expenses are certainly $1.00 per day or $14,000.00 more. Then many take advantage of the big city stores, possibly spending $20,000.00 or $30,000.00 in them; and often a physician or a dentist would be called on. To bring $100,000.00 in actual addi- 349 As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 * tional cash receipts to the business and professional people of the city is surely worth the expenditure of ten per cent of the amount to secure it. But to the business men, the advertising which the city gets is of more value than the additional bank clearings. Of course this does not apply to New York, or Phila¬ delphia, or Chicago. But in every city of third or fourth rank, there is a board of trade, or business men’s club, one of whose purposes is to advertise the city. The Conference mails many thousand circulars and letters each of which carries the name of the city in which the meeting is to be held. When we went to Minneapolis, the business men’s club agreed to finance the local committee out of a fund it had for such pur¬ poses on condition that no other collection should be made. The day before we adjourned I called on the secretary to collect the contribution of $1500.00; which was paid so cheerfully that I asked Mr. Guy if the club was satisfied with the expenditure. He declared that they felt fully repaid by what the Conference had done and the number of people it had brought to the city. These thoughts and facts made me feel that we were not beggars when we asked for the contribution, but that we gave the people full value for their money. I suppose it would have been feasible, at any period subse¬ quent to 1884, to secure contributions from benevolent, wealthy people which would have put the executive committee on Easy Street. But this would have been very repugnant to me and to many of our best members. I and they wanted to feel free of any obligation which might involve fear of the consequences of plain speaking. In inviting people to address us we could always say “speak what you believe, we have no limits except those of courtesy and fair parliamentary practice”. So far as I know, there was never any feeling that we could not tell the truth as we saw it lest we might offend some interest or some one who was profiting by error. We supported our work by a small membership fee which any social worker could pay without hurting himself and by a contribution from the people among whom we met, for which we gave full value. This seemed a strong, sane, democratic finan¬ cial basis, and the fact that we never had quite enough money to do all we would like to do, was wholesome for us, it kept us from extravagance. 350 Adventures with the National Conference The Second Conference at Buffalo The thirty-sixth Conference, that of 1909, with Ernest Bick- nell as president, met in Buffalo, in the same month of the year that had seen the gathering of the fifteenth, in 1888. The con¬ trast between the two Conferences in membership, in interest, and in program, was an admirable expression of the evolution of charity and correction which had taken place in the twenty- one years between the two meetings. In 1888, preventive philanthropy was just gaining recogni¬ tion, but the problems of ameliorative relief were the urgent ones. In 1909, constructive effort in benevolence occupied the place which preventive work had barely attained at the former period; while the theory of prevention had grown in acceptance until it was a truism to say that poverty is a temporary condi¬ tion, that it is mainly due to preventible causes, that science has shown us how it miay be averted and that human benevolence has seized on the method and purposes to put it in practice. In twenty-one years, the problem of the poor had passed over from an affair of the individual to one of the neighborhood. Questions like those of labor and its reward, city congestion, etc. ; which once seemed proper only to the domain of Economics were now considered from the philanthropic side, if not exclu¬ sively, yet so largely that they belong there in the estimation of social workers. Questions of public health were recognized as belonging in the highest sense to preventive philanthropy. Educational reform which shall lead to industrial efficiency was claimed as a concern of constructive beneficence. State supervision and administration still occupied the center of the stage, but the objects of supervision were multiplied in number and wonderfully varied in kind. Several wholly new methods of care for defectives and dependents had come into existence since 1888 ; while in the methods of dealing with delin¬ quents, the changes amounted to a revolution. Above all, it was being more and more recognized that secur¬ ing justice rather than giving relief is the supreme task of philan¬ thropy, that justice is the highest charity and that justice means the equalizing of opportunity in the spirit of human brother¬ hood. This last sentiment was emphasized strikingly in the Con- As Secretary — Third Series, 1908*1913 351 ference sermon, which was preached by an eloquent and enlight¬ ened Jewish Rabbi, on the topic of “Charity versus Justice”. As the president was in Italy during the Spring with the Red Cross relief work after the Messina earthquake, he had assigned to me the duty of choosing the Conference preacher; and it was a sincere pleasure to be able to invite Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to preach to 11s ; all the more because I remembered how he had invited me to occupy his pulpit in Portland, Oregon, when I was preparing for the Conference in that city a few years earlier. There was no new committee reporting for the first time at Buffalo, yet there were several striking new departures within old committee lines. On “Health and Sanitation” the inter¬ relations of public and private efforts were treated in a more practical way than ever before; several public officials partici¬ pating. The topic of health which other than as concerned with hospitals, had been a new one to the Conference in 1905, had become, in four years, one of the leading ones. Several forcible instances of the inter-relation between com¬ mittees were shown. Noteworthy examples were given under “Immigration” as relating to public health, child care, delin¬ quency, and prostitution. The connection between immigration and the spread of typhoid fever; the remarkable and surprising fact that the disease increases and decreases, with the prosperity of industry, instead of in the reverse degree as might be expected; was made clear in a paper coming from the Typhoid Fever Commission of Pittsburgh ; and other papers showing other unexpected side results were all intensely interesting. When the committee on nomination was busy the fact leaked out that they were contemplating the choice of Jane Addams for president. Much as I would have liked to have a share in giving her the honor, I had strictly conformed to a rule I had laid down for myself when I was made the paid officer of the Confer¬ ence — that I would keep absolutely aloof from influencing elec¬ tions. A prominent member begged me to break my rule on this one occasion. Although I had never announced my policy, he told me that he knew and approved it highly; but that this time something had to be done; that the choice of a woman for presi¬ dent would alienate two strong groups of people whom we had recently secured and who were valuable additions to the mem- 352 Adventures with the National Conference bership; that the nominating committee would listen to me as to no one else; that I must sacrifice my own preferences for the good of the Conference. He urged me to tell the chairman of the committee of the evils that would follow; of the danger, almost the certainty, that the choice of a woman president would wreck the Conference. I did not tell the gentleman that I should be delighted to see a woman chosen ; that without parading the fact, I had for years been steadily working for real democracy, for actual equality of sects and sexes; that I had gained one great step this year in the choice of a J ewish Rabbi for a Conference preacher ; that we had had a Catholic president and I hoped to see not only a woman president but also a Jewish one before many years were over. But I did tell him that I had seen the Conference wrecked many times, and each time it had come up smiling, more strong than ever; that I had seldom meddled and never would again with the work of the nominating committee; any more than I always had done by preparing for them a list of committees and officers for several years back, indicating the states from which each had come. The committee acted as my friend feared, but Miss Addams made an admirable president; nobody was alien¬ ated nobody even expressed displeasure. The Conference grew in membership and influence and the sessions over which the woman presided were some of the best ever held anywhere. Meeting my fearful friend in New York a few weeks after the St. Louis Conference, I mentioned what a good one it had been and especially how nobody stayed away because of the woman president and he replied “I tell you, Johnson, they can’t stay away, it’s too interesting”. Once more I refrained from saying, “I told you so,” though I surely thought it. The Second Conference in St. Louis, 1910 As was the case in Buffalo, Detroit, Washington and New York, the Conference played a return engagement in St. Louis; so reminiscences were in order. I had begun my Conference experiences in that city twenty-six years before and first began to feel myself a social worker there; St. Louis was redolent of memories for me. Of those present in 1884, only a handful came in 1910 ; and of our hosts but one or two greeted us again. Most As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 353 of the old timers were dead and of those living few remained in social work. The city had changed greatly. From being rather backward in social affairs, it was now well to the front in such things as juvenile courts, public baths, playgrounds, and some other of the newer developments. The old Provident Association, which in 1884 was a type of the decadent relief society, altho it kept its old name had been made over on modern principles of organi¬ zation and practice. It was particularly pleasant to find a star graduate of my first class in the school of philanthropy, that of 1905; the first and best tho the smallest; acting as city commis¬ sioner of parks, playgrounds, and public baths. The advance publicity had been very poorly done by the local committee; we had Wirt Steele as publicity agent and when he and I got to work among the reporters we found the reason. The man who had undertaken publicity for the local people was very unpopular with the newsmen. They called him a high brow. They took heartily to Steele and myself; we were democratic enough in our habits for anybody; and we did get pretty good notices after the meetings began ; although the Conference suf¬ fered from the previous neglect. A notable new committee to report at St. Louis was that on Occupational Standards. This marked a new alignment of social forces. Its purpose was to disclose the degree to which industrial conditions complicate the problems of distress and delinquency; to show that much both of poverty and crime, is really a by¬ product of industry ; to arrange and co-ordinate the “mute human testimony which whether it comes to us in the form of premature Widowhood, or broken health, or inefficiency, or juvenile crinte; whether we find it in a painter’s poisoned blood, or a telephone girl’s frazzled nerve cells, in the empty sleeve of a brakeman, or in the under-fed child of an under-paid man, has the stamp of the workshop about it”. The report made by Paul IT. Kellogg as chairman, was the first of a series of three ; the second, with a change of the committee’s name to Standards of Living and Labor, with Florence Kelley as chairman, was made the next year at Boston. The third under the same name, by Owen Lovejoy at Cleveland, closed the series and presented a platform of standards on such subjects as a I 354 Adventures with the National Conference living wage, safety and health, reasonable hours of labor, home life possibilities, child labor and other things. The Conference could not be asked to adopt the inclusive and radical platform. It does not adopt platforms. But a special meeting at Cleveland, held on the side lines, adopted a series of resolutions of a noteworthy character. The three reports of 1910, 1911 and 1912 emphasized, as no others had done, the change of front which the Conference forces had effected during the fruit¬ ful years that were passing. It is no wonder that the old guard were bewildered by such new strategy and vainly attempted to bring the hosts back to the ground they seemed to be abandoning. One special feature of this Conference was a very large exhibit in the basement of the Odeon, the great hall in which most of the meetings were held. This was the most elaborate thing of the kind we had ever had and I think has not been equalled since. At St. Louis, the executive committee insisted on raising my salary from $2500.00 to $3000.00, although I warned them that I had sometimes had difficulty in paying it at the lower figure. A year later, on my request, the salary was reduced to its former amount. This action was quite forcibly opposed by several of the committee and was only adopted on my urgency. It was at a time when the financial stringency from which the Conference was never wholly free was a little worse than usual, owing to the fact that the Cleveland local committee had fallen down on its pledged support. I felt that the Conference was altogether too good a thing to be embarrassed by having to pay high salaries; that had I been financially able to do so, I would gladly have given my services free but as I could not do that I was wishful to take no more than a reasonable living from it; and being a man of simple tastes and frugal habits, $2500.00 was a sufficient salary for me. I believed then and do still that the other satisfactions which come to the faithful social worker are great enough to justify a man working at even some pecuniary sacrifice if necessary. T acted according to my convictions although it was hard to make the executive committee see my point and I had to submit to being considered a crank, (which alas! was, and is, only too true.) 355 As Secretary — Third Series, 19081913 Internationalism and the Conference For many years we had welcomed to the Conference many delegates from Canada and a few from Mexico, and in 1897 we had held the Conference in the chief city of our Northern neigh¬ bors. These facts suggested the idea of making the Conference in name as in fact international instead of national. A commit¬ tee to consider this was appointed at the meeting in Buffalo, but the consensus of opinion was that we might as well leave well enough alone. However, when the International Congress of Public Relief and Private Philanthropy, which held its sessions once every five years in Europe; was called to assemble in Copenhagen in September 1910, and we were invited to send delegates, our executive committee felt the invitation should be accepted. I was appointed to attend and granted the sum of $300.00 for expenses. This was, I need not say, a very great boon to me. I was at that time, so I thought, probably the only British immigrant not actually impoverished, who in forty years of American residence had never revisited the land of his birth. I had come to the Western world in 1869 so that more than a generation had passed since I had seen the old country. I took the opportunity of crossing the ocean to spend a few weeks with relatives in Eng¬ land ; to visit my birthplace ; to walk on the streets I used to pass on my way to school (and find how narrow they had become in fifty years) ; and to see the house I was born in. The Congress was a very dignified body. Ex-President Lou- bet of France, was president. King Christian of Denmark with his personal and official family attended the opening session ; the entertainments given us were lavish. A great dinner and recep¬ tion in the Hotel de Ville, as the Danes call their city hall, was the most extravagant thing of the kind I have ever attended; champagne was much more plentiful than water on the table. But as a Conference the affair was simply not in it with ours. Great preparations had been made. Every paper pre¬ sented had been received three months ahead, and printed in French, which was the language of the Conference. The speak¬ ers were permitted to use their own tongue or French as they Adventures with the National Conference 356 chose. It was absurd to listen to a speaker reading a long paper while you held the text in full in your hands, but that was their plan. The general tone of their social work reminded me of ours of forty years ago. They had scarcely begun to conceive of pre¬ ventive philanthropy and constructive social work seemed half a century ahead of them. I was honored as an American delegate by being made a vice- president; but that office is even more purely a complimentary one than it is in our National Conference ; altho the compliment was emphasized by including a special seat on the platform ; but all I had to do was to occupy the chair and look wise. There was a speaker’s stand which each must occupy in his turn. As is often the case with Conferences the program was overloaded and the speakers, except those reading papers, were called down at the end of a very brief period. Those who wished to join in a discussion sent their names to the president who assigned them five, ten or twenty minutes, as he thought proper, and then called them up, or not, as the discussion went on. There was a fiery Parisian with some good ideas on Mother’s Pensions much like those we had eight or ten years earlier; but his idea of relief was as inadequate as, or worse than, ours used to be in the bad old niggardly days. I sent my name to speak in the debate which followed and was allotted twenty minutes, and then called down in ten, just as I was warming up. Most of the proceedings were in French, and I was able to understand the formal speakers by following the copy. The extempore addresses I could also understand when they were in French, if a German, or an Englishman, or a Frenchman from the provinces, spoke. President Loubet, being from Bordeaux, was quite intelligible. But when a Parisian took the stand I could catch at the most about one word in ten. I was like Chaucer’s Prioress, mine was “The French of Stratforde atte Bowe, for of the Frenche of Paris, I didde notte knowe”. One of the marked contrasts between the congress and our Conference was in the courtesy of the audience. At our National Conference, even when a tedious speaker is prosing along, an auditor who wishes to listen is secure from the distraction which comes of loud talking by his neighbors. But at the congress, As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 357 it was only the exceptionally dignified or forceful speaker who was not disturbed. This discourtesy was specially noticeable among the supposed-to-be-polite Frenchmen, whose assigned seats were all together; their rudeness on several occasions made me furious. We had five or six American delegates and we all sat together until I was made vice-president and had to move to a seat of honor. Among them was Miss Sadie American, who presented a paper on the “ Jewish Society to aid Female Immigrants”, which was interesting and valuable, especially at an interna¬ tional gathering. All thru her address the French delegates were talking and laughing, and at last one of them rose and asserted that her paper; which he certainly had neither heard not read ; was proper for the white slave congress, which was to meet in Milan in a few weeks, and not here. The president seemed to be of the same opinion and Miss American, who was not more than half thru, was given two minutes to close. They could not understand any effort for helping virtuous women, except in the way of charity to widows with children. The very next day a Frenchwoman, representing the prison work of the Salvation Army, was allowed nearly a full hour to read a prosy paper which we all had in full in our hands. To her even the Frenchmen were polite, though I doubt they listened they did keep quiet. Two men stood out at the congress head and shoulders above the rest for good sense and good feeling; Charles S. Loch, secre¬ tary of the London C. O. S., and Emil Munsterberg, head of Berlin’s public relief. When either of them spoke everybody listened; and they both used intelligible French. I had met Munsterberg when he was studying charities in the United States and had attracted his attention by an article on mother’s pensions vs. orphan’s homes which he highly commended ; he was strong for the pension system. Mr. Loch attended our National Conference in Grand Rapids, and had sent a paper to be read at Washington in ’85. It was pleasant to renew acquaintance with them. When it came time to decide on the next place of meeting, in 1915,1 conceived the idea of getting them to come to the United states and showing them how a Conference ought to be run; so 358 Adventures with the National Conference I cabled Bicknell in Washington; asking him to get Pres. Taft’s authority to invite the congress to meet in our Capital. I don’t know whether Bicknell could not reach the president, or whether he did not approve ; at any rate I got no answer and London was chosen for the congress of 1915. A few months later I was appointed reporter for the United States on mental defectiveness ; and instructed to have my report ready by October 1914, for the Congress meeting in June 1915. I got it ready; a careful statement of American institutions and laws ; but the great war wiped out any chance for the congress of 1915 along with so much else; and it has not been resumed. The Danish people were as good to us as they knew how to be, and I enjoyed my visit to their beautiful city. I hunted for “slums” in Copenhagen, and could not find them. But the more I saw of the European congress, the prouder I was of our Amer¬ ican Conference. In Denmark, I visited several of their poor-houses, in Copen¬ hagen and other cities, which are on an admirable system.* At Rothskilde, the ancient capital, I saw an agricultural high school which filled me with envy for our farmer boys; and a co-opera¬ tive marketing plant for eggs and pork, which helped to explain how it came that Denmark ; from being almost the poorest coun¬ try, per capita, in Europe; had in twenty-five years become the richest. This last made me wish our farmers could learn to co-operate. I crossed the ocean eastward in a Scandinavian-American boat, which made the passage going north of the British Isles calling at Christiansand and Christiana, Norway, before docking at Copenhagen. Among the passengers was a very dear pupil of mine, Florence Lattimer, a member of the best beloved of all my classes in the New York school of philanthropy, that of 1905, the first to graduate; Jacob Biis and his wife were passengers, and several other social workers. It was an ideal voyage in congenial company. When I returned in the Baltic of the White Star Line, the contrast was painful, both as to the ship and the fellow passengers. Coming home we arrived off Sandy Hook at night and ♦See in “The Almshouse” published by the Russel Sage Foundation, pp. 193-197, an account of these institutions. As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 359 anchored in the Narrows. At dav-break, I went on deck and saw Staten Island to the left, Brooklyn Heights on the right, and the Goddess in the distance and I felt a sensation of home-coming which was really intense. I had seen nothing that looked so good to me since we steamed out of the harbor ten weeks before. I suppose some immigrants from Europe go back to stay; just as some people leave Indiana for New York, and are content. But though the world is my country I am first an American and a Hoosier at that. One of the good things that has come of my retirement is that I may make my home in my well-beloved adopted state. In Boston Once More, in 1911 No city in the Union, perhaps none in the world has shown a finer spirit of social work than Boston. The first Conference that was held there, in 1881, had been a memorable occasion. The Conference was taking shape and many things were begun there. Now in 1911, after thirty years growth the Conference came again with ten times as many delegates and a program many times larger; with an almost infinitely wider horizon. If vigorous growth is the best evidence of healthy life that surely was demonstrated. One notable new committee reporting was on aThe Church in Charity”. This was the topic at the Sunday night session and Rev. Samuel McChord Crothers was one of the speakers. He gave us a wonderful address in his inimitable style and I wanted it in full in the proceedings. Whether the address was in manu¬ script or not, I do not know, at any rate I had not secured it; it had been taken stenographically and the report was fairly accurate; but it had lost the charm and sparkle of its spoken form. I sent a copy of the reporter’s notes to Mr. Crothers, and begged him to revise them for publication ; as he did not answer, I sent it a second time, and again he failed to reply. Despairing of his doing the work I took the notes and with my own vivid recollection of what he had said, I re-wrote it in as near an attempt at his style as I could command ; putting in some things I remembered which the stenographer had not caught, and one good thing he had said on a previous occasion which was appro- 360 Adventures with the National Conference priate. Then I sent him a copy of my revision and told him if it was not satisfactory I could wait two weeks for his correction, but that if he did not answer within that time I should accept silence as consent and send it to the printer. Mr. Crothers promptly replied that my revision was quite satisfactory and T might print it under his name. The position of editor brings many trials, but it has its com¬ pensations. On one occasion, when Judge Mack had spoken to two different audiences at the same Conference on similar topics, I took the two addresses and combined them, ironing out the seams as carefully as I could. I thought the Judge had not noticed what I had done until he jokingly told me that it was not such a very bad job tho the junctures were plain to him. On another occasion I condensed a paper of 12,000 words to 6,000. The author had declared that condensation would spoil it but when I sent the revision to him for criticism he was gen¬ erous enough to confess that he liked my revised version better than his own original. But many authors were not so com¬ plaisant and my editing aroused some complaints especially as the material for the volume increased in amount and had to be cut down seriously. The Associated Societies The possibility, or the necessity, of the growth of the National Conference from a meeting of individuals to a great congress of associations; was a gradual development in the organization; as in my mind. As it slowly dawned on me I began consciously to direct and foster it. I never paraded the idea not even to the executive committee. I tried to let the growth be simple and natural. I was afraid if I made what I was hoping for too evi¬ dent some of the members would balk; and as a matter of fact I was by no means certain that many of them fully realized what was happening or sympathized with my ambitions. Naturally the question of limitation came up. When we advertised these co-operating associations in our programs; notwithstanding any disclaimer of responsibility, we were in effect endorsing them. Some of the societies which came into line were of such importance and dignity that their presence strengthened the Conference itself, as well as increased its membership. This As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 361 was true of the Jewish Conference of Charities which was among the first to hold its biennial meetings regularly with us. The St. Vincent de Paul Society was another strong organization which first met with us in Richmond when Mr. Mulry, who was distinctly at the head of Catholic charities in New York; was president; and again in Boston; other societies soon saw the advantage of the associated plan. I suggested to the executive committee that it pass a resolu¬ tion that the privilege of our program be restricted to societies applying for it in plenty of time; and that it was to be granted each one by a formal vote each year. This was not a perfunctory requirement, altho there was only one occasion of the privilege being refused. This occurred at Boston. When the executive committee met with the local committee to make arrangements, an application came from the Florence Crittenden Society, to be put on the program. To this the Boston people demurred; altho most of the Florence Crittenden homes were well conducted, the one in Boston was in disfavor with some of the local social workers. Its management was far from what it should be, and the local people said it must not receive the endorsement of the National Conference. Accordingly the application was politely refused, and the reason why was given; with the utmost cour¬ tesy but equal firmness. This caused some resentment at first, but its final results were good. The society investigated its Bos¬ ton branch; found that the criticisms were just and took meas¬ ures to remedy the evils complained of. Every year, more societies came with us. They brought us more members, and they added to the value of the Conference to the city which entertained us by not only bringing a larger number of people but keeping them for a longer time as the auxiliary societies met for two or three days before the Confer¬ ence itself. The widening of the scope of the Conference and the coming in of the various associations had one annoying effect. A few people who represented state boards felt, that, as people in their position had begun the Conference, it belonged to them. Under the new regime they were no longer the all important figures and they resented it. After trying on several occasions to stay the development they disliked they decided to cut loose and 362 Adventures with the National Conference start a new assocaition of their own. This lasted for a few years but it attracted nobody but the small group who fostered it and I think has now ceased to exist. All the most influential men in state charities work remained loyal to the National Con¬ ference; and the defection of the few sore-heads was hardly noticed. The Second Time in Cleveland, 1912 The trend away from remedies and towards preventives; which had marked the progress of the Conference for forty years had great emphasis and some acceleration at Cleveland. This was marked in the president’s address and in every committee’s report, as was also the inevitable correlation of preventive agencies. Problems of labor, of disease, of education and even of taxation; were shown to be inextrieally entangled with those of charity and correction. Anyone who came to the Conference with his little panacea for social ill tied up in a neat bundle, was confronted by a host of people who asked many questions which the panacea-maker had never thought of and could not answer. The social student of fifty years hence who shall wish to know what social workers and social reformers thought and talked about and were trying to do, in the early years of the twentieth century, may find almost complete instruction in the six hundred and forty-four pages of the proceedings of 1912. No wonder some of the old members who conceived of the Conference as a place to meet and discuss the work of organized, legalized boards of charities and who had somewhat grudgingly admitted the charity organization societies with the many new problems they presented, were indignant and even bewildered. A few of these attempted between the sessions of 1912 and 1913 to radically reform the Conference by bringing it back to its first status. A letter from Frank Sanborn, the father of the Conference, written to me in May, 1913, expresses the view of the more unselfish among the conservatives so well that I give a few paragraphs from it. After alluding to a personal attack made on me by a member whom I had offended by, as he thought, frus¬ trating his ambition to be president and who when he attacked me had made the natural mistake of measuring me and my As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 \ 363 motives by himself and his own ; and disclaiming any sympathy with the gentleman in his personal grievance ; he says : “Our annual meetings have grown so large as to be unwieldly, and this by their inclusion of topics that could be better con¬ sidered in an organization for the reconstruction of civilized society, a proper end, perhaps, but one for which the Confer¬ ence of Charities was not created. Ours is a much humbler but still an important aim * * * * viz: the co-operation of public officials and private philanthropists in classifying and standardizing the administration of charities, private and public and the introduction of prison science * * * * in the man¬ agement of prisons, etc. * * * *. If now we could drop some of these twining plants of general philanthropy and paternalism that have clasped the trunk * * * * of our banian tree of charities and correction, we could probably reduce our expenses and the size of our volume; make our meetings more useful and address the public more effectively on fewer subjects than we now do with our universal appeals to the spirit of novelty and change.” Mr. Sanborn expressed the views of the conservatives who wanted to reform us backwards; but the opposite trend was too strong for them and him. I had much sympathy with him, in fact I agreed with him pretty well except in opinion. When a parent sees his offspring grow into an adult in whom the family traits have dwindled until the creature looks like a member of a different breed, the poor old father feels that Nature has defrauded him and resents the process of evolution. I confess to have suffered much the same feeling with regard to one or two favorite projects of my own which grew away from my intentions for them. Like many another useful man, Mr. Sanborn builded better than he knew when he initiated the National Conference in 1874; or to change the metaphor, he had no idea “how great a matter a little fire kindleth”. President Mack in his address put it forcibly; he said “For some years, we have been passing beyond the age of mere preven¬ tive work. Eradication of evil is not enough. Constructive philanthropy demands that it be replaced by the positive good ;” and he went on to show how this principle applied in field after 364 Adventures with the National Conference field of social work. He said “In the past few years, a voice never silent in the history of the world, has been growing deeper and louder, the voice of men calling unto men, not for alms, not for charity, but for justice; and this body, tho it remain a Confer¬ ence of Charities and Correction, will more and more in the course of time become a national conference for the considera¬ tion of those measures which in dealings between individuals and between the individual and the state will accord to each man that justice which is his due. * * * * It demands that society in its organized capacity shall secure each individual in the full enjoyment of all those fundamental rights, without which no human soul can fulfil his God given destiny. As we advance in civilization they will increase in number and broaden in extent.” Judge Mack voiced the general sentiment of the Conference and those who wanted to emulate Canute had to give way, tho some of them made themselves quite disagreeable about it. For¬ tunately for the Conference, the matter was kept off the floor, and no one was much worried but myself. The reform which changed the name from “Conference of Charities and Correction” to “Conference of Social Work” had its origin in this disagree¬ ment between conservatives and progressives. When the out¬ ward and visible sign came it was evidence of an inward and spiritual reality which had long existed. Seattle in 1913, The Fortieth Conference It really seemed at Seattle that we had reached the culmina¬ tion of the long steady advance ; from relief to social reconstruc¬ tion ; as the object of the Conference. The president’s address was on “Social Justice”. One committee after another followed his lead. Organizations that once seemed remote from philan¬ thropic effort in their scope, were represented as participants ; most notably the commercial organizations; the boards of trade; chambers of commerce, and their congeners; whose social work was set forth by a committee on “The Relation of Commercial Organizations to Social Welfare,” which offered papers by mem¬ bers of chambers of commerce, development boards and similar. The topic of “The Church and Social Work” was explained in a way that showed something radically different from the ideas of As Secretary — Third Series, 1908-1913 365 the old church aid societies; the committee on “Standards of Living and Labor” discussed wages and work conditions as affected by legislation ; and one member of it presented “Indus¬ trial Diseases” as the facts had never been brought together be¬ fore. The committee on “Health and Sanitation” had developed into “Health and Productive Power” and stressed the co-ordina¬ tion of official and private activities along with that social book¬ keeping we call “Vital Statistics”. The committee on “Families and Neighborhoods” discussed not relief of the poor but social surveys and working programs for city development. Mr. San¬ born might well have said, as he did after the Cleveland meeting in 1912/ that the Conference was becoming “an organization for the reconstruction of civilized society”. When I edited the volume I began to wonder whether we had not gone to a new extreme ; whether we were not in danger of forgetting that not all of the world’s woes are due to social condi¬ tions ; but that some of them have intrinsic and subjective causes ; that some poverty is due to the individual faults of the sufferers. The president declared that the closing session at Cleveland the year before, had marked the end of the second era of thought and discussion in Conference history — the era of prevention ; the first having been the era of relief ; and that the third era that of construction ; had now begun. He reminded us that the prob¬ lems of life which the Conference of 1912 had been discussing became the issues in the most significant presidential campaign in half a century ; that many of the Conference leaders had gone into political action to make their social beliefs effective; some of them aiding to give a new objective to a party whose course had long been erratic ; some clinging to the wreck of the once dominant political power, believing its machinery could be made effective to bring about social and economic reforms ; some assisting at the birth of a new party brought into life with a fervor like that of a new religion. And then he told us that not by machinery, political or social ; not by enacting laws, no matter how wholesome; can social justice be secured. Wise laws, better governmental methods, indeed, we must have, but regeneration must come from within. Social justice demands a sense of social stewardship on the part of those of larger knowledge and power; 366 Adventures with the National Conference demands that workers of every class * * * * shall be hon¬ est, sincere and faithful. To cry for social justice is easy, to attain it, a long and wearisome task. It seems definite; but it is only to be reached by the individual doing the thousand and one common-place things that make up the daily routine of life according to ideas of unselfish fairness and ideals of service. And some who had begun to nurse the fond belief that the world was to be saved by majority votes for better laws ; or by the energy of an inspired minority overcoming the inertia of a lethargic mass; were brought back to the salutary truth that salvation comes to us one by one; that the world cannot be saved wholesale. Before we went to Seattle, I had notified the executive com¬ mittee that I contemplated other work and had asked them to appoint a new secretary before the conference should meet allow¬ ing me to act as emeritus and to transfer the burden to new shoulders without friction. But my resignation was given to take effect at their convenience and they decided I must carry thru the 1913 meeting. The chairman of the nominating com¬ mittee at Seattle begged me to re consider and did his best to make me change my mind and only desisted when he saw that I was not so much leaving the Conference as undertaking a new and attractive work. I had held the position of secretary for nine years; or thir¬ teen, if I counted my first four years as a volunteer worker ; and that is, for me, a long, long time on one job no matter how good a one. Then I was getting old, in years at least, and I had long determined to resign before any one should even hint that it was time for a younger man in my place. I had seen the attendance grow from two hundred and fifty to twenty-five hundred; the paid membership from none to thirty-five hundred. Simultaneously with the evolution of the “charity agent” of 1880, into the “social worker” of 1910; and by the action of similar causes; the Conference had evolved from the narrow scope of “Charities and Correction” to the wide one of “Social Work”.* The tiny seed which I had helped Mr. Fair- child to plant in 1884 had sprouted and grown into a big tree ♦The new name came a few years later, but the thing had come to he, long before the name was changed. As Secretary — Third Series, 1908*1913 367 in whose branches much familiar domestic poultry and some stranger fowls were coming to roost. I had won over an increasing number of social organizations to hold their meeting with and practically to recognize the hegemony of the National Conference. While it had not taken the name it had really become that “Congress of Conferences” whose possibility I had dimly glimpsed in 1892. The Conference had arrived at the place ; or nearly at the place ; of which I had dreamed for it and it seemed to have envisaged its splendidly enlarged task. I was beginning to wonder what was to be the next forward movement. An incorrigible adventurer, I could not be content merely to stand still and consolidate what we had achieved. I come of a restless breed that is never satisfied to leave well enough alone. The urge to progress; or perhaps I ought to say to change ; at any rate, to a hazard of new fortune ; was as strong in me as ever but I lacked a vision. I was in danger of the fate of the radical who, having won the battles of his youth, in his age turns conservative of the fruits of his early victories. My work as secretary had gradually come to be almost wholly concerned with the mechanism of the Conference. For myself above all things I dreaded stagnant officialism. To cease con¬ structive effort and succumb to routine performance of official duty meant to change my whole moral being ; it meant to be old and settled; to have my spiritual arteries harden. To work out a lot of executive detail; to create a firm financial basis with which to replace the more exciting shaky one we had been on so long; and incidently have a good easy time and earn a larger salary — had little attraction for me. Detail of financial trans¬ actions always repelled me; I had been compelled to do much of it but I hated it; there were plenty of men who could do that better than I and who perhaps even liked that sort of thing. Then some purely personal considerations came in. I had lost my dear wife and my children were scattered over the land. I was alone in the lovely little home-nest which my lover and I, with painful economy and self-denial, had built for our green old age together. I needed something vital and adventurous to keep me from brooding, to take me out of myself. 368 Adventures with the National Conference I was offered something new; something that had not been done; a young man’s job; a chance for work of the kind I loved the best and was best fit for; active propaganda of a cause in which I believed enthusiastically ; one of the forward movements most needing promotion in the nation ; and in one department of which I had been successful before I took the Conference secre¬ taryship. I was assured by those who wanted me that circumstances had conspired to make me the one man available who was best fitted for the task. It meant to travel far and wide over the land; to meet thousands of people; in hundreds of audiences; in forty-eight states; with no anxiety about finances; no executive details to worry about; nothing to do but to convert the people of the United States to my way of thinking about the treatment of the feeble-minded ; and then get them to put it into operation. A positive, objective piece of work, which, just as fast and as far as it was successful would have results that could be seen and measured. All these things together — the sense of achievement; the doubt about the next step ; my lonesomeness at home ; the attrac¬ tion of a big, hard job that I thoroughly believed in; were too much to resist. Once more I turned over a new page in the great Book of Life. When the parting came and I said farewell to the National Conference as its secretary, it came as a wrench. I loved the Conference and every one of its members; I felt they loved and trusted me. But I had given my word and could not take it back even had I desired to do so; and I went op to a new adventure in social welfare more strange and exciting than any which had come to me before. PART FIVE ADVENTURES IN SOCIAL EDUCATION (369) ADVENTURES IN SOCIAL EDUCATION Chapter One THE SCHOOL IN NEW YORK The two men to whom most of the credit is due for the estab¬ lishment of the Schools for Social Workers, which now seem accepted as a necessary part of the educational system in many states, are Edward T. Devine and Graham Taylor. They are men who differ widely in many respects but are alike in being essen¬ tially socially-minded and in possessing insight, determination, and unbounded energy. The idea of a school of the kind was first made public at the National Conference in Toronto in 1897, and the next year the New York Summer School of Philanthropy was established. It was specially designed for workers in organized charity and began and has continued as a six weeks course. For twenty-four years this school has been filling its unique place in the nation. Many people who are now leaders in the philanthropic endeavors of the country, came as students to its lectures and profited by them because their duties at home had given them the first-hand contacts, the experience in case-work, without which didactic instruction is of little value. At the New York Summer School what the pupils get from each other and from the contacts they make with the social work of the great city, are more valuable than the lectures to which they listen. Nowhere more than here is it so plain that social work must be done socially so that real social-mindedness is the most essential thing to be acquired. I had the privilege of lec¬ turing occasionally at the school on my specialty of institution management, particularly for the feeble-minded, and in the sum¬ mer of 1903, I gave a six-days course on the conduct of institu¬ tions for defectives and insane. During that week I conducted parties of students on inspection visits to some of the New York city and state institutions. (37 ) 372 Adventures in Social Education Those early days were very interesting. The students were mature people actually engaged in some form of social work most of them as secretaries or agents of charity organization societies. They had a background of social knowledge that made the lecturer’s task an easy one. Phillip W. Ayres was the director of the school and was one of my valued friends and I regarded my work among the students as a high privilege. During the summer of 1911, in the absence of Carl Kelsey who had been director since 1905, I was acting director of the summer school for its six-weeks term. We had a full attendance that year and I made friends of a large group of students. It has been interesting in traveling over the land in various capaci¬ ties for many years past, to meet students of those early days, who are now widely scattered over the nation and to have them claim me as friend and teacher. As a man gets old, personal ambition fades; his hopes are no longer for himself but for his children and his pupils. * To meet successful men and women doing useful service to humanity, and have them remind me of lectures of mine they had heard, of real help which had come from me, sometimes even that my influence had colored their whole career ; these are among the wonderful compensations of a life spent in social work; which make such trivial matters as lecture fees fade into insignificance. They are high places of life that make it worth living. Every great social advance has a leader and every leader needs a backer. The leader of the New York School was Edward T. Devine, his backer was Robert W. de Forest; for many years president of the New York Charity Organization Society. Mr. de Forest is a man to whom social work and the social workers of America owe a debt that will never be fullv estimated ; with- out him, or some one like him, the New York School could not have existed, and without the example and leadership of the N. Y. School it would have been long before the cause of social education would have reached its present commanding position. Mr. de Forest saw the opportunity and not only contributed lib¬ erally but induced Mr. John Stewart Kennedy to became the angel of the school. The first moderate endowment was avail¬ able in 1904, and his subsequent gifts, have lent it permanent stability and have helped to make it the great educational insti¬ tution for the social workers of America. The School in New York 373 It was for me a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, in the summer of 1904, that the National Conference needed a new secretary ; just as Devine got ready to develop the school of philanthropy from its six weeks summer course to a more formal affair, of which he proposed to be director and wanted an asso¬ ciate. It appeared that neither the school nor the conference could afford to employ a full-time man of the quality they desired; each needed one with some ability of speech who knew social work and was capable of directing it. The experience I had had with the summer school during its existence of six years, and my intimate knowledge of the Conference for twenty years, made me seem suitable for the two positions, and I hap¬ pened to be available. So the two places were offered me and were gladly accepted. In theory I was to divide my time and energy, one-third to the conference and two-thirds to the school and the salaries were arranged to match. But it soon appeared that there was plenty of opportunity for a full-time job with either the Conference or the school alone. Because we were rather limited financially we began in a somewhat amateurish way ; most of our lecturers were volun¬ teers, and few could be called on for systematic courses. So it seemed necessary to have two associate directors ; each of whom was capable of giving one or two sustained courses of lectures and who could by acting as presiding officers at the other lec¬ tures, lend a certain unity and direction to the course of instruc- tion. My fellow associate-director was Anna Garlin Spencer whose friendship I had gained when we met at the International Congress of Philanthropy in Chicago, in 1893, when she preached the Congress sermon. Devine who in those days habitually loaded himself up with work enough for two ordinary men, was very fully occupied as secretary of the New York C. O. S. and editor of “Charities”, (now the Survey) and the directing was left chiefly to his two associates. We each gave as many lectures as we were permitted ; in fact one of the few very slight causes of difference which ever arose between Devine and myself was that I wanted to do more lecturing than he thought was proper for a director. I always preferred talking to any other work, it is by far the easiest thing I have ever found to do. It was much 374 Adventures in Social Education easier for me to give some needed lectures myself than to hunt up some other man to do it altho possibly not so well for the students. While the plan of using many occasional lecturers, mostly volunteers, had many drawbacks, it had some advantages. Our speakers were people of pretty high quality, higher than one could expect often to secure for a small lecture fee. Whenever some noted public man came to the city we tried to get him to lecture to our students. Sir Horace Plunkett, of Ireland, gave us a talk on the co-operative system among the Irish farmers. Emil Munsterberg told of the charities of Berlin. Kev. John Graham Brooks gave us a brief course on Community problems. We had Prof. Patten for a series of talks on The New Basis of Civiliza¬ tion. James Bryce, the British Ambassador, talked on the com¬ monwealth. What we lacked of academic system ; and I confess we lacked a great deal; was partly compensated for by breadth of information and the culture that comes of contact with ex¬ ceptionally gifted people. We had among our speakers either as occasional lecturers, or in brief courses, the most prominent social workers in New York and many from other parts of the country.- Such people as Florence Kelly, Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Graham Taylor W. H. Allen, and others of equal, or almost equal power and character, helped us. When we studied immigration we had Gino Speranza for the Italians and Rabbi Blaustein for the Rus¬ sian Jews. For child-welfare, we had Charles Loring Brace, H. H. Hart, and Charles W. Birtwell. On medical social work, we heard Alexander Miller; on hospitals and hygiene we had the chief health officer of the city and others. Samuel J. Bar- rows of the N. Y. Prison Association, talked about the treat¬ ment of criminals. It goes without saying that in presiding at such lectures, I gained immensely myself. My two years as as¬ sociate director of the New York School made a valuable addition to my own social education. Mrs. Spencer specialized on community problems and in the didactic part of associated charities. My specialty was public institutions for defectives, insane, paupers, etc., for which my ex¬ perience as a state board secretary and as superintendent of the school for feeble-minded had fitted me. The School in New York 375 The students were assigned to field work with districts of the C. O. S., with the Children’s Aid Society and some institu¬ tional organizations, and much of this work was very useful to them. # One afternoon of each week after the second or third month of the term, was given to visiting institutions for which there is so large an opportunity in New York. We visited the alms¬ house, the work-house, and the hospital on Blackwell’s Island; the house of refuge, and the institution for the feeble-minded on Randall’s Island; the large hospital for the insane on Ward’s Island ; the great Catholic protectory, and many other of the vari¬ ous institutions for children. A specially interesting trip was to the New York Orphan Asylum, at Hastings-on-Hudson, which is without an equal in the country ; another was to the Children’s Village at Dobb’s Ferry, a unique specimen of institutional con¬ struction. One day we crossed the river to New Jersey and visited the Hudson county insane asylum and the almshouse at Snake Hill. The day before this visit, I had lectured on the Wisconsin sys¬ tem of county care for the insane and had told the students of a runaway patient I had seen at one of the county asylums, who had been cured of his desire to wander by being given the job of mail carrier which involved walking two miles fb the post- office twice daily. At the Hudson county asylum as we entered the office we saw a man carrying a mail bag whom I instantly recognized as insane. I was delighted to be able to show my students a New Jersey example of the effects of freedom in curing crazy people of the run-away tendency which close de¬ tention only confirms. I encouraged the students to take the civil-service examina¬ tions for the city and state charities, not in the hope of getting positions but of checking up their acquisition of practical knowl¬ edge. Several of them who took the examination for institution inspection got high places on the list. One who made ninety- eight per cent, told me “when I came to the questions about in¬ spection, I answered by what you had shown me in our institu¬ tion visits, rather than in the words of the instruction book.” Of course this was merely an example of the advantage which clini¬ cal instruction has over didactic lecturing, or text-book study. 376 Adventures in Social Education The condition of matriculation was either a college degree or practical experience of equal value in fitting the student to ac¬ quire what we had to teach. We had many college graduates, and they were not always the best students, but we had some ex¬ ceptionally brilliant pupils among them. Very little of our teaching was from text books. In those early days, Warner’s American Charities, and one or two of Henderson’s early works were almost all we had. I used the National Conference Proceed¬ ings freely for collateral reading, but we depended mostly on oral instruction and required the students to take notes, write them out and submit them for criticism. This meant a vast amount of labor for the directors, but was possible because the class was small. I gave a pretty full course of lectures on institutional care, much of the instruction being quite technical. A set of notes submitted by one student on this course was so admirable, so accurate, full, and well arranged, that I preferred them to my own original notes prepared for the lectures, and had it copied, with only two or three corrections for my own future use. This student was exceptionally brilliant, but there were many others almost as talented. They were a delightful group of people, and many of them are now occupying high positions in social work. One of the young women of the class of 1905, Miss Mina G - , on graduating, had offers of four different positions and consulted me as to which she should accept. I tried to help her ♦ choose, but before she had decided came a fifth offer which she accepted. It was to be educational secretary of an Associated Charities in a large manufacturing city, which really meant to educate the citizens in their important duty of giving money lib¬ erally. Shortly after beginning her work she called on the president of a large corporation for a subscription and was turned down ; the gentlemen saying he did not propose to waste money in keeping a bankrupt organization going. This piqued the educational sec¬ retary into making such a clear and forcible setting forth of the purposes and methods of the society that she got a handsome check as a personal contribution from him ,and another in the name of his firm. A day or two later the gentleman called up the secretary of the associated charities, saying that Miss G - had so interested him in the work that he would like to help with The School in New York 377 the financial campaign. He invited the secretary to dine with him on Sunday and bring Miss G - with him. When they came he told them that he feared the society was concentrating too much on the business houses down town and neglecting the numerous factories on the outskirts and he helped them plan a systematic canvass. Then on Monday came a note from him to Miss G - , saying, that his chauffeur had nothing to do from 8 :30 A. M. until noon, and that his auto was at her service during that period every day, to take her to the more distant points of the city on her collecting tours. The gentleman was a widower and in a few months I was charmed to receive their wedding cards and a year later to be invited to spend a week or two at their winter home in the Bermudas. The lady, who is now a widow, is at present occupying one of the most important posi¬ tions in social work in the District of Columbia. About the beginning of the school year of 1905-’06, I was asked by the director of the training school for nurses of the New York hospital on Blackwell’s Island, to call upon her. When I did so she asked if the School of Philanthropy would not help her. She declared that when the nurses come for training one of the first things they have to be taught was to regard the patients as subjects of scientific treatment; but that after a year or two they were in danger of forgetting that the people were not mere cases of sickness but actually human beings ; and she wanted the school to “re-humanize her nurses.” The result was that we gave a special course of Wednesday afternoon lectures at the nurses training school, to which we took many of our best lecturers, filling in ourselves when no one else offered. At the National Conference in Toronto, Homer Folks had caught the idea of after-care for the insane and got the State Charities Aid Association in sympathy with it. He conceived the idea of making this a feature of his association, beginning with discharged patients from the Manhattan State Hospital. Before making definite plans it was necessary to get actual facts and he came to us for help, hoping to use students of the school to col¬ lect data on what happened to recovered or convalescent patients after their discharge. His plan was to select some patients at random and follow them up. I suggested the advantage of taking all the patients 378 Adventures in Social Education who had left the hospital during a definite period of time and making a very thorough investigation of the present condition of all who could be found. We had two students well equip¬ ped for such a task; each was a graduate nurse; one had been superintendent of a general hospital, and the other had had thor¬ ough training in the care of the insane. They were women of fine personality and much more than ordinary ability and education. It says much for the reputation of the school that it had attracted students of such quality. We selected the period from October 1, 1905, to January 15, 1906, during which time ninety patients had been discharged. Of these thirty-one could not be found, although the lapse of time since their discharge was at most only three months. But thirty- two of the women and twenty-one of the men were discovered, some doing well, some in danger of relapse, one or two in very serious condition. It appeared certain that at least one-fifth of the whole number might have been greatly benefited by some proper after-care at the time of their discharge. On the basis of the report the association began its extremely useful after-care work, in which it employed as agent a graduate of the New York School of Philanthropy. This is now a regular feature of the association’s program, and extends to all the hospitals of the state.* At the end of the second year of full time work an additional endowment from Mr. Kennedy made it possible to pay larger sal¬ aries to directors and instructors. The National Conference was making heavy demands on my time and the part-time system for both director and associates was dropped. The instruction was reorganized on high academic standards with a professional col¬ lege man of experience and ability at its head. The faculty of full-time teachers was largely increased ; the amateurs were called on less frequently ; and the number of students rapidly increased. After October, 1906, I gave all my time to the Conference. Altho I have been called on for occasional lectures since, the regular work of the school is for me a memory, but it is one of the happy ones of my life. *See in the proceedings of the National Conference for 1907, page 432, “A Year’s Work in After-care,” by Homer Folks, also the discussion fol¬ lowing. Chapter Two THE SCHOOL IN CHICAGO What Devine was for the school in New York, that and more was Graham Taylor for the school in Chicago. I write this good man’s name with love and respect which is much more than admi¬ ration. When the history of the social movement in the U. S. of the most socially fruitful forty years in the nation’s life, those from 1880 to 1920, shall be written, the work of Graham Taylor will fill a wonderful chapter. No more socially-minded man has ever lived. The President and His Home Taylor saw everything in terms of the community and to him “the community” was no mere abstraction ; it was a group of men and women and little children, whom he loved and to serve whom he devoted his life. And few men have been more successful in social service. His influence on social affairs of almost every kind in the vast seething maelstrom of Chicago, has been of in¬ estimable value. I know little of his work as professor of applied sociology in the theological seminary, (of which he refused the president’s chair), but I am ready to believe that his influence and example in that department of human effort, has had a large share in the recent movement of the church towards social mindedness, and making religion a seven days affair. I count it one, and a great one, among the many happy things of my life, to have won and kept his lasting friendship. My first visit to Graham Taylor’s home in the settlement was in the winter of 1895, at the house in which it began. This was before Mr. Taylor had found its luminous name, “The Commons” which now carries a fine message to social workers, thruout the nation, many of whom caught some of their inspiration from resi¬ dence there. I had made his acquaintance at the National Conference and we had felt a certain kinship, a forecast of the (379) 380 Adventures in Social Education brotherliness we were to gain in the future. The house was in an old and dilapidated part of Chicago’s west side, which had escaped the cleaning-up of the great fire ; a district which is now full of R. R. yards and factories, it was then all tenements, shabby little stores and saloons. It was an old fashioned three- story frame, smoked up and badly needing paint. The street level had been raised eight feet from its original swamp and the front door was reached by a flight of steps downward from the sidewalk. The steps and the floors creaked with every footfall. Externally the house was about as unattractive as a house could be. The neighborhood was as deplorable; a mere slum. On the business street near by about every third door was that of a saloon. The first floor of the house was in class rooms and club rooms. Upstairs lived the residents, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor ana their four children; Rev. Mr. Boiler, the pastor of a little Con¬ gregational church a few squares away, and his wife and children; John P. Gavit, author, poet, and newspaper man, with his wife and child. Missionaries in the heart of Africa could hardly present a greater contrast with their surroundings than did these cultured refined people in such a neighborhood. On the day of my visit, Mr. Taylor and I had a date to go to¬ gether to a lecture by G. Stanley Hall, at which I hoped to get some hints for my work in teaching the feeble-minded. On our way in the train we talked of the settlement and he asked me, “Well, Johnson, what do you really think about it?” I told him it reminded me of a story of a convivial party of Scotchmen, one of whom got his jag earlier than the rest and started for home; another followed him shortly after and found number one sitting in the mud holding on to a lamppost; number two tried to get his friend up on his feet but could not manage it so he said, “Old fellow, I can’t lift you up but I can sit down alongside you,” and did so in the mud. I said, “Graham, I don’t know whether 3^011 can lift up your neighbors, but Heaven knows 3rou have sat down in the mud with them.” And Graham answered, “Well, if anyone must sit in the mud, why not I? People who did not know, sometimes said the settlement on Union Street was a dreadful place in which to bring up a famity ; but those whose privilege it is to know the Taylors intimately, think it might be well if more families had so good a chance at The School in Chicago 381 upbringing. When we thought Graham Taylor was sacrificing not only himself but his family to his social instincts, we forgot that “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” Before I began work with the Chicago School the settlement had grown nearly to its present size and importance and the well planned and commodious building on Grand Avenue had been con¬ structed. Among the many pleasant incidents of my connection with the Chicago school was my residence each year for six weeks in the winter and two in the summer at the Commons. I have visited many settlements and know some of them well, but no¬ where; not even in the smaller ones where the residents form a group of eight or ten intimates; have I found such a sense of home-likeness. They made me, for the time, one of the resident family. After my third or fourth visit my own home was broken by the death of my dear wife, and the scattering of my children ; and for many a year coming to the Commons was home-coming for me After a busy day in all kinds of social activity, some in the settlement itself, most of them in different city offices, the resi¬ dents gathered in the dining-room; and tho there were eighteen or twenty of them and always several guests, the evening meal was a real family party, of which Mr. and Mrs. Taylor and their dear daughter Leah (dear to all who know her) were the cen¬ ter. Occasionally Katherine coming from Vassar where she taught literature, or Helen (Mrs. Carr) and her husband from nearer by, were welcome additions, and a festal day would be when Graham Komeyn came from his wanderings over the world for a brief visit. Every evening after dinner the whole resident family gath¬ ered in the parlor for vespers. A hymn or two; a brief respon¬ sive reading; a little talk by the warden or some favored guest; a story of recent happenings by a former resident who was re¬ visiting his old home; often a discussion of some striking social event of the day in the city or from afar. At each of my visits, I was called on at one of my first evenings, to tell my social ad¬ ventures during my travels since I had last met with them. Sim¬ ple, informal, sincere, with no least slant towards sectarian¬ ism; but with a warm pervasive religious spirit thruout; these 382 Adventures in Social Education vesper services lent a tone to the settlement which was felt by everyone privileged to share them. Heterodox, almost agnostic, tho I was, 1 loved the Commons vespers and never missed them unless some imperative call took me away. Graham Taylor was the one settlement warden I have known whose religion was of such a kind that he did not fear to obtrude it. The Chicago school had a simple beginning during the winter of 1901-’02, in the need, felt at the Commons and at Hull House, for trained settlement workers. Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, aud Graham Taylor joined in arranging a course of evening lec¬ tures on social topics, which were held in the board-room of the Relief and Aid Society’s building. The lectures became popular and more commodious quarters had to be found for them. The lec¬ ture fees which it was possible to charge could not nearly cover expenses, in spite of the fact that the lecturers were volunteers ; and Graham Taylor undertook to raise what money was needed. He had already a heavy burden of money-raising in the needs of the Commons, but to him difficulty means not despair, but increased effort. Miss Lathrop was always a most faithful coad¬ jutor and was a member of a board of trustees which assumed responsibility for the work and fostered its development. A few socially minded and wealthy people became interested and the school prospered. Instruction in one new form of social work was taken up after another. It was a period of remarkable social development in Chicago. The story of the simultaneous evolution of social work and the social instruction of the school would make a fascinating volume. My first lectures were in 1902 while it was still an evening school, which the University of Chicago was doing a very little to help. After a few years when larger quarters were secured, and the school had grown to a full-time all-day affair with autumn, winter, spring, and summer terms, I was called on for regular courses of lectures on such topics as the history of public relief, that of organized charity, the administration of charitable agencies, and the institutional care of dependents, defectives and delinquents. I began my life as an American citizen in Chicago in 1873, and lived there for six years, and came again in 1886 to be secre¬ tary of the C. O. S. For me, as for every one who has ever had The School in Chicago 383 his home there, the great city, in spite of its noise and dirt and materialism, has always a weird and permanent attraction, Its life may not be highly refined, but it is the livest place I know. Graham Taylor as president always took a good share of the duty of lecturing. The two chief features which, for twenty years, marked the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy off from most of the similar institutions of the country, were the inspirational power of the president’s lectures and the widely inclusive and practical nature of the instruction given. Other schools were more academic, its most distinguishing qualities were humanness and breadth. After several years of hardly-won support, the burden on Mr. Taylor’s shoulders was somewhat lifted by the generosity of a social-minded man of wealth who gave the school the use of a mansion on Michigan Ave. Built for a residence it had a home¬ like appearance. No one would have erected a school-house on such a plan, but its parlors which were used for lecture-rooms suited the genius of the institution the very building seemed human to match the president and his faculty. To live at the Commons and lecture at the School of Civics and Philanthropy was a source of inspiration and delight to one like myself to whom humanity is the most sacred thing in the universe and I enjoyed the privilege for many years, usually spending there six weeks of each winter and two weeks of each summer term. Chapter Three OTHER SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES Following the example of New York and Chicago, schools for social workers were begun in Boston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, and other cities, and at each of them, I was given the privilege of lecturing either giving short courses or occasional lectures. For many years of my life, ever since the time I became sec¬ retary of the National Conference, I have had opportunities of telling the gospel of social work in many educational institutions. There is a satisfaction in talking to audiences of students such as comes from no other lecturing. Your hearers are young and impressionable; they are to be leaders in their several communi¬ ties. To inspire them with right ideals is sowing seed which may have a wonderful harvest in immensely wider fields. In Chicago for five years consecutively, I gave each year a course on the care of defectives at the Loyola School of Sociology. I had met its director at a State Conference of social workers in Illinois and after he heard me speak he invited me to join his staff as an occasional lecturer. The school was held in the eve¬ nings. The students were all busy people fully occupied during business hours mainly in public social work. The main purpose of the school, in the mind of its director, was that public social work should be well done. Besides my course at the school I spoke several times to larger audiences connected with it espe¬ cially on the care and training of the feeble-minded. While at the Commons on several occasions, Mr. Taylor had me speak to his students in the theological school, sometimes an occasional lecture, but twice I gave brief courses. At Chicago University, Professor Henderson had me talk to his students, once giving a series on Prison Management, and several times on Care of the Defectives. At the Meadville Theological Seminary, my friend, Mrs. Spencer, who was professor of applied sociology (384) Other Schools and Colleges 385 there, had me come several successive years during the summer term, for a week’s course on public institutions. And I had scores of opportunities in many of the states of the Union from Maine to California, and south to Texas for similar work; many of these were in connection with my propaganda for the feeble¬ minded. For several consecutive years I was called to the Summer School for Social Work at Blue Ridge, N. C., conducted in connec¬ tion with the Y. M. C. A. training school at Nashville, Tenn. This was particularly agreeable because of its location among the North Carolina mountains, the most delightful summer climate in the land. One July day I left Fort Wayne with the thermometer at ninety-five in the shade, traveled the hot, dusty, dirty rail¬ road to Cincinnati; got into a pullman berth which felt like an oven ; wakened up at Knoxville to a milder temperature ; found the weather agreeable at Asheville ; left the train at Black Moun¬ tain, and when I reached Robert E. Lee Hall, thoroly enjoyed an open fire of huge pine logs, blazing in the great fire-place. To leave the torrid North for the cool and balmy South was a de¬ lightful change. At Blue Ridge I usually lectured each morning and twice or thrice in the evenings of each week. One lecture always in de¬ mand was a talk on the feeble-minded with stereopticon, another was on prison reform. Then the afternoons were pleasantly occu¬ pied in mountain climbing, with always a swim before breakfast in the delicious mountain-spring water of the pool on the campus. The people I met at Blue Ridge were mainly Southerners, many of whom were combining a little social instruction with an agreeable vacation, and it was necessary to make the talks not only instructive but interesting. I learned to know and love the qualities of the best of the Southern people there, and made many lasting friendships. The knowledge I gained of Southern character was to be valuable when I became staff representative in the Southern division of the Red Cross. I had long desired to try the possibility of interesting high- school students in the care of the feeble-minded. Now on that subject there are many things to say which only an audience of mature people ready for, but I believed it would be possible to give the facts which are so important to be known to boys 386 Adventures in Social Education and girls also in a way to do good and no harm. One day I was lecturing on the feeble-minded in Painesville, Ohio, and the principal of the high-school invited me to talk to his students. I asked him on what subject, and he replied “anything you choose.” I said “dare you let me talk to them on eugenics?” and he said again, “anything you choose.” So with some misgiv¬ ings, I gave the talk. The students sat in the large auditorium, boys on one side and girls on the other ; on the platform were the principal, several teachers, a minister, a doctor, and the county superintendent of schools. I began by telling the boys and girls of what we have to do for defectives. I described the schools for the blind in some detail. Then I went on to the deaf, telling why we must give them and the blind not only academic in¬ struction but also an education in work. I explained the language of signs, which is the mother-tongue of the mutes, illustrating it by some humorous, and one pathetic example. Then I told them of the feeble-minded, ex¬ plaining what we mean by mental-age, telling them of the idiots, the imbeciles, and the morons. I explained heredity and how its influences, when they are evil, have often begun in wrong doing, how large a part vice has played in human degeneration. I told them that the feeble-minded girl, who looks like a young woman, is really a child. I told the boys that I knew there was not one among them, who, if he saw a little girl in danger of abuse of any kind would not fight for her no matter how great the odds against him. And the boys all straightened up and looked brave and de¬ termined. Then I told them that we who are strong must help and protect the weak, even tho they are weak in mind only, that there is no more important duty for men than to do this. Then I said, “boys and girls who will occupy these seats you sit in twenty or twenty-five years from today ? Who will they be ? They will be your children, you will be the men and women of Paines¬ ville, the merchants, lawyers, doctors, home-makers, the fathers and mothers. Will those boys and girls be better than you, nobler, stronger, finer men and women? or will they be weaker, less pure, less worthy? It all depends on you, on the way you live, your purity and fineness, and nobility. The future of the city and state, the quality of the inhabitants, depends on your life and your character now.’ Other Schools and Colleges 387 I was anxious to know what effect my talk had had on the hearers, and a few days later I wrote to Miss Dilla, who had ar¬ ranged my engagement at Painesville, asking her to get me some expressions of opinion, not compliments but the rugged truth. She sent me several words of approval from those who had been on the platform, congratulating me that I had succeeded in not arousing unpleasant self-consciousness in the students, while giv¬ ing them vital facts; and also three letters which I valued even more highly. One was from a boy in the audience who thanked me for the talk and wished every high-school boy in Ohio could hear it ; another from a girl who also thanked me for what I had told them and especially for the way I had told it; and a third from the mother of a brother and sister who had heard me to¬ gether and discussed my talk at the supper table that evening. She thanked me for telling her children things which she knew she ought to have told them but had not. Since that day I have never neglected an opportunity to talk to high-school audiences on my favorite topic, the prevention of human degeneration, and such chances have often come to me. While I have retired from active social work as a profes¬ sion, I still hope to keep up the work I delight in, of lecturing on social topics; and present indications are that I shall have many opportunities to gratify my desire. PART SIX FIVE YEARS ADVENTURING IN PROPAGANDA (389) FIVE YEARS ADVENTURING IN PROPAGANDA Chapter One THE TASK Once in a while there comes to a social worker a vision of something much needed and possible to be done in his department of human effort ; something which he sees how to do and which is clear-cut and positive. No other good fortune that can come to a man is so good as to have such a vision and with it the oppor¬ tunity to give himself unreservedly into making it a reality. Shortly after the Conference of 1912, I was offered an attract¬ ive adventure and as I have told in a previous chapter, I was in a responsive mood, I was about due to attempt something new. I had reached a terminus or what seemed one ; at any rate I was uncertain of the next step; and personal reasons made a new departure advisable. For thirty-one years I had been so fortunate as to have as my business in life, one adventurous social task following anoth¬ er ; each one so alluring and bringing such satisfactions that if I had not needed to earn a living I would gladly have undertaken it as a volunteer without pay. And now came an opportunity more inviting than any which had gone before ; with fewer limitations and hindrances and opening a wider field. I was asked to be¬ come director of the new extension department of the Vineland Training School. Once more I was invited to become an apostle instead of a deacon. The department was not like a University extension which carries higher education to other students than those who can attend the university. Its object was to extend the theories and practice of the training of mental defectives into new and wider fields and among new people. Social adventures are attractive in proportion to the rewards in benefit to the social order which they offer and the interesting nature of the work they require, (391) 392 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda plus their difficulties. Here was one compelling enough from every consideration for any man no matter how venturesome. The department of extension grew out of a committee on the feeble-minded, for the state of New Jersey, of which Edward R. Johnstone had, for some years, been secretary and chief execu¬ tive. This had made a survey of conditions in the state, and had done much to arouse public attention to the needs of mental de¬ fectives. The success of the Training School itself, and of the committee it fostered, had been widely advertised in many states ; especially by the graduates of its summer school for teachers of defectives, which had been conducted annually for ten years or more. Altho the work of the committee had been chiefly in New Jersey, Superintendent Johnstone and Dr. H. H. Goddard, his psychologist, had been called on for many lectures in other states, to an extent that made a serious drain on their time and energy. There was an evident demand for a wide propaganda work ; and the directors of the Training School decided to carry on thru- out the nation what their superintendent and psychologist had begun in the state. The offer came to me from E. R. Johnstone. Nearly twenty years earlier, I had induced him to help me train feeble-minded boys and girls in Indiana. After learning the method and catch¬ ing the vision of its possibilities of good ; he had gone to New Jer¬ sey and there had made “the Training School for those whose minds have not developed normally,” the best known and most useful thing of its kind in the country, if not in the Vorld. He had begun the propaganda in the state thru the committee which, he had fostered, and the decision of his directors, as to the op¬ portunity of extending it to the nation, was due to his influ¬ ence. As director I was to live at the Training School, so as to keep in fresh and vital contact with the kind of folk for whom I was to labor; and to carry on the work, first in New Jersey, where it was so well begun, and then further afield. The conditions were very congenial, Vineland is a delightful place to live in. During my ten years among the feeble-minded of Indiana, I had become convinced that their care was one of the most important duties of the state; I had found as I thought the right way to do it l The Task 393 and believed that if the facts I knew could be known to everybody public opinion would soon compel the law-makers to attempt the work everywhere. I felt it would not be many years until I should reach the end of my usefulness as a social worker and as every man’s last adventure must come some time this seemed to be ideal as a final effort. I thought reasonable success in it would make a fitting climax to my social endeavors. For many years, beginning in 1884, the National Conference had had a standing committee on mental defectives, and each year a report had been made. The sessions devoted to the subject were among the most interesting and were always crowded. The so¬ cial workers who attend the Conference were fairly well in¬ formed; but they are only a few hundred among the nation’s millions. In the minds of the general public there was a vague idea that there does exist a “problem of the feeble-minded,” that there are many of them and that something should be done. But they were usually or frequently confused with the Insane. There was no general knowledge of the relations between feeble-mindedness and poverty and crime; there was plentiful ignorance of what proper care means ; of the possibilities of training ; of the colony plan and how much of benefit it might bring; of the degree to which thousands of imbeciles and morons, otherwise helpless or dependent, or hurtful to social order, might be made safe, use¬ ful and happy; of the methods of sterilization and segregation. There was evident need of a wide presentation of the facts the results of experiment, in a popular, positive, objective way; not merely as it had been done to social workers at national and state conferences; but to the general public. The task was to force upon the attention of the whole people the facts we knew; to convince them of the validity of our methods and of the duty of every state to its feeble-minded; and to induce each to dis¬ charge that duty fully. Twenty-five months after the work of the extension depart¬ ment began, it developed into the “Committee on Provisions for the Feeble-Minded.” Tho the committee would never allow itself to be called “national” it really began as a national body. The de¬ velopment took place at a meeting in New York at the residence of Mrs. E. H. Harriman, on December 18th, 1914. The people H94 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda who made up the committee believed that the care of the feeble¬ minded is of such supreme importance to the community; the story of their joys and sorrows is so interesting; the methods of care and training which have been worked out in sixty years are socially and economically so sound ; that it only needs that the general public be informed on all those facts to make certain that the work shall be attempted and carried to success in every state. On this belief the conclusion rested that the committee’s task was to make these facts known to all persons in authority; Governors, legislators, and other public officials and to the whole mass of the American people; its function was nation-wide pub¬ licity. Two methods seemed available, the written word and the spoken word. For the written word the newspapers are the best vehicle and a great newspaper campaign was proposed. But about the time it was planned to begin a mental defective at Sarajevo fired a pistol shot that set civilization in flames; and during the rest of the committee’s active existence the great war filled the front pages of the newspapers and dwarfed all other news to insignificance. So the committee decided it must rely on the power of speech aided by pictures and it was evident that its chief agent to the public must be one who had that power; who knew the subject so intimately that the stories he had to tell might be based on first-hand information and so be appealing and convincing; and whose devotion to the task amounted to a passion. When the committee began it was practically alone in the na¬ tional field. Its only apparent competitor was the National Com¬ mittee on Mental Hygiene, which had been organized to promote better care and treatment of the Insane. Not until the Commit¬ tee on Provision had done much to arouse the public did the Committee on Mental Hygiene pay much attention to the subject of defective mentality; with which it now seems chiefly con¬ cerned ; as opposed to diseased mentality or insanity ; which was its original objective. As the committee faced its nation-wide task two chief con¬ siderations were born in mind. The first was the desirabilitv 9J of conducting intensive campaigns in certain states where no work for the feeble-minded was being done or where it was inade- The Task 395 quate; but in which there were local agencies of some sort al¬ ready active or ready for action with whom we might co-oper¬ ate; in some of these surveys might be made which would con¬ vince the citizens that the facts demonstrated in other states existed equally in theirs; in these tangible results might reason¬ ably be expected. The second consideration was the urgent need of popular education on the subject all over the Union wherever a hearing could be secured; especially where no beginning of care of the feeble-minded had been made and where no popular attention had been directed to the problem. The experience gained by the department of extension in New Jersey was a valuable guide to the wider work thruout the Nation. Both intensive and extensive plans were adopted. Witlg a modest staff of an executive secretary, a field secretary, two clerks and two field agents, a very remarkable work was carried out. The results have abundantly justified the methods. It is as¬ serted with little fear of contradiction that no national effort of the kind has been so successful in comparison with the amount of money expended and in anything like the time of its operation. Chapter Two THE EXECUTION The department of extension began in New Jersey with one clerk on full time, a field agent on part time and myself as direc¬ tor in February, 1913, altho until the following May I had to give a good deal of attention to the National Conference. In the course of the next three years I had visited all the cities and towns in the state. I had given one hundred and eleven lec¬ tures most of them with sterescopic illustrations in eighty dif¬ ferent centers, to an estimated total audience of nearly 20,000 people. I had traveled also as far north as Montreal, as far east as Newfoundland ; south to New Orleans and Texas ; west to Hli- nois, and had given three hundred talks in some two hundred and fifty places outside of New Jersey. Altho from the first we had seen the work as a Nation-wide one, not until the department broadened out to a National Com¬ mittee did we plan so widely. At the first meeting, Dr. Green- man, Head of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy, Philadelphia, was elected chairman; Bayard Cutting of New York was made treasurer and as he had a wide acquaintance among a group of enlightened and wealthy people he undertook the task of money raising; E. R. Johnstone continued as secretary. These three principal officers were members of the board of the Vineland Training School. Then Joseph Byers, who had been Commis¬ sioner of Charities of New Jersey, was elected executive secre¬ tary and my title was changed from director to field secretary, which meant general publicity man. The office was moved from Vineland to Philadelphia. Adding to the staff of the extension department we got another clerk and two more field agents, the latter being employed in making surveys in various states and preparing the way for my lectures. The work in New Jersey was not finished but lasted intermittently for about three years. (396) The Execution After five years’ and four months’ work, counting from the inception of the department of extension, or three years and six months from the formation of the Committee on Provision, we can summarize what has been done. Meetings were held and lectures given in thirty-three states, the district of Columbia, the Dominion of Canada, and New¬ foundland. Three hundred and fifty different cities and towns have been the scenes of these meetings, some only once, some of them several times. More than eleven hundred lectures and ad¬ dresses were given to an estimated cumulative audience of 250,- 000 people. The audiences have included general public meetings; legisla¬ tive assemblies and committees ; state universities ; colleges, med¬ ical schools, theological seminaries, state normal schools, summer schools of teachers, high schools, teachers’ institutes, parent- teachers’ associations; church congregations at Sunday services and prayer meetings, ministers’ meetings, Sunday schools, and Bible classes; schools of social work in seven different cities; chambers of commerce, business men’s association’s; Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, and other lunch clubs; women’s clubs, local, state, and national, and national councils of women; national and state conferences of charities, conferences of health officers, and of county officials, and conferences on mental hygiene; so¬ cial workers’ clubs, immigrants’ national associations; juvenile protective associations; civic leagues; settlements; state meet¬ ings of King’s Daughters; eugenics education meetings; audi¬ ences in moving picture shows ; and others ; anywhere and every¬ where that people had gathered with a serious purpose, and in some to which they had come to be amused ; wherever a hearing could be had; the appeal of the feeble-minded was made. Of the eleven hundred and more lectures and addresses about half were illustrated by stereoscopic views, showing the audi¬ ences what the children whose histories were being told looked like as they worked and played and learned. Co-Operating Agencies While the work of the Committee was the chief factor in se¬ curing the results to be related, there were many valuable co¬ operating agencies. The National Committee on Mental Hygiene 398 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda did much good work after it entered the field; in several states we worked with it. Some of the State Boards of Charities took part arranging for surveys and otherwise helping tho some of these boards were conspicuous by their inattention. Several states had commissions on the feeble-minded, some under legisla¬ tive authorization, some of voluntary organization, and these in all cases called on the Committee for help. The creation of some of these commissions was due to our activity. Women's Clubs The assistance of these bodies of intelligent public-spirited women was of inestimable value to the committee. While I had often found it difficult to arouse the interest of bodies of men, es¬ pecially of politicians in the needs of the feeble-minded; the cause of the mentally defective girl, so weak a victim, so cer¬ tainly a source of evil thru her weakness if not protected ; when I have placed it properly before a group of women has never failed to arouse their sympathy or their indignation leading to their desire to give active help. In several of the states in which the more intensive campaigns were carried on, notably in Arkansas, California, Kentucky, and Wisconsin, the state federation of women's clubs arranged my itinerary in whole or part; the local clubs working up the audi¬ ences and often defraying the expenses. One of the reasons why we did so much with so small a financial outlay was that we often got both financial and social co-operation. When I was invited by the Canadian National Council of Women to deliver an illustrated lecture in Montreal, the Coun¬ cil not only paid expenses but also a substantial honorarium. The policy of the committee was to collect expenses when possible and to accept a lecture fee when it was offered. In all cases such fees accrued to the committee not to the lecturer personally; But no opportunity to advance the cause was neglected for finan¬ cial reasons. / Universities and Colleges One of the best fields for the work of educational publicity of any important social reform is found in the institutions of higher education. While results of lectures given there might net be The Execution 399 immediate I felt they would probably be permanent and far reaching. Accordingly I made efforts to reach universities, col¬ leges, theological seminaries, normal schools, medical schools, summer schools for teachers and high schools. Illustrated lec¬ tures on the feeble-minded, as well as courses of lectures on social topics, in which the care of the feeble-minded and the extent to which the feeble-minded complicated all other social problems were made clear, were given. During the committee’s life I lectured ninety-five times to such audiences as are mentioned above in seventy-two different cities and twenty-eight different states; the estimated total num¬ ber of students addressed having been fully twenty thousand. The Southern States A large part of my work was done in the South. The spe¬ cial interest in the feeble-minded in that part of the Union began with the first meeting of the Southern Sociological Congress, held at Nashville, Tenn., in 1912, nearly a year before the de¬ partment of extension was in operation. At that meeting two addresses were made, one by H. H. Hart, of the Russell Sage Foundation, on “The Feeble-Minded Girl,” and another by my¬ self; (I was then Secretary of the National Conference of Chari¬ ties and Correction )y on “The Menace of the Feeble-Minded.” These addresses aroused the attention of some public-spirited men and women and led to important developments. At that time the only active public institutions in the South for the feeble-minded were in the states of Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kentucky. North Carolina had begun to build an institution but had no pupils in the school. A small begin¬ ning was made in Texas about that time after some lectures I had given which were promoted by a professor of sociology of the state university ; and a cottage for feeble-minded females was added to the state colony for epileptics in Virginia, partly as a result of my work in that state. In most of the Southern states the topic was a new one. The opportunity for education was wide. I had presented the sub¬ ject at state conferences in Florida and Mississippi in 1911 and 1912, and had given lectures in 1912 at summer schools at Blue Ridge, N. C., at Meadville, Pa., and in Chicago ; at each of which 400 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda there were students from the South. All these efforts, tho scattering, were helpful in advance of the work of the Commit¬ tee on Provision. By the time set for the second Southern Sociological Con¬ gress, which met in Atlanta in 1913, the extension department was organized and I gave an illustrated lecture at the congress to a large and representative audience of Southern people. From that time the campaign in the Southern states for the care of the feeble-minded may be said to have fairly begun. It would be tiresome to give the particulars of my work in every state. What happened in a few typical ones will practic¬ ally tell the story for the rest. Arkansas When the “Men and Religion Forward Movement” swept over the country a few years ago, the city of Little Rock was vis¬ ited and the usual local committees were formed to carry for¬ ward the work which the apostles of the “movement” had begun. One of these committees was on social service and the local chair¬ man was a liberal minded lawyer, Mr. Durant Whipple. He told me that when he accepted the chairmanship he did not know what “social service” was, but he soon discovered it. The committee organized a “United Charities Society” and en¬ gaged a trained social worker as secretary. The new society soon found among its clients in distress many cases in which the trouble was caused or made more acute by feeble mindedness. This was a new idea to the directors who began to ask “what is feeble-mindness ?” and “what should be done about it?” The secretary, Mr. Auerbach, advised them to send for me to tell them my story. This was before the department of extension be¬ gan, while I was still secretary of the National Conference. In response to an invitation from the society I went to Little Rock and lectured to a small but very influential audience. This was in 1912. A few months later I was requested to attend a state conference of charities at Fort Smith, Ark., the subject as¬ signed to me being “Segregation and Sterilization.” Being un¬ able to attend I was asked to write a paper to be read at the meeting. This was published in a report of the conference; printed in full in the Arkansas Gazette, which is the leading The Execution 401 paper of the state; and reprinted in twenty -one local papers. As a result of my first lecture a state commission had been ap¬ pointed by the Governor, of which Mr. Whipple had been made secretary, but it had no funds and it needed help. When the Na¬ tional Conference of Charities and Correction (now of Social Work) met in Memphis in 1914, Mr. Whipple came there specially to find what the Committee on Provision (or the department of extension, as it then was) could do for Arkansas. The result was a meeting in Little Rock with the State Commission of repre¬ sentatives of the National Committee on Mental Hygiene, the Committee on Provision for the Feeble-Minded, and the U. S. De¬ partment of Health. These bodies each agreed to help the cam¬ paign. The U. S. Health Department made mental tests of a few children in representative schools; the Committee on Mental Hygiene examined some of the inmates in the state penitentiary and the boys’ reform school ; also the Eugenics Record office sent an agent who traced the heredity of a few feeble-minded families ; and I went as propagandist and publicity man. For two months in 1914 and six weeks in 1915, I traveled thru the state speaking in each important city and town. In all I lectured eighty times in fifty-seven different towns and cit¬ ies. In January, 1916, during the meeting of the legislature I gave an illustrated lecture to a joint session of the House and Senate at which the Governor presided and introduced me. The week following a bill was introduced to create a state school and colony; it was passed and signed by the Governor. Florida In this state I had started things going with a lecture at a state conference of charities at Tampa in December, 1912, fol¬ lowed by another in February, 1914, at Gainesville. The Chil¬ dren’s Home and Aid Society and the Federation of Women’s Clubs took up the agitation and got a state commission appoint¬ ed. The State Hospital for Insane at Chattahoochee was very badly overcrowded; among the inmates there were more than four hundred imbeciles and idiots who were occupying beds bad¬ ly needed for insane, who could not be admitted for want of room. The legislature was contemplating the creation of a new hospital. I was invited to lecture to the legislature and advised 402 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda them to establish a state colony and school for feeble-minded and begin it with those now in the hospital for insane; so relieving the crowding there. This was accepted as the wise thing to do and the week after my lecture a bill for a colony farm, with a school to be added later, became law. Louisiana Here the interest began with the Sociological Congress in 1912. This was attended by Miss Jean M. Gordon, a very public spirited and influential woman. She was particularly impressed by Dr. Hart’s plea for the feeble-minded girl and resolved that Louisiana should do its part for the mental defectives. The State Federation of Women’s Clubs was interested and several influential bodies in New Orleans joined with them. In the course of the next few years, I gave nineteen lectures and ad¬ dresses in New Orleans to a great variety of audiences, including Tulane Medical School, Newcomb College, the New Era Club, the Catholic Women’s Club, the Equal suffrage Association; the an¬ nual conference of the National Child-labor Society which met that year in New Orleans, and others. The executive secretary of the Committee on Provision was invited to address the legisla¬ ture and other efforts were made, including some work by the National Committee on Mental Hygiene. What followed is told in the chapter on “results.” Kentucky * This state was the fifth in the Union to have a state institu¬ tion for the feebleminded ; but owing to a vicious law which pro¬ vided for a state pension to be paid to a “committee” for the bene¬ fit of each “indigent imbecile”; a law whose effect has been de¬ clared to be to promote the propagation of idiots and imbeciles; the institution had never been adequately supported; and be¬ cause that law really had the effect of increasing the amount of defectiveness, the number and condition of the feeble-minded; in spite of the state school ; was worse than in some states having no provision for the class. Before the work could possibly be as it should it was neces¬ sary to secure the repeal of this law which had often been at¬ tacked but which was the source of so much petty graft that it The Execution 403 had survived all the assaults of those who sought to get rid of it. A small group of people in Louisville active in social wel¬ fare, secured the appointment by the Governor of a commission on the feeble-minded, of which Mr. E. S. Tachau, was chair¬ man. This commission invited the assistance of the Committee on Provision and also that of the National Committee on Mental Hygiene. The latter sent a field agent into the state to make a survey of the conditions ; and I went to Kentucky with my pic¬ ture show. I conducted two brief publicity campaigns; the first began at a state conference of charities in Lexington in November, 1915, and included fifteen cities and towns; the second began in Octo¬ ber, 1917, and practically covered the important towns of the state. For each of the campaigns the women’s clubs acted as ad¬ vance agents, securing places of meetings and publicity and many of them paid traveling expenses, the rest being defrayed by the state commission. The two itineraries included eighty- one lectures given in thirty-nine different towns. Fourteen of the lectures Were given in the city of Louisville. One of my talks in Louisville was at a dinner given by the Chamber of Commerce at which I was the guest of honor. I began my speech by telling them that when Kentucky county, of the state of Virginia, became the state of Kentucky, one of the early laws enacted by the legislature was to promote the breeding of horses and thanks to that law and their unequalled blue-grass pastures, Kentucky has always had the best trotting horses in the country. This brought a round of applause. Then I told them that a few years later another law was enacted, whose effect was to encourage the breeding of idiots and imbeciles and it had been equally successful; and they did not applaud me at all, but they listened intently. I explained the law and how it had been made a source of petty graft by officials and others. I told them of a county clerk who was the Committee” for twenty imbeciles, whom he boarded out at an average rate of less than half the amount of the pension, many of them being able to work for the farmers with whom they were boarded so that he got a substantial rake-off; of a farmer reputed prosperous by his neighbors because “he had ten idiot kids ?’ of a family of idiot children being brought into court hauled in a crate to be re-com- 404 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda mitted each five years, each time their number increasing by one or two ; of one county where the county judge had told me there had been no one committed as insane to the state hospital, where they might have had at least a chance to be cured during ten years past; but each had been declared “imbecile” so that they might stay at home in misery, and those who had charge of them receive the state pension; of the fact that altho Kentucky was the fifth state to have a state school for the feeble-minded, it was one of the poorest and most poorly conducted, because this vicious pension law stood in the way of the legislature making reasonable appropriations for the school. When I had told them what can and should be done and is being done for the feeble¬ minded ; and especially how their propagation which the pension law encouraged ought to be stopped; they gave me a vote of thanks and lined up with the commission in favor of the reform. Wherever I went thru Kentucky and told my stories my audi¬ ences were convinced, and my stock of incidents of the results of the pension law was augmented by people who gave me in¬ stances of the gross abuse of and disastrous consequences from, that law, which was my chief point of attack. I only found one man to defend the pension system ; he was a state senator and was the committee for three imbecile children whom he de¬ clared were very well cared for. My campaigns culminated in three days spent with the legis¬ lature at Frankfort in February, 1918. I appeared before com¬ mittees of the House and Senate and interviewed many of the members in the interest of a bill which I had helped to draft which repealed the pension law and provided for a large extension of the state school and which was successful. Recent changes in the state’s way of managing her institutions make the pros¬ pect for effective care very hopeful. South Carolina The interest in this state began when a Board of State Chari¬ ties was created with an active intelligent liberal minded secre¬ tary, Albert Sydney Johnstone. Knowing of my work in organiz¬ ing the Board of State Charities of Indiana, he came to Vineland in the summer of 1915, to consult me about his state board work The Execution 405 and was naturally much interested in what we showed him of the training of the feeble-minded which was quite new to him. In September of the same year a state Conference of Charities and Public Welfare was held in Columbia, S. C. to which I was invited. This conference was largely attended, Governor Man¬ ning came to many of its sessions, Mrs. Manning, his wife, was at every one of them. My lecture on the care of the feeble¬ minded with stereoscopic illustrations was the feature of an evening session. The whole conference was converted. At the close of the address the Governor with the speaker of the House of Representatives, invited me to repeat the lecture to a joint session of the two houses, when the legislature should convene in January 1916, and the next morning, the president of the Senate joined in the invitation. Following the state conference, I lectured in a few of the principal cities. The next step was the making of a survey of feeble-mindedness in South Carolina, which was done by Miss Helen Hill, a field agent of the Committee on Provision, work¬ ing under the direction of the state Board of Charities who paid the expense of the survey. In January 1916, I gave my lecture and showed my pictures at a joint session of the two houses of the legislature and got much applause. The law makers had been enacting some temperance legislation and were much worked up about the evils of alcoholism and when I traced the beginnings of some feeble-minded family lines to drunkenness and debauch¬ ery I made warm friends for the cause. A bill was introduced to create a school and colony and passed the House but was lost in the Senate in the rush of business at the end of the session. The State Board of Charities, warmly supported by Gov. Man¬ ning, kept the subject before the people and it was a major topic at a state conference in Charleston in November 1916. At this second conference. Bishop Gerry of South Carolina was in the chair and he introduced me to the audience in one of those mildly humorous speeches which are so frequently heard when the topic is the feeble-minded. When I concluded the good Bishop sprang to his feet and most warmly endorsed what I had said. He declared that until he heard my story he had no con¬ ception of the gravity of the situation; that my lecture had informed and completely converted him; he pledged his utmost 406 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda efforts and the use of all the influence he possessed to, as he said, “make the state of South Carolina do exactly what this gentle¬ man has told us ought to be done for the feeble-minded”. While Bishop Gerry was speaking, a dear white-haired old lady sitting behind me, touched me on the shoulder and passed me a slip of paper on which she had written “Fm glad God made you”. When the legislature met in January 1917, I lectured again to the two houses in joint session. The bill which had passed the House a year before was approved by the Senate and the institution is now in successful operation. Virginia In this state the interest had begun with the meeting of the National Conference of Charities in Richmond in 1908. E. R. Johnstone was chairman of the committee on mental defectives that year and the subject was well presented. The state had just created a Board of State Charities with Dr. J. T. Mastin as its secretary, and his visits of inspection to poorhouses, reform schools and jails, soon disclosed the vast mass of poverty, crime and other social evils, attributable to feeble-mindedness. From its first year the board began holding state conferences of chari¬ ties and to these Dr. Mastin always invited me to present the case of the feeble-minded. In 1913, I made a ten days tour in the eastern part of the state under Dr. Mastin’s direction and gave sixteen lectures in as many cities. I made other journeys to the central and west¬ ern counties in 1916, 1917, and 1918. During these visits, I went to twenty-eight cities and lectured to forty audiences. Other Southern States In Georgia, the effect of the lectures at the Southern Socio¬ logical Congress was marked. A state commission was formed and on its invitation I gave a few lectures mostly in Atlanta, with good results. In Mississippi I had got the interest started at a state con¬ ference of Charities in 1912, when I gave two lectures one of them illustrated ; which aroused the attention of some physi¬ cians and some members of the Federation of Women’s Clubs. Some of these people came to the Sociological Congress at The Execution 407 Atlanta and the National Conference at Memphis and I lec¬ tured to the state meeting of the King’s Daughters at Natchez in May 1914. Missouri had an institution for imbeciles and epileptics, but its accommodations had long been recognized as inadequate. A group of social workers in St. Louis and Kansas City began an effort to increase the provision and called on me for help. I lectured in a few of the larger cities and at their state confer¬ ence. In February 1915, I went to Jefferson City while the legis¬ lature was in session and addressed a large audience which included about one hundred and twenty-five members of the House and Senate. The following week an appropriation for extension of the institution was trebled and the social workers declared that the increase was the direct result of my lecture. North Carolina was one of the few Southern states which, before 1913, had recognized the duty of caring for the feeble¬ minded; but altho the school was built, it was not equipped for pupils. At the urgency of the promoters of the institution, I attended state conferences, and other meetings and gave thirty- nine lectures. A good many of these were at the summer school for social workers, held annually at Blue Ridge, which attracts people from many Southern states, and is a favorable place for that general publicity Which our committee was organized to give. In Tennessee, as in Virginia, Florida, and Mississippi, I had begun the propaganda before the committee was organized. Here the idea of teaching the feeble-minded was not quite so new as in most of the South as there had been a small private school in existence for ten or twelve years. Public interest however began at a state conference in 19li, at Chattanooga, where my lectures caught people’s attention which was much increased by the Sociological Congress in Nashville the next year. Since then several important meetings had kept the interest growing. The National Conference at Memphis in 1914, a second state confer¬ ence at Chattanooga in 1916, another at Memphis in 1918, all had their effect. At each of these meetings the promoters, espe¬ cially Mr. Menzler, secretary of the State Board of Charities, featured my lectures and they kept the matter before the public and the legislature. 408 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda States Outside the South A small group of socially minded people in Denver, who were dissatisfied with the slow progress of the Colorado institution, called on us for help. I gave eighteen lectures for them; in Denver ; at the state University in Boulder ; the Teachers College at Greely ; and the University at Colorado Springs. California had begun an institution in 1889, about the time of the meeting of the National Conference at San Francisco. Here we worked with the Board of State Charities, and the Fed¬ eration of Women’s Clubs toward getting a much needed second institution for the Southern part of the state. In all I lectured fifteen times in nine different cities. One lecture was given at Del Monte at the meeting of the Federation of Women’s Clubs on which occasion I was much impressed by the ability, knowl¬ edge and public spirit of the club women of the state; no doubt partly due to the effects of the franchise in developing their sense of responsibility. Connecticut is the birth place of the National Committee on Mental Hygiene. My work here was confined to attending and speaking at state conferences in 1914 and 1915; speaking with stereopticon at a public meeting called by the Mental Hygiene people at Hartford and also at a legislative hearing about some extension of the state institution which had long had a rather feeble existence. Illinois was the fourth state in the Union to create a state institution for the feeble-minded but as in every other state the accommodations have never been equal to the need. Owing to frequent requests from various bodies of people, and the fact that I spent at least six weeks of each year in Chicago with the School of Civics and Philanthropy and so was available; I gave a good many lectures in that city each year. Besides the lectures at the School of Civics and the Loyola School of Sociology, I gave lectures at Chicago University, Chi¬ cago Theological Seminary, McCormick Theological Seminary, Training School for Deaconesses, Y. M. C. A. Training School, Chicago Medical College, the City Club, the Women’s Club, the Women’s City Club, the Juvenile Protective Association, the Bohemian Women’s Club, the Eugenics Education Association, several settlements and others, thirty-six lectures in all besides The Execution 409 those at the two schools first mentioned. Twelve lectures were given in eight other cities and I attended and addressed three state conferences in successive years. Social welfare work in Illinois has been a matter of much public attention. It is unfortunate that politics plays so large a part in the social work of the state but in spite of that some progress has been made ; altho the condition of the feeble-minded in Chicago is still a matter of grave concern. It is greatly com¬ plicated with the crime question and the state institution has been compelled to receive too large a proportion of juvenile delin¬ quents for its own good or that of its inmates. Nowhere more than in Illinois is there a need of some institution intermediate between a school for the feeble-minded and a reformatory, which shall partake to some extent of the nature of both. Indiana is my home state and most of what I did there has been told in other parts of this book. During the period of my work for the Committee on Provision however, I lectured on twenty-one occasions in nine different cities. Our executive sec¬ retary and field staff had an important part in the development of the work for feeble-minded in this state which is on a scale of scientific knowledge and practical utility much superior to that of most if not any other of the commonwealths. New York had a Committee on Provision for the feeble-minded of its own so that our committee was called on for little work in this extremely fruitful field. I gave a few lectures for the State Charities Aid Association which has its committee on the v feeble-minded and answered calls from several women’s clubs and other public bodies. In all I visited ten cities and gave thirty-one addresses; of these thirteen were in Buffalo and eight in New York City. Ohio was the first of the Mid-Western states to create an institution for the feeble-minded and its institution has always held high rank. Since the plan of special classes for defectives in public schools was developed, the state has been the leader in this respect with the possible exception of New Jersey. A few requests for assistance came from Ohio to the Committee on Provision especially from Toledo and Cleveland but no system¬ atic campaign was conducted. In all I gave twenty-eight lec¬ tures there. 410 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda In Pennsylvania much of my work was under the direction of the Public Charities Association which was conducting an active campaign for the feeble-minded. Including lectures at the Meadville Theological Seminary and those at the School of Social Workers in Philadelphia, I gave fifty-one lectures in nine different cities of Pennsylvania. Most of these were in Pitts¬ burgh and Philadelphia. No systematic campaign was con¬ ducted. Wisconsin has had an excellent school for the feeble-minded for many years, but unfortunately the provision has never been adequate enough to arrest the multiplication of the mentally defective. Early in 1916, the Committee on Provision was asked for assistance in the promotion of a second state institution. Five lectures, four of them illustrated, were given in Milwaukee ' in January; and in October following I gave the whole month to the state. I visited eighteen different cities and gave fifty- three talks and addresses. Some of these were to colleges and high-schools, several to women’s clubs and business men’s clubs. The itinerary was chiefly organized and greatly aided by the Federation of Women’s Clubs. It is somewhat of a reproach to our National Government that the public benevolent institutions of the District of Colum¬ bia, are not the best of their kind in the United States, but we have to admit as well as deplore the fact. Social workers in the District have long known the need of provision for the feeble¬ minded there. A survey made under the direction of the Chil¬ dren’s Bureau showed at least eight hundred cases needing care. The few feeble-minded children of the District who are being cared for are kept by contract in institutions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia, and Congress which controls all dis¬ trict affairs and ought to show its constitutent states the way they should go, lags behind. The committee was called on for assistance and I gave a few lectures in Washington. I spent three weeks there in March and April 1918, in a vain effort at lobbying for the Tinkham Bill which sought to provide a Dis¬ trict institution. In a few other states, lectures have been given by request of State Boards of Charities or other public bodies especially at State Conferences of Charities, but no systematic campaigns The Execution 411 have been made. The following is the list of the states touched in those sporadic efforts : Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Texas, Washington, fifty lectures in all. British North America In May 1913, I was called by the National Council of Women to Montreal to lecture on the care of the feeble-minded in the Dominion of Canada. In 1917, I was invited by a committee of social workers to participate in a series of meetings in Nova Scotia, Prince Edwards Island, and Newfoundland. The total of lectures was fifteen in five cities, three provinces, and one crown-colony (Newfoundland). National and State Conferences Probably the best forum in the United States for a presenta¬ tion of a measure of social advance is the National Conference of Social Work (formerly the National Conference of Charities and Correction) and only second to it are the numerous state conferences of the same kind. As far as possible the Committee on Provision was represented during its active life at these important meetings. I attended the National Conference at Memphis in 1914, Baltimore in 1915, Indianapolis in 1916, and made the work of the Committee known. During the five years of work of the extension department and the Committee, I addressed state con¬ ferences in twenty-five states some of them at more than one meeting. These conferences were always useful occasions and in three instances the lectures and discussions at them marked the beginning of an interest and a movement that culminated in the creation of a state institution. These instances were in the States of Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee; while the remarkable development in the South as a whole may be clearly traced to the initial impulse at the first two Southern Socio logical Congresses, held at Nashville in 1912, and Atlanta in 1913. Schools for Social Workers Here again a fertile field for effort was recognized and many opportunities were offered in it. I gave courses of lectures to 412 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda schools of social work, in Chicago, Richmond, Philadelphia and Houston, and occasional single lectures to the schools in Boston, St. Louis, and New York. At the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy I gave regular lecture courses each year during the winter and summer terms. While most of these lectures were not directly concerned with the special work of the Committee; the care of the feeble¬ minded was always made prominent and the relations between feeble-mindedness and all other forms of social defect made plain. In the course of the five years, from 1913 to 1918, at the summer and winter terms fully seven hundred and fifty new social work¬ ers were met and informed. These people came from a wide range of territory especially from the West, Middle West and South. There is no doubt in my mind that no lecturing that could be done elsewhere, to audiences many times greater in number, could be more useful in spreading the gospel of right dealing with the feeble-minded. In Chicago also, for five years I gave a regular course of lec¬ tures each year at the Loyola School of Sociology, a Catholic institution presided over by a broad-minded man of the Church who is deeply interested in social topics. Chapter Three THE RESULTS To sum up the results achieved in the thirty-three states of the Union where the Committee operated; we may say that in nine states in which, in 1913, no public provision for the feeble¬ minded existed ; state institutions have been built, are now build¬ ing, or are authorized by law; in each of five states which had institutions with evidently inadequate accommodations, one or more new institutions have been created; in one a private char¬ itable institution has been established and is being conducted and another has been built by a charitable bequest and dedi¬ cated to the city in which it stands. In four others substantial additions have been made to existing institutions; and in nearly all the states where the committee has been active its influence on the development of special classes for the defectives in the public schools has been salutary. That is to say in nineteen states very positive tangible results may be demonstrated and in the other fourteen results less tangible yet positive may be con¬ fidently asserted. These results make a very remarkable showing. They have been of varying importance in different states. I am not claim¬ ing credit for the Committee for all that has happened; I want to acknowledge with gratitude the work of our co-operators whom I have mentioned above. But I can fairly claim that most of the results of which I tell have been due to our work and that my particular job of publicity has been practically an exclusive contribution. In considering these efforts and results it should be remem¬ bered that during the time of the Committee’s active work the great War was in progress and public attention was so much absorbed by it that most strenuous efforts were necessary to secure attention to the campaigns of publicity we were con¬ ducting. 414 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda It seems proper to give the details of the results I claim and I do so without separating what was done by the department of extension and what by the Committee on Provision since the two over-lapped considerably in time. Beginning with ISfew Jersey where the results are due to our work added to the efforts of the state committee with the constant example of the Training School of Vineland ; these things have come : First, the creation of the Burlington county colony, since taken over by the state ; Second, a notable increase in the num¬ ber of special classes for defectives in the public schools and a law requiring such classes; Third, a law requiring medical inspections for all school districts in the state; Fourth, three¬ fold increase in the accommodations at the state institution for women and girls at Vineland and double the number of state boys at the Training School; Fifth, the acceptance by the state of the Woodbine colony for male idiots and imbeciles ; Sixth, and perhaps the most important, a general understanding and ac¬ ceptance by public opinion of the theory of training and colony care for all defectives, an acceptance which has had some marked effects on other institutions besides those for the technically feeble-minded. I give other results by states, first those of the South and then others in alphabetical order only premising that some of these results have matured since the committee’s work slowed down. In the Southland In recounting the remarkable results in this part of the country and trying to understand how they happened there are two very important factors to be borne in mind. The first ; which applies equally all over the country, was that the great war was in progress; everyone’s mind and heart had been stirred. Great social reforms always come at a time of upheaval and turmoil. Men’s minds are shaken out of their old ruts; people begin to ask of the conventions and the general order of things, the all powerful question, Why? And when you ask why and the answer is not plain, something happens. Such times are the periods of change and development; of upsetting old things and bringing in new. The Results 415 The second factor is that the South was never so prosper¬ ous in material things before. Her chief products especially cotton and tobacco were in great demand, and at high prices. The cotton states had more money than ever and the people were willing to spend. Only a remarkably good cotton market, for instance, could have induced the state of Mississippi to spend a million dollars for a tuberculosis hospital, as was done in 1917. There were other contributory causes; those above stated were sufficient to counterbalance the difficulty of attracting pub¬ lic attention from its pre-occupation with the war. The list of achievements in the South is as follows : Alabama, a state school and colony now approaching completion and some increase in the teaching of defectives in the public schools; Arkansas, a law for a state school and colony; Delaware, state school and colony now in operation; Florida, state colony now in operation ; Georgia, state school in operation ; Kentucky, vicious law abrogated, additions to state school authorized ; Louisiana, two private institutions established, state school and colony begun; Mississippi, state colony and school in operation; Missouri, extension of institution ; North Carolina, extension and better support of institution; South Carolina, state school and colony in operation; Tennessee, state institution authorized; Texas, state school extended; Virginia, additions to colony for epileptics and new institution for Colored feeble-minded now building. In some of the states outside the South, the following occurred : California, a second institution begun ; Colorado, improvements to institution and better classes in schools; Con¬ necticut improvements to state institution; Indiana, one addi¬ tional colony and many improvements in schools; Ohio, much popular interest aroused, some developments in public schools; Pennsylvania, one additional institution established; Wisconsin, one additional institution and much improvement in special classes in public schools. It must seem strange after such claims as above, to have to record the fact that a committee which could score so great success in so few years should have subsided and practically given up its organization. The story is a very noteworthy one, and I must tell it. 416 Five Years Adventuring in Propaganda When E. K. Johnstone and I caught the vision of the possi¬ bilities of the Committee on Provision we planned positively for a five years program of pioneering. We did not hope to con¬ vert the Nation to our views in that period, but we did expect to get the work well started. Then things seemed to go our way, we were received in almost every state with approval, often with acclamation. In one state after another we got laws enacted for institutions where they had none or for extensions of older ones. After success seemed so positive our ambitions widened and we hoped to continue until we had practically covered the country. The amount of money needed to carry on the work seemed small compared to its value; we were alone in the field; we were demonstrating success. There seemed no reason to doubt that we could get ample support. But when the National Mental Hygiene Committee got fairly going and discovered that the care of the feeble-minded was something more popular and essential than what they h(hd organized to do for the insane; and so desired to enlarge their work to take in ours; they invited our Committee to become a sub-committee of theirs ; proposing that we should raise the funds we needed and spend them under the direction of their executive committee. Of course our Committee could not accept the propo¬ sition. To raise money for provision for the feeble-minded and let it be expended by a group of physicians; who, however well qualified to treat the insane, had had no practical experience with those for whose benefit it was given ; was manifestly out of the question. We felt that their committee being largely medical would find its greatest usefulness in the care of the insane and in the field of surveys and investigations, from a more or less scientific viewpoint. Our interest was in having the feeble¬ minded recognized and given proper care and protection. Altho our Committee was mostly composed of laymen; when we began, in December 1914, many of the superintendents of institutions for the feeble-minded joined us, and all but one of them were medical men. It had long been customary, in spite of one or two notable exceptions, to imagine that a school for feeble-minded was a medical institution and that its head must be a physician. As the Mental Hygiene Association had a phy¬ sician as chief with the title of medical director ; and was stress- • The Results 417 ing the medical side; and our officers were laymen emphasizing the educational and social aspects; this was all too much for the doctors; and most of them deserted us for what they con¬ sidered a medical association. For the first year or two their defection did us little harm. Unfortunately our treasurer had been so efficient that no one else had thought it necessary to help him raise money; and tho our budget was a very modest one, some money was necessary; when he accepted service with the Y. M. C. A. and went to France to work for the A. E. F. he left us with enough in the treasury to continue our work to the end of 1917 ; intending to come home and take care of us in the year to come. But tho not a com¬ batant he was a victim of the war and died in Paris. Our president, secretary, and executive secretary were very modest men. They did not even make our own subscribers under¬ stand how much we had effected and how much value it had. In fact our subscribers had been allowed or led to conceive the idea that much which was chiefly due to our work had been achieved by the other agency, which had really played a very small part in it. The result was that by the Spring of 1918, our chief con¬ tributors, not realizing how successful we had been, were enlisted by the other organization; our funds were exhausted and the work slowed down to its present modest program; once more it has become the extension department of the Vineland Training School. However, we have the satisfaction of knowing that for an appreciable time what we did was very well worth while; and when our work ceased it left us with the consciousness of eminent success. - • ' ■ »• ■ • • PART SEVEN ADVENTURES WITH THE RED CROSS (419) ADVENTURES WITH THE RED CROSS Chapter One WITH THE BOYS IN CAMP In the summer of 1918 I enjoyed a long vacation the first for many years. The Committee on Provision for the Feeble-Minded was slowing down its work, and I was waiting to hear what it would decide to do uncertain what was to be my next adventure. Among my holiday incidents was one of ten days lecturing at the Chicago School of Social Work, where, with other classes, I had one made up of home service workers of the Red Cross. A second vacation event was a very pleasant two weeks with the Summer School for Social Workers at Blue Ridge N. C. I had spent many happy weeks in the delightful climate of the North Carolina highlands with this school during previous summers. This year the classes were fuller than ever. Among other incidents was a training class for Y. M. C. A. secretaries, who were preparing for work with the boys in the camps and with the A. E. F. overseas. That summer was one never to be forgotten. The war was going our way. Our brave fellows in France were giving splen¬ did account of themselves. Nothing was too good for our sol¬ diers and their families. The wonderful work of the Red Cross was at its height; under its banner people of all ranks and classes were coming together were working and feeling together as never before. Thousands, perhaps millions, of our citizens realized almost for the first time what it means to say “I am an American”. We had accepted the dire necessity of war with the utmost reluctance ; yet some of the more hopeful ; I of course as an incorrigible optimist among them ; dared to hope that one immensely valuable salvage from the horrible wreck of war was to be a new birth of the Nation in loyalty to high ideals of citizen¬ ship, in unselfish devotion to social welfare. (421) 422 Adventures with the Red Cross An old friend, Joseph C. Logan of Atlanta, was representing the Red Cross at the summer school. One afternoon he with a professor from a University in Texas who was lecturing to the Y. M.’s and I took a ten mile tramp among and over the moun¬ tains. We got back to Robert E. Lee Hall at 5:15. The swim¬ ming pool on the Campus with its deliciously cold, mountain¬ spring water, closes at 5:30. I said “come on fellows, we are just in time for a plunge before supper/’ but they declared what they needed was a hot shower. The next morning they were nursing their aching muscles while I was ready for another tramp. I am old enough to be Joe’s father and then some, the professor is my junior by twenty years but they decided that I was the youngest man of the trio. The next afternoon Logan offered me a most attractive job. The Red Cross was then scouring the country for trained social workers; home service was seen to be fully as important as military relief; hundreds of chapters wanted executive secre¬ taries. Each division needed a score of field supervisors; every training camp had to have several associate directors of civilian relief. Logan was director of civilian relief of the Southern division and he invited me to enlist under the Red Cross banner as associate field director in charge of home service in one of the camps. It was flattering to be offered a young man’s job once again and like every good citizen I was more than pleased to be an active as well as a contributing member of the Red Cross. I was assigned to Camp Greene, near Charlotte N. C. and stayed there until armistice day. I have had many fascinating tasks but never one equal to that of my work among the soldiers. I have always loved case-work and have frequently regretted that circumstances made it impossible for me to do much of it. Now I was on duty seven days a week, from eight A. M. to ten P. M. ; and often worked until midnight getting ready for the next morning but the hours went by like minutes. One human inter¬ est story after another, many sad, some tragic, a few humorous ; all vividly interesting; kept me intensely occupied from day¬ break to midnight. Camp Greene was one of the smaller ones ; while I was there we had from 15,000 to 20,000 men in training. Most of these were class A men and these were the ones who made the fewest With the Boys in Camp 423 calls for assistance. There were some labor battalions of negroes ; and a few colored regiments seemingly fit for the front line. Besides these capable fellows, there were development bat¬ talions of men who needed special attention in the way of phys¬ ical upbuilding and a “casual camp” full of derelicts; all phys¬ ically and many mentally defective, who should have been dis¬ charged promptly but who, owing to the pitiful red tape which seems to tangle up all army affairs, were being kept in idleness. The captain in command of the casuals was a fine officer of the regular army who bitterly resented his job. He told me he had come to camp to train soldiers and they had made him keeper of an imbecile asylum. Our Red Cross hut was close to the Y. M. C. A. headquarters and our relations with the Y. M.’s were pleasant and mutually helpful. We used their post-office and kept our money overnight in their safe. I had occasional opportunities of co-operation with the Knights of Columbus and the Jewish organization and was able to instil some charity organization ideas into them and found prompt and hearty response. My predecessor in the camp had not managed to stand in with the officers and the staff and complained that they had been unsympathetic and even obstructive; but I found them the very reverse. All that was necessary to get any facts or service I wanted was to find the right man and put the request in the right way. My relations with the officers both commissioned and non-commissioned as well as the headquarters staff were pleasant and co-operative. During my stay I only ran up against one really hard-boiled officer. The requests of the enlisted men for help were of a widely varying character; many were for assistance in getting fur¬ loughs and a few for discharges. Our rule was that the Red Cross must not initiate such applications ; we were only to secure information on request of the officer in command. Most of the officers whom I met were interested in their men and wishful to grant their reasonable requests. They availed themselves gladly of the services of the Red Cross in securing positive evidence of facts , but they did not ask our opinions. One Saturday afternoon at three o’clock a top-sergeant asked me by phone to get informa¬ tion about the wife of a man who wanted a furlough to visit her 424 Adventures with the Red Cross as she was on her death bed. I sent the inquiry by wire to the chapter where the woman lived at Raleigh N. O. ; the executive secretary visited the woman at once, found she had recovered, promptly wired an answer and at five o’clock I called up the sergeant with a satisfactory reply. The next morning, Sunday, T had to find a man for an important piece of business, who had been in the same command and phoned my friend the sergeant about him. He told me the man had been transferred a year before and he did not know his present location. At it was Sunday morning, the personnel office at headquarters was not open or I could have got the soldier’s present command in a few minutes. The matter was urgent and I prepared for a trouble¬ some hunt. Just as I was starting the sergeant called again; said he knew I was busy while he had plenty of time so he would hunt him by wire for me. In an hour he gave me the location, having followed the man over the phone thru three transfers. Almost every day there were several of these requests for information about furloughs and usually the chapters answered very promptly. One boy wanted to go home to see a sick wife and baby at Charleston, W. Va. The chapter promptly replied that the woman had recovered ; the child was still sick but having excellent care in the Red Cross hospital. The husband and father was divided in his feelings between happiness that his wife was well and regret that he could not have a furlough. His worry about the baby was that it had never been christened, and he begged that the Red Cross would summon a priest to the hospital and give the baby the name of Cora. Visiting the hospital one day the adjutant asked me for help to locate the relatives of a negro, dead of flu, about whom he had been telegraphing vainly for two days past, wanting to send the corpse home for burial. I told him I would try. The chapter answered by wire the next day with the correct location and thenceforth the adjutant was stronger than ever for the Red Cross. Not all the chapters were so well officered; often the family wanted lived out in the country and in one case it was located midway between two chapters, each of which claimed it belonged to the other. But many stories are on record of long and toilsome journeys made by self-sacrificing executive secre¬ taries over hills and thru swamps, along roads that were mere With the Boys in Camp 425 trails, to find families in trouble. The devotion and utter dis¬ regard of their own ease and comfort; often even their own health ; which many faithful Red Crossers exhibited rank up well with the endurance of the boys in the trenches or the nurses in the hospitals. One of the most pathetic cases I had was of an Italian from the Bronx, New York, one of the refined delicate-looking kind one sees, rarely, among his people. He had been drafted and given only twenty-four hours notice. His wife had suffered a miscarriage a few days before and he left her in bed with only |5.00 in money. They were new-comers to the city, had no friends or relatives near; were living in furnished rooms among strangers. He showed me a letter from his wife which told how she had tried to go to work; she was a seamstress; but had fainted on the street and thought the best she could do would be to go back to bed and stay there till she died. I assured him his wife should have friends and help at once and wired to the Bronx chapter begging prompt attention. No answer came the first nor the second day, the poor fellow coming in morning, noon and evening with the pathetic question “have you heard from my wife yet?” The third day as no answer came to a sec¬ ond wire, I tried to get Alexander Wilson, who was manager of the Atlantic division in New York, to call up the Bronx people. I had a claim on him as he was an old pupil of mine in the School of Philanthropy ; but it was just at the time of the Perth Amboy explosion and he was busy about that. However in the evening of the fourth day came a long wire from the chapter; they had found the woman, got her a physician and a nurse and would take good care of her until she was well and see her thru until the allotment and allowance checks began to come. When I read the message to him he buried his face in his hands and wept real tears which trickled thru his fingers; and I confess my own upper eyelid was not quite rigid just then. It is easy to see the tremendous help to the morale of the boys which came out of such home service for their families. During October and November the epidemic of flu was raging and for several weeks the death rate in camp was from twenty- five to thirty-five daily. Of course this gave us many calls for information from all over the land. One day came a nicely type- 426 Adventures with the Red Cross written letter signed in a very pretty hand, addressed to the “Ked Cross man at Camp Greene” begging for some word about Lawrence H - , of a certain regiment, from whom the writer had not heard for several weeks. I found Lawrence in the hos¬ pital recovering from flu and still in bed. He was a fine looking fellow and when I asked him if he knew Miss Fannie C - , he blushed and said “yes” ; I asked him if she was the only girl and when they were going to be married. He said as soon as he got out of the army. The doctor had just told him he might get up the next day and he promised to write at once. I wrote to Miss Fannie telling her Lawrence would soon be well and what a fine fellow he looked, one of whom I would be proud for a son ; that he had told me of their romance and I hoped they would be very happy. In reply came a charming little note of thanks conclud¬ ing with the remark that henceforth she would have no anxiety about him since I had taken a personal interest in his case. The dear girl did not consider that there were 15,000 others in camp besides her lover for me to be interested in. Fully half the work of the Red Cross home service before the armistice and almost as much since was due to the delays and blunderings of the War Risk Insurance Bureau. The govern¬ ment had undertaken an impossible task and delays and errors were inevitable. It was an exceptionally fortunate beneficiary who got her first allotment check wthin six months of the sol¬ dier’s enrolment and delays of twelve or eighteen months were frequent. This delay was all the more exasperating to those the soldier had left at home and to the men themselves, because as half the man’s pay was held back to be sent to the beneficiary it was difficult for the soldier himself to send any money to them. One of the bitterest complaints was that the government kept back the allotment from the man and did not send it nor the additional allowance to his family. An Irishman brought me a letter from his mother in Cork, to whom he had made an allotment, enclosing a demand from the U. S. for the re-payment of money which was supposed to have been sent to her but to which she was not entitled. Whether she ought to have had the money or not, I did not ascertain, but as he had been enrolled for a year, and the mother had never received any of the money she was asked to return, it did not With the Boys in Camp 427 seem to matter very much, except that the U. S. Army was made a laughing stock. The War Department is properly punctilious about names and initials and the enrolling officers were often as careless as the department is particular. There were many thousands of allotment and allowance checks undelivered because of a mis¬ spelled name or a changed address. The post-office regulations were as strict as those of the War department. A mis-directed letter cannot be forwarded to a new address but must be re¬ turned to Washington. Such cases came to the Red Cross to hunt down and correct. One thing a department cannot under¬ take is the discovery of its own errors; it will make corrections when a sufficient number of documents, supported by a sufficient number of affidavits, have been filed in a sufficient number of offices, but it’s a slow and wearying job. Many cases which took long and patient work to adjust came because enrolment officers were ignorant of the law, and did not even read the blanks which they made the men sign. The com¬ monest error had regard to the application for the allowances. An allotment was compulsory if the draftee had dependent rela¬ tives, the allowance to supplement it had to be applied for. While I was in camp, among a dozen or more officers and clerks whom I questioned, I only found two who knew that the allowance did not automatically follow allotment. Yet the enlistment blank had a place to show application for it. The army was not alone in its blunderings, some of the Red Cross agents were often guilty. My own predecessor as associate field director was one of the ignorant ones about allowances. And of course the care¬ lessness and the illiteracy of so many of the draftees were causes of vast numbers of mistakes. I had one case of a Sicilian on the verge of mutiny or worse, in fact he had threatened to stick his knife into his top-sergeant. He said they had compelled him to make an allotment to a dependent daughter who lived with her grandfather in Italy. His pay had been depleted monthly yet tho he had been in the service eighteen months she had not received any money. Then he had frequently been in the guard-house for various offenses and usually his pay had been mulcted for those periods so that some months he had nothing coming. His theory was that the 4:28 Adventures with the Red Cross whole thing was a scheme to defraud him and he thought the Red Cross was in on it, as my predecessor had taken his complaint three months before and nothing had occurred. The man was enrolled as “Carlo” but I happened to notice a watch charm he wore with a name on it, and found his name was “Corallo”, and finally managed to get the correction made and the claim straightened out; probably within six months after the armistice his daughter got some money. One day a boy from Brooklyn, just out of the hospital after pneumonia following flu, and still very weak, begged me to wire to his father from whom he had not heard for three weeks. As the wire brought no answer I tried the chapter and got a dreadful story of domestic tragedy. Almost the whole family dead of the flu, the mother, three children, an aunt and two cousins all gone, and the father dangerously ill in the hospital. The news of the family’s sickness had come while the boy was himself in a dan¬ gerous condition and had been withheld from him by the doctors. The answer from the chapter came by wire about nine o’clock at night and I called up the top-sergeant and asked him to tell Joseph. He said “my God, I can’t tell him that; you must tell him yourself.” I told him to let the boy sleep that night but to send him to me in the morning; in the meantime to get the captain to put in a rush request for a furlough and we would get the boy off to see his father by the eleven o’clock train the next day. In the morning when Joseph came and I told him the awful story his only remark was “how’s my dad? how’s my dad?” I said his dad was still alive and he must go to him at once. “But,” he said, “I can’t get a furlough and I have no money.” I told him the furlough would be ready for him by the time he got back to his command; to go and get it, then take it to headquarters for his order for transportation at one cent a mile, to come back to me with them and I would let him have travel money. He got the documents and I lent him $15.00 of Red Cross funds and sent him in the Red Cross car to the rail¬ road station at Charlotte just in time to make the train. A few weeks later he returned to camp told me his father was getting well and he made good the loan the next pay day. One of the most vicious devices connected with the draft was one that allowed a peace officer to arrest a supposed draft-evader, With the Boys in Camp 429 bring him into camp, and collect $50.00 reward which was de¬ ducted from the draftee’s pay. This was practiced mostly with negroes who are mortally afraid of any white man wearing a uniform or sporting a star and timidly submit to almost any extortion. Several of the fellows who came to me declared they were on their way to the enrolment office when some deputy sheriff arrested them, and I am convinced that in some instances they told the truth. I had two negro boys who had been working for the Tal- lassee Power Co., at Baden N. C. each of whom had been brought to camp by a deputy sheriff named Tom Manous. Each of the boys declared he was coming in when arrested; each had some pay coming to him from the power company and Manous had collected and stolen it, in addition to the $50.00 per head reward. I wrote to the secretary of the company, and was told that Manous had collected the money, $13.75 in one case, and $21.50 in the other; that he was “no longer in the company’s employ” but that I could possibly find him at a certain address. I replied that I had no desire to find Manous, that he was no doubt as irresponsible as he was scoundrelly; that he had not robbed the boys but the power company since he had no authority to collect; that the company therefore still owed the money and I requested checks for the amount. In three days I got a check for $35.25, which certainly made the boys glad, altho they probably lost it all at craps the next day. A colored boy from Florida came with a pitiful tale of a sickly wife, two little children, an old father crippled with rheu¬ matism, crops on a little farm going to ruin for want of atten¬ tion; a store keeper worrying the woman with bills for food and fertilizer; and tho he had been in camp eight months, the gov¬ ernment allowance and his allotment unpaid so that the woman was desperate. I wrote the chapter near his home who at once took up the case; gave the woman clothes and food; arranged with a neighbor to have the crops tended; stood off the store- . keeper telling him the law about the immunity of service-men’s debts while the men were in the service; and promised to lend the woman enough to go on until the slow moving wheels of the bureau at Washington got round to paying what Uncle Sam owed her. 430 Adventures with the Red Cross There were many cases especially among the colored people in which the family was better off, or rather better supplied with money, when the one who ought to be the bread-winner was in the service than they ever had been before. A wife with three children was entitled to half her husband’s pay, plus a govern¬ ment allowance which made her income fifty dollars per month; often much more than she ever had got from her husband. Some of these women had been supporting their families even before their men were drafted. Now, with no greedy man to feed, and a steady income the woman gave up her laundry or house- work, and some even hired a less fortunate colored sister to wash for them. A very few thrifty ones kept on working and saved their money, some even buying a little home; but these were the rare exception ; in most cases, it simply meant fine clothes, more meat to eat and idleness. In some Southern cities, the calls for charity were notably fewer in the winters of ’17 and ’18 than before ; and this was not all because of general prosperity. Again when the first check came, owing to the delays of the overworked bureau, it was usually the accumulation of six, nine or twelve monthly payments. This caused much extravagance among poor people who had never in their lives handled sums of more than fifteen or twenty dollars. On the other hand were the numerous cases of men who in the flush times of 1914 to 1917 had been making twice as much per week as the army paid them per month and their families were real sufferers by the war. I had one case which came near ending my service with the Red Cross. A negro came wifh the pitiful story that he had been drafted from Sheffield, Ala., where he was working on the nitrate plant, earning $3.30 per day, out of which he sent $10.00 each week to his old mother in Memphis. The mother, tho feeble, did a little washing, and with his help took care of two little chil¬ dren and a helpless crippled boy. I got his story about the fam¬ ily confirmed by the Red Cross at Memphis. The poor fellow had been in camp three months but had drawn no pay and was desperate about sending no money to his mother. He was with one of the labor battalions and his top-sergeant admitted that his story was true. I called up the adjutant and told him that I had found many bad cases but that this was the worst; that I With the Boys in Camp 431 proposed to have satisfaction and if I could not get it in camp I should resign from the Red Cross by wire that day and go to Washington; that I should begin with secretary Baker whom I knew well; failing with him, I should try vice-president Mar¬ shall who had been my neighbor in Indiana; and if I could get nothing done by either of them I should try the president; but that I should devote my time to this and some other cases until I made myself such a nuisance to the government that they would either send me to Leavenworth or treat the draftees to a little justice. The adjutant invited me to his office and told me he had an even fifty negroes from Memphis in the same fix; that they had never been enrolled ; that he had not a line of writing about one of them. I asked him what he proposed to do about it and he said he would give them a provisional enrolment the next day and pay them for the three months they had been in camp even if he got broke for doing it. I begged him to pay them in full not deducting any allotments; to which he agreed. The negro boy came to my office in the evening and when I told him he was to get ninety dollars the next day he wept and said “Bress Gord, massa, den I can send my old mammy some money”. A fine looking man came in one day and begged information about securing a discharge; he had a slight defect of vision and was not getting any military training. He was an electrician having some special ability about what they call “static”. He showed me a letter from the superintendent of the power com¬ pany in Pennsylvania, for which he was working when he was drafted, offering him his old job at $10.00 per day as soon as he could get a discharge. In a camp with many miles of wiring and hundreds of electrical appliances, the only work they could give this highly competent electrician was to wash dishes in the hospital kitchen. I told him as a Red Cross man I could do nothing for him but I suggested a plan. I asked him if the company was sup¬ plying power to any factories which made government supplies and he said scores of them. Then I said “your job is easy. Get a letter from the superintendent addressed to the commandant of this camp, asking him to grant you an indefinite furlough so that you can work for him and help supply the aforesaid plants 432 Adventures with the Red Cross with power.” He took my advice and got the furlough, which is practically a discharge, the very day the superintendent’s letter came. I regret to say that an instance of such prompt action was a rare exception to the rule. There were many other incom/petents whom the army was feeding, clothing and paying who could never be made soldiers and were not able nor the right complexion for the labor bat¬ talions. It was hard for a non-military man to understand why these were not discharged. Many of these did not want a dis¬ charge, they were delighted to be better fed and clothed than they ever had been before; but there were many cases of great hardship even worse than that of my friend the electrician. One of these was a young fellow from Florida. He was an enthusi¬ astic American citizen, and had been eager to be a soldier. Five times he had enlisted in different places and five times he was rejected as under weight and having a weak heart. Then sup¬ posing he was entirely unfit for the army and therefore immune from the draft, he rented some land, borrowed some money and put ten acres in celery and lettuce. Just as the season began he was drafted and this time was accepted and mustered in. When he got to the camp he was again examined and rejected for train¬ ing but they kept him there doing police duty round the tents or similar very light work. His father was a periodic-insane man, utterly unreliable, quite sane for a week or two and then quite insane for months. His mother was old and weak. He showed me a letter from her telling him she was trying to save his crop, “but what can one old woman do with five acres of lettuce?” His crop which should have netted him $400.00 per acre was going to ruin ; it seemed impossible to get it cared for. Of course I had to tell him I could only help him with advice; but I told him how to get the application for a discharge initiated by his friends at home thru the draft board who perhaps by this time had realized their mistake. The poor fellow was utterly discour¬ aged his morale all gone. I told him to brace up. I reminded him that Uncle Sam has many nephews and some of them will make mistakes ; those who drafted him had done so ; but I said “suppose you had been able for training had gone to France, and thru the mistake of one of the commanding officers, who also make mis¬ takes in the field sometimes, you had been killed; this mistake With the Boys in Camp 433 has cost you a year’s time and $4000.00, but that would have been worse.” But I told him to remember he had done his duty, he had come when his country called ; he was one of the great army and had worn the khaki ; and in years to come when the memory of the errors of the present had faded and for all his long life after he would be glad and proud that he had been here. My eloquence seemed to have a good effect on the boy’s morale; he thanked me and went away, looking quite cheerful. Just the day before I left the camp, a morale officer was appointed, a fine young fellow who appeared to have lots of good sense and good feeling. His job was to correct just such things as I have been telling about. I met him at headquarters and told him of one or two cases. He came to our hut and spent sev¬ eral hours asking questions and hearing about a number of the men I had on a list as being proper to discharge, and I have no doubt many things wrong were set right after I left. On the morning of November 11th before we knew of the armistice, I got orders to report to Atlanta, the headquarters of the division, for work of another kind. I left the camp with much regret. My work there was an intensely interesting one and I learned lessons of much value. One especially which I perhaps did not need was that on “passing the buck”. I had always despised that cowardly practice; perhaps sometimes I have been too ready to assume responsibility which I might properly have shoved off my own on to other’s shoulders. But certainly after a little army experience the fear of taking respon¬ sibility looked more contemptible than ever. It is to me an unsolved enigma how the same men can be such moral cowards in the camp and so lion-hearted so valiant against the enemy in the field. Another lesson was the difficulty if not impossibility of gov¬ ernmental management of any business which is not purely rou¬ tine. I had long had a leaning towards government ownership and governmental management of public utilities. But what I saw at Camp Greene and what I have encountered since in con¬ nection with the Red Cross has changed my opinion radically. I saw waste and mismanagement on every hand especially appal¬ ling waste of man power. If any private business should be run as we were then running our training camps, after more than a 434 Adventures with the Red Cross year’s experience, it could not last a month. If a commercial insurance company were to be conducted as inefficiently as was the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, the U. S. Government’s inspectors would put it out of business very shortly. And what has happened since the war has ended has only confirmed my distrust. Of all the superstitions which paralyze mankind, that of the omnipotence of government seems the stupidest. It is almost omnipotent for evil, it is futile indeed for good. Chapter Two ADVENTURES AS DIRECTOR OF SUPERVISION The new task which was given me on November 12th, was of a widely different nature and called for different qualities from those needed in camp. I no longer had to deal with the clients nor even directly with those who dealt with them. My work was to direct supervisors, who in turn were to counsel with and help the chapters and their executive secretaries. The armistice had ended the fighting, it had not ended the war. The chapters all had as much to do as ever; no longer' rolling bandages, nor knitting sweaters, but the home service was vastly increased. There was a general feeling of relief from the tension that had kept every one in line. It was necessary to make people see that their work was not done, that we still had a tremendous task before us until the troops should come back across the sea ; and a still greater one after they returned. The work at division headquarters had been done thru a number of departments, each with its head and its staff of work¬ ers, and it was a highly complicated job to re-organize and cen¬ tralize it. It was undertaken slowly. There were two main departments that of military and that of civilian relief, and the relations between them had sometimes been strained. My work was supervision of home service and belonged under civilian relief. I cannot tell the story of re-adjustment which went on all thru the vast Red Cross organization. That would take a volume in itself and I have neither time nor knowledge to write it, and I had only a small share in it. We had five states in our Southern division ; North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, with headquar¬ ters at Atlanta, and a total of about six hundred and fifty chap¬ ters each with one to twenty branches. The Red Cross had assumed certain responsibilities to the government, and these could only be fully discharged by every chapter carrying on and (435) 436 Adventures with the Red Cross doing its full duty. To do our work of supervision as it should have been done each chapter should have been visited in the period succeeding the armistice, at least once a month by a highly competent field supervisor thoroly versed in all the intri¬ cate details of allotments and allowances, compensations, insur¬ ance, hospitalization, junior Red Cross, and a hundred more details. But it was impossible to do this, we could not find the trained people and we had not the money to pay them if we could have found them. With an inadequate staff, we did the best we could and the consequence was that many chapters lapsed which might have been saved. The wonder was not that so many lapses took place but that we saved as many as we did. If it had been important for chapters to have trained executive secretaries in the full flush of enthusiasm during the war, they were much more needed now. There was more office work to do than ever and the volunteers no longer wanted to do it. Many volunteers did keep on with a magnificent patriotic devotion ; and if we had been able to visit every chapter frequently and by entirely competent supervisors, thousands more workers might have been kept in line. Before the armistice, the home service cases which involved correspondence with government departments, were mostly those of mis-sent or unapplied for allowances; these tho tedious were comparatively simple. To find out whv an allowance check did not come, or whv after it had been coming for two or three months, it was discon¬ tinued, often took three or four letters with wearying delay. When a government department has ten times as many letters to answer as its ill-trained and often politically appointed clerks have time for, and when almost every clerk has learned the para¬ mount importance of red tape, as his or her first lesson and the gentle art of passing the buck as the second, it is no wonder that enquiries got snowed under below a heap of later papers and were misplaced or lost. But even before the boys came home many compensation and insurance cases came up and these were hard¬ er to handle, the opportunities of fraud were greater and the gov¬ ernment’s precaution to avoid it more stringent. Now we be¬ gan to know what the word “affidavit” means. Then as the boys began to return and thousands of disabled ones wanted voca- As Director of Supervision 437 tional training and many thousands needed hospitalization; things got worse; the amount of “paper-work” as the army calls it, became appalling. It was simply impossible for a chapter to function without a trained executive secretary. Some interesting work I had to do was with institutes, each of six weeks’ duration, in which we tried to give new executive secretaries some slight idea of their duties. Although six weeks’ instruction is only a tiny beginning, these were quite useful. Many of our new workers, with even this superficial training, who had the right back-ground of life and the right social mind¬ edness, gave good account of themselves and are today doing ex¬ cellent service some with chapters and some in the field. Early in 1919 we were faced with a serious emergency prob¬ lem. Many chapters had almost ceased to function and there were hundreds of unfinished cases requiring attention. Many of these were enquiries from government departments; many from chapters in other divisions. It was essential to clear the files of unanswered letters and I therefore sent field representa¬ tives, or as we called them at first, supervisors, to inactive chap¬ ters to take hold of the work precisely as tho they were the execu¬ tive secretaries of the chapter involved. By doing this we managed to relieve the Bed Cross of some of the odium of falling down on its job with which it was threatened. We were slow to realize the magnitude of the task we had ac¬ cepted. The number of men, wounded or gassed, and the appall¬ ing number with shell shock or tuberculosis grew rapidly. In 1919, there were 3,300 hospital cases, in 1920, 17,500; in 1921, 26,300; 1922, 35,600. At first we were warned that the peak of the number would not be reached until 1924 ; then 1926 was named, and now (1922) we are told that the number will grow until 1928.* One persisting duty of the Red Cross chapters has been stressed by the army, it is to furnish information to the vari¬ ous commands, when enlisted men ask for furloughs or dis¬ charges because of family necessities. Perhaps no other army than that of the U. S. has ever treated its enlisted men with such consideration. When a man has joined the colors and then some accident or misfortune befalls those he has left behind, and he applies for a furlough to go to see them, the application is re- *It now seems probable that this latest estimate is ill founded. 438 Adventures with the Red Cross ferred to the Red Cross man in camp who sends it to the chapter nearest the man’s home for verification and the decision as to the furlough or discharge is based on the information received just as it was while the men were in training camps. This service is continuous, and is one reason for the continuation of the chap¬ ters. During 1918 and 1919, every few weeks, new orders as to pro¬ cedure superceded those we had just learned to understand, to be in turn themselves superceded about the time the government clerks and the Red Cross secretaries understood them. The Red Cross national headquarters printed a loose leaf manual and sent corrections as fast as the new rules were imposed, but in spite of this the changes caused many errors of form with con¬ sequent excruciating delay. I had thought I understood what “red tape” means, but I found myself almost childishly ignorant of its depth of iniquity. Charles Dickens’ story of the circumlo¬ cution office is a mild depiction of the way many a worried execu¬ tive secretary of a Red Cross chapter feels about the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. This may be an exaggeration of the facts: it does not exaggerate how we came to feel about them. When the Veteran’s Bureau was invented to supercede the broken down War Risk Bureau some of the optimists among us dared to hope for some relief from the weary burden of delay and procrastination. But alas! it proved another case like Milton’s “New presbyter is but old priest writ large.” The cases now are most frequently of compensations: the ap¬ plicants are victims of shell shock, nervous breakdown, tuber¬ culosis, and the sequelae of gassing. Under recent rulings appli¬ cations of the kind miist be supported by a mountain of affidavits, each of which, if in the opinion of an inspector it is irregular or insufficient: is cause to pigeonhole the case (and then forget the hole) so that letter after letter must be written. I am told that an urgent telegram to one district office, concerning some dying man is rarely answered within several days of its date: that a common answer after weeks of delay and showers of letters of in¬ quiry is that “the file cannot be found” so that sometimes the whole weary work is to do again. I am glad to say that not all of the districts of the bureau deserve this condemnation. I have been told of one of them in which when the chief gets an urgent As Director of Supervision 439 telegram, he hardly lets the message out of his hands until an answer has been sent. But such prompt efficiency, I fear, is rare. One of the awkward things existing in the Southern division when I took charge of the supervision of home service was that several other departments had representatives in the field, work¬ ing independently, each calling on the chapters with regard to its own department and ignoring the rest. This had bad effects on the chapters. Decentralization had not been so hurtful during the war, when everybody was as fully occupied in his own spe¬ cialty as he could possibly be. But as the work slowed down, it became necessary to devolve on the executive secretary, many things which had been done by different committees, and too many supervisors are as bad as too many cooks. I conceived the idea of organizing the service of my bureau as an auxiliary to all the others. I had the supervisors come to headquarters frequently to keep in touch with the administra¬ tion, and when I got them together, I invited the heads of each department to meet with us and tell us what we could do for them. The spirit I tried to instill is shown in a few paragraphs I quote from a manual for field supervisors which I compiled and of which I gave a copy to each: “The field representatives of the bureau of supervision come into more immediate and per¬ sonal contact with the chapters and home service sections than any one else belonging to the division. Hence the opportunity for usefulness and the need that we be equipped to render service. Our ambition is to be helpful to every Bed Cross department.7’ “Our supreme virtue is loyalty to the Red Cross and to our sis¬ ter bureaus. We must feel that Red Cross is one , not a congeries of unrelated departments. We must be meticulously careful not to belittle the work of our associates nor to allow it to be belit¬ tled without a polite, tactful, but emphatic protest.77 “In all we say and do, remember the need for sincerity, clearness of purpose, tact, courtesy, and patience. The people we are working for and with are chiefly volunteers. They will take advice on methods if it is given tactfully but we cannot expect them to take orders.77 “Do case work77 with each home service section. Regard the home service committee of a given chapter just as you have been taught to regard a family problem. Think of its per- 440 Adventures with the Red Cross sonnel as you do of the members of a family. Learn its circum¬ stances, its history, its environment; that is to say the commu¬ nity of which it is a part; and study all these to see how they bear on its success or failure. Think of chapter or commit¬ tee betterment as you do of betterment in a family. Abstain from doing for them what they can and should do for them¬ selves, just as you abstain with a case, remembering that that way lies pauperism. Our motto with the committees just as with a family, should be “help them to help themselves.” “Miss no opportunity to encourage the development of the volunteer work, If there is a trained worker, make sure of her attitude towards the volunteers and, if she seems wavering, remind her that it is her duty to lead, not to do all the work herself, even tho she may be able to do it better and more quickly than they can or will.” “While holding up our standards of Red Cross work do not over-emphasize the need of training to the extent of discourag¬ ing the faithful volunteer workers, who without training, but with fine spirit and devotion, have been and are bearing the bur¬ den ; nor those who as paid executives realize the value of train¬ ing but by untoward circumstances have been deprived of it. It’s worth while to remember that twenty-five years ago professional training for social work had not been invented. The most illustrious of our present-day social workers began as untrained assistants, or secretaries. This is no argument against train¬ ing today; any more than to say that our grandfathers had no telephones would be an argument against using the wires. But it may tend to remove discouragement and help us to have pa¬ tience.” We soon found that it was impossible to reach more than a few of the many chapters with competent representatives and some scheme had to be found to keep people in line. A common question was “why does the Red Cross go on now that the war is over?” People had to be reminded that Red Cross did not be¬ gin in 1917 ; of the great work still to do, its vast importance and most of all the fact of our assumed obligation to Uncle Sam which we must discharge. Even before the extension of home service had been permitted, I organized a number of district meetings, gathering together As Director of Supervision 441 in one place representatives of the chapters of fifteen or more counties. At first we called these “home service conferences” but very soon changed the name to “Red Cross District Conferences” and invited to them the directors of all the Red Cross depart¬ ments nursing, production, junior, etc., to make their appeal. Of these conferences, during 1918-1919 we held six in North Caro¬ lina, five in South Carolina, five in Georgia, and three in Tennes¬ see. We were able to work up a good deal of enthusiasm. Then the Junior Red Cross was assuming proportions hitherto unex¬ pected. We developed the idea that this was no longer only for people across the sea, but for the wonderful help of children in our own land. In this we were greatly aided by the Health Cru¬ sade which had done much to popularize the idea of school chil¬ dren working together for their own benefit, as well as that of foreigners. It soon became evident that the humdrum routine work of adjusting vocational training, hospitalization, compensation, al¬ lotments, and allowances, back pay, travel pay, and all the rest, altho it required steady patient work of hundreds of people, would not hold the chapters together. For that we needed some¬ thing more spectacular, something to appeal to the emotions. The flu epidemic in November and December, 1918, gave us a grand opportunity and while that lasted, the enthusiasm was almost like that of the war. In a thriving little city in South Carolina, the flu was very prevalent, nearly half the people were sick; and the other half working with the Red Cross were waiting on and nursing them. Autos were busy carrying food and medicine, doctors and nurses were on duty day and night, and the work was done so well that the death rate was very low. When the epidemic abated the manager of the Southern division wrote to the chapter chairman a letter of thanks and congratulations on the splendid service that had been rendered and asked him for the names of eight or ten of his best workers to whom the division might give some special mark of commendation. The chairman replied, “I can¬ not give you the names of eight or ten, but I can give you the names of five hundred.” In many other places, similar good work was done and it is probable that the organized service of the Red Cross during the 442 Adventures with the Red Cross great epidemic saved more lives than we had lost in battle during the war. In places where there was no chapter nor similar service the poor people died like rotten sheep. In one hamlet in Louisiana the population was reduced by three-fourths ; three times as many died as remained alive. No disease has ever shown so clearly the value of good nursing ; it was by far more important than the work of the doctors. The facts about the epidemic and other considerations led di¬ rectly to the adoption of public health nursing as a chief activity of the Red Cross, and many chapters decided that, as they could not afford both, a nurse was more important than a trained so¬ cial worker. In a few places, efforts were made to combine the duties, but the results were never favorable, and it became ac¬ cepted as a positive rule that the same worker could not properly fill the two distinct places. A demand for trained health workers became as insistent as that for trained executives, not only as local nurses but also as supervisors of the nursing service. Then came conflicts, misun¬ derstandings, sometimes jealousies, between the two sets of su¬ pervisors. Some of the states in the division had active boards of health and it was necessary to find some basis of co-operation with them. The medical officers of the state naturally enough felt that they ought to be supreme in all health matters. They were quite ready to take over the Red Cross nurses at the ex¬ pense of the Red Cross; and then thought they should have full control of them and even resented the chapter requiring its own nurses whom it paid to report to it. I suppose similar difficulties arose in other divisions. They needed careful and tactful handling everywhere. Fortunately we had in our Southern division a chief of the nursing staff in Jane Van de Vrede, a woman of rare ability and fine qualities of head and heart, unselfish, devoted and wise, so that our con¬ flicts were overcome with the minimum of harm. Still there were some cases in which chapters were wrecked in spite of all our field representatives could do because all their energies were ab¬ sorbed in the nursing service and that was taken over by the state health authorities. THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY Chapter Three Even before the armistice, people began appealing to Red Cross chapters for home service and relief for civilian families who had not had a member in the army. Under the charter as it was then interpreted, these requests had to be denied. Our home service was exclusively for service men and their families. Then came the question how soon after a man is discharged, does the family become a civilian one? And the answer at first was six months, and later, one year. But when we had been doing home service for a family it was hard to stop unless the need was all met, merely because we had reached a time limit. And then other considerations came in. Very early in its history, the Red Cross had extended itself from its first clear purpose ; the help of soldiers in time of war ; to help of civilians in great disasters during peace. The be¬ ginning of a nation-wide health campaign had been another exten¬ sion. Home service for the families of soldiers; which came with our entry into the great war in April, 1917, was a third. Was it not possible to make another great extension, that of home service to civilian families? Might this not be a final develop¬ ment of great value? In one city where a strong chapter existed, there was a fair¬ ly well conducted Associated Charities. Before the war this had a list of families getting help or service of some kind, num¬ bering about eleven hundred. As the Red Cross home service developed it was found that nearly one thousand of these fami¬ lies had such connection with the army that they belonged to the Red Cross. The citizens and the Associated Charities said : “The chapter has taken so many, why not take the few remain¬ ing, why continue two similar agencies in the same city ? Why not save overhead and avoid duplication by uniting?” (443) 444 Adventures with the Red Cross The day after the armistice when we began to ask ourselves, “Where do we come in, now?” the first glimpse of hope for a real future came, when we thought we saw an opportunity to extend the realm of social work beyond the farthest bounds of the im¬ agination of the National Society for the Organization of Char¬ ity. We said why cannot we make of most, or many, or even a chosen few, of the Red Cross chapters, centers of associated knowledge and effort which shall be what we used to dream of, when we began scientific organized charity in the eighteen-eight¬ ies. We had the idea of service more clearly defined and less hampered by relief than it had ever been before, except to a small group of the elect. We had a wonderful nucleus in each chapter; a band of people whose emotions for social welfare had been stirred in common ; who had enjoyed as never before doing things for others in company. If we could only guide these emo¬ tions and enjoyments aright ; if we could only get the nuclei to see the opportunity; might not part of the salvage from the awful wreck of war be a better social order? Not only in a few great cities, where the sense of responsibility of the privileged for the welfare of the less fortunate had been preached for many years and sometimes with a little success ; but in the thousands of small towns and villages and even in the rural districts among our twenty thousand or more chapters, branches, and auxiliaries ? It’s true that many of our leaders did not see what we thought we saw. But some of them did and still do. While they missed the great opportunity there are many small ones remaining. The question of extended home service was taken up in sev¬ eral of the divisions. Many, altho not all, of the social workers, who had been drafted into work for the chapters from the ranks of organized charity were for it. Pressure was brought to bear upon the central council in its favor. I wrote a letter to a friend who was connected with military relief in which I put the argu¬ ment given above as strongly as I could and he presented it to one of the higher-ups who carried it to Washington and my friend said it had some effect. With much hesitation it was ruled that chapters might be allowed to extend their home service under certain conditions ; such as assurance against neglect of our present obligation to the government; against competition with existing benevolent organizations; against temporary and spas- The Great Opportunity 445 modic efforts ; assurance of well trained service and a high stand¬ ard of work; and other safeguards, and many chapters under¬ took the extension and are now carrying it on. Now the fatal weakness in each succeeding method of social welfare work for families which has spoiled them all, one after the other in their turn, has been that it has always, or nearly al¬ ways, seemed necessary to accompany, or prepare for, service by some measure of relief ; and service being often difficult and relief easy, the easy thing has been done, and the difficult one postponed ; until the fine theories of human betterment with which every one of the successive methods began; were first ob¬ scured and then forgotten. Could we hope that Red Cross might escape this danger? There was one factor that seemed favor¬ able. Red Cross work was not confined to, nor chiefly for, “the poor.” It belonged to all in the service. It was far removed from old-fashioned “charity.” So we felt and preached, that the function of a chapter with extended home service was not to be just one more — nor just one — relief organization. It was to be a center of social effort. It was as much concerned with the pro¬ motion of joy as with the assuagement of sorrow ; as much inter¬ ested in the life of the industrious, self-respecting workman and workwoman as in that of the derelict, the broken-down, the de¬ pendent or would-be dependent. It should believe and teach that health is better than sickness and equally contagious; that the school boy has as much worry when his tonsils are affected, if he is the son of the village postmaster, as he has when he is the child of the village loafer ; that souls suffer from hunger as much or more than stomachs; that hyacinths may be more necessary than bread ; that it is as much our function as Red Crossers to recognize the disaster of being a community of dull, stolid, joy¬ less people ; as the disaster of a fire, a flood, or a tornado. Our approach to the chapters with our new message, was partly in print, but chiefly by means of the representatives we sent to visit them, and my job was the direction of these field workers in their dealings with the chapters and particularly with the executive secretaries. Those in the field had the heavy end of the job. We urged them to approach their work in the spirit above expressed and slowly and cautiously win the mem¬ bers one by one, man by man and woman by woman to our 446 Adventures with the Red Cross theory. We told them the most important text for leaders in the New Testament is Mathew xx :27, “and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant,” that the chapter can be chief if it will be the servant of all and in no other way. The executive secretary must be the eye and the brain of the socialized community. Not the tongue, she must do some talk¬ ing, but if she is shrewd she will find some, preacher or lawyer or even a decent politician, to do most of that for her; not the hand, or not the only hand; not the heart, there’s plenty of heart stuff ready if she has the wit to find it. But she must see more, and see more clearly; she must know more of every possi¬ ble sourse of help, of joy, of opportunity; than anyone else; not because she is smarter than the rest, but because it is her job and she is on to it. And many of our devoted workers responded nobly. I have seen an executive secretary go into a town where the chapter doubted she was needed, and in her first week find two deaf- mutes and a blind child growing up in deafness and blindness without education because neither the parents nor the Ladies’ Aid Society, which was giving them relief knew how to apply to the state schools. And what the executive secretary is to her chapter, the field representative is to her group of chapters. I have known of a field representative going into a mill village and finding out that the model cottages, provided by the benevolent, socialized, pater¬ nalistic mill-owners, were supplied with water from wells into which horrible contagion inevitably drained and caused typhoid ; which a mysterious Providence, for some inscrutable reason, per¬ mitted to afflict the poor people, whom the pious, piously re¬ signed, were so sorry for. I told them when they found such pious resignation to preach from another favorite text of mine : Mathew xxiii :v.l4, “It is not the will of your Father which is in Heaven, that one of these little ones perish” — that the value in such instruction of Scriptural over sociological texts, in the average professed God-fearing community, is that they dare not deny their authenticity, even tho sometimes, when it hurts, they question their application. Many chapters applied for and were granted home service extension, a few of them in the spirit outlined above (tho I The Great Opportunity 447 must confess that these were few) and are now carrying on with marked success. A few began and dropped it; a few lapsed al¬ most from the first into crude almsgiving. But where it has been faithfully tried, with a trained, efficient social worker as executive secretary, it is going well. In August, 1919, I was urgently requested to help some people in New Orleans to organize a much needed institution for the feeble-minded. I had got them started about the little school and done a lot of talking for them. Now they were ready to begin and needed some old experienced hand to get things going. It seemed a call I could hardly refuse and I spent a few months getting the institution fairly under way, and it is now run¬ ning successfully. But in doing this, and also keeping up some Red Cross activities and a few other responsibilities which I did not succeed in evading, I broke down in health and, in March, 1920, being in a condition approaching nervous collapse, I was told by my physician that I must either give up work at once and rest for six months or perhaps a year, or go on for a very short time longer and then give up altogether. I chose the milder alternative and rested until the end of the year. With six months’ complete rest and freedom from responsi¬ bility, I got back to health and vigor, and beginning in January, 1921, I resumed Red Cross work with the Gulf division in a new character, that of Staff Representative, my work being merely lecturing and teaching. This at first was in the three states of the Gulf division, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, but in April when the divisions were united, and the headquar¬ ters moved to Atlanta, I went with it, doing the work I most en¬ joy, and am, perhaps, best fit for. So my last adventure in social welfare (perhaps I ought to say my latest) was very nearly re¬ lated to my first, for the home service of the Red Cross, which was the principal, tho not the only theme of my lectures, is in a high degree that family welfare work which I first tried to do in Cincinnati forty years earlier. I traveled extensively from Virginia to Louisiana and all the states between speaking to the public in churches, giving courses of lectures on social work at colleges and summer schools and discussing all the departments of the Red Cross. 448 Adventures with the Red Cross As I went from chapter to chapter to talk to the grown-ups I visited the schools and talked to the children about the junior Red Cross, etc. It was a frequent pleasant incident, on the day following a trip thru two or three school-houses, where I had talked to four or five classes in each, to have school chil¬ dren accost me by name on the street and ask me when I was coming to tell them some more stories. As time went on many changes in the organization were need¬ ed. The successive roll-calls inevitably showed a smaller num¬ ber of members and I felt that the division should not be burdened by paying even the modest salary I needed. Tho the manager of the division seemed to wish to keep me, I resigned to take effect July 31st, 1922; thus bringing to a close, forty years of social work, and setting me free to live wherever I chose, and to write my book, which I had long had a mind to do. And because there’s no better state than Indiana, and no more hearty, wholesome, kindly, human people than the Hoosiers, I settled in my adopted state, at Fort Wayne, hoping for the rest of my life to help when I may as a volunteer once more; for whoso once fairly begins in social work will surely continue in it as long as life and strength shall last. INDEX of People Mentioned Page Addams, Jane . 278, 325, 329 351, 352, 374, 382 Allen, W. H . 374 Almy, Frederic . 46,57 American, Sadie . 357 Armstrong, Gen. S. C . 291 Arnold, Mathew . 89,300 Aschrott, Dr. ( Prussia ) . 88 Auerbach, Murray..- . 400 Ayres, Philip W . 372 Bagley, Gov. (Mich.) . 312 Barnard, Kate . 342 Barrows, Isabel C . 308,318 Barrows, Samuel J . 342, 374 Ba r ton , Clara . 290 Battershall, Miss . 228 Bicknell, Ernest P . 78,83,102 133, 146, 155, 163, 168, 169 244, 313, 358 Bijur, Nathan . 331 Birtwell, Charles W . 153,374 Blake, James Vila . 90 Blinn, Dr. Odelia . 72 Brace, Charles Loring . 374 Brackett, Jeffrey R . . . .320, 323, 326 Brooks, John Graham . 374 Brown, Waldo . 41 Bryce, Lord . 374 Burns, Allen T . 278 Busch, Prof. (Hamburgh) . 48 Butler, Amos W. . .133, 161, 162, 163 235, 328, 341, 347 Butler, Edmond . 47 Byers, Albert G . 295, 297 Byers, Joseph P . 324,327,396 Cabot, Dr. Richard C . 3 Choate, Joseph . 320,321 Christian, King (Denmark) ... .355 Corrigan, Archbishop . 320 Craig, Rev. S. S . 318 Crothers, Rev. Samuel McC . 359 Cushing, Joseph . 295 Cutting, Bayard . 396,417 Dawes, Anna L . 316 deForest, Robert W . 316,325 338,372 449 Page Denison, Edward . 53 Devine, Edwin T . 7,51,316,327 328, 331, 336, 337, 339, 371 372, 373 Dewey, Dr. Richard . 316 Donaldson, Parker . 38 Durbin, Winfield T _ 261,262,263 264, 324 Elder, Archbishop . 19 Elder, John R . 82,84,106,165 298 299 Eliot, Pres. Charles W . 7 Eliot, Rev. T. L . 293,294 Elmore, Andrew . 276, 277, 302 Emerson, R. W . 9 Emery, L. S . 41,42 Fairchild, Charles S . 283, 366 Fairbanks, Mrs. C. W . 84, 309 Fernald, W. E . 211 Fletcher, Miss Alice . 291 Findlay, John H . 85,86 Fish, Dr. Wm. B . 299 Folks, Homer . 316, 324, 328, 377 Fortune, William . 101 Fulcomer, Daniel . 308 Gage, Lyman . 67 Garrison, Wm. Lloyd . 318 Gavit, John P . 380 George, Henry . 317 Gerry, Bishop (S. C.) . 405 Gibbons, Cardinal . 297 Gillespie, Bishop G. D . 291 Gillin, J. L . 7 Glenn, John . 292 Glenn, John M . 295,297,322 Goddard, H. H . 392 Gordon, Jean M . 402 Greenmail, Dr . 396 Gundry, Dr. Richard . 290 Gurteen, Rev. S. H . 48,59 Hackett, E. A. K. . .174, 175, 198, 264 Hall, G. Stanley . 182,380 Hall, Bolton . 318 Hanley, Gov. (Ind.) . 100,163 Hanna, H. H . 298,348 450 Index Page Harriman, Mrs. E. H . 393 Hart, Hastings H . 85,86,271 281, 302, 305, 319, 324, 342 374, 399 Henderson, Charles R - 8,322, 384 Heyman, Michel . 313 Hill, Helen F . 405 Hitchcock, Jane E . 331 Hoadly, Gov. (Ohio) . 289 Hoffman, Frederic L . 325 Hovey, Gov. (Ind.) . 87,89,92 Hoyt, Charles S . 85,86 Ireland, Archbishop . 289 Ireland, Mrs. Geo. F . 39,40,41 Page Mathews, Gov. Claude (Ind.).. 168 173, 174, 245, 256, 257 Miller, Dr. Alexander . 374 Montgomery, Louise . 331 Morgan. “Blinky” (burglar) ... .128 Morss, Sami. R . 94 Mount, Gov. James A . 257,258 259, 260. 261 Mulry, Thos. M . 328, 344 Munsterburg, Emil . 17, 357, 374 Murphy, Edgar Gardner .... 325, 326 Neff, Peter Rudolph . 36, 44 Nicholson, Timothy . 84. 99. 292 323, 324 Johnson, Mrs. Alexander ... 190, 191 200, 228, 241 Johnstone, Albert Sydney . 404 Johnstone, Edward R. .181, 187, 188 392,396, 416 Jones, Rev. M. Ashby . 345 Keene, Dr. George . 311 Kelley, Florence . 312, 325, 353 Kellogg, Charles D . 290 Kellogg, Paul TJ . 353 Kelsey, Carl . 372 Kennedy, John S . 320,372.378 King, Henry W (convict) . .118, 119 Kingsley, Sherman . 78 Kloman, Dr. (Baltimore) . 288 Lamb, Charles . 56 Lathrop, Julia C. . .278, 308. 309. 312 382 Lattimore, Florence . 358 Lee, Bill (convict) . 124 Lee, Jim (convict) . 124 LeGalley, Dr . 254 Letchworth, Wm. P . 281.282 Lincoln, Mrs. Alice . 148 Lindsey, Judge Ben . 339 Loch, Charles S . 357 Logan, Joseph C . 422 Loubet, Ex-Pres. (France) . 355 Lovejoy, Owen R . 353 Low, Seth . 319,321 McCulloch, Oscar Carlton. .81, 84, 86 141, 285, 292, 296, 297, 299 300, 301, 303 McKelway, A. .T . 345 Mack, Julian W . 328,363,364 Martindale, E. B . 82,84 Mastin. .T. T . 167,347,406 O’Reilly, John Boyle . 56 Paine, Robert Treat _ 53,307,314 Palmer, Gov. (Ill.) . 85 Patten, Jim . 121,123,126 Patten, Simon N . 374 Peabody, George Foster . 345 Peelle, Mrs. Margaret F . 84 Phillips, Wendell . 15 Plunket, Sir Horace . 374 i Reed, Myron . 103, 299, 300. 301 302, 303 Reichelderfer. Joseph . 214 Rich, Gov. (Mich.) . 312 Richmond, Mary E . 7,54,316 Robins, Raymond . 341 Rogers, Dr. Joseph G . 88,103 Rogers, Dr. (Minn.) . 254 Rosenau, Nathaniel S . 70,285 287, 288, 306, 308, 309 Sanborn, Frank B . 270,291,311 320, 362, 363, 365 Smith, Hoke . 325,326 Smith, Dr. Samuel E _ 95,96,108 132 Smith, Samuel G . 322,328,329 332 333 Smith, Zilpha Drew . 54.55,56 281, 283, 284, 285, 322 Solenberger, Edwin D . 3 Sonneschein, Rabbi . 290 Spalding. Bishop . . 324 Spann, John M . 256,264 Spencer, Anna G a rlin. .306,373, 374 384 Speranza, Gino . 374 Steele, H. Wirt . 347.353 Stettinius, John L . 30.37,39 INDEX 451 Page Stewart, Wm. Rhinelander. . 319, 321 Swanson, Gov. (Va.) . 347 Tachau, E. S . 403 Taylor, Graham.. . .278, 371, 374, 379 380, 381, 382, 383, 384 Taylor, Graham Romeyn . 381 Taylor, Katharine . 381 Taylor, Leah . , . 381 Trusdell, Charles G. . .61, 77, 78, 286 287 Tucker, Frank . 329,365 Von Yoght, Casper . 48 Page Walk, James W . 130,285,287 Warner, A. G . 7,8,376 Wayland, Rev. Dr . 70 Wayland, Judge Francis . 310 Wendte, Rev. Charles W . 13,21 West, Mary Allen . 74 Whipple, Bishop . 289 Whipple, Durand . 400,401 Wilmer, Rev. C. B . 325 Wines, Frederick Howard. .. .85, 86 98, 130, 302 Wise, Rabbi Stephen S . 330,351 Woods, Robert W . 278 Wright, Dr. Charles E. .95, 109, 113 Wright, A. 0 . 311,312 Topical Page After-care of insane. . .316, 377, 378 Aftermath of disaster . 25 Aged poor, care of . 35 Alms, degrading and hurtful. ... 33 53, 57 Almshouse, The . 140 American Assn, for Org. Fam. Soc. Work . 55 American Assn, of Soc. Wkrs... 7 American Charities (Warner) . . 8 50 American Prison Assn . 307 American Red Cross, Adven¬ tures with . 290, 419 boys in camp, with . 421 Bureau of War Risk Ins . 426 434, 438 Camp Greene, N. C . 422 circumlocution office . 438 conferences of R. C. in South¬ ern Div . 441 extended home service . 444 flu epidemic and R. C . 441 institutes for training execu¬ tive secretaries . 437 Junior Red Cross . 441 morale officer Camp Greene.. 433 passing the buck . 433 red tape triumphant . 427,433 436, 438 Southern div. A. R. C . 435 supervision, direction of . 435 supervisors doing case work with their chapters . 440 Veteran’s Bureau, the . 438 Y. M. C. A. and R. C. in camp. 423 American Soc. Sci. Assn . 270 Page Apostle or deacon . 344, 391 Art of social work . 8 Asiatic immigration . 331 Assd. Char, meaning of term _ 23 Assd. Char, reputation of . 31 A. I. C. P. in diff . cities . 24, 48 Asthenontology, Sci. of . 130 Asylums for poor, names of.... 137 social classification in . 147 Birth control, German view.... 18 Blue Ridge Assn. N. C . 385 summer school at . 421 Bds. of St. Char. vs. Bds. of Control . 92 Boston, Assd. Charities of _ 21,53 Buffalo, C. O. S. of . 21, 48 By-products of philanthropy .... 146 Calamity relief liberal . 33 Charity, feared and hated by decent poor . 5, 41 Charity trust, A . 76 Chicago C. O. S. beginning of... 59 loud call from . 44 making good . 63 publicity stunts of . 68 Relief and Aid Soc. and _ 59,60 77, 286 its board . • 62 triumvirate who ruled it. .62, 76 77 county out-door relief in _ 71 fire relief, results of . 32,60 Child labor in the South . 325 Childn. Aid Soc. of N. Y . 154 chldn. taken to Ind. by . 154 452 Index Page Children’s Bd. of Guardians .... 82 Children of strikers fed . 4 Church and King mob . 6 Churches weakened by gifts of millionaires . 33 Cincinnati Assd. Char . 13 org. of by districts . 13 salaries of agents . 23 saving money expected . 21 Cincinnati, early history . 16 in the eighties . 14 poor whites and shanty boat folks . 20 negroes, former slaves . 20 slavery days, underground R. R . 15 pro-slavery sentiment . 15 Cincinnati, German influence... 17 child labor 19, personal lib¬ erty 19, opinions on “puri tans” 18, thrifty but pleasure loving 17, “over the Rhine”17 Cincinnati, floods in Ohio valley 1883 24, 1884 25 flood relief, the great . 25 central committee . 24, 25 city’s contribution . 27 clothing from afar . 29 contribs. to A. C . 29 derelicts, human flood of . . . 28 repg. and replacing homes . . 31 results of flood on A. C . . . 25, 27 33 Cincinnati today, A. C. highly org. million dollar funds, social unit experiments ... 44 Columbian exposition in Chicago.305 Common schools of vice, jails as 104, 127 Concentration vs. association of charities . 52 Conference, The National ... 36, 267 American plan hotel for head¬ quarters preferred . 282 associated societies, the . 360 limitation of . 361 commercial orgs. cooperating.. 364 cumulative index, the . 333 democracy of . 273, 323 effects of, on a city . 295 eras, three, of the . 365 finances of the . 347 first attendance, my . 36,281 get-together dinner, Phila _ 336 Guide and Index, The .... 333, 334 hegemony of the . 367 meetings of, Atlanta 47, 325, Page Baltimore 295, Boston 359, Buffalo 350, Chicago 305, Cincinnati 322, Cleveland 362, Denver 302, Gd. Rapids 278, 311, Minneapolis 340, Nashville 307, New Orleans 313, Omaha 290, Philadel¬ phia 335, Portland, Me., 326, Portland, Ore., 329, Richmond 344, St. Paul 56, 288, St. Louis 281, 352, San Francisco 291, Topeka 321, Toronto 313, Washington 284, 322, New Haven, 310 name changed to Conf. of Soc. Wk . 364 platforms not adopted by.... 354 sectionalism, dreaded . 278 sermons, by distd preachers. .323 singing, congregational, at.... 298 sociability, lack of, at times. . .282 standing corns, of, work of compiling . 275 stormy petrels of, few . 272 unwritten (customary) law.. 270 271 vice president, a, ruled out of the succession . 337 Conferences, State . 157 Conference, the spirit of . 276 Conflicts in cities, N. Y., Chi¬ cago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, etc . 49 Conquest of poverty (Almy) .... 57 Copenhagen, slumless city . 358 Cotton famine in Lancashire... 5 Council, The . 70 Council of Char. Offrs., The. .56,289 Decadence of char, societies .... 24 Declaration of dependence, chil¬ dren’s . 345 Degradation of char, energy _ 50 Democratic spirit, The . 200 Deps. Defs. Dels. (Henderson) . .376 Devel. from char. agt. to soc. worker . 366 Dole relief, evils of . 46 Elberfeld system, the . 48 Endowments, evils of . 33 Family welfare work in 80's. ... 45 conflicting agencies . 47 enthusiasm of early days . 45 friendly visiting . 34,53 homes, to save or restore . 47 Index 453 Page help to self-help, only kind _ 54 night office hours, in Cinti. ... 43 in Chicago . 64 provident plans, coal funds, etc . 42, 43 Feeble-Minded, Adventures with. 171 adult females, commitment of. 218 employment of . 226 The Moated Grange (dream) 229 amusements for f. m . 188 birthday parties . 190 camping out on farm . 189 comic operas . 192, 194 being investigated . 238 Colonia, farm, boon to the supt. profitable to state. . .211 fruit growing as industry. . .215 lumbering and brick mak¬ ing . 215 construction, Harper lodge.... 226 Sunset cottage . 223 housing at Colonia . 230 doctors and medicine . 246 autopsies . 246 cretinism and the thyroid.. 252 epidemics, diphtheria, scar¬ let fever and measles . 250 making friends with the medical school. . .248, 249, 253 dentistry, dental interne . 254 education of the f. m . 180 encouragement the spirit . . . 182 employees, meetings of . 205 attendants and teachers .... 201 employment of children, Sun¬ set sisters and imbecile helpers . 223 berry picking, event of joy. .234 f. m. labor and the unions.. 219 happiness the prime requisite. 58 188 institution method and spirit.. 203 corporal punishment . 206 elopements (runaway) . 206 matron and homelikeness ... 200 New Orleans school begun.... 447 nutrition experiments . 232 Sunday School, the . 190 training in usefulness, and permament control the es¬ sentials . 177 Federation of soc. agencies . 44 Firvale union, Sheffield, Engd..l48 Florence Crittenden Homes . 361 Fresh air for children, Chicago.. 71 Daily News fresh air fund. ... 72 Page Castle Content . 73,74 Fresh air for chldn, Cincinnati.. 37 Mount Healthy, farms at . 40 New Richmond & Clermont Co. 38 Oxford & Butler Co . 41 Giving in the eighties and now. .39 Governors as best friends . 256 Governor as severe critic . 261 Greed as a cause of poverty .... 51 Hamburgh in 1788 . 48,60 Heredity of feeble-mindedness and pauperism . 133 Home coming from Europe . 359 Home for self-supporting wom¬ en in Chicago . 57 Hoosier character, friendliness of . 165 Hull House, Chicago . 278 Illinois Board of Charities . 83 Impressions of early childhood.. 4 Indictment of char, agencies in Pres. add. at Conf (De- vine) . 340 Industries which cause poverty and vice . 51,120 Insane in almshouses and jails 111, 112, 114 Inspection vs. detection . 89 Inspection and Supervision in Indiana . 79 Board of State Charities, The. 81 annual report, the first . 97 asylums for poor . 137 employment of inmates . . 143 f. m. the, treatment in... 145 insane in . 144 visits of inspection to ... . 139 bi-partisan boards . 84 card catalog of instn. inmates. 131 dependent children . 150 county orphans homes . 150 migrant children . 153 importation of, into state in 26 years . 154 finances and contracts . 133 forthcoming reports as news . . 102 hospitals ins. inspection of . . . . 91 eastern hospital, the . 93,96 impeachment law . 158 jails, county . * . .127, 128 see, common schools of vice. Longcliff hospital . 103 news value of new board . 101 pardon cases and Gov. Hovey.117 118 454 Index Page Prisons, north 97, South 121 discipline, silent system .... 122 punishments, dark cell . 115 the free hour . 122 food, the slop contract . 98 labor, contract . 119,120 Fourth of July in prison.. . .125 prison schools . 116 State penal farm . 129 statistical work of Board . 130 International Congress of Char., Corr. and Philanthropy, Chicago . 305 International Congress of Pub. Rel. and Pri. Philan¬ thropy, Europe . 355 Internationalism and Conf . 355 Inwardness, method of . 89 King Coal’s Highway . 14 Lancashire, working people of . . 5 Lavish relief, from left-over funds . 32,61 Legal Aid Society, Chicago . 65 London Charity Organi. Soc _ 56 Loyola School of Sociology . 384 Minimum wage law needed . 57 Minnesota St. Board of Char... 131 National Prison Association. .. .126 N. Y. St. Char. Aid Assn . 316 Page S. C. 404, Ky. 402, Va. 406, Fla. 401, Calif. 408, Wis. 410 cooperative agencies . 397 women’s clubs . 398 universities and colleges.. . .398 Eugenics record office . 401 various other agencies . . 402, 403 f. m. the problem of . 393 legislatures lectured to, Ark. 401, S. C. 405, La. 402, Fla. 401, Mo. 407 meetings, varieties of audi¬ ences . 397 Mental Hygiene Com.. 394, 397, 401 403, 408, 416 Pro, for F. M. Com. on . 167 Southern States work in . 399 Vineland Trg. Sch. . . . 187, 391, 392 extension dept, of . 391,392 Provident Associations . 24, 48 Provident Society of Boston .... 286 Reformation of criminals . 127 Relief, eradication of a benefit. . 57 agent of, will become obsolete. 53 habit like a drug habit . 53 from left-over funds in Cinti. . .25 32 in Chicago . 32, 60 Reporter of Organized Charity. . 68 Responsibility and authority go together . 204 Ohio Bd. of St. Charities . 83,97 Oligarchy, benevolent, success . . 273 Outdoor relief in Buffalo . 21 Outdoor relief in Cincinnati .... 21 Pamphlets on Char., demand for. 69 Pauperism, a higher . 177 Pauperization, a lesson in . 32 Penal code, basis of in Indiana . . 121 Peterloo massacre, Chartists .... 6 Philadelphia Soc. for Org. Char. 21, 49 Plymouth Church, Indianapolis. 81 Politics and relief, Chicago . 70 Poormaster, the, Buffalo . 21 Poor relief, an adventure in ... . 156 Poverty, abolition of . 317 Prisons, see Inspection, etc. Propaganda for the F. M. Adventure in . 389 task 391, execution 396, re¬ campaigns in states, Ark. 400, Social Education, Adventure in. .315 schools for soc. workers . 7,9 Chicago school of civics and philanthropy . 379,382 humanness of . 383 practical and broad . 383 Graham Taylor, Pres., and his home . 379 # Commons, The . 380, 381, 382, 383 high sch. pupils and eugenics.. 386 N. Y. School of Philanthropy 23, 327 academic standards . 378 matriculation requirements . 376 field work of students . 375 summer school of six weeks. 371 Salford, Lancashire, famine re¬ lief in . 5 Salvation Army, The . 24 Satisfactions of Social Work.... 3 Segregation and sterilization of f. m . 400 Index 4oo Page Self-help, law of life . 32 Sentinel, The Indianapolis. . .84, 94 Settlement theory , The . 277 Social work, how to understand. 34 worker, use of term . 8 Sociology a recent science . 310 Southern Socio. Congress . 399 St. George’s Bene. Society . 64 St. Louis Provident Assn. ... .49, 284 St. Vincent de Paul Soc. . 64, 344, 361 Staff representative A. R. C _ 447 Survey, The . 7 Page Tax reform a social need . 318 United Charities of Chicago.... 78 Utopian purposes of the C. O. S. . 50 Va. Bd. of St. Charities . 347 Verbal currency, depreciation of. 46 Vision, future, of soc. work - 391 Wisconsin Board of St. Charities 83 Woodyard for tramps, Cinti.... 42 Chicago . 69 DATE DUE f f GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S. A.